2026-05-11

Horseshit

• NV-CA state line casinos and truck stop to close July 4

• The Era of the Tiger Mom Is Over. Enter the Beta Mom

• Scouting's Real Crisis Is Not Marketing. It Is Decades of Neglect.

  When the Boy Scouts of America, recently rebranded as Scouting America, gathers in Dallas May 11-15 for its National Annual Meeting, its leaders will confront a crisis that messaging cannot solve. At the end of 2025, the organization’s market share sank to about 1.25 percent of American youth, the lowest since about 1923. The organization has not strung together a multi-year recovery in 25 years.

  • And the whole kiddy fiddling problem might have had an impact.

• Why 'quantum proteins' could be the next big thing in biology

  • 'Quantum' sounds so cool but doesn't really mean anything so its a perfect marketing term, applicable to anything.

• Why saying hello to strangers can be good for you

• Physics experiment hints at the existence of 'anyon' particles

• Typing Is Being Replaced by Whispering–and It's More Annoying

• Will the stigma around boys who dance ever shift?

• Brain scans reveal a difference between psychopaths and other people

• Want to track the apocalypse? One theory: Follow the billionaires' jets

• Scientists Studied 906 Mafia Marriages and Found Something Surprising

• What happens when we lose a language?

• MIT researchers revive 40 year old triangular zipper concept

• Why modern parents feel more sleep deprived than our ancestors did

celebrity gossip

• Lego raises age limit to 100 for David Attenborough's birthday

Musk

• What is Elon Musk's formula

• Hacking Tesla, so the doors open mechanically in an emergency

• SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Do City Delivery Drones Make Sense? No One Knows, but They're Flying over NYC

• I have seen the dystopian future of elderly care

• Humanoid Robots Are the Next Phase of the AI Hype Cycle

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Multiple universities forced to reschedule final exams after Canvas incident

• NYC School District Hit by Malware Attack as Well as Canvas Hack

• Student hackers revenge on final exams 'ShinyHunters' attacks nearly 9k schools

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Antitrust Remedies Order Takes Effect as US Judge Denies Google's Stay Motion

• Memory godboxes could offer relief from the RAMpocalypse

  The next generation of servers will treat system memory in much the same way. Systems will still have some local DDR5, but the bulk of it will be remotely accessed from what some have taken to calling the memory godbox. The ongoing DRAM shortage has created a perfect storm for the proliferation of the appliances, which not only allow for memory to be pooled, but also data stored in that memory to be shared by multiple machines simultaneously. In effect, memory becomes a fungible resource.

• Louis Rossmann tells 3D printer maker Bambu Lab to 'Go (Bleep) yourself'

• COBOL Is the Asbestos of Programming Languages

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Case of the Kung Fu 'Phreak'

  The only problem is, the thinly disguised voice never sounded at all like Kevin Mitnick, and two of the messages came after the hacker had been arrested. "I heard that this guy named Shimomura had been hacked ... So I just thought, What the hell, I'd leave some voice mails," says 31-year-old Zeke Shif. "I used to watch kung fu movies a lot." Under the handle "SN," Shif once had a solid reputation in the computer underground as a "phone phreak" (i.e., phone hacker). But he says that, by 1995, his fear of "The Man" had long since scared him straight; he simply succumbed to the temptation to make some prank phone calls.

• Running Your Own 3G Network

• Extremely Low Frequencies

  John Willoughby was employed by the NBS, which would later be known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to investigate new types of radio receivers. In the summer of 1917, he was arranging various types of coil antennas at a receiver test site on the Chesapeake Bay when he accidentally dropped one of the antennas into the water. Strangely enough, the radio receiver connected to the antenna continued to provide good reception even as it sank into the bay. NBS management was not especially enthusiastic about this accident, but Willoughby was. He knew that the Navy was investigating means of communication with submarines, and that seawater seemed to block radio waves, all of which suggested that he might have stumbled on an important discovery.

  The lowest generally recognized radio band, ITU band 1, is Extremely Low Frequency or ELF. There is some historic complexity around the definition of ELF, and the modern range of 3-30 Hz does not exactly match the way the Navy has used the term. In general, though, we can consider ELF to refer to the very bottom end of the usable radio spectrum. The extreme lower edge could be said to fall around 7 Hz, where the wavelength of a radio signal matches the circumference of the earth. This leads not only to complex interference problems due to constructive and destructive interactions, it also produces a very high noise floor as global lightning storms trigger perturbances that resonate on and on. Balancing the desire for the lowest possible frequency against the practical challenges of ELF, the Navy settled on the range of 72-80 Hz as the most promising window for submerged submarines.

  This underscores a fundamental problem with ELF: antenna sizes. At 80 Hz, the wavelength of a radio wave is 2,300 miles, or about one quarter of the diameter of the earth. Take, for example, a half-wave dipole antenna—a very common antenna design in most bands. For ELF, the antenna would need to stretch from Albuquerque to Portland. Clearly, then, any practical ELF antenna needs to be "electrically short" or, in the relative sense of RF engineering, a small antenna.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA is planning a rescue mission for its Neils Gehrels Swift Observatory - a.k.a the Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer - which is sinking fast and will re-enter the atmosphere later this year without a boost.

• NASA’s Artemis 2 astronauts saw flashes on the far side of the moon that cameras struggle to capture. Here’s why scientists are excited.

  The four crewmembers reported seeing several impact flashes — flickers of light created when a meteoroid hits the lunar surface and vaporizes.

• The mangled remains of probes sent to Venus may still be there

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• There's a Long-Shot Proposal to Protect California Workers from AI

• Gen Z Resentment Toward AI Grows as Adoption Stagnates and Workplace Fears Mount

• AI in the sky: Inside the FAA plan to overhaul air traffic

• Giant Virginia Data Center Project Upended by Clerical Error

• Anthropic weighs deal for near $1T valuation as revenue surges

• AI creates a fearsome cold-war-style dilemma

• Mark Zuckerberg Told 8k Employees Their Layoffs Are a Line Item in AI Bill

• Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI

• AI Is Forcing CEOs to Make a Stark Choice: Lay Off Workers or Make Them Do More

• Anthropic and OpenAI are launching joint ventures for enterprise AI services

• AI Is Making Digital Fraud Easier, Faster and Harder to Stop

• The Real Singularity is the Friends We Made Along the Way

  As far as I can tell, these people actually think they are building the machine God with all the quasireligious hullaboo that goes with it. Now when you see how AI works and how it is and will be integrated into the economy, I’m ashamed to have ever believed in this. And just like Scientology, it’s a real worldview with real consequences for believing it.

  We have lived at the end of history for so long that any movement feels like the eschaton. But it’s not the end times. It’s just movement.

• 'AI gave me your number': AI doxxing turns ChatGPT hallucinations to harassment

• Utah's 'hyperscale' data center could create heat island near Great Salt Lake

• The new Wild West of AI kids' toys

• PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

• Anthropic says 'evil' portrayals were responsible for Claudes blackmail attempts

• Maryland citizens hit with $2B power grid upgrade for out-of-state AI

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Crypto exchange Coinbase to lay off 14% of staff as AI reshapes work

  • Coinbase steep first quarter loss after slide in crypto prices; shares fall 4%

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Private Credit Isn't a Major Threat–Probably

• Fidelity to Cut 800 Staffers as It Overhauls Tech, Product Teams

• New York Stock Exchange to open private members' club on Wall Street

• Only one of Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank can survive

• Oil-price bets ahead of Iran war news totalled $7B, reporting shows

• Akamai surges on big LLM deal as Cloudflare dims

• Wall Street lawyers aided insider trading ring, say US prosecutors

• Chris Hohn's fund slashes $8B Microsoft stake in warning over AI disruption

• Amazon uses its logistics empire to take on UPS and FedEx in freight, shipping

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Taxpayers May Be Eligible for Significant Tax Refunds – If They Act by July 10

  Tens of millions of taxpayers may be entitled to refunds or abatements of penalties and interest that the IRS assessed during the nearly 3.5-year COVID-19 federal disaster period. However, this relief will not happen automatically. To protect their rights, most taxpayers must file a claim for refund – generally by July 10, 2026.

  • If you paid "late fees" or similar they might refunded and these people can recommend lawyers to help you...

• Why DC's Metro Wants to Automate Its Trains

Left Angst

• 36 Doctors Just Staged the Quietest Coup in American History

  On April 30, 2026, thirty-six American physicians slipped a document into the Congressional Record that every future historian will be forced to reckon with. As of this writing, not a single mainstream reporter has touched it. The Times has not. The Post has not. 60 Minutes has not called. The MSM has done the math. They looked at what happened to the law firms, the universities, and Jimmy Kimmel and politely said, “Not my rodeo.”

  The four-page document is titled Medical Concerns About President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness for Office. It is, in plain language, a clinical bill of particulars. The 36 were concerned enough to invoke the Declaration of Geneva — the post-Nuremberg successor to the Hippocratic Oath, which was written specifically because doctors at Nuremberg argued they had only been following orders. They concluded that Donald J. Trump is mentally unfit to be the President of the United States, and that steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency.

• The left-wing case for AI

  This is a fascinating point of conflict in left-wing anti-AI spaces. Every so often somebody will ask “hey, wouldn’t LLMs help disabled people?”, and the comments will devolve into a dogpile of (often non-disabled) people slamming AI and a handful of disabled people trying to explain their experience. If anti-AI sentiment weren’t so strong on the left for other reasons, I think there’d be a current of left-wing AI supporters on a disability-rights basis.

• Checkmate in Iran

• After USDA request, Indiana plant biologist locked out of lab by school

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Former US contractor convicted in federal database wipe case

  A Virginia man, Sohaib Akhter, faces decades in prison after a jury convicted him of being involved in a scheme to delete approximately 96 databases containing US government data. The events of the case transpired around two weeks before the twin brothers allegedly involved were fired from their jobs at a software supplier to the US government. Sohaib and Muneeb Akhter, both 34, allegedly worked together on February 1, 2025, to access the account of an unnamed individual who submitted a complaint through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s public portal. Court documents do not say why the brothers wanted access to the account, but the pair were both fired on February 18, 2025, after the company, which provided software to at least 45 government agencies, learned that Sohaib had a prior felony conviction. Within five minutes of being fired via remote meeting, the twins sought to inflict damage on their employer. At approximately 16:55, Sohaib tried to access the software supplier’s network but couldn’t because his VPN connection was severed and his Windows account was deactivated while he was sitting in the firing meeting. However, Muneeb allegedly still had access and told his brother the same. A minute later, at approximately 16:56, officials say Muneeb issued commands preventing other users from reading or writing to the database, before issuing a command to delete it. Over the following 56 minutes, Muneeb allegedly deleted approximately 96 databases, the indictment states, which contained data related to Freedom of Information Act matters and sensitive investigative files belonging to federal departments and agencies.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon Wants Innovation. Small Businesses Want to Deliver. What's the Problem?

World

• Red Card or Black Card? The Conscription Lottery in Thailand

• Amazon's data center in Chile is moving forward

• U.K. Reform earthquake

  In city council elections held across England, the current majority party in the national Parliament finished a distant second to the upstart right-wing Reform party. Labour lost most of the seats it was defending. In the election for the Welsh parliament, Labour went from first to third, winning just nine seats and losing 35 they had previously held. The local nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, emerged as the largest party, but still short of a majority. Reform went from zero seats to 34, good enough for 2nd place and official opposition status. The Conservatives fell from 2nd to a distant fourth.

• Defence sovereignty: Europe races to build the low-cost weapons of future

• Canada's unemployment rate rises to 6.9% as economy sheds more jobs

• Canada admits bill C-22 would allow govt to secretly order microphone activation

Israel

• Israel's AI targeting system: data from a phone become a death sentence

China

• Xi's Forever Purge

Health / Medicine

• Some gene therapies no longer require clinical trials, thanks to new FDA rule

• Does Ozempic cause hair loss? Doctors explain what’s really going on.

• (2024) The Mythology of Rice and Beans

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Could Contact-Tracing Apps Help with the Hantavirus?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Bill Gates' Mosquito Factory in Colombia and Its Contribution to Health

• Chewing gum releases microplastics into your saliva, UCLA research shows

• Plants can 'hear' rain coming, spurring them into action

  • Plant Seeds Do Something When the Sound of Rain Strikes

• Do houseplants improve air quality?

• The River Otter's Remarkable Comeback