2026-06-04

etc

• Missing worker at Los Alamos National Laboratory found dead in remote forest

• Demand Is Booming for New No Tech, Repairable Tractor

Horseshit

• Microsoft's new quantum computer chip has a fundamental problem

  • Microsoft Doubles Down on Controversial Quantum Computing Claims

• Videos show people entering NYC sewers at night; residents,investigators baffled

  • Mystery of manhole mole people sparks wild theories — what they're really up to

  A pair of unusual caught-on-camera sightings of men emerging from Brooklyn manholes in recent weeks raised concerns in the Big Apple and sparked an NYPD probe — but sources said it doesn’t appear the weirdos are up to anything sinister. An NYPD emergency services and New York City Department of Environmental Protection investigation conducted underground found the strange incidents appear to be people scavenging for anything of value that inadvertently made its way into the city’s sewer system, sources told The Post. Urban scavenging for derelict valuables like coins, wallets, scrap metal or jewelry is a more common practice in other countries around the world, the sources added.

• Three Chess Friends Battled Demons and Saved Two Lives

• The Ordinary Miracle of Existing

  Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience.

• You Are an 'Avatar in a VR Game,' Scientist Claims

• Everyone in This Lego Dispute Should Have Spoken to a Lawyer Earlier

  I will say that Bricks & Minifigs corporate (and the replacement franchise owners) come out of this all looking very, very, very sketchy. Ben Schneider comes out of it looking like both a hero for getting a tremendous amount of viral attention to all of this, but also kind of a dumbass for doing a bunch of very stupid things that he thinks helps his cause but don’t, which he could have avoided by… actually talking to a lawyer. Yes, Schneider got a ton of attention on the issue, but also did a ton of things that likely made everything worse for Mansell and himself. If literally anyone involved had spoken to a lawyer at any point, an awful lot of this mess could have been avoided.

  Strip it all back and the core of this is pretty simple: an 83-year-old man’s carefully assembled lego collection — built over 15 years, meant to fund his grandkids’ college — appears to have been taken (at least in part) by people who calculated that it would cost more to fight them than to walk away. That bet almost paid off. The only reason this became a national story is that Bryan Mansell found someone willing to be very, very extremely online about it. But “going viral” is not a legal strategy.

  • Patreon Refuses to Remove YouTuber's Viral Lego Investigation

• Uber list of strangest lost-and-found items: Dentures, butterflies, dishwasher

• Young adults are more perfectionistic than ever before

• Are Young People Lazy, or Are They Just Hopeless?

celebrity gossip

• Ex-girlfriend of former Google CEO ordered to pay him $10 million

  An arbitrator has sided with former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, saying in a preliminary ruling that he was not guilty of sexual assault against his former girlfriend and business partner Michelle Ritter. The arbitrator, retired Washington State Judge Beth Andrus, recently ordered Ritter to pay $10.7 million in damages to Schmidt. Ritter sued Schmidt in Los Angeles County Superior Court last September, accusing the billionaire tech mogul of “forcibly” raping her on a yacht off the coast of Mexico in 2021. She also alleged Schmidt forced her to have nonconsensual sex at the Burning Man festival in 2023.

  Ritter, 32, alleged that a 2022 federal law inspired by the #MeToo movement intended to end forced arbitration of sexual assault and harassment claims allowed her to have her case heard in open court. Superior Court Judge Michael Small disagreed, ruling that the law did not apply because a financial settlement and arbitration agreement Ritter and Schmidt signed in December 2024 was entered into after the alleged sexual wrongdoing — not before as legally required.

Obit

• Peabo Bryson, Veteran R&B Singer of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Whole New World,’ Dies at 75

  • 'Beauty and the Beast' singer Peabo Bryson dies at 75

Musk

• SpaceX targets $1.75T valuation in all-primary IPO next week,sources say

  • SpaceX plans IPO price at $135 per share, targeting record $75B raise

  • SpaceX is worth less than half of its $1.75T IPO target, Morningstar says

  • SpaceX Seeks $75B in Record IPO Plan to Fund AI, Launch

  • SpaceX's IPO is set to be the biggest ever: $75B

  • SpaceX Sets Price for $1.77T IPO

• SpaceX wins Texas tax breaks for chip project, ahead of record IPO

• UK adopts SpaceX's Starshield for military operations, sources say

  • New Zealand testing of Elon Musk's Starshield 'significant', US expert says

• Tesla retroactively added 'supervised' to FSD contracts owners signed years ago

• Elon Musk is expected to become the first trillionaire

• Tesla Cybertruck resale value plunges amid sales slump

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Soon 80k-pound self-driving trucks could deliver packages to your door

• 'Driving like teenagers': Waymo robotaxis run red lights, nearly hit pedestrians

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Why People Hate Humanoid Robots

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Amazon Has Axed Its New Stargate Series

• Amazon-owned Ring should pay Americans for scanning their faces, lawsuit says

• How Lawsuits Alleging Social Media Harms Threaten Big Tech

• User-Replaceable Batteries Are Coming Back in a Big Way

• NC lawmakers target 'addictive' apps in teen social media bill

• Microsoft’s new developer-optimized Windows embraces Linux even more

  Microsoft has created Coreutils for Windows from the uutils open-source project, a cross-platform reimplementation of the GNU coreutils in Rust.

• I Wore a Smart Fart Wearable for Three Days. Here's What I Learned

• Acer working to patch max severity zero-days in Wave 7 routers

• YouTube overtakes Netflix in average daily viewing around the world

• MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production

• Intel bit off more than it could chew with 18A process node

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Texas Instruments Changes The NE5532 And Others Into Incompatible Versions

  Among the other big changes are a reduction in the supply voltage from 22V to 18V, and a halving of the ESD protection from 2kV to 1kV. Although it might be slightly more efficient on the new process node this way, it clearly comes with a lot of trade-offs that make it an overall worse op-amp, while also being incompatible with the same op-amp from other manufacturers.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• ‘A pretty significant setback’: How Blue Origin’s rocket explosion affects NASA’s moon plans.

• How long will it take to rebuild Blue Origin's launch pad?

• Blue Origin CEO: "We will fly again before the end of this year"

  The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. I’ve seen some speculation that we might move directly to the 9x4 configuration, but we won’t do that.

• Blue Origin Issues Official Statement on New Glenn Explosion

• Impulse Space raises $500M as orbital maneuvering race heats up

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Anthropic faces AI spending backlash before IPO

• Florida lawsuit accuses OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of endangering children

  • Florida sues OpenAI and CEO Altman, claiming company concealed serious risks

• Google Is Quietly Buying Code from Play Store Developers to Train AI

• 1 in 5 U.S. Adolescents and Young Adults Use AI Chatbots for Mental Health

• Why Does OpenAI Pretend to Be a Nonprofit?

• Meta scales back plan for internal mouse-tracking tech, citing staff concerns

  • Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

• Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

• Tech CEOs Are Using AI as the Perfect Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs

• Publishers in UK can opt out of Google AI search results

  • UK media groups given power to opt out of Google AI search summaries

  • UK publishers can opt-out of Google's AI search

  • Google will allow websites to exclude themselves from AI search results

• Rehumanizing global health care with agentic AI

• I spent $2k.' Is Dreams of Violets AI slop – or the future of film-making?

• Uber Caps Employee Spending on AI Tools Like Claude Code to Manage Costs

• GitLab to cut workforce by 14% and exit 22 countries in restructure around AI

• America's Data Center Build-Out Is Falling Way Behind Schedule

• Google's $80B equity raise adds to that giant AI sucking sound

• More harmful than helpful': young people sour on AI

• Can A.I. produce writing that we want to read?

• Study finds AI chatbots frequently miss possible diagnoses

• Alexandr Wang's bid to revive Meta's AI edge

• ChatGPT Isn't Just Changing How We Work. It's Harming How We Think

• India's High-Stakes Push for Sovereign AI Faces Reality Check

• Meta enters enterprise AI race with new business agent

• AI Has Ruined the Job Market

• AI to double data centre power and water consumption by 2030, UN researchers say

• Martin Scorsese gets backlash after endorsing 'creatively freeing' AI

• Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search

• Walmart Caps Usage of an AI Tool for Employees After High Demand

• Google's new Gemma 4 12B model is designed to run on any laptop with 16GB of RAM

• Gemini Spark is the most impressive and terrifying AI experience I've had yet

• Americans Have Grown Dramatically Anti-Data Center

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• George Santos reported to prosecutors over suspicious Kalshi trades

  A prediction market reported U.S. Rep. George Santos to federal prosecutors after he boasted he’d be going to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, then bet against his own attendance, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Texas is becoming America Inc's centre of gravity

• A whale of a deal: Paramount's takeover of Warner Bros

• Goldman Sachs CEO says markets in 'greed' mode as AI companies seek billions

• Gold overtakes US bonds as world’s favourite investment

• Private payrolls grew by 122,000 in May, stronger than expected

• Mounting evidence suggests remote work is behind the Gen Z hiring nightmare

• Iran war drains US oil stocks to lowest level since 2004

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• In Fenwick Island, Delaware, nonhumans can still vote

  State lawmakers let Fenwick Island change its charter in 2008 to permit voting by corporations, trusts and other “artificial" entities.

• Tech-favored candidates fell short on California's primary night

  Vote tallying in California’s primaries could drag on for days, but one trend is already hard to miss: tech-bred and tech-backed candidates are striking out.

  • "We can't tell you details yet but we know the trend" ... counting votes takes weeks? Or deciding which votes count?

• Spencer Pratt lays out plan to defeat Mayor Karen Bass in November runoff election

  Spencer Pratt has confidently claimed he’s already looking ahead to a November runoff as election results Tuesday night showed him comfortably in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Pratt’s bullish comments came as Bass advanced to the November runoff while Pratt held second place ahead of socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman in third. While a large number of ballots remain to be counted, political observers increasingly view a Bass-Pratt matchup as the most likely outcome.

• New York to require 3D printers to be equipped with filter software

• Far-left Southern Poverty Law Center reimbursed Klan members for cross-burnings: feds

  The Southern Poverty Law Center paid reluctant white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members thousands of dollars in donor money to remain in the notorious hate groups — even making them whole for money spent on cross-burnings, the Justice Department alleged in a shocking superseding indictment filed Tuesday. The feds initially charged the once-venerable civil rights organization in April with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a bank, and money laundering conspiracy. Tuesday’s superseding indictment, filed in Montgomery, Ala., federal court, lays out some of the stories of informants who were paid in money the SPLC raised from donors on the pretext of “exposing hate and injustice” and “fighting discrimination.”

Trump

• Trump signs downsized AI order after weeks of reversals

  • Trump's AI E-(I)-O could let feds pick winners and losers

• Trump administration drops $1.8B 'anti-weaponisation' fund

Democrats

• Joe Biden crashes Jill’s book talk, steals spotlight to ask whom she loves the most in incredibly cringey moment

  I have a question,” Biden said unprompted, and without a microphone, while flanked by security guards. “Joe has a question, like you couldn’t ask it later?” Jill responded. “Who do you love most in the whole world?” Biden enquired. “Whoopi,” Jill answered, causing the audience to break into laughter. As “The View” co-host tried to speak, Biden continued to stand and blankly face his wife, seemingly unhappy with her answer. The former first lady eventually caved and said, “I love you most, Joe. Was that it? Was that the answer he wanted?” “It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?” the 46th president continued — barely audible without a microphone. “Overwhelming, well, that’s what keeps him on his toes, he’s never 100% sure, I always keep him guessing, is that not true?” Jill said as her husband lowered his head and made the sign of the cross.

Left Angst

• He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut

• Scientists lose critical ocean observatory climate record to Trump cuts

  • Dismay as Trump officials to dismantle key ocean monitoring system

• Trump signs new order to shut down bank accounts of undocumented immigrants

• Trump's Takeover of the American Regulatory Machine

• Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers

• HHS is overriding peer review to require changes to research scope, design

• Scott Pelley fired at CBS News after blowups with Bari Weiss,60 Minutes producer

• Dell inks $9.7B Pentagon contract after Trump acquires stock

• Paul Krugman’s Deranged Call to Purge America of MAGA Is Scarier Than You Think.

  we really need to do a thorough purging of the United States. We need a, a deMAGAfication, and that is... You know, I'm not going over the top by using a word that's very similar to the denazification, uh, that we pursued successfully after World War II in Germany.

• White House plans to vet public grants for 'American values' spark alarm

• The Florida woman catfishing America's political class

  The two, who shared an affinity for left-leaning politics, grew closer over homebaked peanut-butter cookies and even talked of weekend trips to out-of-state football games. Over months of texting, Field came to believe that the woman who identified herself as Leah Andrews might be his “forever person.” But just over five months after they first met, surreptitiously recorded videos of their dates and calls were posted online by conservative influencer Steven Crowder. Field watched himself on tape — his private observations on fellow Democrats and Republicans suddenly available for public consumption, just days before New Jersey’s contested 2025 primary election for governor.

• Facing life-threatening miscarriage in Arkansas, calls to governor didn't help

• People with cancer / HIV could lose Medicaid under new work rules, advocates say

• H-1B Crackdown on Indian Workers Erodes a Texas Real Estate Boom

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Brazil's beloved instant payment system faces scrutiny from Trump administration

• The Empty Field That Wasn’t: GPS, OTAD and Two Decades of Encrypted Broadcasts

World

• Japan declines to join movement to ban youth from social media

• UK lawmakers call on government to ditch Palantir NHS contract

• Nvidia to spend $150B a year in Taiwan, 'epicentre' of AI revolution

• Shortlist of Animals for UK Banknotes

• The European Parliament has ditched Google Search for French competitor Qwant.

  • EU Parliament to Ditch Google for European Alternative Qwant

• EU plots long game against US digital supremacy

  • Europe unveils tech sovereignty package amid concerns over reliance on U.S. tech

  • Europe Wants to Be Less Reliant on American Tech. Here's Its Plan

• EU wants households to cut peak time energy use as industry and AI demand soars

Iran / Houthi

• Iran attack on Kuwait airport injures at least 63 and damages terminal building

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The Effort to Build Ukraine's Ground Robot Arsenal

China

• China's Rise in Drug Development Looms over U.S.

• Not just America, China's top scientists are dying mysteriously

• Grab what you can while you can: The new reality in the South China Sea

Health / Medicine

• Vaping alters genes linked to cancer, heart and lung disease

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Exploring geospatial link between soils and national intelligence quotient

• Clothing, not air conditioning, should be 1st layer of response to extreme heat

• A rift is splitting Africa apart forming Earth's sixth ocean

• Google requests permission to release 32M mosquitoes in California and Florida

• She watched a wildfire destroy her town, so she's building fire-proof bunkers

• The method for counting 52,019 puffins

• UN calculates nation-sized environmental footprints for AI and data centers

• Flesh-eating screwworm detected 25 miles from U.S. border, USDA says.