2026-06-27

Horseshit

• How much? The hidden costs of restaurant dishes

• How not to be a tennis parent

• What we miss when we ignore male infertility

• High-sensitivity electro snout sniffs out unsafe food

• Archaic Hominin Species Buried Only Their Women

• Portland reps query $600M gift to Blazers owner; he says be glad he pays taxes

• Alamo Drafthouse spent years banning phones. Now it requires them

• Looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular proves incels have ‘no game’ after getting rejected by multiple women in embarrassing video.

• A single letter in 1968 ruined MSG’s reputation. Science is finally clearing its name.

• 'Edited' human embryos reveal secrets of our development–and fuel ethical debate

• Venezuela quake: Devastation is urgent warning for California

• What if ideas aren't getting harder to find, after all?

Epstein

• Federal judge orders DOJ to release more Epstein files by July 2nd

celebrity gossip

• Happy birthday Mel Brooks — and thanks for the laughs! ‘Blazing Saddles’ director turning 100

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Reading the news is the new smoking

  During the Trump administration, I would devour news of the president’s latest impropriety and imagine myself throttling one of his supporters. “WHY DID YOU DO THIS??” I would shout, squeezing the life out of them. I started to feel like maybe this was a bad thing. So in the summer of 2020, I stopped. I swore to only read the news on Saturday mornings. Since then, I’ve given it up almost entirely. And I feel better. Way, way better. It feels like a war that used to be fought in my backyard is now being fought on Neptune instead. I feel relieved of my duty to keep track of the whole world, and I now realize I never had that duty in the first place. My brain got quieter and I started hearing myself think instead of hearing myself worry. And I stopped imagining myself choking people to death, which was a big improvement.

Musk

• What is Starfall? A look at SpaceX’s mysterious new return capsule.

• SpaceX plans to build 'Starpipe' natural gas pipeline to fuel Starship rockets

• Elon Musk's SpaceX plans Starlink mobile push into US consumer market

  • SpaceX plans to launch Starlink mobile service in the US

• SpaceX's newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

• SpaceX bonds sell off days after AI and rocket group's $25B debt deal

• Musk ordered to testify in election lottery cases; one lawsuit may be narrowed

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Underpromise, overdeliver? Hands-on with the $24,950 Slate auto

• US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• A Charter School Spent $500k on AI-Powered Humanoid Robots. Was It Worth It?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Goodbye, Scientific American

  Scientific American has been acquired by LabX Media Group, which holds Discover Magazine, IFLScience, and a number of other science publications. I haven’t looked at IFLScience since it was a Twitter account stealing other people’s material. They say it’s different now.

• Why have papers by Max Planck been retracted?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Sony Confirms 'Significant' Bungie Layoffs

• Xbox follows Apple with price increases

• Apple hints at more price increases coming later

• Micron blames Apple and customers for the lack of memory capacity

  • Micron sets high memory prices for 5 years

• The Long-Term Threat to the Memory Chip Boom Is Innovation

• Samsung will soon start charging to access its smart home API

• Netflix requires every user profile to be tied to unique email address

• PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

• Apple to Skip High-End M6 Mac Chips, to Launch M7 Pro, M7 Max, M7 Ultra Instead

• The Nationwide Backlash Against Cameras Watching Your Car

  • Paintball guns provide a harmless, quick, fun way for citizens to register their disapproval of these devices.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Small satellite operators confront a bottleneck to space access

  At least nine SpaceX partners and customers tell SpaceNews that SpaceX is not accepting Transporter reservations beyond late 2028 or early 2029, and the manifest for the next couple of years is nearly full. Some customers said they expect that SpaceX will extend Falcon 9 rideshares if its super heavy-lift Starship rocket does not come online as quickly as company leaders anticipate. But the lack of spots — potentially as few as half as many as in recent years — has left satellite companies scrambling to find a way to space.

• Perseverance Scratches the Martian Surface, Finds Organic Carbon

  • Inorganic carbon would be a trick

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• White House asks OpenAI to limit its next model release

  • US Government Asks OpenAI to Stagger AI Model Release

  • Trump administration asks OpenAI to limit next model release

  • Trump administration asks OpenAI to stagger release of new model

  • OpenAI will initially only release ChatGPT 5.6 to government-approved customers

  • The White House is asking OpenAI to slow roll the release of its new model

  • OpenAI staggers AI model release after Trump administration request

  • OpenAI set to limit GPT 5.6 rollout after call from Trump administration

  • White House Will Ad Hoc Decide Who Can Individually Access GPT-5.6

  • OpenAI releases GPT-5.6 to select users vetted by US Government

  • U.S. government will decide who gets to use latest upgrade to ChatGPT

• OpenAI leans toward waiting until next year for IPO, NYT reports

  • OpenAI Mulls Delaying IPO Until 2027

  • OpenAI leans toward waiting until 2027 for IPO: Report

• Anthropic Moves Toward Deal with US to Lift Curbs on AI Models

  • Trump admin allows Anthropic to release Mythos AI model to some companies

  • US releases powerful Anthropic model Mythos to some US companies

  • US allows Anthropic to release Mythos to 'trusted partners'

  • Anthropic Moves Toward Deal with US to Lift Curbs on AI Models

• AI is reshaping work. A new group aims to help people adapt and thrive

• Competition intensifies for Anthropic and OpenAI ahead of IPOs

• The fight against data centers has nothing to do with data centers

  They have become a proxy for the hate towards AI and the concentration and accumulation of wealth it’s creating.

• A Niche Technology Became a Choke Point for A.I

• OpenAI Codex bombards SSDs with needless write operations, costing millions

• DuckDuckGo's AI Feature Is Telling Users That Trump Died of Rabies

• California State Government Launches AI Job Loss Tracker as Layoff Fears Grow

• Samsung readies $648B bet, report says, as AI boom reshapes South Korea

• How the DeepMind mafia brought the AI boom to London

• Jim Keller: 'AI Still Obeys the Old Laws of Compute'

• What Would C. S. Lewis Have Thought of AI?

• A.I. Doomaxxing Is Bad for Our Economy

• There's One Clear Reason Americans Are Gloomy About A.I

• Anthropic's Claude is winning over paid consumers, a market owned by ChatGPT

• The AI backlash is only getting started

• Anthropic has hired an economist with interesting views on human survival

• 'Cost Me the Election': Data Centers Trigger Voter Backlash

• Cory Doctorow on the Right – and Wrong – Way to Criticize AI

• NYT slams Microsoft for building copyright-infringing supercomputer for OpenAI

• Apple's Vision Pro and Smart Glasses Chief Is Leaving for OpenAI

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Polymarket says hackers stole users' funds

• Polymarket tops $1B in annualized revenue

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Volkswagen weighs up to 100k job cuts and four plant closures

  • VW Eyes Cutting 100k Jobs and Closing Plants

  • Volkswagen to axe up to 100k jobs in cost-cutting drive

  • Volkswagen reportedly planning to axe 100k jobs

  • VW may close four factories to adapt to the future, report says

  • Volkswagen to cut 15% of workforce, close four German plants

  • Volkswagen reportedly planning to axe 100k jobs

• The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations

• Crazy Rich Returns Lure Cabbies and Even Kids to Red-Hot Asian Markets

• Revolut scraps 'remote-first' working for graduate hires

• Best Investments over the Last 100 Years? Almost All Are Tech Companies

• Engineer accused of insider trading around Microsoft's Three Mile Island reboot

• Amazon Prime Day Household Spending Down 16%, Numerator Says

• Intel's Chip Business Shows Signs of Life After Years of Struggle

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• California wealth tax fight moves to voters

• FCC may kill $2B program that connects schools and libraries to Internet

Trump

• Executive Proclamation restores commercial fishing in Pacific marine monuments

• Trump threatens 100% tariff on any country that imposes digital services tax

  • President warns of 100% tariff on countries implementing digital services tax

  • Trump Threatens 100% Tariffs over Digital Services Tax on U.S. Firms

  • Trump threatens 100% tariff on European digital services taxes

Democrats

• Gavin Newsom’s Circle of Corruption

  As federal agents examine Newsom’s connections, we decided to do the same. We reviewed records dating back to his tenure as mayor of San Francisco. They reveal that, over nearly three decades in politics, Newsom has amassed a network of appointees, employees, and associates implicated in a range of ethical violations and criminal offenses—including, in some cases, serious felonies.

• Gavin Newsom opposes a California wealth tax. He’s proposing a national billionaire tax instead | CNN Politics

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed a national tax on billionaires that he says is the first part of an “economic reset for America” agenda, which aides explicitly say is part of his considering to launch a presidential campaign. “The system America’s founders built was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades,” Newsom writes. “We can reverse it together, as a country.” It is extremely early in the presidential campaign cycle for a policy proposal — but comes as Democrats continue to embrace economic populism and moves against the wealthy. It also comes as California voters in November will decide on a billionaires’ tax after the governor and opponents of the tax late Thursday failed to reach a deal to keep it off the ballot.

Left Angst

• Russell Vought's Latest Plan to Gut the Government Should Terrify You

• Ex-NOAA employees re-create a valuable climate data site shut down by Trump

• Texas Man Gets 30 Years in Prison for Transporting 'Anti-Government' Pamphlets

  Sanchez-Estrada was arrested, charged, and convicted of corruptly concealing a document and conspiracy to conceal documents.

  • AKA tampering with evidence. Those documents were relevant in a conspiracy to commit murder, but now I'm pretty sure he can have them back and distribute them. Disappointing to see "Reason" puffing the propaganda pipe on this one.

• Top DOJ Official Tells Staff He Wants to Avoid Antitrust Trials

• Bayer scores landmark victory as Supreme Court overturns Roundup verdict

  • Supreme Court ruling blocks lawsuits against maker of Roundup

• Democrats grapple uncomfortably with World Cup success

  The triumph of the World Cup’s first two weeks — boosting the U.S.’s global reputation with sold-out stadiums and few logistical complications — has forced Democrats who had criticized President Donald Trump’s role in preparations to grudgingly reconsider. “I think that there was a little bit of like liberal wishcasting that this would maybe be a disaster to sort of stick it to Trump,” said Rob Flaherty, the digital Democratic strategist and soccer fan who attended the U.S. group-stage match with Australia. “It hasn’t yet been.”

• Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton pleads guilty to mishandling classified documents

• The Teen Believers in Christian Nationalism

• The National Parks Were Reportedly Told to Stay Silent on Deaths

  • Internal memo tells staff to stay mum on deaths at national parks

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Secret Service Didn't Secure Mobile Devices

• Former Colorado DNA analyst pleads guilty to manipulating data in agreement with prosecutors - CBS Colorado

  Yvonne "Missy" Woods reached a plea agreement with prosecutors after she was accused of mishandling or manipulating data in dozens of criminal investigations, casting doubt on many cases in which she was involved. She pleaded guilty to one count each of cybercrime, perjury, attempt to influence a public servant and forgery.

World

• Iraq warns it might leave OPEC if oil quota not raised

• Teens who hacked TfL were known to police years before cyber-attack

• Cambridge hospital staff accessed records of boy hurt in crocodile pit

  About 40 members of hospital staff accessed the medical records of a three-year-old boy hurt in a crocodile pit, prompting an investigation, it has been reported. Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) has referred itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and is investigating whether all the workers had a legitimate reason for looking at his information. The boy, from Cambridgeshire, who ended up in a zoo’s crocodile enclosure, is now in a stable condition. He was taken to Addenbrooke’s hospital, run by CUH, last Thursday after the incident at Johnsons of Old Hurst zoo. A 30-year-old man from Norfolk was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and later bailed after he was “assessed as not being fit for interview”. The suspect reportedly has learning difficulties and had been on a trip with carers.

  • "Who ended up in the enclosure" ... probably get arrested for saying "he was thrown" now. That's what happened but is no longer the Official Story.

• Self-proclaimed King of Switzerland uses loophole to build his empire for free

• Stop Killing Games Pivots to Amending Digital Fairness Act in EU After Loss

• The food science behind designing an ice cream

• Spain will require carriers to keep mobile networks live during power outages

• King Charles reveals he paid £12.9M in tax for 2024-25

• Purchasing non-taxed Cannabis products carry fines now. Nova Scotia

• Secret gifts from public swell Treasury's coffers

  Already this year, 18 people have handed over almost £620,000 without the taxman even asking for it, according to figures obtained by the BBC in a freedom of information request. In the past two decades a total of 153 donations have been made to the Treasury, including 27 people who left money to the chancellor in their will. It has bolstered the national accounts by £4,729,091.92 since 2003, equivalent to 0.00004% of total government spending this year.

• Germany's railways grind to halt as IT maintenance snag takes down network

• Mullvad founder Daniel Berntsson donated millions to far right party

• The EU Wants to Grow Homegrown Tech. Its Courts Keep Making That Impossible

• Europe's largest datacentre hub leaves town sweltering

• Yen's decline makes perfect sense to some analysts

Iran / Houthi

• Iran Attacks Cargo Ship, Testing Trump’s Deal to Reopen Strait

• UN halts escort of ships through Hormuz after Singapore-flagged vessel attacked

• Cargo ship hit by projectile in Hormuz as Iran issues renewed passage warning

• How Iran Devastated an American Naval Base—and Caused a U.S. Recalculation

  The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers—damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals. The military said no one was killed at the base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and that the strikes didn’t significantly impact operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel but has kept a small staff on the ground.

  • Since February. Its almost as if the media doesn't want to say "Iran attacked," like they've been trained to cast them as "peaceful, austere religious scholars" at all costs.

• Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show

• US strikes Iran in response to drone strike on commercial ship

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• New EU rules: military age Ukrainian men to lose refugee visas Jun 27 2027

  • Europe to exclude military-age Ukrainian men from temporary protection scheme

• Ukraine disguised Nord Stream sabotage mission as a 'porn film'

China

• China's CXMT Is Set to Challenge DRAM Incumbents

• $1.4T investment helps China restore freshwater ecosystem's oxygen

• Chinese cybersecurity company claims it's built a better-than-Mythos bug finder

• Small aircraft crashes into Beijing's tallest skyscraper

  • Small aircraft crashes into Beijing's tallest building, videos show

• Cache of unseen Tiananmen Square protest pics show Chinese resistance and clashes with People’s army up close.

• China dumping more rocket bodies in space, endangering low Earth orbit satellites.

Health / Medicine

• Snap's Evan Spiegel, Miranda Kerr help erase $550M in med debt for Californians

• Serious statin side effects on muscles are rare, new research confirms

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• The Ticks That Cause Red-Meat Allergies Are Spreading Across the U.S.

  • The tick that makes you allergic to meat is spreading across Massachusetts

• Why were Covid vaccine trials so fast?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why

  • Paris to ban drinking alcohol in public as hospitals hit heatwave breaking point

  • Paris Bans Alcohol Consumption, Sales Amid Heatwave.

  • How Paris is harnessing the Seine to replace air-con

  • Fossil fuel emissions have rapidly worsened European heatwaves in a few decades

  • European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis

  • Heat, humidity and housing: why British heatwaves hit differently

  • BBC News uses thermal cameras to illustrate heatwave in London

  • Paris police asks major festivals be cancelled due to relentless heatwave

  • Hot and stuck in Paris and London: homes not built for heat

  • The French are painting their windows with chalk to beat the heat

• Marine expedition uncovers 31 new species in two weeks

• A little bird told her: scientist wins $100k prize for decoding birdsong