2025-07-09

etc

• The Texas Flooding Tragedy: Could It Have Been Avoided?

  But what is particularly disturbing is that the National Weather Service (NWS) provided excellent warnings and forecasts before the event that clearly predicted a substantial threat. And yet, no attempt at evacuation was made. Furthermore, weather model forecasts indicated the potential for a major precipitation event over this historically flood-prone region during the prior days.

  Any media or other organization suggesting that the National Weather Service was not on top of this event is not only not telling the truth, but doing a deep disservice to the highly professional and skillful folks in that organization. Some folks are making such suggestions for patently political reasons. Extraordinarily unethical and wrong. The Texas flooding is another example of large numbers of deaths, even when weather forecasts are excellent, with all too many other examples, including the Maui wildfires, the LA wildfires, and flooding from Hurricane Helene. But if you really want to experience media and advocacy group loss of moral compass, consider those claiming this event is the result of global warming.

• Teen 3D-printed a beehive for his bedroom

• Nuclear reactors smaller than a semi truck to be tested in Idaho

Horseshit

• Delta flight from ATL diverted after lithium battery explodes in passenger's bag

• Why are there no good dinosaur films? - by Brianna Zigler

• 'Gold standard': training centre could be gamechanger for football in US

• People with higher cognitive abilities have weaker moral foundations

• "vegetarian rocket engine" to power data centers

• Have we reached peak supercar?

• Is Technology Ruining Teens' Lives?

• The Site of the Jonestown Massacre Opens to Tourists. Some Ask Why

• Semiconductor industry could short out as copper runs dry

• Plato warned that some pleasures separate us from reality

Obit

• Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a 'Beautiful' DNA Experiment

Musk

• 'America Party' proves Elon Musk needs a political time-out

  I think Musk has enjoyed his political work, which brought him unaccustomed adulation and a break from his grueling routine. But when you have a vocation that matches your unique talents, it’s best to focus on that. (Look at Elvis Presley, who wasted many years on acting — at which he was not uniquely talented). Take a vacation from politics, Elon. We desperately need you elsewhere.

  • "unaccustomed adulation" is too much of a camel to swallow

• XAI updated Grok to be more 'politically incorrect'

• Tesla reimbursed Full Self-Driving in arbitration for failing to deliver

• Tesla is in deeper trouble than you think

• Elon Musk's Grok praises Hitler, shares antisemitic tropes in new posts

• Elon Musk's Grok Chatbot Goes Full Nazi, Calls Itself 'MechaHitler'

• Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing "woke filters"

• Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot is posting antisemitic comments

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Why Americans Can't Buy the Best Electric Car

• Waymo robotaxis are heading to Philadelphia and NYC

• Honda scraps EV SUV development due to decreased US demand - Nikkei Asia

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Who is Camille Noûs, the fictitious French researcher with nearly 200 papers?

• Big Student Loan Change Makes It Harder to Become Doctor or Lawyer

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Jack Dorsey launches a WhatsApp messaging rival built on Bluetooth

• Duke Nukem Is Back, but in a Silly and Sad Way

• Qualcomm at 40: From Disrupting Mobile to Playing the Long Game with PCs

• Unless users take action, Android will let Gemini access third-party apps

• The Atlantic's Expensive Hiring Spree

• Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing changes that upset users

• Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

• Netflix Says 50 Percent of Global Users Now Watch Anime

• Apple announces chief operating officer transition

  • Apple Operating Chief Jeff Williams to Pass Role to Deputy

• Scattered Spider hackers are wreaking havoc on corporate America

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Back to the Future came out 40 years ago: A hacker's look at the gear

• The Tandy Corporation, Part 2

  According to InfoWorld, during a photo shoot for the Asimov Pocket Computer ads, a Radio Shack employee asked Asimov: “How close is that to the computer you described in the first volume of the Foundation trilogy?” Isaac Asimov looked at the computer for a bit, then nodded and said “this is it.”

• Xorg neglect and XLibre slander | Felipe Contreras

  Influential people like YouTuber ThePrimeagen misinform their audience making them believe that tear-free rendering is not possible under Xorg. It’s extremely easy to get rid of tearing without Sultan’s patch, but making a release with this patch could only help. So why are Xorg developers not releasing this patch? Why do they not rectify these myths? One would be tempted to say that perhaps they have a vested interest in making it seem like Xorg can not be fixed, even though this patch was merged in 2022, normal users still cannot use this feature in 2025. It’s interesting enough that the news site Phoronix published an article about it: xf86-video-modesetting X.Org Driver Sees Patch For “TearFree” Page Flipping. This is just one patch out of more than a thousand. Who knows how many gems Xorg maintainers aren’t particularly eager for users to have.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI-Enabled Coups: How a Small Group Could Use AI to Seize Power

• Anthropic and OpenAI Have Begun the Subprime AI Crisis

• ChatGPT testing a mysterious new feature called 'study together'

• AI video becomes more convincing, rattling creative industry

• ChatGPT is pushing people towards psychosis – OpenAI doesn't know how to stop it

• People Are Using AI Chatbots to Guide Their Psychedelic Trips

• Meta reportedly recruits Apple's head of AI models

  • Meta just hired Apple's head of foundation models

  • Meta Hires Top Apple AI Expert, Continuing Zuckerberg's Recruitment Push

• Meta's "AI superintelligence" effort sounds just like its failed "metaverse"

• OpenAI and Microsoft Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers

• Working with 400k teachers to shape the future of AI in schools

• Why Is ChatGPT Telling People to Email Me?

• Unilever Used AI to Make Soap Go Viral

• Meta Invests $3.5B in Largest Eye-Wear Maker in AI Glasses Push

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Did something just hit Saturn? Astronomers are racing to find out.

  • bloop. The Interstellar Squid dumped their ramscoop on the way in; so it won't fall into primitive hands should the worst happen. Once they conquer our planet they can build a new star drive from our resources.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon requests its NY office workers donate time to deliver groceries this week

• Private equity firms stuck with investments 'indigestion'

• Shein files for Hong Kong IPO to pressure UK to save London listing

• First-Time Home Buyers Are MIA. Landlords Are the Winners

• The global economy is suffering from the Rashomon effect

  oday there is no single narrative about where we are, or what comes next. Instead, there are multiple competing ones around globalisation, inflation, capital markets, politics and technology. All this creates a kind of Rashomon effect — the same data and events can be interpreted in contradictory ways by different market participants.

• Investors buy growing share of US homes as traditional buyers struggle

• GlobalFoundries to Acquire MIPS

• We've decided not to care about blatant securities fraud anymore: Robinhood CEO downplays OpenAI concerns on tokenized stock structure

• Intel Cuts More Than 500 Jobs in Oregon as Part of Layoff Plan

• SoftBank-Backed Ola in Crisis Mode a Year After Blockbuster IPO in India

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• A Marco Rubio impostor is using AI voice to call high-level officials

  • AI scammer posing as Marco Rubio targets US officials

  • Impostor uses AI to impersonate Rubio and contact foreign and US officials

  • State Dept. Is Investigating Messages Impersonating Rubio, Official Says

  • Rubio imposter using AI in calls with foreign diplomats, US officials

  • AI used to pose as Marco Rubio and contact foreign ministers

  • Marco Rubio Imposter Used AI to Contact Five Government Officials Including Foreign Ministers

• Feds brag about hefty Oracle discount – licensing experts smell a lock-in

• NOAA and Google team up to advance AI hurricane forecast models

• Army, Navy both asked for right to repair, now Senators want to give it to them

• IRS says churches can now endorse political candidates

Trump

• Trump threatens to impose up to 200% tariff on pharmaceuticals 'soon'

• Trump admin to ban China from buying US farmland.

• 12 Key Questions That All Americans Should Ask About The Shameful Attempt To Cover Up The Truth About Jeffrey Epstein | ZeroHedge

Left Angst

• Detainees allege inhumane conditions at immigration concentration camp

• One Day in Kentucky and What Makes America Great

  You’ll forgive me if I’m not feeling particularly patriotic on this 4th of July. The president, an authoritarian felon, recently boasted that migrants who escape from their purpose-built cages will get eaten by aligators.

• 'There's a knife at my throat'. A tax code time bomb hammered small businesses

  Like many small businesses, Agile Six was blindsided and hammered by a quiet shift in the U.S. tax code, a change to what’s known as Section 174. The change radically rewrote the tax rules on research and development. And it has helped fuel the loss of hundreds of thousands of high-paying, white-collar jobs, a Quartz investigation revealed last month. The tweak dates back to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the first Trump administration’s signature tax legislation. That bill slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% — a massive revenue loss on paper for the federal government. To make the bill appear deficit-neutral over the standard 10-year budget window, lawmakers inserted delayed provisions that would raise future revenue. The change to Section 174 was one of them. It didn’t take effect until 2022. But when it did, the impact was brutal.

  • If only the Democrats had been given an opportunity to "fix" things at some point between then and now, eh?

• What Is American Exceptionalism, and Is It Coming to an End?

• Founders sign letter to Sequoia on Shaun Maguire's Mamdani remarks

  Almost 600 people have signed an open letter to leaders at venture firm Sequoia Capital after one of its partners, Shaun Maguire, posted what the group described as a “deliberate, inflammatory attack” against the Muslim Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City. Maguire, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and is out to advance “his Islamist agenda.” Those signing the letter are asking Sequoia to condemn Maguire’s comments and apologize to Mamdani and Muslim founders. They also want the firm to authorize an independent investigation of Maguire’s behavior in the past two years and post “a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and religious bigotry.”

  • A Prominent Investor Is Criticized over Mamdani Comments

• DOJ goes after US citizen for developing anti-ICE app

  • Trump Officials Want to Prosecute over the ICEBlock App

  • RIAA is supposed to be behind law enforcement efforts to counter "applications and devices intended to circumvent law enforcement", right?

• Learning to See America's Promise Through Its Failures

  The United States was the original author of the restrictive, "guilty-until-proven-innocent" immigration regime that is the global standard today. These laws made it so impossible for me to get a visa that I was forced into a nightmare I can barely speak about—becoming a sex slave to a trafficker, just to get the permission to escape from Iran. The permission which they had taken away from me simply because of where I was born. Today’s immigration system has its roots in the Confederate states, and it became federal law through the Immigration Act of 1924. A legislation so restrictive and exclusionary that it inspired and fueled the Nazi movement, unleashing a wave of nationalist hatred across the world.

• Trump Fired Them. Now They’re Plotting to Stop Him.

  Former USAID and State Department officials worried about the future of democracy in America say they’re actively organizing to resist Trump, inside and outside of government.

  “Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one,” said a currently employed federal official, who spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity. “They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.”

• Take Off the Mask, ICE

• Science Makes the U.S. a Great Nation

• Trump's NASA budget could cede solar system to China, scientists warn

• All living NASA science chiefs unite in opposition to unprecedented budget cuts

• Masked, Armed and Forceful: Finding Patterns in Los Angeles Immigration Raids

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• TSA to Let Travelers Keep Their Shoes On, Ending Hated Rule

  • TSA to Allow Shoes to Stay on for Airport Security Screening

  • TSA to end shoes-off policy for airport security screening

  • TSA expected to phase out shoe removal policy at airport security

• Nearly Half of America's Murderers Get Away with It

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon provided $2.4T to private arms firms to 'fund war and weapons', report

World

• UK police dangle £75M to digitize its VHS tape archives

• Female-led aerospace sewing firm is expanding

• Britain's 5G experience 'among the worst in Europe' says MedUX

• Japan requires name change after marriage with big effects on female scientists

• Post Office scandal may have led to more than 13 suicides, inquiry finds

• Europe's Crackdown on Speech Goes Far and Wide

• Blaze at Cairo telecommunications building kills 4, disrupts internet, phone

• 'Village of one kidney': India-Bangladesh organ traffickers rob poor donors

• City to get its own Monopoly board after contest

  Chichester is set to receive its own Monopoly board after beating off rivals from around the UK to get its own version of the game.

  • Paris, TN had "custom monopoly" games in the stores the last couple years; i assumed it was a Chamber of Commerce type scam. We didn't buy one even when they had the clearance sale.

• Why Are Protesters in Mexico City Angry at Remote Workers?

• 78% believe fast, reliable internet access should be a right in the UK

• In Hiroshima, search for remains keeps war alive for lone volunteer

Israel

• Pro-Israel Silicon Valley Bro Just Went Viral for Islamophobic Tweets

• Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• How Old-School Tech Is Rewiring Drone Warfare in Ukraine

• The Wild Russian Plot to Burn a London Restaurant and Kidnap Its Owner

• Ukraine urges investigation into alleged Russian chemical weapons use

China

• China used embassies to undermine Rafale sales after India-Pakistan clash

Health / Medicine

• Cough Syrup Ambroxol shows promise for Parkinson's dementia treatment

• First malaria treatment for babies approved for use

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• U.S. measles cases reach 33-year high as outbreaks spread

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• As Global Climate Leadership Stumbles, Cities Are Stepping Up

• Loggers close in on uncontacted people in Peruvian Amazon

• Two rare fishing cats born in France

• A new species of rare pseudoscorpion has been named after the Slovak president

• Living with feral buffalo in Hong Kong

• Typhoon Danas damages floating solar platforms off southern Taiwan

• Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough

  • Scotland's underwater turbine spins for 6 years, boosting tidal energy

• Can you trust climate information? How and why powerful players are misleading

  We reviewed 300 studies published between 2015 and 2025, all of which centred on climate misinformation. Our study found that the human response to the climate crisis is being obstructed and delayed by the production and circulation of misleading information. We found that this is being done by powerful economic and political interests, such as fossil fuel companies, populist political parties, and some nation states. The public needs access to accurate information about climate change, because this enables them to take action to stop global warming. Without accurate information, none of us will be able to do the right thing for coming generations and the wider natural world.

  • "We need people to not disagree with us so we can immanentize the eschaton"

• Feds Could End Wyoming's Controversial Cloud Seeding Program for Good

• How does air pollution impact your brain?

• Peter Jackson Tries to Resurrect a Giant Bird That Went Extinct 600 Years Ago

  • Peter Jackson backs long shot de-extinction plan starring New Zealand's lost moa

• Orcas Use Kelp as a Possible Grooming Tool