I made some yummy mushroom risotto last night, loosely following this recipe.

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Bluechip NFT project Moonbirds signs with Hollywood talent agents UTA

Visualizing $65 Trillion in Hidden Dollar Debt

Audi-Backed Startup Holoride is Bringing VR to the Car

There’s a use case for virtual reality that remains untapped: the automobile. “VR in the car” – where passengers amuse themselves with virtual reality (VR) headsets instead of phones or iPads – sounds like a good idea on paper, but the tech is notorious for inflicting motion sickness on many wearers, even when they’re standing still. Throw in a moving car and you’re practically guaranteed to need a (non-virtual) barf bag.
There’s a way to solve this problem, and a startup spun out from Audi has done it. Holoride, launching in the U.S. at CES 2023, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the car’s motion in real time, combining that with the head movements of the wearer to smooth out the experience and ensure any barf bags stay in the seat-back pocket. For testing the product at CES 2023, we can confirm that it works.

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Protesters clash with police at antigen kit maker factory in China

‘Fake’ Indian COVID-19 medicines flood China’s black market amid surge in cases

Politics:

America’s Coming Age of Instability

The United States appears headed toward endemic regime instability. Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional crises, including contested or stolen elections and severe conflict between presidents and Congress (such as impeachments and executive efforts to bypass Congress), the judiciary (such as efforts to purge or pack the courts), and state governments (such as intense battles over voting rights and the administration of elections).
The United States would likely shift back and forth between periods of dysfunctional democracy and periods of competitive authoritarian rule during which incumbents abuse state power, tolerate or encourage violent extremism, and tilt the electoral playing field against their rivals.
In this sense, American politics may come to resemble not Russia but its neighbor Ukraine, which has oscillated for decades between democracy and competitive authoritarianism, depending on which partisan forces controlled the executive. For the foreseeable future, U.S. presidential elections will involve not simply a choice between competing sets of policies but rather a more fundamental choice over whether the country will be democratic or authoritarian.

Hundreds arrested as Brazil authorities push rioters out of congress, court

Brazil Election Protesters Storm Government Offices

Thousands of supporters of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed the country’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices on Sunday to protest what they falsely believe was a stolen election.
It was the violent culmination of incessant rhetorical attacks by Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters against the nation’s electoral systems.

That three buildings were attacked apparently simultaneously suggests a coordinated conspiracy. Might electronic footprints show that Bolsanaro and Trump were together as the attacks unfolded? Secret Service agents as witnesses?

Lula vows to punish Congress invaders

How Trump's allies stoked Brazil Congress attack

No sign of casualties after Russia claims revenge attack on Ukrainian soldiers

Kevin McCarthy is a medical miracle because most people wouldn't survive having their spine slither out their asshole. pic.twitter.com/7YiqZr9q4B

— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot) January 8, 2023

Russia backs banning of maps disputing official ‘territorial integrity’

Russia’s government extended support to a legislative amendment that would classify maps that dispute the country’s official “territorial integrity” as punishable extremist materials, the state-owned TASS news agency reported on Sunday.
The amendment to Russia’s anti-extremism legislation stipulates that “cartographic and other documents and images that dispute the territorial integrity of Russia” will be classified as extremist materials, the agency reported.

Serendipity:

Your stuff is actually worse now

How the cult of consumerism ushered in an era of badly made products.

Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?

As alcohol-related liver disease rises in the U.S., a clinic takes a new approach to treatment

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