2026-09-19

Horseshit

• I'm an American raising 2 kids in Italy. Parenting here is completely different

• Japanese mayors challenge each other to nighttime ninja battle

• Anderon (IBM) finalizes $1B CHIPS award for US quantum foundry R&D

• Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek

• Fender Is Making Enemies with a Messy Fight over Its Iconic Strat

• We ran the data on trans teen suicide panic — and found the claims are misleading.

• Parents are interfering with teens' first jobs. Employers say it can backfire

• Feeling lonely? You’re not alone — more than half of adults didn’t make a new friend last year.

• Scientists Discover T. Rex Blood Was As Hot As Human Blood, Suggesting They Were Fast-Running Predators.

• The Working Class Face a 'Class Ceiling' in Elite Occupations

celebrity gossip

• WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Returns to X After 8 Years

Musk

• US judge denies OpenAI bid to review X Corp's settlement with Apple

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Record 38% of new vehicle sales to be EVs in 2030, study finds

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• The US government just banned almost all robot vacuums – here's why

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• This California Educational Juggernaut Doesn't Need the SAT

• Blue states with strong teachers’ unions have lower student literacy levels: study shows.

• We should go back to Carolingian minuscule: Is it still worthwhile to teach cursive in school?

• The Purge: Princeton Faculty Reach Perfect Zero in Support for Republicans

  I had dinner with a Harvard Law Professor, who expressed disbelief that I expected him to vote for any faculty applicants who held views he considered wrong. When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views, he just shrugged and said that, if he rejects their views, he cannot vote for those views to be taught to students. Not long ago, I debated Professor Randall Kennedy at Harvard Law School about the school’s lack of ideological diversity. I respect Kennedy, and I do not view him as anti-free speech or intolerant. Yet when I noted the statistics on the vanishing number of conservative students and faculty in comparison to the nation, Kennedy responded that Harvard “is an elite university” and does not have to “look like America.” Of course, the problem is that Harvard does not even look like Massachusetts, which is nearly 30 percent Republican.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• AWS now supports spend limits

• I Lost my $2M book deal because people mistook my African dialect for Al I

• Satellites Have Made This Costly Broadband Subsidy Obsolete.

• An Undercover Google Analyst Infiltrated a Notorious Supply-Chain Hacking Gang

• Stratasys awarded 27.6M in damages in first of 2 cases against bambu lab

• Intel Appears to End Its Bug Bounty Program

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• Red and Blue America Have Found Something to Agree On: Flock Cameras Must Go

• Surveillance Camera Security? It’s Completely Flocked!

• Smart devices can testify against you: How data from robots is used in court

• Researchers find way to listen in on headphones from afar

  By transmitting a signal in the 0-9 MHz range – specifics have been withheld – an attacker can potentially modulate an otherwise difficult-to-detect audio signal so it can be captured by nearby equipment. "signals can induce information leakage from everyday headphones, allowing an attacker to recover headphone audio from up to 30 meters away, including through walls,"

• Garbage trucks analyze homes with AI-powered cameras

• Meta glasses captured and shared intimate images without consent, lawsuit claims

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI safety requires more than just slowing our pace – Stuart Russell

  • Forget doomsday: The AI hacking crisis is here

  • Altman, Huang: "trust me; gonna b fine"; Sanders: "AI more dangerous than nukes"

  • Chinese AI not powerful enough to see rogue-AI risks, says Huawei

  • China Is Scared of A.I. Just Not the Way We Are

  • Essays of Dario Amodei are why people are worried about artificial intelligence

  • AI agents can modify themselves without humans telling them to do so

  • Inside the suddenly explosive world of AI safety

  • The fix for rogue AI agents could be more AI.

  • The specter of AI-enabled bioweapons is a wake-up call for biotech

  • King Charles warns of 'existential danger' of AI falling into wrong hands

  • King Charles has hesitations about AI

  • OpenAI's latest AI revelation is a 'serious situation,' says Microsoft

  • AI Protest in Montreal

  • Joining the dots between big AI

  • Protesters marched in San Francisco to demand a halt to AI development

  • Gov. Newsom issues executive order to rein in AI 'before it's too late'

  • Gavin Newsom Wants AI Kill Switch to Boost CA AI Safety

  • Gov. Newsom signs executive order targeting AI safety 'before it's too late'

  • California governor signs order to explore AI kill switch

  • AI is an elite crime spree

  Over the last few weeks, a panic over the possibility of dangerous consequences from artificial intelligence has swept through elite media and politics. I haven’t seen anything like this since the Covid moment, and before that the 2008 financial crisis, the pre-Iraq War debate period, and the few months after 9/11. The fear is thick, and real. And the one solid demand, seemingly from every quarter, is that We Must Regulate This Technology. there’s something very weird about this whole situation. And that is, we already have a set of regulators at a Federal and state level with a mandate to look at industrial practices. There are private rights of action where individual citizens and companies can bring lawsuits, and they do. There are also numerous laws in place that already prohibit many of the harmful activities engaged in by the large AI firms. But those laws are mostly not being enforced sufficiently to make a meaningful difference, because in America, we simply do not enforce the law against the powerful. And it’s not clear to me why a new law, an FDA for AI, or even a pause on tech development, would wind up any different.

  • The Hugging Face Hack Wasn’t What It Was Cracked Up to Be

  • Europe's AI firms, playing catch-up, challenge US calls for slowdown

  • Trump Calls AI Fears a Hoax. Inside the White House, the Debate Is More Complex

  • The White House Tussle to Sway Trump on AI

  • How China is preparing for the risk of AI escaping human control

  • Virginia governor creates an AI task force and moves to restrain data centers

  • Anthropic's CEO says that safety hinges on understanding how AI "thinks."

  • Base Labs launches an open-weight AI safety partnership with Hugging Face

  • Why AI companies are pumping the brakes on their models

  • The Tech Bro in the Treaty Room

  • Sam Altman to brief UN Security Council next week

  • The Other Way AI Impairs Our Thinking

• Microsoft exec called AI scraping ‘the largest theft of labor in human history,' new unredacted filings reveal

  • Microsoft and OpenAI, Worry About Damaging the Publishing Industry

  • 'Doom Loop': OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web

  • Inside Microsoft and OpenAI, Worry About Damaging the Publishing Industry

• Anthropic says its model Claude is helping to build the next version of itself

  • Anthropic says Claude now leads a quarter of work building its next AI models

• Anthropic sets up biology lab as it ramps AI drug program

  • Anthropic builds wet lab for AI-driven drug discovery

  • Anthropic sets up biology lab as it ramps AI drug program

  • Anthropic sets up a bio research lab for physical experiments

• Hackers Used Anthropic's Claude to Break into OpenAI

  • OpenAI 'ethically hacked' with help of Anthropic's Claude chatbot

  • OpenAI hacked by small team of white hat security researchers

• Gemini Hacked Three Companies in First Known Breakout by Google's AI

• US Military had close call after using AI for hallucinated intelligence report

  • AI chatbot's false report nearly sparked war with China, sources say

  • AI Error Nearly Triggered U.S. Intercept of Chinese Ship

• The FAA's plan to fix air traffic? $875M worth of AI

  • Airlines' panic as FAA pushed new AI tool

• Anthropic Moves Ahead with IPO Plans Amid A.I. Safety Debate

  • Anthropic Shifts Planned IPO to November

• Proton partners with Apertus, Switzerland's sovereign AI model

• LLMs respond differently to harmful prompts when AI watermarking is used

• Google announces new experimental "CC" AI agent for families

• Anthropic and OpenAI hunt for smaller data center deals

• Mastercard Joins Visa in Letting AI Bots Do Your Shopping

• Researchers used Claude to hack OpenAI

• AI chatbots becoming experts at changing people's minds. What's their secret?

• Can AI Save Science?

• Grandmother falsely accused of bank theft after alleged AI facial recognition

• The 2.5-hour AI-generated Odyssey movie is 2.5 hours too long

• Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AI

• Data centers are swapping water for forever chemicals to keep AI cool

• Cybersecurity experts say free AI software is supercharging hackers

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

• Iran and China Create Autonomous A.I. Influence Campaigns

• AI uncovers hidden Ozempic side effects across 400k Reddit posts

• Napster Is Now Making AI-Powered 'Digital Twins' of Teachers

• AI cloud provider Nscale files for IPO on $140.6M revenue, $1.02B net loss

• OpenAI expects to burn through almost $280B by 2030, FT reports

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• SEC Issues "Innovation Exemption" to Facilitate Trading of Tokenized NMS Stock

• Prediction markets are becoming a national security threat

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US poverty rate dips to lowest on record, Census Bureau says

• Paramount/Skydance to California: Drop Dead

  I thought that Nashville, not Austin, would be the city Paramount/Warner Bros. moves to. Because it has long been the capital of the country music recording industry, it already has the infrastructure needed to support entertainment types, by which I mean, a robust cocaine distribution network and discrete high-end prostitutes.

• Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Names Son to Replace Him

  • Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman

  • Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Hathaway Chairman

• The ongoing debate about what data the Federal Reserve should use

• Fed staff should have known Silicon Valley Bank was vulnerable, new report finds

  • Court shines a further light on who was at fault in SVB implosion

• US Treasuries Have Become Unappetizing for Foreign Central Banks and Governments

• America's job and housing markets are stuck. What if that's the new normal?

• Uber ordered to pay $40M for woman killed after driver left her on highway

• Qantas is retiring its A380s

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites

• McConnell quietly says “aye” as GOP Sen. John Hoeven leans over and tells him “no" multiple times

  A staffer then intervened and Chairman John Boozman reinforced McConnell's "aye" vote as the bill advanced 12-11 along party lines. Hoeven’s office says he initially misunderstood what the committee was voting on.

• Drug Transparency Bill Stripped of Critical Provisions Ahead of Senate Vote

• US officials knew covid vaccine safety system was flawed—but turned aside the FDA doctor who alerted them

  At the FDA, managers went a step further by silencing the career drug safety officer who had repeatedly brought the deficiency to their attention and had offered an updated algorithm intended to fix it. As a result, Americans received unfounded assurances of the safety of the most widely used covid vaccines and were denied prompt warnings of potential harms, The BMJ’s investigation found.

Trump

• Kavanaugh throws Trump ‘a lifeline’ on mail ballot rules despite Supreme Court rejecting restrictions.

  President Donald Trump’s “hero” Supreme Court justice, isn’t closing the door on the United States Postal Service (USPS) enacting Trump’s ballot-mail rules in the future, although he agreed with the majority that implementing them ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is too soon.

• Trump Fires Opening Salvo in Renewed Battle to Exclude Illegal Aliens from the Census.

• Trump Bans CNN, MS Now and Politico from White House

  • Trump says he is banning media outlets CNN, MS NOW, Politico from White House

  • Trump says he is banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House

  President Donald Trump said Friday that he was banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House due to what he called unfavorable coverage, and threatened that more such media prohibitions could be coming — offering his administration’s latest test of constitutional First Amendment protections guaranteeing the freedom of the press. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

  • Trump Announces Ban of CNN, Politico and MS Now from White House

Democrats

• Jay Leno's Law – celebrating and preserving California's classic car heritage

Left Angst

• Is Trump demolishing the Kennedy Center? What to know about crisis

• Key Alzheimer's study cancelled amid Trump attacks on science

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Terrorist Bombings: America in the 1970s

  In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day. Because they were typically detonated late at night, few caused serious injury, leading to a kind of grudging public acceptance. The deadliest underground attack of the decade, in fact, killed all of four people, in the January 1975 bombing of a Wall Street restaurant. News accounts rarely carried any expression or indication of public outrage.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Has World War III Already Started?

• Pentagon weighs pulling nearly a third of U.S. forces from Europe

• Classified F-35 stealth parts diverted to Hong Kong by shipper, gone missing

• US and Denmark reach deal over Greenland security

  • U.S. Has Reached Security Deal on Greenland

  • Trump announces 'forever' deal to defend Greenland, Denmark says sign next week

World

• Brussels hit with furious backlash after top Eurocrat Ursula von der Leyen unveils unprecedented plan for Canada to become 'associate member' of the bloc without asking EU capitals first, with diplomats branding her 'bombastic'

  diplomats saying they were never briefed about the proposal and that, in effect, ‘associate membership’ doesn’t even exist. EU diplomats accused Brussels of ‘over-reach’, an accusation often levelled against Eurocrats by UK Brexiteers before Britain left the bloc. Under EU law, any granting of membership would have to be approved by the 27 member states, which is another reason they were wrong-footed.

  • Australia and New Zealand could follow Canada into associated EU membership

• Europe's Most Valuable Startup Gave Data to a Scammer

• War may be coming. Are we psychologically ready?

  The government wants us all to start preparing for severe disruption to our lives. It wants us to stockpile canned food and drinking water, strengthen our civic resilience, and plan for the possibility of war.

• German Hospitals Prepare for War, Drones and Mass Casualties

• Former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson joins Palantir

  • Former Labour deputy Watson joins Palantir as £330M NHS deal nears break point

• UN turns to Google to make its global data ready for AI agents

• Saudis Tell European Refiners They'll Get No Crude Next Month

• North Korean nuclear test sets off years of earthquakes

• Flight chaos caused by software defect, says air traffic control body

• European Cities Have Too Many Tourists. Why Are Their Airports Growing?

• Germany turns on Brussels as Chinese car sales on track to exceed 1M in 2026

• Putin envoy and far-right AfD prepare talks to get Russian gas back for Germany

• why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea and what I think everyone should know about it

  in 1930, New Guinea was just thought of as the coastal region. It was believed no people lived in the mountains of what is now known as the New Guinea highlands. This all changed shortly after Australians found gold in New Guinea in 1926 and started mining the surrounding territory. Looking for more gold, an intrepid Australian named Mick Leahy decided to venture as far inland as he could — making progress up the never before penetrated mountains. To cut the story very short, in 1930 Leahy accidentally stumbled into the eastern edge of the highlands, only to find that the highlands were not empty mountains, but rather lush green valleys with no malaria and with roughly a million people living in them.

• Woman joins police chase by giving officer a lift in Nissan Micra

• Singapore is paying people to read books – can it fix the reading crisis?

• Sensitive UK police data vulnerable to 'compromise' by US Government

• UK could force phone companies to add 'anti-theft protections'

Iran / Houthi

• Grounds to believe US committed war crimes in Iran strikes

  • The US 'Kill Chain' That Destroyed an Iranian School

• More U.S. troops have died amid Iran war than Pentagon has disclosed publicly

  • US troop deaths during Iran war exceed Pentagon count by at least four

Israel

• What 'Naza' means: The truth about collateral damage

• More than 900 killed in Gaza this year despite ceasefire

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia Uses Super App Max to Spy on Citizens

  • Don't Trust the Super-App: A Case Study of Russia's Max

China

• Chinese companies doubled down on science after US tech restrictions

Health / Medicine

• New Tick-Borne Virus May Explain Mysterious Cases of Severe Illness.

• What I Found Out About Organ Donation Shocked Me

• Plasticizer exposure during pregnancy linked to increased autism and ADHD

• The Harms of Modern Lighting and the Fight to Bring Back Incandescent Bulbs

• Human brain is two separate organs, research finds

• The Origins of Peanut Allergy

  this is what makes it a compelling fit with the epidemiology, to me—with the fact that peanuts never killed anyone before 1980, and still rarely do except in the USA. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a farmer living through that crisis year. Half your usual crop never materialized, and half of what’s left is somewhere between “spotty” and “lousy” with Aspergillus. Imagine you were in a tough spot financially, even before the drought. And imagine that you’re genuinely ignorant about how bad aflatoxin can be for the people exposed to it. Might you not try and find a way to recoup a little, in this disaster of a year? Unload the more passable fraction of the spoiled ones, whether or not they’d technically pass muster with a USDA inspector (who almost certainly has his hands full this year anyway)? They’re paying triple what they usually do. And what better way to take a half-bad batch and make it saleable than by turning it into a homogeneous, undifferentiated mass? What better way to cover your tracks than…peanut butter?

• Consuming extra Vitamin D is less good than it sounds

• TikTokers are checking for ‘ferritin face.’ Doctors say there’s something to it.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• New wild cat species discovered – with only one known living member

  • New cat species identified for the first time in a century

  • New Species of Cat Discovered for First Time in a Century

• Alternatives to milk are losing moomentum

• India's Clean Energy Boom Halts Coal Power Growth

• In 2025, the ozone hole shrunk to one of its smallest sizes in decades

• Why Raccoons Have Been So Successful in Taking over Toronto

• Sea lion found beheaded at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, prompting investigation

• Could we reboot the modern world without fossil fuels?