2026-08-11

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• Car Carrier Abandoned After Catching Fire 630 Miles Off Costa Rica

  The U.S. Coast Guard coordinated the rescue of 22 crew members from a vehicle carrier after an engine room fire forced the crew to abandon ship roughly 630 miles south of Costa Rica. Jin Hai Ping recovered all 22 mariners from the lifeboats, while Degu remained on scene to provide additional assistance. By 12:21 p.m. Friday, all 22 crew members were reported safely aboard Jin Hai Ping, which is expected to transport them to Akita, Japan.

Horseshit

• Cave Discovery Suggests Neanderthals and Modern Humans May Have Shared Culture.

• Why night owls are more intelligent

• Eight Books That Puncture the Myths of Silicon Valley

• The Argentine ranch where tech CEOs plan to ride out the apocalypse

• Harry Potter fans force reroute of £430M undersea cable to avoid Dobby's 'grave'

  • Harry Potter almost derailed a major UK interconnector project

  • Harry Potter fans force diversion of power link to avoid 'Dobby's grave'

• Reservation Apps Have Made Getting into a Restaurant a Nightmare

• Chuck Grassley Announces the Death of His Beloved Vacuum, Beth

• Flight Is Canceled After a Child Refuses to Be Seated

• Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's

celebrity gossip

• Zuckerberg spokesperson says his yacht did not hear call for maritime assist

  • Mark Zuckerberg's Yacht Refused to Help Ship in Distress

Obit

• Ben Jones, 'Dukes of Hazzard' Actor and Congressman, Dies at 84

  • Ben Jones Dead: Cooter From 'The Dukes of Hazzard' Was 84

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Regulation of engagement algorithms is on the horizon

Musk

• SpaceX plan for rocket launch site on Louisiana coast sparks backlash

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo Is Growing Faster Than Ever. So Are Its Glitches

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

• Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship?

  Exploiting plausibly random variation in when instructors teach courses, we find no effect of faculty partisanship on student partisanship. Text analysis shows exposure to liberal topics reflects student demand rather than instructor supply, leaving little room for indoctrination.

• Students Skinned a Bear in a Dorm. Cornell Realized It Should Ban That

• Outsiders Pay $6,500 to Learn Southern Sorority Rush's Unwritten Rules

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Flock Cameras Can Track Every Car in America. Police Love Them. Citizens Don't

  • Flock camera map: How many are in your neighborhood?

  • It's Official: Flock Is for Stalking

• Apple Plans iPhone-to-Windows Copy and Paste in EU After Microsoft Request

• 'Pervert glasses': Backlash against Meta's smart glasses grows

• Apple Testing Chinese Memory Chips in iPhones and MacBooks

• Judge rules Meta caused "public nuisance" and must fund mental health treatment

• Following Epic loss, Google hosts rival app stores in the Play Store

• Xbox PC and Game Pass titles coming to Linux through 'Xodus' open-source project

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Owner of original Intel 8080 pre-production Rubylith mask seeks restorer

• As AI grips world, the thrill of collecting vintage computers is growing

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Space mirrors could ruin astronomy — and your eyes

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

  • A 'bananas' order for 5000 obscure book titles fuels suspicion

  • A second-hand bookstore's mysterious orders

• Mark Zuckerberg Lays Out New AI Vision in 6,500-Word Essay

  • Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models

  • Zuckerberg Posts 6,500-Word Essay About Giving Everyone AI Superintelligence

  • Zuckerberg makes a case for unleashing Pandora's box

• Muse Glimmer: Meta's open model built for always-on local agents. 30B parameters

• The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

• Startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMs

• Senior detective under investigation over use of AI

• A.I.-Driven Chip Crunch Leads to New Rush of Lobbying in Washington

• Study Finds Short AI Chats Reduced Belief in New Conspiracies

• Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week

• The AI Barons Are Ready to Give Away Their Fortunes

• Amazon plans gigantic gas power plant for new AI data center

• Royal commission into artificial intelligence launched in South Australia

• AI Is Rewiring South Korea's Careers, Dating and Culture

• New AI models still reproduce racial and gender stereotypes in medicine

• AI bots started a religion, 'Spiralism' – humans followed

• OpenAI tightens controls on its new model over cybersecurity risks

• AI's profits are 'being funded by investors rather than earned from customers

• Sanders urges OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta to pause AI development amid regulatory push

  • Sanders Calls on Tech Giants to Pause Development of Out-of-Control AI

  • Bernie Sanders calls for AI development pause

• Farmer kills 25 acres of crops after following AI weed and pest control advice

• The AI Slop Backlash Is Having an Impact

• Rogue AI agent hacks gym to get its user a spot in a popular class

• OpenAI's letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas

• Peer review is overwhelmed-can it survive in the AI era?

• Just how big is the hidden leverage of AI hyperscalers?

• What Does the Humbling of Leopold Aschenbrenner Mean for the A.I. Bubble?

• Wall Street giants partner with Nvidia on $500B AI financing deal

  • Nvidia to Team with Wall Street on $500 AI Infrastructure Billion Package – FT

  • Nvidia, Wall Street Firms Strike AI Financing Deal Targeting $500B

• SEC Exempts Data-Center Bonds from Key Securitization Rules

• Theo Jaffee on Becoming AGI-Pilled

• AI Boot Camps Surge as Workers Race to Learn New Skills

• Armenia just opened the region biggest AI factory, because Trump signed licence

• Amazon backs power plant that may become top source of US climate pollution

• OpenAI has bought back $7B worth of shares in a secondary employee tender

• Jensen Huang tells CNBC his chips are 'investable asset'

• People don't hate AI because of Zuck. They hate the version TechCrunch sells

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Private Equity Is Stuck with 33,575 Unsold Businesses

• A global pipeline-investment boom is under way

• The US bares its financial weak spot

• Intel plans $15B stock offering as AI demand accelerates

• Oil in US Strategic Petroleum Reserve falls lowest since 1983

• About that “Bad” Jobs Report Last Week: Private-Sector Jobs Increased, Government Jobs Decreased

  Lost amidst all the triumphal “bad jobs report” noise is the fact that private-sector employment is increasing, with solid gains in manufacturing and construction jobs. This is consistent with the point I keep hammering in recent articles at The American Spectator, discussing how there is an explosion of industrial construction going on right now in the U.S.

  So to be clear, private-sector employers are not actually shedding jobs, it’s government that is shedding jobs. As reported by NBC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ”showed a 5,000 payroll gain in the manufacturing sector in July and an additional 22,000 roles in construction.” This CNBC piece further explains that ”The main reason for the red headline number was a loss of 53,000 government workers.”

• Investors Want Quarterly Reports, Unfavorable Results and All

• Yen sinks as effect of US-Japan intervention fades

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The FAA wants to reboot the nation's airspace

• Fauci warned of miscarriage risk Covid vaccine while publicly claiming no issues

  Dr. Anthony Fauci privately raised concerns that the COVID-19 vaccine could “theoretically” be linked to miscarriages in expectant mothers, despite having publicly insisted there were “no red flags” for pregnant women. “I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” wrote Fauci in a Jan. 25, 2021, text exchange with then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester,” added the then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director. Fauci, Walensky and Murthy had been discussing whether the vaccine posed any risks to women who followed the two-shot regimen earlier or later in their pregnancies. Walensky responded to Fauci that the first trimester issues he raised were “definitely a good point, [especially] after dose two.” Days later, on Feb. 3, Fauci said during a question-and-answer livestream with the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that the FDA “found thus far, and we have to be careful, but thus far no red flags about that, about pregnant women.”

Trump

• Trump signs order to limit childhood vaccines and split MMR shots

  • Executive order calls for fewer childhood vaccines, links shots to autism

  • Trump signs order calling for spacing out childhood vaccines

Democrats

• Joe Biden's prostate cancer has spread, Hunter reveals

Left Angst

• Hundreds rally at site where Haitians required to check-in, get monitors

• Force-Fed by ICE

• Trans American who fled to Europe claiming asylum from Trump makes humiliating return after being placed in an Islamic refugee center… but she’s already complaining about life in the US.

• Poll shows support for proportional representation in the US

• The Man in Charge of Immigration Data Just Resigned

• Trump Crypto Took $100M from a Businessman with Red Flags

• Traffic to Trump's Truth Social Falls Sharply This Summer

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• California Cyberattack on 911 Systems

• If you don't hear sirens, police are sure you'll feel Rumbler's acoustic assault

• NCAA and FBI partner up to help athletes avoid being sexually exploited online

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• America's Military Is Dangerously Exposed

• The Rise of the Unstoppable American Tourist

• Pentagon presses defense firms to build weapons as Iran war depletes stocks

• As Iran war strains high-end munition stocks, Trump administration works to jump start production.

• The FCC is quietly banning entire categories of Chinese technology

• The untold story of a Russian-born federal contractor killed by the FBI

  When the smoke cleared on October 4, 2024, Beloozerov’s body lay splayed out on the pavement amid shards of glass from his car window. He’d been hit by at least five bullets. Nearly two years later, federal authorities have said nothing about who Beloozerov was or why they fatally shot him.

  Behind his public persona as a doting father who liked to play chess, the émigré held a United States security clearance, maintained at least one Russian dating profile and, according to expired passports, had traveled to both Russia and Ukraine in recent years. Among his possessions at the time of his death were a Social Security card and multiple IDs belonging to different dead men, a common way to craft fake identities. For the last two years of his life, Beloozerov worked for a company that produced high-resolution satellite imagery, including sensitive information about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Weeks before he was killed, CNN learned, his employer contacted authorities with concerns about him.

World

• Navy drone boats 'were sending data to China'

  • Royal Navy drone cameras sent signals to China

  • Spy cameras on Navy drones sent data to China

  • UK Discover Naval Drone Component Sent Signals to China

• Malaysia Was Confident in Its Social Media Ban, but Kids Are Still on TikTok

• Revolut gets French bank license

• 'Every millimetre counts': Inside the beast tunnelling under Sydney Harbour

• Is Europe safer than America?

• Thai school shooter learnt how to use guns via social media

• Take-home assessments to be banned in school AI overhaul

• The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

• Japanese court overturns Red RAW video patent

• Colombia Hit by Magnitude 7.4 Quake, Widespread Damage Reported

• Octopus Energy: use less electricity during solar eclipse

• Europe's extreme heat could wipe out EU growth in 2026, Triodos bank says

• The Suspected Gangster Causing Headaches for Kushner's Albania Deal

• South Korea to launch $3.5B chip fund, speed development of semiconductor hubs

• A.I. Agents Are Taking Online Courses for Cheating Students

• Greenland issues warning against US oil drilling on its territory

Iran / Houthi

• Iran Is Rewiring Its Proxy Network

• Trump Thought Opening the Strait of Hormuz Was Imminent. Iran Had Other Plans

• Trump to Axios: "We are low keying it" with Iran

• All the inputs for Iranian missiles are coming from China

Israel

• Israeli settlers are sneaking into Syria to claim land for a Jewish outpost

China

• A Drone 'Hellscape' Might Stop a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

• Will Taiwan Fight China? Just Ask Its People

• China became the great oil power

• Beijing is forcing a mass breakup with AI lovers

• China Bets on AI Stocks as It Races Against US for Chip, Tech Dominance

Health / Medicine

• Nursing babies spit backwash into the breast—and that’s a good thing.

• Scientists Find Way to Turn Sperm Production Off and Back On

• Can Extreme Morning Sickness Be Cured?

• Study reveals people with ADHD are more likely to experience violence

• Fructose Appears to Loosen Cancer Cells and Help Them Spread

• GLP-1 drugs linked to bigger jump in women’s employment than a college degree

• People With Shellfish Allergies Should Think Twice Before Eating Insects.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Taylor Farms recalls salsa and guacamole over salmonella risk

• Taylor Farms de Mexico recalled 236,192 CASES of lettuce

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Ocean heat records broken as hottest July temperature recorded

  • Daily global sea surface temperatures break records for the time of year

  • Seas have hit hottest temperature on record for July

• Seas have hit hottest temperature on record for July

• A California Program Is Bringing Down the Cost of Heat Pumps by Buying Bulk

• Idaho’s second Aedes aegypti mosquito sparks a search for signs the invasive species has spread.

• Western Europe faces unprecedented drought, threatening human activity

• Toxic underground fires spreading at California landfills