2026-08-17

Horseshit

• Why travellers are obsessed with foreign supermarkets

  Hilton's 2026 Trends Report found that 77% of travellers enjoy visiting grocery stores abroad, while Condé Nast Traveller recently named grocery tourism one of the biggest travel trends of 2026.

• The Lonely Men at the End of the World

• More screen time in childhood linked to improved cognitive processing in teens

• How Diplomats See the World

• Cloning could be used to save species–or make human "organ sacks"

• Want things to go well? Plan like a defensive pessimist

• The rise of air-conditioned clothing

• The Live Shopping App Where Some People Bid Until They're Broke

• Men are turning to penis fillers despite the risks

• Why Your Summer Wardrobe Should Include UV Protection, Linen Clothing

• Every fusion power startup that has raised over $100 million.

• A U.S. Strategy to Prevent the Creation of Mirror Life

• The weekend is 100 years old

• Weather apps are crushing America's small businesses

• Fearing violence, some Metro bus drivers are bucking order to announce fare

• Is it okay to be intentionally ignorant?

• The Problem with Child-Led Potty Training

• The billionaire threatening to upend Wall Street

Musk

• Woman claims stepfather used Grok to transform childhood photo into CSAM imagery

• SpaceX officially closes its Cursor acquisition

• Nvidia discloses $21B stake in SpaceX at end of second quarter

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Bankruptcy, Not Forgiveness: It Is Time to Reform America's Student Loans

• If you had trusted the settled science of the day here is how it would have gone

• When Astronomy Morphs Into Astrology

  the committee of 10 eminent scholars that drafted and unanimously approved the “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences” takes the path of reasoned criticism. Commissioned by Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and Washington University Chancellor Andrew D. Martin, what has come to be called the Vanderbilt report since issued in April has provoked lively controversy. Notwithstanding divergent methods and tone, the report’s conclusions about the decline of the humanities converge with those Sokal reached 30 years earlier.

  While finding examples of serious scholarship in the core humanities fields and humanistic social sciences that it examined, it identified in each “pathologies” to varying degrees. In each, the committee observed professors who view scholarship as politics by other means and who reject the very idea of objectivity while touting their judgments about injustice and justice as objectively true.

  The problem is not that numerous humanities professors are decidedly progressive but rather that they import progressive articles of faith into their scholarship. The problem is not that numerous humanities professors are politically active or that they use scholarly findings to defend or criticize public policy but rather that they lower or disregard intellectual standards to concoct politically useful results. The problem is not that numerous humanities professors have broadened their remit from the great books to the writings and experiences of historically marginalized groups but rather that they neglect, where they don’t demonize, classic works and conflate study of and advocacy for the marginalized. And the problem is not that humanities professors adopt a critical or debunking stance toward conventional norms, practices, and institutions but rather that they reflexively revile the great works of the West and mechanically besmirch the American political tradition.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Access to telemetry data: Automotive industry criticizes intelligence reform

• Court Rejects Fair Use Claim, Orders YouTube to Unmask Anime Recap Channels

• Two years as prime minister in a hit new game – then my cabinet deserted me

• Trump administration 'Not in Favor' of Apple Using Chinese RAM

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Why Buy It When You Can Print It? A DIY Nation Has a Fix for Broken Doodads

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• US Space Force gives Rocket Lab $397M to build threat-tracking 'Flatellites'

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Anthropic shares more details about how Claude's new watermarks will work

  • Can Anthropic's invisible watermarks curb AI slop? Researchers remain sceptical

  • Anthropic's 'Watermark' Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of Writing

• Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is 'fundamentally a crisis of trust'

  • Anthropic CEO says the way for AI to win over the public is to cure cancer

  • Dario Amodei on Concentration of Power

• Anthropic revenue reportedly jumps to more than $11.5B in second quarter

• Anthropic IPO valuation hinges on $190-200B 2028 revenue forecast

• Anthropic sees AI risks rising, no plan to release stronger "Model 2"

• Who is Anthropic's auditor – and why should we care?

• Patterns and problems in emerging multi-agent systems

• Google Turns on Gemini A.I. For Students Using Its Classroom App

• US warns allied nations: Side with us in the AI race

• The first anti-AI protester to be jailed has a message: 'Regain your humanity'

• The 'Country Hicks' Who Refused $26M from an AI Data Center

• Twitch Adds Opt-Out for Amazon AI Training After Enrolling All Creators

• Young people don't trust AI – or the billionaires that tell us we should love AI

  • Young People Hate AI CEOs So Passionately That It's Almost Hard to Believe

• The Safety Reckoning Inside OpenAI

• We Can't Control the Bots

• CEOs of AI companies say their creations will lead to a shorter work week.

• Why tech CEOs keep posting manifestos trying to sell the world on AI.

• When and how different AI models lie to you.

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

• Mathematicians Despair as AI Achieves Jaw-Dropping Breakthroughs

• Oracle's $165B New Mexico Data Center Plan Hits a Gas Pipeline Delay

• Rogue AI aren't science fiction anymore

• Stripe Nears Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter for over $7B

  • Stripe Clinches over $7B Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter

• Apple Making a Custom Chinese Model

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US oil reserves are so low, the caverns holding them could be damaged

• How a Sony Veteran Is Overhauling the Company He Grew Up In

Trump

• White House authorizes private companies to launch hack-back cyberattacks

  • Trump administration wants to allow companies to hack foreign cybercriminals

Left Angst

• The "Censorship-Industrial Complex" Idea Shaping US Policy

  • "We never tried to create a 'Ministry of Information'; that was all Trumpist propaganda!"

• The Trumps' Crypto Project Just Got One Step Closer to Becoming a Bank

• ICE Shot a Journalist and Threw Him in Detention. He's Approaching 300 Days

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US Navy 3D prints combat-ready drones and parts aboard during exercise

World

• Japanese publishers fight imposter news sites with a cryptographic signature

• Taliban government supporters dance, take selfies in Kabul celebrations

• South Korea proposes talks to officially end war with North

• Wildfire alert backfires as public blocks all government warnings

• Again: Morocco tightens security as migrants gather near Ceuta border

  Morocco has deployed heavy security around the border city of Fnideq after false social media rumours claimed the border to Spain's Ceuta enclave would open. Hundreds of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, have gathered nearby, raising fears of another mass crossing just weeks after tens of thousands attempted to enter the Spanish territory.

Iran / Houthi

• A False Nuclear Claim About Iran Ricocheted from India to Washington

• The Iran War Is a Whole New Level of Quagmire for the US

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian missile uses Nvidia AI chip to help target Ukraine

• Kyiv blows up biggest Wildberries hub in drone attack

China

• Why Chinese Citizens Are More Optimistic About AI Than Americans

• Beijing is forcing a mass breakup with AI lovers

• China's $13K Tiny EV Hit 1k Orders in Japan in Just Two Weeks

• China Is Opening the First Regular Cargo Route Through the Arctic

Health / Medicine

• Have Another Drink!

  This analysis was commissioned by the US goverment. It has a deceiving title and a deceiving summary conclusion: “At low levels of consumption, no protective net effect of alcohol consumption on health was observed.”. Their claim is that lifetime alcohol-attributable mortality risk were >1 in 1,000 at around 7 drinks per week and reached ~1 in 25 (4%) at 14 drinks/week (the established upper guideline limit). It offers a guidance of no more than 1 drink per day (or less). Table 1 in the paper shows data that doesn’t fit the narrative (there are obvious gains from alcohol at low levels, and high standard errors) and, worse, some methodology that is obscure enough to be suspicious.

• Scientists Identify 3-Minute Exercise Better than 90M one

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Targeted marine cloud brightening weakens subsequent El Niño

• Zapping Rocks Unlocks Stimulated Geologic Hydrogen

• The influencers getting bitten while chasing the perfect shark shot

  • A look into the harmful effects of Ocean Ramsey and shark influencers

• Wildfire smoke now bigger prenatal threat than human sources of air pollution

• Invasive beetle is spreading across the world. It's costing economies billions

• Bedbugs can cause people to lose sleep — and blood. Here’s what to do about them.