2026-06-15

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• Pilot and 11 skydiving passengers killed in Missouri plane crash

• Ford Recalls 255,404 Focus Models That Could Unexpectedly Stall.

Horseshit

• 'A man of great appetites': what's it like to be a dictator's personal chef?

• Consciousness likely not unique to earthlings, paper says

• Is the peptide craze backed by science? The promise behind the hype

• Drones seized pilots cited near SoFi Stadium during World Cup security operation

• 63 people arrested, 4 stabbings and 1 shooting reported in NYC after Knicks fans go wild celebrating NBA Finals win

• Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged

• Chinese overtake Dominicans as NYC’s most numerous foreign-born group

• How to earn a billion dollars

  Starting a successful startup is the most common way to become a billionaire, so in effect I've spent the last 21 years training people to become billionaires. So far about 30 of them have, but there are many more in the pipeline. So you can imagine how astonished I was last month when an American politician said that it was impossible to earn a billion dollars. I felt like a skating coach hearing someone say that it's impossible to do a triple axel. Of course it's possible. It's hard, but it's possible.

Epstein

• A Missing Woman from Germany Reappears in the Epstein Files

Obit

• Oliver Tree, 'Alien Boy' Musician, Dies at 32 in Helicopter Crash

Musk

• Goldman and Morgan Stanley to Pocket $100M Each in SpaceX IPO Fees

• SpaceX Rented Out Computing After Own Teams Had Trouble Using It

• Elon Musk's role was 'instrumental' in the Belfast riots, researchers say

• Elon Musk drifted from Larry Page 10+yrs ago, companies now closer than ever

• How much of Elon Musk's wealth comes from government help? Virtually all of it

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Why pushback is growing against New Jersey's crazy e-bike law

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Education and the Tyranny of ‘Equality’

  Katie Arnold-Ratliff is also highly intelligent, but that doesn’t mean she’s exempt from criticism, and her recent article for New York Magazine about the education of “gifted” children has set off a firestorm among those who, like you, are capable of reading a lengthy essay and discerning the errors of judgment therein. (Don’t you just love it when you encounter a fancy word like “therein”? All smart people do.)

• Stanford grads walk out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai speech

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google fires sueball at alleged Chinese phishers over AI-powered fraud ops

• PeopleSoft 0-day affecting organizations steals gigabytes of data

• Honda Civics and the Evil Valet

  To update 10th-gen Honda Civics, Honda ships updates on specially-formatted USB drives. They're essentially Android 4.2.2rc1-era recovery packages with some Honda-added version checks (which can be spoofed). The packages are signed with the publicly-known AOSP test key, so with physical access to the front USB port you can sign and flash your own package for arbitrary code execution on the headunit. This doesn't require root/su. I've run it end-to-end on my own 2021 Civic and separately confirmed an official EU update file carries the AOSP test-key signature.

• Federal Network Agency vs. Steam: Investigation into "Plantation Simulator"

• Angry Meta employee hijacks company presentation unleash profanity-laced tirade

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Making glass-to-metal seals for home­made vacuum tubes

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Humans will soon be able to spend longer in space

• Discs, Orbs, ‘Heavenly’ Phenomena, and More Revealed in 3rd Batch of Declassified UFO Files

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• US Secretary of War Comments on Anthropic

  • The whirlwind 24 hours that led to export controls on Anthropic

  • White House's export limits on Anthropic linked to concerns about Chinese access

  • The US government has responded to Anthropic's constant warnings of imaginary dangers with a global ban - except for US citizens on US soil - on access to the company's Mythos 5 and Fable 5 security-focused AI models.

  • I guess there’s a consequence to constantly saying your AI system is a dangerous weapon with unique capabilities that everyone should fear.

  • EU Commission looking at practical consequences of Anthropic decision

  • As Anthropic suspends access to new models, India debates its AI future

  • Sometimes it is hard to solve for the equilibrium

  • Anthropic staff to meet White House officials next week

  • Carney Says Anthropic Ban Shows Risk of Relying on Big AI Models

• OpenAI hit with multistate probe into possible user harm as its IPO looms

• 'Tell Him He's a Piece of Shit': Meta's New AI Unit Is a Total Mess

• Russian families use AI to 'resurrect' loved ones killed in Ukraine

• UK announces $1.5B AI infrastructure plan

• UK police officer under criminal investigation over alleged use of AI

• General-purpose large language models outperform specialized clinical AI

• While Oracle Will Rake in Big Bucks on AI, Profits Are Hard to Predict

• Zuckerberg says Meta made 'mistakes' in AI workforce shift

• New Brunswick woman sues OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT led to daughter's death

• Shutterstock is embracing AI slop and calling it creativity

• KPMG pulls report on AI usage due to apparent hallucinations

• The Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes

• Companies are scrambling to curtail soaring AI costs

• The Millions of Songs Mashed into AI-Generated Music

• 'It's a hurricane warning': Guardrails around powerful AI models may be too late

• Calculations Suggest It'll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Crypto Platforms Sold Users on SpaceX IPO. The Tokenized Stocks Never Arrived

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Judge re-opens eBay harassment lawsuit after settlement talks break down

• Mag 7? MANGOS? SpaceX forces name rethink on Wall Street's tech-stock moniker

• S&P's decision not to include SpaceX is a mistake

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Section 702 lapsed for the first time since 2008

Trump

• Trump says Netanyahu 'has no fucking judgment' after Beirut strike

Left Angst

• An octagon on the White House lawn for Trump's 80th birthday, the nation's 250th

  • UFC to pay White House fighters in crypto issued by Trump company

• Let's Destroy American Science

• Have politics come for the National Academies of Science?

• Why the US economy keeps defying the odds

• New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded "Abundance Movement"

  According to Zack Rosen, founder of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network, the problem with politics is Americans being too involved. Bemoaning the rise of small-dollar political donations in fundraising documents leaked to the Prospect, Rosen is blunt: “Small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.” Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance. Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says “the old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count cards; small dollar donors today are amateurs yanking the handles of ActBlue slot machines.”

• Trump prosecutor in L.A. pushing unusual public search for voter fraud before count is in.

• Trump administration blocks federal homelessness funds in Los Angeles.

• The Cultural War is a Civil War

  Owning the libs may feel good today but please look just one move ahead in the game tree. When AOC controls the executive branch, she will inherit every tool Trump normalized. Look a few moves further and see the damage to American institutions.

  • When Obama and Biden were insisting on DEI, people on the Right tried to make the same point. No one on the Left had any hesitation requiring ideological purity then. "Silence is Violence" and numerous other examples of "our way or the highway" have to be ignored, to cast the blame for this situation on Trump. As is normal for the Left, history is what they need it to be, today.

• The Strait of Hormuz Has Been Closed for 100 Days. Why Aren't Oil Prices Higher?

• The Former GOP Operative Running a News Site for the 'Politically Homeless'

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Police accused of misusing AI license-plate tracking systems

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Germany and Japan Are Rearming Again, 80 Years After World War II

World

• Starmer to announce social media curfew and chatbot ban for teenagers

  • UK set to announce social media ban for under-16s

  • Starmer to announce 'Australia plus' ban on social media for under-16s

  • Starmer to unveil social media ban for under-16s

  • UK to announce Australia-style social media ban for teenagers

• Switzerland to vote on plan to cap population at 10 million

  • Swiss voters reject 10M population cap, early projections say

  • Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million

  • Swiss voters reject proposal to cap Population at 10M

• Make stolen phones unusable, Met Police urges tech giants

• Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

• Trial of 12mph bike lane speed limit grinds gears of Dutch cyclists

• 'AI will free us': Javier Milei's plan for Argentina

• France probes compromise of gov messaging platform after account hijack

• Bran flakes classed as junk food under UK Labour health plan

  • Bran flakes to be classed as junk food under new health plan

Iran / Houthi

• Iran threatens to attack Elon Musk's SpaceX and Starlink facilities

• Iran- draft US deal has oil sanctions waiver, nuclear limits and asset release

• U.S., Iran expected to "electronically" sign agreement to end war Sunday

• Peace deal between US and Iran, Pakistan says, with Strait of Hormuz to re-open

• US and Iran announce deal to end military operations

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• U.K. forces intercept a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in English Channel

• Russian media reports GlobalSign mass-revoking SSL for Russian companies

China

• Why China is betting on big nuclear reactors

• China Is Propping Up the World Economy by Importing Less Oil

• In China ride-hailing work is a last resort for rural labourers

  But now Shenzhen says it has too many of them

• Meta moves to unwind $2B Manus deal after Beijing's demand

• Chinese Drivers Are Using Tiny Plastic Heads to Fool Tesla Autopilot Safeguards

Health / Medicine

• 4 things to know about the new sunscreen ingredient the FDA approved

• Ageing alters ankle mechanics and muscle contraction patterns while walking

• Scientists Identify 2 Distinct Subtypes of Autism in the Brain

• Antidepressants and antipsychotics could be alternatives to opioids, study finds

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Half-red, half-yellow chimera apple draws crowds at New Zealand store

  Curious visitors are flocking to a New Zealand produce store to catch a glimpse of a rare chimera apple that is half red and half yellow. The apple, with colors split almost perfectly down the middle, was found in a mid-May delivery of Red Braeburn apples at the Sunshine Corner Market in the Christchurch suburb of Mairehau. Chimera apples, believed to occur in less than one in a million fruits, result from a genetic mutation that causes the apple to form from cells from two different genetic backgrounds.

• Dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals found in US breast milk samples

• A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown