2026-07-28

Horseshit

• Older people's media literacy can be boosted in just 60 minutes

• Open-source 3D-printed portable MRI machine built for under $70k

• Even in Utah Families Are Getting Smaller

• The Rise of the Deserving Rich

• The Art of Ham Radio

• Hunter-gatherers introduced fish to a mountain lake 7000 years ago

• The robots programmed by kids to speak their Indigenous languages

• He saw a pit on Google Maps. It turned out to be a 390M year-old meteor crater

• Gen Z Fell Out of Love with Work. I Don't Blame Them

• America's Big Cities Are Rapidly Losing Kids

• The Red Cross plans to extend its protection to cyberspace

• Singles Are So Burned Out They're Letting Spreadsheets Evaluate Their Dates

• New York City Halts Construction at Another Office-to-Residential Conversion

Epstein

• Blanche-led DOJ likely to derail Epstein survivors' pursuit of justice

Obit

• TV presenter and comedian Bill Oddie dies at 85

• Paul Andrews, Founder of 'Contact in the Desert'–Woodstock of U.F.O.s–Dies at 77

• Gunther von Hagens, creator of Body Worlds and plastination, dies aged 81

Musk

• Elon Musk’s Boring Company reportedly raising funding at a $20 billion valuation.

• The Odyssey Leaked on X: Bootleg Seen by Millions in Hours Before Takedown

• An abandoned SpaceX rocket is about to crash into the Moon

• Musk Shamed After Attacking NYC Mayor over $38B Government Handouts

• Musk's SpaceX tumbles back to Earth, dragging Tesla stock down with it

• Tesla to Make Design and Software for Model S and Model X Open Source

• X Money released to Premium and Premium+ users in the US

• Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a "dead end" for rapid reuse

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo Is Racking Up Thousands of Dollars of Parking Fines in Austin

• E-bike bans in schools highlight the growing debate over freedom vs. safety

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Taxpayer-funded trans dolls with removable genitalia to hit classrooms this fall for kids as young as 4 to ‘learn about different options’.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Does a PhD Pay Off?

  When I entered university at the beginning of the 1990s, about 0.5% of the Canadian population had a PhD. This has nearly tripled today, and it is fast increasing. Something of the order of one person out of 80 has a PhD. Comparatively, there is roughly one professor or university-level instructor per 900 people. With a fast aging population, we simply do not need many more professors and instructors than we already have.

  the financial case for a PhD is narrower than people assume. If you fail to get a professorship, or you want an early retirement, you may very well end up with a poor outcome. And it is not getting better over time.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Click to Pray: The Pope's Official App Exposes 700k User Emails

• Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory

• Microsoft seeks Supreme Court lifeline in pre-owned license battle

• Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

  • "Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win

• Apple fixes 75 security issues with your iPhone and 155 for Mac, update now

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astronauts describe persistent 'observer' sensation after 6 month missions

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI Moves into Family Life

• Sam Altman says we are in the singularity

• Nvidia in talks with OpenAI to guarantee $250B financing for data center

  • Nvidia in Talks with OpenAI to Guarantee $250B Financing for Data Center

• Meta launched a new AI optimism ad set to a song about human extinction

• OpenAI's myopia keeps causing alignment problems

• Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts

• AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

• Nvidia Bets on Ilya Sutskever's New AI Lab to Expand Compute Reach

  • Nvidia bets $5B on Ilya Sutskever's AI breakthrough

• Nvidia, SpaceX, Microsoft launch AI safety initiative

• Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

• AI companies are shredding rare books

• More on an Internal OpenAI Model Hacking into HuggingFace

• Workers are crossing job boundaries with AI, OpenAI research shows

• Young Adults Are Letting AI Do Their Talking for Them–Even in Person

• Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal

• Spotify's AI Problem Is So Bad Random People Are Stepping in to Track the Slop

• AI Is Coming for Every Bluff We Live By

  AI is getting rid of garbage reproducible work. Anything that is normal, repeatable, explainable, or reducible to a process is becoming less valuable, and we’re still trying to figure out what value even means in a world full of intelligence. The word taste gets thrown around constantly here. AI will replace the programmers, replace customer support, replace sales, replace marketing, and taste is supposedly what will empower the humans who have it.

• I'm sorry, Dave

  the idea that Anthropic should decide what you get to read is insane. Translating a text isn't endorsing it. What if Microsoft Word started refusing to right-align paragraphs it disagreed with? Or Windows wouldn't print an excerpt from The Camp of the Saints? (I know, don't give them any ideas!). What an upside world when Chinese open-weight models will tell us about Tiananmen Square, but American frontier models won't translate a blog post. Not even Kubrick saw that coming.

• Lawsuit says Mayo Clinic rushed AI rollout put patient care and privacy at risk

• Nvidia's $750B in Deals Reignite Circular AI Fears

  • They're aspiring to "too big to fail"; then Bernie gets to hand out trillions for "making AI a public resource," after which it will become permissible to say that "AI" has not fulfilled the promises made.

• Environmental groups urge EPA to reject new PFAS to cool datacenters

• AMD and Anthropic Sign Major Chips-and-Investment Deal

• OpenAI's Sam Altman to Meet with Senate Intelligence Committee's Top Democrat

• Government engagement with AI creates more uncertainty for investors, CIOs warn

• Why China is giving away its best AI models

• Kimi Panic Is a Sputnik Moment for 'Open' AI

• What will more intelligence actually do for us?

  And yet…the world remains much the same. In lots of sci-fi books, as soon as artificial superintelligence arrives, it bootstraps itself to even more godlike intelligence in an explosive “singularity” that rapidly transforms the entire physical universe. Lots of people, especially “AI safety” and “effective altruist” types, expected things to play out basically the same way in reality. But looking around, not much has changed since we entered the intelligence explosion. There’s a huge data center boom, and most people use AI on a daily basis, but we still live basically the same lives — driving to work or taking the train, sitting in front of a computer, scrolling on our phones, collecting a paycheck.

• OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic Absent from Nvidia-Led Open Secure AI Alliance

• Person Opposing Data Center Arrested for Clapping at City Meeting

Economicon / Business / Finance

• New Jersey governor signs law banning surveillance pricing to protect shoppers

• Big Firms Are Starting to Hire Again, Defying Predictions of AI Wipeout

• America has become an entrepreneur's paradise

• Apple overtakes Nvidia as most valuable company

• Etsy Is in Its Flop Era, and Sellers Are Fleeing

• Cracker Barrel CEO Stepping Down After Logo Controversy, Activist Pressure

• Big Tech credit risks rise sharply as AI spending soars

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• As Bombshell Fauci Docs Drop, Faux-Conservative Media Indignantly Covers Story It Suppressed in 2020

  • The Wuhan lab created Covid and unleashed it on the world. And it could not have done so without Fauci’s help

  • Fauci's newly released COVID diaries reveal bizarre fixation on fame as pandemic deaths mounted

  • Anthony Fauci diary entries on COVID fame ignored by major networks | Fox News

  Eye-popping diary entries written by Dr. Anthony Fauci reveal the former White House COVID advisor was fixated on his newfound celebrity at the height of the global pandemic, but anyone who relies on legacy media outlets for news and information may not be aware. ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN and MS NOW's on-air broadcasts ignored Fauci’s diary entries from the time they were released on Saturday afternoon through Monday at 9 a.m. ET when flagship morning shows had concluded, according to a search of transcripts using Grabien Media.

  • Will the "Fat Lady" Finally Sing?

  Dr. Fauci was initially invited but declined to appear (didn’t feel like it), so the committee issued a subpoena compelling him (under penalty of up to a year in jail for failure to show). Because Dr. Fauci was given a peremptory pardon by “Joe Biden,” he cannot legally invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. He will have to answer the questions. Of course, Dr. Fauci has demonstrated in previous appearances that he is a world champeen of failing-to-recall stuff and, at age 85, one might expect him to work that angle to the max.

• 5th Circuit blocks Texas law requiring websites to filter "harmful" speech

Trump

• 'Is This Supposed to Be Fun?' Trump Hurls Insults at Correspondents' Dinner

Democrats

• Apax Partners: The Money Linking Singham and the DNC

  Virtually every major Democratic campaign — presidential, Senate, House, state — accesses its voter data through one platform. NGP VAN has been the de facto sole vendor of the DNC voter file since 2004. Thirty-eight million donors and volunteers in the system. $10 billion in campaign contributions tracked in the 2022 cycle alone. 1.4 billion voter contact attempts. If you’ve ever knocked on a door for a Democrat, your data went into this system. No competing vendor holds a parallel DNC voter file contract. The company that owns all of it is a London private equity firm called Apax Partners. And four foreign governments hold ownership stakes in Apax.

• Inside the Phone-Throwing Drama at the Troubled, Broke Democratic Party

• Taxpayer funded propaganda:

  • California's economy isn't just bigger than TX and FL – it's growing faster, too

  • Mayor Mamdani Unveils New Municipal Grocery Stores

Left Angst

• American Nero: Why Trump is trying to burn down the National Academy of Sciences

• The US is charging an American citizen for wiping his phone at the border

  • Activist charged with felony after giving border agent "duress code" that wiped

• Donald Trump's AI Brain Trust

• Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him

• How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump)

• John Oliver Returns to Expose Trump Family's Shady Crypto Dealings

• The Billionaire Blowing the Whistle on Trump's Crypto Shop

• The Reason Elon Musk Keeps Insisting DOGE Cuts Killed "Zero" Kids

• US DOT deleting bike lane references

• The War That Shall Not Be Named

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Ford Motor Joins Race to Build Next U.S. Army Truck

World

• Germany's sick-note crackdown may be treating the symptoms, not the disease

• EU Fines Google $1.02B for Favoring Its Own Services

• Canada remains anti-nuke, but its potential path to the bomb is getting shorter

• Bali bans Dutch expats whose run club allegedly excluded Indonesians

• UK's iconic Jodrell Bank telescope faces axe in science cuts

• Europe wildfires rage on, forcing more than 250k to flee

  • Devastating European wildfires in maps – and how they're being tackled

• Singapore's Unique Monetary Policy

• Parents 'driven to suicide' by wrong orders to pay child maintenance

Iran / Houthi

• Iran War Forces Energy Buyers to 'Unshackle' from Global Markets

• Tanker hits mine in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran intercepts six vessels

• Top US military commander in Middle East advised halting Hormuz bombing

  The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, Adm. Brad Cooper, recommended stopping the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz because it has reached the limit of its effectiveness, according to two sources with knowledge of his position. It was an acknowledgement by both military and civilian advisers to the president that there are limits to what can be accomplished through military action, and specifically an air power campaign.

• Trump pauses Iran war amid warnings about stockpiles

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Why a Ukrainian cruise missile is flying with hobby drone hardware

• The Ukrainian startup taking the missile fight deep into Russia

China

• Chinese chipmaker shares surge 470%

  • China memory chipmaker CXMT's shares soar in blockbuster listing

  • China Chipmaker CXMT Jumps 472% in Debut After Blockbuster IPO

  • Chipmaker CXMT vaults to top of China's valuation with 466% surge in debut

• China State Media Says Support for Open AI Models Has Limits

• China wants to end AI romances

• China begins making homegrown DUV chipmaking tools

• In China, people are renting out their faces to AI

• Wham's Surreal Trip to China

• China's Shijian-31 satellite is sweeping GEO using a unique orbit

Health / Medicine

• We're getting closer to a breakthrough on hearing loss

• Consumer Safety Product Commission Demands Hospitals Share ER Records

• As a doctor, here's why I wear sunblock indoors

• 73% of Americans fear the dentist — a periodontist said it’s hurting them in ways most don’t expect.

• Little-Known Dangers of Restricting Sodium Too Much

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Consolidated food supply may be worsening cyclospora outbreaks, experts say

• Cyclospora outbreak has many changing eating habits, CBS News poll finds.

• Dozens sickened in 17 states recalled eggs feared contaminated deadly bacteria

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Sand battery: Finland's answer to a renewable energy headache

• Replacing gas stove can help asthmatics as much as some drugs, US experts find

  • Replacing gas stoves with electric stoves greatly reduces asthma symptoms

• Private companies could ruin the night sky and international law can't stop them

• Net zero could put global temperatures on a long, slow decline

• Fire-loving fungi are nature's first responders after wildfire, renewing soil