2026-04-21

Horseshit

• The Victorian sex abuse scandal that shocked Britain and changed the law

• Snake Bros Keep Getting Bitten by Their Lethal Pets. Only Zoos Can Save Them

• The Melancholy of Subculture Society

• They Went Abroad to Save Money. Moving Back Seems Unaffordable

• Intellectuals are Fucking Idiots

  Once there, Caldwell toured the country. He met the leadership and learned about their policies firsthand. But the climax of his trip was the last evening — a private audience with Pol Pot himself. Reportedly, Caldwell was “euphoric” with excitement and anticipation. Once in private, Caldwell and Pol Pot had a long intellectual conversation. In his enthusiasm, Caldwell began sharing some of his ideas for the Cambodian regime. He began to offer feedback and dare I say, potentially even a little criticism. Pol Pot, not used to being lectured to by a professor, promptly had Caldwell killed that night. Malcolm Caldwell is what I like to refer to as an intelligent idiot. A man with an encyclopedic breadth of knowledge and understanding, a world-class mind with powerful thoughts, and yet absolutely no idea how to apply any of it.

• The New York Times is wrong about the birth rate

• When Your Digital Life Vanishes

• Why nearly every farmer who grows these Chile peppers is a woman

  "Growing chile has always been a woman's job," Pandiamma says. That's true not only for the thousands of chile farmers but for all farmers in the region. "More than 70% of agricultural activities in this region have always been carried out by women farmers," says Vallal Kannan, a program coordinator for Krishi Vigyan Kendra, a government-run agricultural center. He says that's because men prefer to take on the agricultural jobs that involve finances, such as supervising and selling, leaving the menial, labor intensive jobs to the women.

• Who Killed the Florida Orange?

• Genetic clues tell the story of Neanderthals' decline

• The $400M Machine That Spawned the Most Coveted Toy

• Southern California residents sentenced in bear suit insurance fraud scheme

  It all stems from a claim the suspects filed with their insurance company, saying a bear got into their car, a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost, at Lake Arrowhead on Jan. 28, 2024, and damaged the inside with scratches. The California Department of Insurance said the suspects provided a video to the company, which showed the "bear" in the car. An investigation into the claim - dubbed "Operation Bear Claw" - took a closer look at the video and found the "bear" was actually a person in a bear costume, the insurance department said.

• What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos's Private Retreat

• America's coming revolt is in the 'wired belt'

• Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want

• Rise in Young Men's Religiosity Realigns Gender Gaps

celebrity gossip

• Discovering Prince, Ten Years Later

Obit

• Elaine Ingham, Who Taught That Soil Is Alive, Dies at 73

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• 'Reefer Madness,' the PSA That Backfired Spectacularly

• At long last, InfoWars is ours

Musk

• French prosecutors summon Elon Musk, alleging X child abuse images, deepfakes

  • Elon Musk does not appear at hearing in French prosecutors' X probe

• Car Owners Are Revolting over Tesla's Self-Driving Promises

• Elon Musk's Mistaken Call for a 'Universal High Income'

• Offshore tax tricks likely saved Tesla hundreds of millions

• Tesla settles wrongful death lawsuit over crash that killed Florida teenager

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Electric car sales soar 51% in mainland Europe as Iran war drives up fuel prices

  • EV sales soar in main European markets as drivers shun expensive petrol

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Boston Dynamics and Google DeepMind Teach Spot to Reason

• Robot smashes human record in half-marathon – as another self-destructed

• Robots beat human records at Beijing half-marathon

• Humanoid robot beats the human half-marathon world record by 6.5 minutes

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Theoretical physicist explains why humanity likely won't see all forces unified

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Intel refreshes non-Ultra Core CPUs with new silicon for the first time

• Mac Mini and Mac Studio Supply Shortages

• The race to build the next WordPress

• Toshiba refuses to replace large hard drive that was under warranty — company offers refund at the purchase price, not the higher current retail price

• Lawsuits, licensing, and royalties are complicating 4K video support in gadgets

• I'm never buying another Kindle, and neither should you

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA working on 'Big Bang' upgrade to keep the Voyagers alive for longer

• Third New Glenn launch suffers upper stage malfunction

• Astronaut's astounding iPhone 17 Pro Max video shows 'Earthset' from space

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Industry of the Future Is Run by People Who Hate Each Other

  • They all know they're in the same zero sum game of investor scam.

• Regulators monitor Anthropic's Mythos for banking risks

• NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist

• AI quota inflation is no token effort. It's baked in

• Just like phishing for gullible humans, prompt injecting AIs is here to stay

• OpenAI Executive Kevin Weil Is Leaving the Company

• AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis worse

• Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

• Contra Benn Jordan, data center (and all) sub-audible infrasound issues are fake

• Netflix's AI deal puts the global VFX workforce at risk

• SiIicon Valley's AI agent hiccups: Wasted tokens and 'chaotic' systems

• AI chatbots could be making you stupider

• AI fuels wireless talent shortage

• Yann LeCun says Dario Amodei "knows nothing about AI effects on jobs"

• Nvidia AI chip rivals attract record funding as competition heats up

• Germany's Merz says industrial AI needs less stringent EU regulation

• Deezer says 44% of songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-generated

• Tech CEOs Think AI Will Let Them Be Everywhere at Once

• Allbirds' Move to AI Has Echoes of the Dot-Com Frenzy

• Anthropic's Mythos AI model sparks fears of turbocharged hacking

• Peter Thiel Is Building a Parallel Justice System – Powered by AI

• AI is killing the wayback machine

• Amazon to invest up to another $25B in Anthropic

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Farm Bankruptcies Continued to Climb in 2025

• Amazon customers furious as delivery drones drop boxes from 10 feet in the air

• America Is in the Middle of a Stealth Manufacturing Boom

• Second Jury Finds Uber Responsible for Sexual Assault by a Driver

• Tim Cook is stepping down

  • Tim Cook to step down from Apple

  • Tim Cook Stepping Down as Apple CEO, John Ternus Taking Over

  • Johny Srouji Named Apple's Chief Hardware Officer

  • Tim Cook Retiring

  • Apple Hardware Executive John Ternus to Become CEO

  • Tim Cook steps down. Ternus to CEO

  • Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman

  • Apple names John Ternus CEO, replacing Tim Cook, who becomes Chairman

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Businesses can claim refunds for tariffs declared unconstitutional

  • US opens refund portal to start paying back Trump's illegal tariffs

• DOJ sues six states for refusing to turn over voter registration rolls, warns ‘open defiance’ of federal law. Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington accused of violating federal election laws.

• U.S. banks may soon collect citizenship data from customers

• Netgear Gets Mysterious Exemption to Trump FCC 'Router Ban,' Refuses to Say How

• USPS Inspector General Issues Alert on Counterfeit Postage

  According to the OIG alert, since 2020, the US Postal Inspection Service (an investigative agency within the Postal Service) noted a significant increase in the creation, sale, and use of counterfeit postage. And in February of 2026, the OIG identified a “significant increase” in the volume of packages with suspected counterfeit labels.

  • I have seen fake "Forever Stamps" advertised widely, on sites I was surprised to see promoting such things.

• FBI Director Kash Patel sues Atlantic mag for $250M over story alleging excess drinking, mysterious absences

  FBI Director Kash Patel slapped The Atlantic and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick with a defamation lawsuit, after the outlet alleged in a report that he has a drinking problem that could pose a threat to national ‌security. Filed on Monday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the lawsuit, which seeks $250 million, claims the magazine’s story, initially titled “Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job,” is “categorically false and defamatory.” The Atlantic, which published its exposé on Friday, cited more than two dozen anonymous sources expressing concern at Patel’s “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences” that “alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice.”

Left Angst

• Ukraine Has Finally Given Up on Trump

• Tracking when Trump chickens out

• The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

• The Geopolitics of Epic Fury.

  Between February 28, when Operation Epic Fury began, and last week, when President Trump allowed Iran to lift its head out of the water briefly in order to surrender, the WSJ has run countless stories explaining how, despite appearances, Iran was actually winning the conflict. On Saturday, the Journal greeted Iran’s braggadocio about the Strait of Hormuz just as enthusiastically as did the Times.

• Judge sides with ICE tracker creators in DHS/DOJ First Amendment lawsuit

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The Killer Robots Are Coming. The Battlefield Will Never Look the Same

• Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft

• Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are changing how America wages war

World

• Canada's PM calls economic ties with US a weakness that must be corrected

• Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it

• Japan Is Building a War Machine in the East China Sea

• Magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Japan. 3M tsunami expected

  • After a 7.7-magnitude quake, Japan warns of slightly higher risk of a mega-quake

• How Cybercrime Became a Leading Industry in 'Scambodia'

• Brussels pushes remote working to ease energy crisis

• Google should allow third-party search engines access to data, EU says

• All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027

• Baltic nations brace for impact of Iran war delaying US weapons shipments

• Javier Milei Wants to Rewire the Argentine Mind

• Mobile phones to be banned in schools in England under new plans

  • Phones to be banned in schools by law in England under government plans

• Japanese man sentenced to prison for posting spoilers

• More than 50% of young Dutch adults do not want children

Iran / Houthi

• More Brave Cruise Ships Just Thumbed Their Noses at the IRGC in the Strait of Hormuz.

• Trump says US has ‘full custody’ of Iranian-flagged ship, ‘seeing what’s on board.’

• Emposat Denies Knowledge of Iran Using Chinese Satellite via Its Ground Stations

• Iran's Brutal Digital Siege Hits Day 50

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's Second Miracle Year

China

• China's 7-tonne cargo drone completes maiden flight

• Chinese tech workers are starting to train their AI doubles

• Hustlers are cashing in on China's OpenClaw AI craze

• The Weird, Twisting Tale of How China Spied on Alysa Liu and Her Dad

Health / Medicine

• How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds

  • The enema has been a major focus of health care far longer than "modern medicine"... perhaps those ancestors knew something we have forgotten?

• Hospital-acquired pneumonia reduced by daily toothbrushing

• US birth records uncover an autism risk surge tied to common drugs

  These sterol biosynthesis–inhibiting medications (SBIMs) include certain antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, beta-blockers and statins. These are the generic names of the 14 medications studied: aripiprazole, atorvastatin, bupropion, buspirone, fluoxetine, haloperidol, metoprolol, nebivolol, pravastatin, propranolol, rosuvastatin, sertraline, simvastatin and trazodone. Many of these are among the most commonly prescribed medications in the United States, accounting for more than 400 million annual prescriptions. Mothers prescribed at least one SBIM during pregnancy had a 1.47-fold higher risk of having a child diagnosed with ASD. Risk increased in a dose-dependent manner. For each additional SBIM co-prescribed, there was a 1.33 times increased risk of ASD, reaching 2.33-fold risk when four or more SBIMs were prescribed simultaneously.

• Analysis of Alzheimer's Drugs Stirs Debate About Their Effectiveness

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Why Birds Were the Only Dinosaurs to Survive Mass Extinction

• IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

• Cheap Batteries Are Taking over the Power Grids

• Washington DC on track for most volatile temperature year since 1959

• Biosciences said it cloned red wolves. Is it for real?

• Most people care about farm animals – our food system doesn't reflect that

• Some fish can tell when you're staring at them or their eggs

• Experts warn climate change will make parts of Israel uninhabitable in decades