2026-04-03

Horseshit

• Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse art among items stolen in Italian job

• What Exoskeleton Technology Learned from One User

• The Anti-Intellectualism of the Silicon Valley Elite

• Tech startup R3 Bio is creating brainless clones for organ harvesting.

• "guided cancer"? Tobacco plant altered to produce five psychedelic drugs

  Asaph Aharoni at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and his colleagues modified Nicotiana benthamiana plants using a technique called agroinfiltration, which involves using a bacterium to introduce genes from other organisms into a plant. The modified plant then makes the proteins encoded by those genes, but the DNA isn’t incorporated into the plant’s genome, so the effect is short-lived. With the addition of nine genes, the plants were able to produce psilocin and psilocybin, usually found in mushrooms; DMT from various plants; and bufotenin and 5-methoxy-DMT, compounds secreted by the Colorado river toad

• What does it mean to 'age well'?

• Quantum computing bombshells that are not April Fools

  Notably, out of an abudance of caution, the Google team chose to “publish” its result via a cryptographic zero-knowledge proof that their circuit exists (so, without revealing the details to attackers). This is the first time I’ve ever seen a new mathematical result actually announced that way, although I understand that there’s precedent in the 1500’s, when mathematicians would (for example) prove their ability to solve quartic equations by challenging their rivals to duels. I’m not sure how much it will actually help, as once other groups know that a smaller circuit exists, it might be only a short time until they’re able to find it as well.

• Humans have been gambling since the Ice Age

  • And for most of that time, most forms of gambling were socially frowned upon, with only a few, tightly regulated examples being accepted... perhaps there's a reason for that?

• Blind marathon runner to be guided by smart glasses

• Scott Wiener and Garry Tan Team Up to Fight Big Tech's Anti-Competitive Behavior

• Why Gen Z is taking up boomer hobbies

• FIFA raises World Cup final top ticket price to $10,990, up from $1,600 in 2022

• Pinterest said he violated laid-off colleagues' privacy. Now he's going public

Epstein

• Epstein files: Buffett says he hasn't talked to Bill Gates

celebrity gossip

• Paul McCartney to celebrate 50 years of Apple with concert for staff

Obit

• I ran that too: Oldest known tortoise still alive, as reports of death revealed as hoax

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Men are ditching TV for YouTube as AI usage and social media fatigue grow

• 'Tinder for Nazis' and the woman who hacked it

• The EU Killed Voluntary CSAM Scanning. West Virginia Is Trying to Compel It

• The War Against Misinformation Is Over. The Lies Won

• The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign

Musk

• Wisconsin woman killed daughter 'to protect her,' complaint says

  Oninski on March 20 reported the homicide to police, admitting in a 13-minute phone call that she killed her daughter, Kuren Rein, the previous night then unsuccessfully tried to take her own life. Oninski told police she killed Rein to "protect" her from Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, SpaceX and former head of the controversial government-gutting agency DOGE under President Donald Trump. The complaint does not specify what kind of danger Oninski thought Musk posed to her daughter.

• Elon Musk's Father Says He Held 'Memorable' Meeting with Vladimir Putin

• Japanese X is now America's favorite corner of the internet

  • Japanese Twitter Is Awesome

• Tesla reports weaker than expected 6% rise in global deliveries

• Artemis Mission Reeks of Musk

• Musk wants SpaceX IPO to fund AI space data centers. Microsoft's undersea setback sounds warning. | Reuters

• Individual Investors Could Get a Rare Shot at Buying Into SpaceX From Day One.

  • SpaceX files confidentially for IPO potentially valued at $1.75T

  • SpaceX files initial paperwork to sell shares to the public and likely make Musk a trillionaire.

  • SpaceX Targets More Than $2 Trillion Valuation in IPO

  • SpaceX targets more than $2T valuation in IPO

  • SpaceX has held talks with Saudi fund for $5B investment in IPO

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• California Suspends Enforcement of Law Requiring VCs to Report Diversity Data

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Half of social-science studies fail replication test in years-long project

• Stop censoring books, teachers warn school libraries

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Garry's Mod successor s&box arrives on Steam on April 28 – PC Gamer

• Cloudflare Announces EmDash as Open-Source "Spiritual Successor" to WordPress

• WhatsApp notifies users who installed fake app made by government spyware maker

• Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

• Meta and Google face existential threat as nations rush to ban teen users

• Nvidia rolls out its fix for PC gaming's "compiling shaders" wait times

• French consumer group sues Ubisoft over shutdown of online game 'The Crew'

• Microsoft cracks down on old Windows kernel drivers

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Threadless Ball Screw Never Took Off, But Don’t Write It Off

  • from comments:

  The coolest thing is that they can be variable pitch, and even reversible: A shaft can be running at constant speed and by a simple lever adjustment of the pitch you can make the carriage go forth or back at arbitrary speed. Very useful.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Nice: A Retro Artemis II Realtime Tracker

  • NASA: Artemis II Real time tracking with multiple views

• The Moon belongs to all of us – not just countries that can afford to reach it

• Artemis II Update: Crew and Ground Teams Troubleshoot Orion's Toilet

  • Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone

• Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why

  • Even Artemis II Astronauts Have Microsoft Outlook Problems

  • Artemis II astronaut finds two Outlook instances running on computers

• Artemis II will use laser beams to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps

• Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?

  • We're flying past it... not nothing, but not where we was 50 years ago, either.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Devil worshippers are using AI, exorcists are warned

  • We thought the security holes in the "vibe coding" shit was bad; but then the Great Old Ones showed up.

• Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggest

• Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

• AI Models Lie, Cheat, and Steal to Protect Other Models from Being Deleted

• r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

• 'Think Everybody Dead': How the Threat of AI Is Fueling a New Political Alliance

• The Startup That Used AI and OpenClaw to Automate Its Own Developers

• I handed over my dating life to AI. I don't think she'll see me again

• A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8B Company

• Google questions family's X-rated Gemini account-ban story

• Visa is bringing AI to credit card charge disputes

• 'I hate customer-service chatbots': The consumer-AI refund relationship is rocky

• Young People Are Falling Behind, but Not Because of AI

• The IT Department: Where AI Goes to Die

• Anthropic Says That Claude Contains Its Own Kind of Emotions

• A.I. Could Change the World. But First It Is Changing Silicon Valley

• Mistral secures $830M in debt financing to fund AI data center

• Anthropic leak reveals Claude Code tracking user frustration

• Failed AI tractor company lays off all employees, abandons Bay Area headquarters

• OpenAI Buys Tech Talk Show TBPN in Rare Move into Media

• Anthropic says its leak-focused DMCA unintentionally hit legit GitHub forks

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• 'The status quo is unsustainable': Congressional scrutiny of Kalshi, Polymarket explodes

  “There seems to be a growing consensus that the status quo is unsustainable,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who was an early entrant into Congress’ prediction market debate. The platforms, once considered niche, are poised to get new scrutiny across Capitol Hill this year. Senate Commerce Committee members have discussed holding a hearing focused on the industry, according to four people granted anonymity to discuss the private conversations. The House Agriculture Committee, which oversees commodities trading, has been holding bipartisan briefings on the issue, with more expected.

• US sues Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois to stop regulation of prediction markets

Economicon / Business / Finance

• $200 oil isn't as crazy as it sounds

• Fuel prices are soaring. Plastic could be next

• Blue Owl limits redemptions on private credit funds after exit requests

  • Blue Owl Investors Seek to Pull $5.4B from Two Private-Credit Funds

• Amazon Reportedly in Talks to Buy Apple Satellite Partner Globalstar

• Can a country get too rich?

• Startup funding shatters all records in Q1

  Global investing in startups hit $297 billion in Q1 2026, breaking all records, according to new Crunchbase data. That’s a massive 2.5x increase over the $118 billion raised in the previous quarter. This single-quarter haul outpaces every full year of global VC activity prior to 2019. The unprecedented spike was fueled by just four behemoth deals, each a record-breaker in its own right. Last month, OpenAI announced that it is now valued at $852 billion after collecting $122 billion, surpassing the previous record for the largest funding round ever, also held by OpenAI when the ChatGPT maker raised $40 billion a year ago. The quarter also saw Anthropic, its main rival, raise $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion. That funding haul effectively made it the third-largest VC round on record. The other two mega-deals of the quarter included a $20 billion fundraise by xAI and Waymo’s $16 billion round. These four rounds collectively raised $188 billion, accounting for more than 63% of total funding in the quarter.

  • None of the big four mentioned could be counted as a "Startup" anymore, could they?

• Oil prices soar and shares drop after Trump threatens more Iran strikes

• Amazon to add 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge as Iran war raises energy prices

  • Amazon to Apply 3.5% Fuel Surcharge to Third-Party Sellers

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Auto industry group calls for scrapping US gas tax, adopting vehicle fee

• California should extend Diablo Canyon nuclear plant's lifespan

• U.S. Unveils Up to 100% Tariff on Branded Drugs

Trump

• Attorney General Pam Bondi Out at DOJ

  President Trump announced Thursday that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out from the top job at the Justice Department. Her departure comes amid simmering frustration over her leadership and her handling of the Epstein files. In social media post, Trump called Bondi "a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year." Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump's former personal attorney, will step in to serve as acting attorney general, the president said.

  • Pam Bondi ousted as Attorney General

• Trump: "We're fighting wars. We can't take care of day care"

Democrats

• Fraud on ActBlue: New Report Details Potential Illegal Activity on the Democrat Platform

  Internal documents show that ActBlue executives and staff are aware that both foreign and domestic fraudulent actors are exploiting the platform but do not take the threat seriously. In fact, they attempted to hide the changes to avoid sparking discussions about fraud on the platform. For example, ActBlue’s training guide for new fraud-prevention employees instructed them to “look for reasons to accept contributions,” rather than err on the side of flagging suspicious donations. Internal communications further reveal that, rather than seeking to reduce or eliminate fraud, ActBlue’s chief fraud-prevention official was willing to accept 10 percent more fraud while focusing on DEI. Additionally, in a thirty-day window during September and October 2024, ActBlue detected 237 separate donations made from foreign IP addresses using domestic prepaid cards.

Left Angst

• Death of a refugee left at a doughnut shop by Border Patrol ruled homicide

• Maybe Trump Should Not Have Given This Speech

• Americas military is never coming back from this

• Every President Tries It. It Never Works

• Trump's rage at NATO allies is binding them together – against him

• Putin's Dream Plan

• CDC Pauses Testing for Rabies and MPox Viruses

  widespread layoffs, hiring freezes and resignations have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who can assist state labs. The C.D.C.’s rabies and pox virus teams have lost many of their members. By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none. The teams already have too few members to offer after-hours advice for states as the agency has long done, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of retaliation.

• Unmasking the Paramilitary Agents Behind Trump's Violent Immigration Crackdown

• Public Anger Is Rising

• Company backed by Trump sons to sell interceptors to Gulf states being attacked

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI declares suspected Chinese hack of US surveillance system a ‘major cyber incident’

  The FBI last week deemed a recent China-linked cyber intrusion into a sensitive agency surveillance system a “major incident,” meaning it poses significant risks to U.S. national security, according to one congressional aide and two U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. The bureau first told Congress on March 4 that it was investigating suspicious activity on an internal agency system that contained “law enforcement sensitive information.” The FBI did not publicly identify who was behind the activity at the time, but POLITICO previously reported that China is suspected. The determination suggests the hackers successfully compromised swathes of sensitive data stored directly on FBI systems, likely marking a major counterintelligence coup for China. FISMA requires agencies to tell lawmakers within seven days about any digital intrusion it has determined is “likely to result in demonstrable harm” to U.S. national security. Cynthia Kaiser, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said she is not aware of the FBI making any such determination on a hack affecting its own systems since at least 2020.

• Exposing the FBI's Human Experimentation Studies

• Utah Bans Polygraph Tests for Those Reporting Sexual Assault

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. Is Burning Through Tomahawk Cruise Missile Stockpile at an Alarming Rate

  • U.S. Tomahawks are being used in Iran war faster than stockpile is being refilled - CBS News

• Golden Dome, ships and missiles top Trump's $1.5T 2027 defense wish list

• US Army chief of staff fired by Hegseth

World

• UK Government unveils rules to end subscription traps

  • New laws to make it easier to cancel subscriptions and get refunds

• Iran War Showcases Strength of South Korean Defense Sector

• Google, Cloudflare, Cisco Lose Pirate Site DNS Blocking Appeal in France

• Italian bill proposes curbs on social media addiction

• Bulgaria requests EU support to fend off election meddling in April vote

• Man dies in storm as Saharan dust shrouds Crete

• Berlin is rearming, and its neighbors are weighing the risks and benefits

• Australia to crack down on gambling ads after years of criticism

• Police find drug-smuggling tunnel in Spain, underground rail system and cranes

• Canada Post is planning to end home delivery

• Stellantis wants to build Chinese Leapmotor EVs at its idled Canadian plant

Iran / Houthi

• How to take down a US F-35 over Iran? Chinese engineer's tutorial goes viral

• Why Iran targeted Amazon data centers

• Macron says it is unrealistic to open Hormuz Strait by force

• The Islands That Give Iran a Stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz

• Iran Says It Hit Oracle Facilities in UAE

  • Iran attacks Oracle data center in Dubai

• Amazon data center in Bahrain attacked by Iranian Revolutionary Guards

• Tehran Accuses Ukraine of Active Participation in Iran War

Israel

• 'Weak and pathetic': why is the EU not using its leverage to stop Israel?

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• A Cat-and-Mouse Game of Russian Internet Restrictions and Evasion

China

• Chinese chipmakers claim nearly half of local market as Nvidia's lead shrinks

• China became a global pharmaceutical powerhouse

• Chinese government bonds emerge as lone war haven

• Chinese EV giant BYD faces 'forced labor' investigation at Hungary factory

• China's Aiming for the Moon, and NASA Is Looking over Its Shoulder

• As arms agreements fray, China secretly expands its nuclear weapons infrastructure | CNN

• China expands digital yuan programme with 12 new bank operators

• Nvidia market share in China falls to less than 60%

Health / Medicine

• Nursing Is the Surefire New Path to American Prosperity

• Recall issued for chocolates containing potentially ‘life-threatening’ amounts of Viagra.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the recall, saying the Gear Isle chocolates in question were found to contain potentially “life-threatening” amounts of prescription drug ingredients, sildenafil and tadalafil, that are commonly used to treat erectile dysfunction and found in Viagra. Both chocolates are sold as dietary supplements and were found to contain the “undeclared” pharmaceutical ingredients. According to the FDA, manufacturers of such supplements are responsible for ensuring the product’s safety.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Parasitic sleeping sickness creates 'invisibility cloak' to hide for years

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• 50 years measuring the cleanest air

• Magnitude 4.6 Earthquake Rattles Northern California

• One ant for $220: The new frontier of wildlife trafficking

• Melting Himalayan glacier unleashed tsunami at 17,000 feet, shattering lives

• 100M years ago an 'evolutionary fuse' sparked squid diversification

• Australia's "Red Centre" Turns Green

• Snow melt-off in American west stuns scientists

• Storm Dave Cometh. But Why Is It Called That?

• EPA flags microplastics, pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water