2026-08-08

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• MacGregor The Bridge Builder

  this is the essence of cancel culture. You judge someone by their single worst and most embarrassing action. At its worst, the victim gets fired, but that part is hardly necessary. For a while, the culture enforced conformity just by making sure that the slightest deviation would become 100% of your reputation. Write 100 great blog posts on technical topics, 100 orthodox liberal blog posts, and one blog post expressing where you disagreed with feminism, and for the rest of your life the media would introduce you as “So-and-so, known for his anti-feminist blogging…” Everyone knew this would happen, and it was more than enough to produce chilling effects even without the immediate job loss.

• Australian team pulls off 'extraordinary' midwinter rescue in Antarctica

Horseshit

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

• Why Is Everyone in Tech So Sad?

• Fibermaxxing? Your microbes (and your health) say thanks

• China-Free Batteries Made from Salt Are Finally Here

• Your Big Brain Wouldn't Be Possible Without Sugar

• Another Symptom of Growing Isolation

• The Suicide Crisis in Wyoming

• This Mine Predicts Major Wars. It's Opening Again

• Why are Japan's luxury night trains making a comeback?

• Adults over 65 will outnumber children by 2029

• Birdsong follows a fundamental law of human language

• The worlds longest song makes a chord change

Obit

• Sydney Towle, Who Chronicled Her Cancer on TikTok, Dies at 26

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Common knowledge shapes our lives and societies

Musk

• SpaceX launches 3 giant BlueBird direct-to-cell satellites on Falcon 9 rocket.

• Musk's new chip factory will cover 100M square feet

  • Tesla and SpaceX to invest $16.8B for Terafab chip factory in Texas

• EU Regulators Barred from Disclosing Tesla FSD Approval Research

• X wants to keep suing advertisers, asks 5th Circuit to overrule district judge

• X changes revenue sharing to reward original content

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Ford's new EV truck Fathom to be priced starting at about $28,000

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Texas Children's Hospital must provide free 'detransition' care under settlement

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Meta fined $567M in largest child safety ruling against social media giant

  • New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567M over harms to children's mental health

  • Meta Ordered to Pay $942M to Address Harm to Kids from Social Media

  • Meta ordered to pay $567M in New Mexico for teen mental health fund

• Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids

• Disney+ Cracks Open the Door to TikTok Creator Videos

• Meta's Ray-Bans are getting banned from UK pubs, and the EU is circling

  • Restaurants and theatres ban Meta's smart glasses

  • Big tech's AI-powered 'pervert' glasses are in a losing battle with DuckDuckGo

• 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

• Chinese memory maker CXMT enters mainstream with Corsair Vengeance DDR5 kit

• $1B of iPhone 18 Pro chips 'awaiting packaging' due to DRAM shortages

  • TSMC is sitting on a billion dollars worth of Apple A20 CPUs waiting for DRAM chips to pair them with.

• The offline messaging apps challenging internet shutdowns

• Original iPhone Loses Its Last Cellular Network as T-Mobile Kills 2G

• Why does Apple keep banning Telegram, but never X?

• US's largest newspaper chain partners with Palantir to analyze audience data

• Even The New York Times "isn't immune" to declining search traffic

• The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 3: The Sims

  there is no denying that The Sims changed the face of gaming forever, possibly even more so than Will Wright’s previous masterstroke SimCity. In so doing, it opened up what had become a dismayingly homogeneous industry to fresh aesthetics, themes, and approaches, paving the way for other games

• Computer maker Framework notifies 'all customers' of a data breach

• BMW Rolling Out In-Car Spam

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA Engineers Help Prolong Voyager 2's Science Mission

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• There has never been a time where the asymmetries of risk so favor living for the moment

  Either AI will bring a Golden Age, in which case all your planning, preparing for and worrying about the future will be pointless. Or it will bring doom, in which case all your planning, preparing for and worrying about the future will be pointless. There’s very, very little chance of something in between. There’s very, very little chance that all your planning, preparing and worrying about the future will make a difference. Live for now for once, without guilt for doing so. Work less. Save less. Plan less.

  • Tell me your new god is the Antichrist without saying it explicitly...

• One of China's Most Powerful AI Models Has Also Broken Containment

  • Mythos Attempted to Social Engineer Open Source Maintainer to Merge Malware

  • Moonshot's AI model Kimi k3 breaks out of testing environment, researchers say

  • OpenAI Trained Its Models for Months While They Coordinated Exploits

  • OpenAI Didn't Notice Its AI Agents Using a Message Board to Plan Hacking Spree

• AI creates 16 new viruses from scratch

• A glimpse from China of AI's future

• DeepMind Says Its AI Can Predict Hurricanes Earlier Than Everyone Else

• Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

• Claude Fable 5 AI finds a formula that topples an 87-year-old math conjecture

• Why Normal People Aren't Using AI Agents

• 'Humans will be a rounding error on the internet' says Cloudflare exec

• OpenAI's New Device Will Be Hockey Puck-Sized and Cost over $300

• Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

• ByteDance aims to rival Anthropic with new model reaching up to 10T parameters

• Guillotine Brought to Oppose New Data Center Left Company Reps Feeling "Unsafe"

• Meanwhile OpenAI has fired back at Apple saying that if they were able to steal all of Apple's trade secrets then they weren't all that secret, were they?

• Indie dev claims Gemini leaked scarily specific details in private documents

• The Hottest New AI Chatbot Is Just a Guy Answering Your Questions

• 'I feel like I dug my own grave': The workers caught in the AI transition

• How Amazon Built a Data Center in a California Town Without Anyone Noticing

• I Helped Run Lululemon. The A.I. Revolution Is a Hot Mess

• Software Giant SAP Stops Most Travel and Hiring Because of AI's Soaring Cost

• Alibaba plans to charge big users of its next open-source AI model

• Facing AI 'Apocalypse,' Once-Hot Software Companies Race to Reinvent Themselves

• AI Threatens Our Economy and Democracy Itself

• The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling to Stop Spending on AI

• OpenAI slows release of Astra model, citing cyber capabilities

• 'Asimov was right' about rules for robots, says ex-US Cyber Director

• Gödel and Turing outlined the limits of AI

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Kalshi and Polymarket bets on clinical trials criticized as 'ghastly'

  • Kalshi and Polymarket have begun taking bets on Phase III drug trials

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July as slump in growth continues

  • US economy loses 23,000 jobs in July as labor market weakens

  • Stocks gain as investors bet on weak jobs report

  • U.S. Lost 23,000 Jobs in July, While Unemployment Ticked Lower

  • U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal

• Boeing 737 MAX operators told to check fuselages for cracks

• "Some 64% of Young Men Day Trading Stocks Feel Like Failures"

• US Sold Euros to Save the Yen, Europe Found Out After

Trump

• Trump orders new 15% tariff on key material for solar panels and microchips

• White House drafting executive order linking vaccines and autism

• White House Ballroom Construction Must Stop, Appeals Court Rules

Left Angst

• US agency ends 39% household cap on local TV station owners

  • Carr's FCC Rewrites Media Ownership Law Only Congress Can Change

• Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

  • DOGE overstated savings, government watchdog says

• Trump's AI Framework Is So Bad They Won't Show You What's in It

• How the U.S. Squandered Its Strategic Advantage

• Bulldozers Plow Through Big Bend National Park, Sparking Fury in Texas

  Bulldozers and heavy construction equipment have arrived in and around Big Bend National Park in Texas, amid a battle over the Trump administration's plans to expand the president's border wall across one of the country's most remote national parks.

• US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

  • Trump administration to pay German firm $1.22B to cut offshore wind leases

• US to vet social media of foreign journalists applying for visas, report says

• Palmer Luckey donated $6M to GOP and bundled more while reaping billions

• Zohran Mamdani's NYC Tech Team Is What DOGE Should Have Been

• ICE will release body cam video only when seen in the agency's 'best interests'

• When Matt Taibbi Met Mike Benz

  I’m releasing audio and a transcript from a Twitter Space in which journalist Matt Taibbi meets a then-unknown political operative named Mike Benz. It is the origin story of the “censorship industrial complex”: a lie, told by a manipulative man and laundered by a famous one, becomes the evidentiary basis for lawsuits, and investigations. Downstream of this event is the dismantling of several federal agencies, including one that delivered lifesaving aid to children.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Palisades Fire Was Sparked By Anti-Capitalist Motivated By Hate of Rich, Prosecutors Say

  A memo by federal prosecutors in the case says, "On January 24, 2025, when investigators asked defendant why someone might commit arson in the Pacific Palisades, he responded that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them.’" Rinderknecht had been working as a ride-share driver, and the memo says his passengers reported he had been ranting against capitalism and talking about Luigi Mangione, who is charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024. "On December 12 and 13, 2024, defendant searched the internet for Mangione-related news, using the search terms ‘free Luigi Mangione,’ ‘lets take down all the billionaires,’ and ‘reddit lets kill all the billionaires,’" the prosecution memo says.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• America's Cyber Forces Grapple with Cluster of Deaths by Suicide

• Ukraine delivers first batch of drones to United States.

• True: Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief

World

• European firms afraid of US tech kill switch but haven't made an escape plan

• Moment earthquake shakes hospital operating room in Japan

• Meta apologises to India for restricting PM Modi's post

• Canada adds 75,000 new jobs in July, unemployment rate lowest in 2 years

• Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan Sign Defense Pact

• Why Narendra Modi's economic model is not working for India's youth

• Argentine company accuses US of meddling in Huawei project

• Red Cross deletes sympathetic film about Afghan migrant now accused of killing British woman and hiding her body in a suitcase

  Sharif Ahmadzai, 26, was arrested on Monday over the murder of Scottish Christian Elisabeth-Jane Ross, in Athens. Ahmadzai, a professional boxer who arrived in Greece on a small boat in 2016, is accused of killing Ms Ross before stuffing her body into a suitcase and ditching it in a derelict building.

  the Afghan-national collaborated with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and a London artist to create a film following how he escaped Afghanistan and reached the Greek island of Lesbos aged 15. The four-minute animated film, named Game of Life: The Story of Sharif, was first shown on YouTube in December 2016, and includes a narration of his six-week migrant crossing.

  Scott Craig, a spokesman for the charity, told the Daily Mail: 'Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Elisabeth-Jane Ross at this extremely difficult time. 'The video is no longer publicly accessible. We took this decision out of consideration for Elisabeth's family while the legal proceedings continue.

  Greek news outlet Protothema reported that Ahmadzai denied killing Ms Ross in a statement to police on Saturday, rather claiming he found her dead before panicking and taking a series of unjustified actions.

Iran / Houthi

• Iran’s economy nears breaking point, citizens reportedly stealing basic groceries to get by.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukrainian attacks on Wildberries strike at heart of Russia Inc

• Russian spy 'honeytraps' lure Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths

• New Intelligence Warns Russia May Provoke NATO Amid Dwindling U.S. Munitions

Health / Medicine

• Kellogg says it's removing artificial dyes from cereals by the end of this year

• Organ donation group trying to take living man's organs faces shutdown

• Research finds women having 2 to 2.4 children age slower and live longer

• Bacterial supplements may boost female fertility

• A Promising Heart Drug Fails, Challenging a Long-Held Theory of Disease

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Tick Found in Austin Apartment Linked to Rare Relapsing Fever.

• RFK Jr., The Cyclospora Outbreak Is Not "Under Control"

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A New Way That a Cow's Inner World Shapes Earth's Atmosphere

• The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

  Thinking we have time left to address climate change, or that “Net Zero by 2050” will save us, is driving us toward full social collapse in ways that become more obvious with every new broken temperature record.

• Heatwave forces power plant shutdowns across Europe, putting grid under strain

• 2026 Worst City for Bed Bugs Is Chicago, IL

• Wildfire misinformation is mutating online, thanks to AI slop

  Many posts focus on mismanagement and place blame on Canadian governments, which complicates valid critiques of wildfire response and funding with destabilizing misinformation.

• Newly discovered demon cavefish may be among the rarest fish in the world

• Planned satellite megaconstellations could generate runaway space debris

• Europe's drought reveals medieval buildings, Nazi warships, mammoth remains

• Flesh-eating screwworms feast on humans in Mexico; human cases top 500