2026-09-17

etc

• Victims on board NBC helicopter identified as longtime news reporter and veteran pilot after devastating crash that killed three

Horseshit

• Chop up your books

  this is an 850+ page paperback! It is what I call Too Big. It’s going to tire out your hands to hold up an 850-page book for the time it takes to read an 850-page book. If you read in bed, it’s going to tire your arms out, trying to hold this giant tome over your head. If you want to take this book on a plane or bus, it’s going to take up half of your bag. So, I would like to recommend you to a practice I call Chop That Book Up Into Reasonable Sizes.

• Nuclear Fusion's Moment of Truth

• UK mathematician debunks myth around Parthenon's optical illusions

• Is pasta a type of noodle? The surprisingly serious debate over beloved carbs

• Is There Anything Google's Fruit Fly Brain Can't Do?

• The Real Causes of the Baby Boom: Tech, Medicine & Housing

  French pronatalists frequently and vividly campaigned on the issue as a serious matter of national security. In 1914, the Alliance nationale published over a million posters showing two Frenchmen being bayoneted by five Germans. The poster bore a caption explaining that for every five German soldiers born, only two French soldiers were. The French were not the only nation to chafe against a new reality of smaller family sizes and quieter maternity wards. The British government established the National Birth Rate Commission in 1912. In fascist Italy, the ‘Battle for Births’ was named one of Mussolini’s four key economic campaigns in 1922.

• My Dumbphone Made My Life Better. It Made Everyone Else's Worse

• We know what a world without work looks like

• Corporate and political systems are efficient filters to promote psychopaths

• Not pink? First-ever 3D map of the ‘black box’ of female genitals created by scientists: ‘Super important.’

• Racing driver is about to race 100 karts at once

  It’s one of 101 identical karts that have been sourced from Eastern Europe for the event—the other 100 will be driven by a mix of content creators and Red Bull athletes, all of whom fancy their chances at beating one of the world’s greatest drivers at his own game. They get a bit of an advantage, all starting ahead of Verstappen. Once he passes another karter, they’re out of the race, and Verstappen has 30 laps of a purpose-designed layout at Silverstone to get through them all and win.

• Fossil tooth analysis confirms Tyrannosaurus rex was warm-blooded

celebrity gossip

• All supporting acts withdraw from Ed Sheeran’s tour in solidarity with Macklemoren

  All four supporting acts for upcoming dates of Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour have withdrawn in solidarity with fellow opening act Macklemore, as backlash grows against his removal from the tour over onstage comments in support of Palestine. Finneas, the singer who was scheduled to open for Sheeran on six South American dates in November, withdrew from the tour on Tuesday afternoon, hours after Sheeran posted his own lengthy statement to Instagram explaining pressure from venue owners to remove Macklemore for pro-Palestine comments made during two shows at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.

• The Rouse by China Miéville – a mighty achievement from the 'new weird' author

• Steve Wozniak launches merch store

Musk

• Musk's companies must explain why they dropped antitrust claims against Apple

  Judge Mark Pittman, a conservative Trump appointee based in Fort Worth, Texas, ordered the Musk-owned businesses on Wednesday to produce for his review any agreements with Apple related to the decision to dismiss its claims against the company. The lawsuit alleges that Apple and OpenAI are “two monopolists joining forces to ensure their continued dominance” in the AI market, including via alleged manipulation of Apple’s app store rankings. The complaint also points to an exclusive 2024 deal to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Apple’s popular iPhone. Apple has reportedly signed a new agreement this year to integrate Google’s AI services into its products.

• NHTSA orders Tesla to prove its Cybercab is legal to sell, under oath

• Space Force gives SpaceX latitude on design of $2.3B satellite network

• Elon Musk Trains His Political Chaos Machine on the U.K

• SpaceX's next Starship launch is Sept. 22, aims to reach orbit for first time

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo to start Tokyo robotaxi service next year in Asia push

• How Electric Cars Took Hold in Australia

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Student suspended for bringing coffee to class in act of 'civil disobedience'

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads

  after the boy complained about views, he set up a roughly $20 promotion and talked through the steps aloud: set a budget, select who sees the ads, hit run. The boy then created his own campaigns, and Dave said his son did not understand the $20 as a limit. “The credit card, it just says approved every single time,” Dave said in the video. Finance showed him three weeks of ad spend totaling $118,000

  • 9-year-old Minecraft YouTuber ran up a $118,000 ad bill using dad's company card

• "Filmmaker" suing PassThePopcorn may be banned user out for revenge

• Original Sony PlayStation 2 security chip 'broken wide open' after 26 years

• PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

• Apple weighs Nvidia technology for potential server market return

• AI memory shortage: Fairphone says RAM is now 60% of materials cost

• Google confirms Pixel phones exploited in 'targeted' modem based attack

• Statement On V/H/S SCP Foundation Film

• If you really must have an RTX 5090, one of the cheaper ways to get it right now is the $11,000 Asus ROG 20th Anniversary bundle.

• Automattic's interim CEO and legal chief signed reciprocal severance deals

  • Automattic says CEO Mullenweg was gone and back inside 33 hours. What happened?

• "WeWorm": Zero-click worm could have taken over all WeChat accounts

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• ZuckOff Is a Free App That Sees Meta Glasses Before They See You

• Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera. Its Data Shows How the System Works

  • Hackers Stole Flock Camera Software Revealing How Company Tracks Cars and People

  • Flock cameras are riddled with security vulnerabilities and hardcoded creds

• Amazon to launch Ring 'neighbourhood watch' app in UK amid US privacy fears

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Is There Alien Debris on the Moon? Some Scientists Plan to Find Out

• The Roman telescope has enough gas for 22 years, double NASA's expectations

• Trump administration releases fifth batch of UFO files

• NASA spacecraft discovers a new crater on the moon

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Should markets discount the AI apocalypse?

  • The Liftoff Scenario That Terrifies A.I. Doomsayers

  • AI stocks get drilled because of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's 3,800-word warning

  • Anthropic's proposed AI watchdog METR has deep ties to Effective Altruism

  • AI safety beyond the frontier labs: uncensored local models

  • There is NO realistic scenario where AI wipes out all of humanity

  • Sanders: "If AI is coming for workers, it should bring a 4-day workweek with it"

  • Roundtables: Could AI kill us all?

  • We don't need AI regulation – leave safety to us, Nvidia's Jensen Huang says

  • Sam Altman says world 'right to be afraid' but 'should trust' AI firms

  • Ex-Google DeepMind researcher adds to warnings that AI could 'kill all humans'

  • Anthropic CEO renews call for AI slowdown as Nvidia's urges acceleration

  • AI is not going to kill you

  • Artificial Intelligence, Quote Unquote

  All the hokey, handwavey parts of Cyberpunk that you just accept - the origin story of the neofeudal, technocratic state - you always wonder what that looks like. How the interests converge, how they're allowed to converge. I can tell you. It looks like this.

  • Musk proposes adversarsial peer review for AI Safety

  • Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders Condemn Tech 'Oligarchs' and Demand A.I. Reforms

  • The Bannon-Bernie Bromance over AI and Oligarchs

  • What Regulatory Capture Actually Looks Like

  Go ahead: argue that Amodei and other AI experts are wrong about AI risk. Ask whether his proposals favor Anthropic. But calling “our product might kill you” a clever marketing and regulatory-capture strategy isn’t sophisticated analysis. The facts don’t fit regulatory capture theory and trying to make them fit requires epistemically painful Ptolemaic epicycles. Even a dull Ockham’s razor cuts through that story to the obvious alternative: Amodei actually believes what he’s saying.

  • If these people continue to develop AI that they think will kill all humans; shouldn't we shoot them down like dogs at our earliest opportunity? Or should we doubt the headlines and use our own reason about their actions, which suggest that they seek a savior from their financial games as the promises the bubble was built on prove false?

  • Microsoft says AI rival Anthropic could have 'disastrous impact' on humanity

  • Reddit co-founder says tech industry has been 'tone deaf' in explaining AI

  • How an AI moratorium can save AI bosses

  • 'Godfather of AI' says tech regulation is nearing Covid-style pivot moment

  • Media execs sound alarm on AI

  • The Long Doomsday of A.I.

  • AI must not outrun safety controls, DeepMind co-founder warns

  • AI bosses' safety push sparks rift inside OpenAI and Anthropic

  • Forget the AI Apocalypse – The Real Threats Are Already Here

  • Who Is feeding the sudden panic about AI?

  We’re not conspiracy mongers here, but it sure looks as though big AI companies have teamed up with Democrats and the mainstream media, probably with an assist from Chinese interests, to embark on a textbook anti-competitive regulatory push.

  • Destroying Humanity Is Against the Law

• The Bad Guy with an AI Named Claude

  By exposing Chinese attempts at systematic fraudulent distillation of Claude, Anthropic has embarrassed and potentially antagonized the Chinese. This starts with ‘all the top Chinese labs made efforts to distill Claude, which we mitigated and stopped,’ which is already an issue that was also covered by a joint advisory from NSA/CISA/FBI two days before the full report.

  • Anthropic Confirms Claude AI Use in Weapons and Surveillance

  • Playing both sides of the U.S.-China AI "Cold War"

  • The 'But China ' Dilemma Driving the A.I. Race

• OpenAI agents probed Hugging Face for weaknesses two months before major hack

• OpenAI breakthrough triggers 'existential crisis' in math

  • Math Can't Go on Like This

• OpenAI Considers Pre-IPO Funding Round at More Than $1.2T Valuation

  • OpenAI weighs funding round at $1.2T valuation before IPO

• AI models need more data about biology, and OpenAI is paying to create it

• China's open-weight AI models are now just 4 months behind frontier US offerings

• AI Is Reshaping Open Source Software and Straining the Systems That Sustain It

• Everyone Says Datacenter Moratoriums Are Killing the US Buildout. We Disagree

• Due to DMA, Siri AI delayed in EU for iOS 27 and iPadOS 27

• AI models in 'surreal' dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon

• Paying for frontier AI models buys 4-month head start at 5x the cost

• Independent Lens – Ghost in the Machine: AI's troubled history, current impacts

• Uncanny and unappetizing: appetites spoil as AI images take over food menus

• Mirror publisher to cut 220 editorial jobs as readers turn to AI summaries

• Pangram: The Most Reliable AI Detector Has a Human Problem

• A.I.'S Effect on the Work Force Is Showing Up in Wages

• Backflip: Apple now wants to train AI models with user data after all

• Novo partners with Anthropic to speed up drug development with Claude

• Anthropic to fold Claude AI features into one interface, launches document tools

• Why a fast-growing German AI startup is moving its parent company from the US

• Advertising is coming to AI chatbots and it could influence the answers you get

• A coffee shop owner used AI to make a menu poster. Then came the angry DMs

• Poll shows Americans are increasingly alarmed by AI's ecological footprint

• AI is creating ghostwriting jobs on LinkedIn

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• More people are seeking emergency care for gambling and it's mostly men and boys

  • ER visits for gambling disorders doubled after expanded online gambling market

• Senate blocks cryptocurrency regulation as Democrats push back on Trump investments

  • Clarity Act (crypto) fails in the Senate

  • A Trump-backed crypto bill just suffered a bruising defeat in the Senate

• Where Prediction Markets Struggle

• US gov't orders Kalshi halt AI compute price tracker over natl security concerns

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Rising Fuel Prices Set Off Anger and Protests Around the World

• American Incomes Hit Record Last Year as Women Gained Ground

• Most workers would take a pay cut for job security

• Why Cheap Used Cars Are So Hard to Find

• 14,000 Security Guards for Major Tech Companies Plan to Strike

  The strike comes after months of negotiations over fair wages and improved benefits with 15 private-security contractors and employers, during which the union has called attention to the disparity between compensation for guards and the vast wealth that they protect. Jane Martin, an organizer with the activist group Bay Resistance, joined the security workers on Tuesday, holding signs with slogans like “Keep families together,” “Good jobs to security officers” and “No ICE, no fear.”

• SK Hynix in talks with Intel about deal to make memory chips in US

• Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer Picked as World Bank Top Economist

• The Volatile Finances of Airline Pilots, America's Unpredictable Millionaires

• Oil Prices Could Hit Highest Levels in Months After Saudi Pipeline Attacks

• Amazon bumps minimum starting pay to $20/hour, adds new discount for employees

• Fed approves interest rate hike, signals one more to come this year

  • Fed Raises Rates as Warsh Bucks Trump to Contain Inflation

  • Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields

  • Fed Raises Rates for First Time in Three Years

  • Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement

  • US interest rates raised for first time in three years

• L.A. and State Officials Say Paramount Leaving California

• American, United, Southwest scale back schedules as fuel shock reshapes flying

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Massie launches effort to impeach Hegseth

• House Defies Automakers and Mandates AM Radio in New Cars

Trump

• OpenAI says CEO Altman will attend Trump's state dinner for Xi

Democrats

• Federal criminal probe of Newsom expands; Lurie’s wife Prowda named in subpoenas.

Left Angst

• Bari's '60' Burst

• Republicans Aim to Shield Fossil Fuel Companies from Climate Lawsuits

• The American Age Is Over

• Leftists' masks come all the way off — revealing the ugly truth

  Now it isn’t just CEOs; when Erin Placenti, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president, was fatally stabbed last month by a nut in Times Square, leftists cheered because she worked for a bank that had issued a “buy” recommendation for Israeli bank stocks. Last week, the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — which occurred while he was politely debating leftist college students in an open forum — spurred “Happy Kirkiversary” and “Merry Kirkmas” outbursts on campuses around the nation. Meanwhile, a lone black man who stood up to the bullying of 11 white jurors to prevent the acquittal of confessed killer Lindsay Clancy has been subjected to widespread threats and character assassination by fellow jurors, the media, Clancy’s defense lawyer (as well as his wife) and a host of ghouls via TikTok. More and more, leftists support violence and threats of it against anyone who openly disagrees with them, or stands in their way, on the grounds that such dissidents are bad people and deserve it.

• NSF memo implementing Trump's 'golden age' of science unsettles researchers

• The FBI Doubles Down on Easing 'Bestiality' Hiring Standards

• Trump's war on EVs derailed America's auto-factory revival

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI boarded Texas-bound oil tanker to investigate cyberattack

• Chinese Gangsters Turned This California Paradise into a Marijuana Factory

  An expert told us that Chinese nationals are running illegal grow operations on U.S. soil to poison Americans. One group seems poised to benefit from the mayhem: the Chinese Communist Party.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. has deployed space-control weapons in orbit, Air Force secretary says

World

• EU chief wants Canada to become the bloc's first associate member

  • EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

  • EU opens door for Canada to become its first associate member

  • EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

  • Canada invited to become first 'associate member' of the EU

  • EU Chief calls for Canada to become bloc's first associate member

  • European Union invites Canada to become first ever 'associate member'

  • EU Chief Backs Canada's Push to Become Bloc's First Associate Member

  • Australia says it could follow Canada in forging deeper ties with EU

• Age Limits for Social Media Outlined by European Union

  • EU chief proposes social media, online gaming and chatbot ban for kids under 13

  • The EU Bans Social Media for Under-13s

  • EU announces plan to ban social media for under 13s

• EU approves sending mountains of trash to Turkey despite environmental fears

• Saudi Arabia discovers 110M tonnes of uranium-bearing ore in Medina

• Internet shutdown crosses 100 days in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

• Singapore launched a novel five-year national campaign to nurture reading habits

• Tiny village votes for 'independence' from UK amid asylum seeker row

• Japan now has more than 100k people who are 100 or older

• Meta to report child abuse material directly to Indian authorities

• In Germany's east, old ties to Moscow fuel AfD rise

• Garda whistleblower unit members allege reforms undermined

• Will Taiwan Just Give Up?

• Is GitHub a social network that endangers children? Australia wants to know

• 4chan/Kiwifarms lawsuit against OFCOM dismissed for lack of jurisdiction

• 'We will rule in Canada': Letter from Bishnoi gang to police disclosed

Iran / Houthi

• AWS unable to restore destroyed data in Bahrain

  • Amazon says cloud infrastructure in Bahrain, UAE 'beyond saving'

  • AWS can't restore service to Bahrain, UAE facilities 6 months after Iran strikes

  • Iran strikes on Amazon data centers caused permanent loss of customer data

• Photos show damage at U.S. positions caused by Iranian missile, drone attacks

• Houthis enter US ‘kill box’ after seizing Red Sea ‘cork,’ former Pentagon official warns.

• Saudi pipeline closure is a brief interruption that will last days, U.S. Energy secretary tells CNBC.

• Debris Found in Yemen Suggests Saudi Arabia Fired Its First Chinese Missile

• Iran improved targeting of US assets. How Russian satellites likely have helped

Israel

• Netanyahu seeks to strip citizenship as threats to NAZA film directors intensify

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The Armored Sarcophagus Saving Ukrainian Soldiers

• Ukrainian USV Attack on Sochi Reveals Rarely Seen Russian Navy Trained Dolphins

China

• The New Chinese Way of Cyberwar

• China would face a "hellscape" in a war over Taiwan

• Chinese Solar Panels Drop to 12 Cents a Watt, Rooftop Installs Surge Worldwide

• In the Age of AI, Some in China Wonder If Learning English Is Worth the Trouble

Health / Medicine

• Doctors got transplanted testicular tissue in an infertile patient to grow sperm

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood may be linked to poorer brain health

• The Unwilding of Patagonia's Pollinators

• Apple detectives solved mystery of ancient tree and rewrote the history of fruit

• Should We Accept Degrowth as a Serious Academic Concept?

• Chimps teach their kids tool tricks