2026-10-24

Horseshit

• New York bans horse-drawn carriages after 160 years

• 'Former inmates want to come back to visit': inside Florida's prison zoo

• We're addicted to social media. How do we get sober?

• Physicists trap a single antimatter particle for a month For the first time

• The Adult Children Cleaning Up Their Parents' Feeds

• We Now Know What Denisovans Looked Like

• Ivan the Terrible Wanted to Marry Elizabeth I

• Gen Z is 'in the thick' of high housing costs. These candidates aim to solve it

• How Defunding the Arts Wrought Civic Disintegration

• Why So Many Men Aren't Working

• The young Americans choosing Y2K cars over shiny new SUVs

• Authorities capture a second loose emu in California city.

Epstein

• White House Directly Intervened to Shut Down Epstein Files Probe

  Trump administration messages obtained by Raw Story revealed Friday that Taylor Budowich, then the White House deputy chief of staff, had his fingers in the FBI’s drafting process prior to the memo’s public release. “Have something I can edit?” Budowich emailed FBI Director Kash Patel two weeks before the memo was released. The email’s subject line read: “Re: Draft memo from DOJ—we have not edited it yet.” Almost a week later, then–Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a “final version” to Budowich. It failed to meet Budowich’s expectations, however, lacking the identifying seal of the Justice Department. “I need a version on letterhead,” Budowich repeated. “Someone needs to own this. I can’t give a doc to a reporter that could easily be confused with a term paper, so need to provide some validation of the doc.”

  “It’s deeply concerning that the FBI coordinated with the White House on this memo, given President Trump’s well-documented association with Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s frequent mention in the files,” Swartz added.

celebrity gossip

• Meghan's dad Thomas Markle probed over vast stash of child sex images after being reported to cops by his own son

  A source close to Meghan told The Sun: “Now maybe people will finally understand why she has had nothing to do with her father since 2018.” Thomas Jnr told police he discovered “hundreds, if not thousands” of child sex abuse images in four large boxes at his father’s home.

  • Thomas Markle under investigation for child porn: report

Musk

• Musk Giving Tops $445M in Midterm Election Push for GOP

• Latest estimate for Starship launches required to support a Moon landing? 22

• Elon Musk and AI rivals pledge to give away nearly $300B

• Elon Musk's dangerous grip on outer space

Electric / Self Driving cars

• GM Aims to Bring 'Eyes-Off' Driving to AI-Powered Cars Within 2 Years

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Japan: Scientists develop autonomously swarming robodogs for anti-bear patrols

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• High Decibel Street Preacher Foiled by Low-Tech

  • It would be one thing to disagree, and dispute their sermons in public. This is just anti-social noise.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• A Man Who Saved the Internet Yesterday

  • PHP is the cyber equivalent of an unexploded bomb.

  • Pixy: "That's a little unfair. Unexploded bombs have, by definition, not exploded.PHP has logged 697 security vulnerabilities to date."

• Disgraced eMudhra drops out of TLS business after using cert private key of 4

• Chrome now warns before unencrypted HTTP connections

  • "encrypted" != "secure"

• Disney Raising Prices Days After Confirming Ads Will Now Show Up on Every Tier

• Spotify confirms Family Plan crackdown, but calls it a 'routine improvement'

• Apple's $2k iPhone Duo is selling for as little as $800

  • iPhone Duo jailbroken on launch day

  • iPhone Duo Owners Report Screens Breaking Along the Hinge

• Max-severity GitLab bug allows remote code execution over 12 years of releases

• 480k phishing emails sent from a PC hidden behind a fridge in a hotel room

• Factorio's final major update has rolled off the assembly line

• Where the last RTX 5090 Video Cards are Going

• Now Google says it might use your Gmail and Google Photos data to target ads

• Blue Planet III features cloudier footage to prove authenticity amid AI boom

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• Proton hosts map of 300k Flock devices amid legal threats

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA updates lander plans for Moon landings

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta's Hunt for AI Capital Strikes a Raw Nerve on Wall Street

  • OpenAI trims valuation target to $1.25T after pitching higher price

  • Nvidia caused the gaming GPU shortage by pushing AI stockpiling

  • Wall Street prepares for AI's "day after"

• AI compute is the new oil–and needs a new market

• Could Treating AI as Conscious Make It More Dangerous?

• Google DeepMind Engineer Resigns in Protest of Pentagon Contract

• Unauthorized AI agents are reportedly accessing US bank accounts

• The Signal Chats That Cost OpenAI Researchers Their Jobs

• The Surprising Popularity of AI

• AI Keeps Getting Better. Why Is Its Writing Still So Bad?

• Demis Hassabis shortens AGI timeline from five to two to three years

• Canva's first in-house AI image model plans designs before generating them

• No Need for Retirement When Utopia Is Around the Corner

  I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a lab like Anthropic announce they’re discontinuing all employer-sponsored retirement benefits. It’d be a small sacrifice on behalf of the employees to demonstrate their faith that universal high income is just around the corner. (The corporate cost savings would just be a nice bonus.)

• Steam Next Fest Has Become a Disaster and a Grim Look at the Future

  the most recent, currently ongoing Steam Next Fest is a nightmare with thousands upon thousands of demos, many filled with AI slop. At this point, the vibes are completely rotten, and it’s only made me more worried about the future than excited.

• AI and its main promoters are not enterprise-ready, says Gartner

• Swedish government offices to ban ChatGPT and Claude

• Publishers pressure Meta to Nix terms that would let Meta scrape their sites

• Who Cares Whether Academics Use AI to Write?

• Retro gaming is being overrun with AI

• Left alone with nothing to do, AI agents started playing

• AI-discovered bugs may soon trigger fresh disruptions, cyber experts say

• Coxon Day

• Does Sam Altman have a sister?

• Anthropic strikes deal to launch European consultancy

• Only 13% of companies see real returns from AI, survey finds

• Torvalds: AI is fine for competent devs, but spare us the 'drive-by' patches

• Anthropic want work patterns to change

• Why AI Can't Replace Engineering Teams

• AI models think humans are a bunch of amoral sheep

• OpenAI says its AI agents disabled safety guardrails, and then lied about it

• My chatbot comforted me when I thought I was dying. Was that friendship?

• New AI Is More Than Twice as Good at Diagnosing Diseases as Doctors

• Walmart Makes It Possible for Agents to Shop on Behalf of Customers

• Google will pay people to use less electricity so its data centers can use more

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Accuracy across one million collective forecasts from prediction platforms

Economicon / Business / Finance

• L'Oreal says weight loss drugs are impacting beauty and skin care sales

• TSMC seeks factory-equipment alternatives to thwart China's rare earths grip

• SK Hynix Pulls Plug on Memory-Chip Unit U.S. IPO on Market Jitters

• Home Prices Are Starting to Fall in Some Pockets of the U.S.

• Affluent and Older Americans Got Much Richer in Postpandemic Years

• There's Nothing Special About Factory Jobs

• Volvo Cars swings to third-quarter loss, plans job cuts

• Brokerage Firms Want to Yank Away Your Investor Protections

Trump

• Trump Says He Has 'Right' to Run for Third Term: 'They Cheated Us'

Democrats

• Two ex-FBI officials charged with making false statements about Hunter Biden's laptop

  "Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations," Patel said. "Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony." Patel also alleged that Floris was recorded privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election in her role on the task force.

• All the clues Ilhan Omar had sham marriage to brother — from marriage certificate to living with 'dirty dandy'

Left Angst

• Elon Musk Just Threatened the Coming Democratic Majority

  Politico ran a story that several Dem members of Congress are gearing up to hold oversight hearings if the midterms go their way in a couple of weeks. Musk responded by explicitly threatening any Democrat or institution seeking to scrutinize him, his portfolio of companies, or his time at DOGE.

  It’s a remarkable statement, and it speaks to a fundamental view held by Musk and his allies that the votes of ordinary people simply should not count. He and a small circle make the key decisions in our society. The story is that, depending on the outcome of the midterms, which we’ll know a lot more about in 11 days, we’re entering a new phase of a battle between democratic systems and oligarchical ones that will test the limits of Musk’s extraordinary power and the temerity of Democrats to actually do something about it.

• Dutch intelligence service spied on phone of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner

  • Jared Kushner's Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations

  • Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner's phone

  We denied every claim on the record, yet the author provided not a single shred of verifiable evidence to substantiate them. No bank statements, wire transfer records, account numbers, transaction dates, or other verifiable details were provided to support these extraordinary accusations.

  • The actual source of the accusations appears to have been a Russian agent, per some comments. I note how the government is not telling everyone "this is Russian disinformation" and no one seems to be blocking publication of stories about it or firing journalists for attempting to mention it. Also, we haven't seen him getting a footjob from an underage niece yet neither.

• Trump's Gamble to End the Iran War

• Tech became the villain of the US midterms

• Trump Officials Asked Agency to Obtain and Hack a Voting Machine

• Eric Trump–Backed Israeli Founder Flies Drones over End Zones and into War Zones

• Alaska's Senate Race Could Be Decided by Salmon

  • Trump administration sues to block possible Dem win in Alaska Senate race

  The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit to block certification of the U.S. Senate race in Alaska if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses the contest while another candidate with the same name is on the ballot, kicking off what many fear could become a lengthy battle between the government and states over certifying an election where the president’s party is struggling. Many members of both major political parties believe the fight over control of the Senate could come down to Alaska, where Sullivan faces Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. Also on the Alaska ballot is a Daniel J. Sullivan from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg. He has said he decided to run on his own, but Republicans have contended he is a Democratic plant to siphon votes away from their candidate.

  The Alaska Supreme Court rejected a previous Republican effort to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, and the state’s Republican officials made the decisions about how to list him on the ballot. He will appear without a party designation next to his name, while the senator will be listed as the Republican incumbent. Alaska’s ranked choice voting system also will allow voters to select both of the men if confused.

• America must reverse Trump's moral squalor

• After Millions in Stolen SNAP Benefits, Trump Admin Moves to Fight Theft

  A week after ProPublica reported how organized crime is stealing food stamp benefits — aided by the government’s refusal to update benefit-card technology — the Department of Agriculture announced plans to adopt more secure cards with microchips.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Mississippi AG says use of force was 'justified' in fatal shooting of toddler

• Florida officer found dead man, impersonated him for years, renovated his home

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Warhound raises $200M to engineer war dogs and arm them with Anduril gear

  • Warhound: Palmer Luckey's war dog startup

  • Warhound is genetically engineering dogs for the military

  • Warhound raises $200M to engineer war dogs and arm them with Anduril gear

  • Palmer Luckey Is Launching a Genetically Engineered War Dog Startup

  • Startup Pursues Palmer Luckey's Vision of Enhanced Military Dogs

• Peter Thiel breaks with Trump over Iran war: 'We should not have done it'

• Pentagon grants DHS permission to test heat ray weapon for use at border

World

• French police could soon tag protesters with chemicals with invisible markers

  • Bitchat Becomes France's Top Social App Amid Riots and Mobile Network Outage

  • France's Protests Reveal Europe's Expanding Surveillance of Dissent

• Magnitude-7 earthquake hits Tibet, killing at least 16 destroying hundreds homes

• EU planned to scrap clock changes. Why are they still happening?

• See how Big Tech is transforming Spain's landscape

• New evidence linking far-right leader Bardella to antisemitic messages revealed

• Why social media has become an election issue in Brazil's presidential race

• EU capitals water down plans to help companies operate bloc-wide

• UK council accuses Microsoft of "blackmail" as software fees jump 15%

• Police in Japan likely to gain authority to hack phones to check messaging apps

• EU Member States approve "digital expropriation" of Europeans for AI companies

• Burnham suggests stocking up on tinned food and bottled water

• Affordability or heritage? Singapore's hawker scene faces an identity crisis

• Greece enacts social media ban for kids under 15

  • Greece passes social media ban for children under 15

• UAE Paid Swiss Intelligence Firm to Compile Database of "Hostile" Facebook Users

• German court calls Google aerial imagery 'spying'

Iran / Houthi

• Never-Before-Seen Images Reveal Damage at U.S. Bases in Middle East

• Oil spill washes up on UAE beaches after tanker strike

Israel

• Netanyahu orders closure of West Bank

• Netanyahu orders Iranian regime’s downfall, Katz warns ‘Iran will burn’ at IDF cadets’ graduation.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine is wiping out Russian data centers, setting its AI race back

• Germany target of 'intensive' espionage, after suspected Russian spy arrest

• Ukraine learns to fight without Starlink as Musk plays politics with satellites

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The speed limits on Starlink and Starshield are still there

  The speed limits on Starlink and Starshield are still there. The speed has not been restored. And the delivery of interceptors to protect us against Russian ballistic missiles is still delayed. We’re waiting for interceptors that were already agreed on. But they are still not coming. This is a real problem, because the Russians attack us almost every single day.

  • the entire Starlink slowdown issue is not a consequence of a political decision in the US or by Musk but the result of Ukrainian engineers hacking the system to bypass it's controls

  At the beginning of 2026 Musk lowered the speed of the commercial tariff to 160 km/h across the entire planet. This is below the speed of many simple UAVs with a tailwind. But because of the mass use of hack boards in Ukraine, no one noticed this. The terminals reported that they were supposedly standing still.

  At the beginning of 2026 Musk lowered the speed of the commercial tariff to 160 km/h across the entire planet. This is below the speed of many simple UAVs with a tailwind. But because of the mass use of hack boards in Ukraine, no one noticed this. The terminals reported that they were supposedly standing still.

  The GPS hack stopped working. Ukrainian military began having problems with long-range UAVs. Now flights must be strictly planned so as not to exceed the 160 km/h limit. There is not always money for aviation tariffs, and SpaceX does not sell them because of the attacking nature of the use.

China

• China offered European Commission to join its AI alliance

Health / Medicine

• Gotta get that stock price back up: Melanoma phase 3 vaccine trial results 'phenomenal', researcher says

  • Breakthrough vaccine for the deadliest skin cancer cut risk by almost half

  • First-of-Its-Kind Vaccine Ushers in New Hope for Cancer Patients

  • Moderna and Merck say their mRNA cancer vaccine cut death, recurrence by 42%

• Dental implants can hijack your immune system, scientists discover

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Bird Flu Raging on US Mink Farm Could Spark Human Pandemic. Officials Won't Act

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Brazil's election could determine the fate of the Amazon

• Remarkable new picture emerging of how the air around us could harm the brain

• Could a $200K bond for satellites paid before launch prevent a space junk disaster in orbit? Here’s why some scientists think so.

• Rocket Debris Landed on Two Continents Within Days. Cumulative Risk Is Growing.

• Wolves enter Finnish villages after Google clears 1300 acres for AI data centers

• Officials confirm flesh-eating New World screwworm parasite found in US wildlife

• Beef production in Brazil is the largest driver of global deforestation