2025-11-23

Horseshit

• Cryptology Group Held an Election, but Can’t Decrypt the Results - The New York Times

  For a group of the world’s top cryptology researchers, it was the kind of election you would expect. It was a secret digital ballot whose final tally could be decoded only by using three keys split among select election trustees. So secure was the annual contest to fill three director and four officer positions that when one trustee lost his cryptographic key to unlock the results, the error made it impossible. The group, the International Association of Cryptologic Research, or I.A.C.R., was left with no choice but to throw out the vote and call a new election.

  • International Crypto Association elections botched by loss of key

  • Oops. Cryptographers cancel election results after losing decryption key. - Ars Technica

• What I've learned from frank conversation with parents

  I started having frank conversations with parents over the last year, in order to get more clarity about whether I should have children. What happened surprised me. After speaking to many parents, I came away less convinced that having children was the right decision for me and my wife.

• Mind-altering 'brain weapons' no longer only science fiction, say researchers

• Superman copy found in mum's attic is most valuable comic ever at $9.12M

• The digital nomad era is over

• The death of tech idealism and rise of the homeless in Northern California

• Birds aren't real: Nanophobia: The Rising Fear of Invisible Technology

• WWII Enigma machine sells for over half a million dollars at auction

• Victorious Scotland fans caused 'small' earthquake in Denmark win

• How Breathwork Became the New Meditation

• The corrupt culture of sports gambling

• Human Development progress slows to 35-year low – UN Development Programme

Epstein

• Chomsky had deeper ties with Epstein than previously known, documents reveal

• Comer Threatens to Initiate Contempt Proceedings Against the Clintons if They Continue to Ignore Epstein Subpoenas

Musk

• Musk's xAI in advanced talks to raise $15B at $230B valuation

• SpaceX's first 'Version 3' Super Heavy Starship booster buckles under pressure

  In a post on X Friday morning, a user by the name of Starship Gazer, whose profile describes nearly half a decade of documenting Starship's development, posted an image of Booster 18 with much of the bottom portion of the vehicle crumpled like an empty soda can. It appears in the photo that whatever propulsion and structural integrity tests SpaceX performed overnight did their job, and found some faults in the stainless-steel vehicle.

• Elon Musk says that in 10 to 20 years, work will be optional

• Elon Musk's Grok chatbot ranks him as world history's greatest human

• X begins rolling out the 'About this account' feature to users' profiles

  Elon Musk’s X has begun rolling out a new feature for user profiles that will display information about the account, including where it’s based, how many times the account has changed its username, the account’s original join date, and how the user downloaded the X app. The new information is meant to reduce inauthentic engagement on the platform, where bots often pretend to be humans — a problem that could get even harder to police in the age of AI.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Ignore the howls around pay-per-mile. We can't afford not to tax electric cars

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Which Social Psychology Theories Survived the Replication Crisis?

• College 'sticker prices' have risen dramatically

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Did Qualcomm kill Arduino for good?

  Adafruit has been the moral authority on open hardware for decades. They’ve made their living proving you can build a successful business on open principles. When they sound the alarm, it’s not about competition, it’s about principle. What they’re calling out isn’t that Qualcomm bought Arduino. It’s that Qualcomm’s lawyers fundamentally don’t understand what they bought. Arduino wasn’t valuable because it was just a microcontroller company. It was valuable because it was a commons. And you can’t apply enterprise legal frameworks to a commons without destroying it. Adafruit gets this. They’ve built their entire business on this. That’s why their criticism carries weight.

  here’s what Qualcomm’s lawyers missed: Arduino isn’t a normal acquisition. The community isn’t a customer base, it’s a commons. And you can’t apply enterprise SaaS legal frameworks to a commons without destroying what made it valuable. This is tone-deafness, not malice. But the outcome is the same. A community that trusted Arduino no longer does.

• Roblox CEO Makes a Fool of Himself in Car-Crash Interview

  When asked about the “scope of the problem” of predators in the application, Baszucki came in shoulders first saying, “We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well.”

• Court Filings Allege Meta Downplayed Risks to Children and Misled the Public

  • Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Microsoft AI CEO calls artificial superintelligence an 'anti-goal'

• You Can Now Ask Gemini Whether an Image Was Created by AI

• Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand

• Meta is building an AI-powered morning brief in push to compete with ChatGPT

• An MIT Student Awed Top Economists with His AI Study–Then It All Fell Apart

• Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

• Microsoft's head of AI doesn't understand why people don't like AI

• Who's funding Silicon Valley's data-centre dream? It might be you

• AI assets are an unconscionable risk for premium-priced games

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Living in artificial gravity

  If optimized for low debris environments, the fabric-based hull of a 6,650 cubic meter wheel-shaped station, built using the same materials as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, could weigh as little as 28 tonnes and pack down to as little as 490 cubic meters (see appendix for calculations). This would fit nicely within Starship’s limits. More conservative assumptions, accounting for low Earth orbit operation with full shielding, yield a structural mass closer to 120 tonnes.

• ‘The public has been lied to’: secretly made documentary insists that aliens exist

  • 'The Age of Disclosure' Documentary About UFO's, Gets a Congressional Audience

• NASA releases images of interstellar comet, not an alien spaceship.

Crypto con games

• IRS crackdown on popular crypto 'tax cheat' begins with 2025 filing year

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Northwest fuel pipeline shutdown could affect Thanksgiving travel

• Mortgage lending in America is seizing up

• US tech stocks slide as jolt of volatility hits Wall Street

• Peter Thiel's fund offloads $100M Nvidia stake

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

• Rare earths get federal backing — and tech advances : NPR

• TSA to charge $18 fee for travelers without Real ID or passport

Trump

• US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to resign after fallout with Trump

  U.S. Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime ally of Donald Trump who recently had a dramatic falling out with the president, said on Friday she was resigning from the House of Representatives effective January 5. "Loyalty should be a two way street" while Congress "has mostly been sidelined" under the Trump administration, Greene posted in a lengthy resignation statement on social media.

Democrats

• Fugees rapper Pras Michel sentenced to 14 years in prison over illegal donations to Obama campaign | CNN

  Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Michel, 52, declined to address the court before US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him. In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington, D.C., included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

  Michel obtained over $120 million from Malaysian billionaire Low Taek Jho – also known as Jho Low – and steered some of that money through straw donors to Obama’s campaign. Michel also tried to end a Justice Department investigation of Low, tampered with two witnesses and perjured himself at trial, prosecutors said. Low, who has lived in China, was one of the primary financiers of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a movie starring DiCaprio. Low is a fugitive but has maintained his innocence. “Low’s motivation for giving Mr. Michel money to donate was not so that he could achieve some policy objective. Instead, Low simply wanted to obtain a photograph with himself and then-President Obama,” Michel’s attorneys wrote.

Left Angst

• US Border Patrol Is Spying on American Drivers

• Quantum Investment Bros: Have you no shame?

  In any case, the main reason I made my remark was just to tee up the wisecrack about whether I’m not sure if there’ll be a 2028 US presidential election.

  There are, famously, many intellectual Communists who are ruthless capitalists in their day-to-day lives. I somehow wound up the opposite. Intellectually, I see capitalism as a golden goose, a miraculous engine that’s lifted the human species out of its disease-ridden hovels and into air-conditioned high-rises, whereas Communism led instead to misery and gulags and piles of skulls every single time it was tried. And yet, when I actually see the workings of capitalism up close, I often want to retch. In case after case, it seems, our system rewards bold, confident, risk-taking ignoramuses and liars, those who can shamelessly hype a technology (or conversely, declare it flatly impossible)—with such voices drowning out the cautious experts who not only strive to tell the truth, but also made all the actual discoveries that the technology rests on. My ideal economic system is, basically, whichever one can keep the people who can clearly explain the capabilities and limits and risks and benefits of X in charge of X for as long as possible.

• Advocacy advertising: DJI warns pilots: US drone ban is closer than you think

  Even as the company rolls out steep Black Friday discounts on much-loved gear, right from safety-focused drones like the Flip with full-coverage propeller guards to creative tools like the Osmo 360 (35% off), DJI is simultaneously dealing with a regulatory countdown that could reshape the US drone market.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI Wants to Add Fiber Optic Drones to Its Arsenal

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• UN human rights expert urges US to lift sanctions on Cuba

• Navy Salvage Ship Trying to Fish Super Hornet and Seahawk Out of South China Sea

• UK Army will use Call of Duty to train soldiers

World

• Brazil's ex-president Bolsonaro arrested to prevent 'escape' court says

  • Brazil's Bolsonaro detained for trying to break ankle bracelet and flee

• Germany to classify date rape drugs as weapons to ensure justice for survivors

• Saudi Arabia widens alcohol sales for expats

Iran / Houthi

• Iran president says capital move now a necessity as water crisis deepens

Israel

• the entire “Gaza resident” influencer industry & fake IDF soldier industry just imploded

  Turns out the “eyewitness in Rafah living under bombardment” has been live-tweeting from a comfy flat in Islamabad while the only thing exploding is his mum’s pressure cooker. The “Khan Younis nurse who hasn’t slept in 400 days” is apparently posting between shifts at a call centre in Lahore. Babe, the only IV drip you’ve seen is the chai one. Congratulations to the “Gaza dad of six hiding in a tent” who’s been rage-sobbing for donations from a rooftop in Dhaka with better Wi-Fi than most of London. Your ‘link in bio’ days are over. Shout-out to the “Deir al-Balah poet writing by candlelight” who’s actually in Chelyabinsk, Russia, typing manifestos next to a radiator that’s warmer than the entire sob story. Also, a soecial shout out, to the “IDF snipers in Gaza” accounts that are actually posting from a bedroom in London, sipping tea between sobs for your ‘buy me a coffee’ donations. Busted baby.

China

• Jack Ma's family shifted wealth to UK after years-long 'disappearance'

• China's burgeoning undersea sensor net aims to turn the ocean transparent

Health / Medicine

• Mark Cuban's plan to shake up healthcare with "Cost-Plus Drugs"

• Scientists found a way to reverse kidney damage

• Influencers profited pushing 'wild' births – now linked to baby deaths globally

• Young women are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer as young men

• Why you don’t want to get tuberculosis on your penis.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• almost as effective as no "vaccine" at all! mRNA flu vaccine is up to 34.5% more effective than current flu vaccines

• Washington State resident dies from complications of avian influenza

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• COP30 evacuated after fire breaks out

  The UN climate talks COP30 have been evacuated due to a fire breaking out inside the venue in Belém, Brazil. BBC journalists saw flames and smoke in the pavilion area before they were rushed outside where fire engines raced past. The UN said the fire was extinguished after six minutes and 13 people were treated for smoke inhalation. It is not yet known what caused the blaze.

  • Did a Battery Fire Just Kill the COP30 Climate Conference?

• A looming 'insect apocalypse' could endanger global food supplies

• Can't wait for the butterfly privacy advocates: We Can Now Track Individual Monarch Butterflies. It's a Revelation

• A Startup's Bid to Dim the Sun

  • The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming

• "Superfluous consumerism": adult advent calendar trend alarms green groups

• 3 schoolchildren seriously injured in grizzly bear attack in British Columbia - The Washington Post

  Three schoolchildren and a teacher were seriously injured in a grizzly bear attack during a school walk in British Columbia, authorities said Friday, and the community was urged to avoid the area while conservation officers searched for the animal. The group of about 20 fourth- and fifth-graders had stopped along a wooded river trail in remote Bella Coola at midday on Thursday when the bear emerged from the trees and attacked, Canadian authorities said. “Multiple teachers physically intervened,” the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service said, using bear spray and a noisemaking bear banger to drive the grizzly away. The animal remained loose on Friday, the conservation officers said. They were setting up traps and motion-activated cameras. Grizzly bear attacks are rare. Conservation groups count two to three fatalities in North America in a typical year. Last month, a British Columbia man died three weeks after an attack near Fort Steele.