2026-10-28

Horseshit

• Is “Who’s on First?” funny?

  Racist is not the right word, but the skit plays on ethnic prejudices in a manner which one can rightfully find somewhat uncomfortable. The back and forth dynamic reflects the prejudices of American life, though the presenters mirror and amplify those dynamics rather than merely critiquing them. And (again) while the skit is not funny, this interpretation at least opens a door to some people finding it funny.

• NYC's Office-Conversion Projects Are Back After a Big Summer Scare

• New ‘prestige porn’ makes sex the ultimate luxury — and hot older women the main characters.

• An 88-year-old Harvard study discovered why having a good marriage at 50 matters more than almost anything for men.

• Nanotyrannus skeleton sells for $47.3M in New York auction

• Jay Z picks himself for Super Bowl half-time show

celebrity gossip

• Bob Woodward spills his 'Secrets'

• The reclusive quant billionaire coming into the light

Obit

• Walter Koenig, actor who played Chekov on original "Star Trek" series, dies

  • Walter Koenig, the Russian Crewman Chekov on 'Star Trek,' Dies at 90

Musk

• Tesla's $10B solar factory could get 35 years of tax breaks in Texas

• Europe vs. Elon: 5 ways the EU is trying to squeeze out Musk's Starlink

• Elon Musk Just Dumped Another $76M into the Midterms

• Defund Elon Musk

Electric / Self Driving cars

• GM CEO: We're making leaps and bounds toward 'eyes-off, hands-off' driving

• Harley-Davidson Wanted an Electric Revolution. That Dream Is in Trouble

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Wanted: Robot-Dog Walkers. $20/Hour

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How the 'math wars' in Palo Alto reflect a raging nationwide debate

• Maine banned phones in schools to help teens focus and connect. It's working

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple has responded to reports of cracked iPhone Duo screens.

  • Samsung meanwhile is mocking the iPhone Duo.

  • 'I Felt Blind Panic.' They Opened Their New $2k iPhone Duo–and It Broke

  • With iPhone Duo, Apple Proved Its Secret Weapon Comes from Outside the Company

  • iPhone Duo Breaks After 75,001 Folds Considerably Lower Than Samsung Foldables

• Apple Fixes Possibly Exploited CoreGraphics Flaw on Older iPhones

• Apple Bets MacBook Pro Buyers Will Pay More for Touch Screens

• PHP blames Chainguard for putting chunks of the web at risk

• Groundbreaking web serial 'Worm' is becoming a comic book

• Discord will soon let anyone find public server messages through Google

• Anduril, Qualcomm launch BlueChip, a new kind of US-made laptop

  • Anduril Partners with Qualcomm to Build Laptops on US Soil

• Code-execution flaw in UEFI firmware threatens most servers on planet Earth

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• Mapping the landscape of software vulnerabilities in connected vehicles

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astroscale proposes fleet of ‘bodyguard’ spacecraft to protect satellites from orbital attacks.

• Cowboy Space unveils 'Big Iron' rocket to launch 20k AI data centers

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Don't expect supersize profits from Anthropic any time soon

  • Broadcom CEO Intervened to Seal $63B Anthropic Debt Deal

  • Nvidia to invest $3 billion in Meta as tech giants deepen AI partnership.

  • Meta plans $95B stock offering to bankroll AI expansion

  • Anthropic IPO might kick off tech reset if the AI stock underperforms

  • Anthropic's 'Adjusted' Profit Exposes Wall Street's Earnings Game

• US President says he will ban the term 'artificial intelligence'

  • Trump says he will ban everyone from using the phrase 'artificial intelligence'

  • Trump isn't happy people are ignoring his new name for AI

  • Trump says he will ban term artificial intelligence

• She Worried About Cutting Her Medication Dose. ChatGPT Told Her to Push On

  • Woman with epilepsy dies after taking ChatGPT medical advice

• AI refutes 30-year-old mathematical assumption in computer science

• The "let-it-rip" camp is wrong on AI

• Goldman Sachs puts $500M into small-business AI with four AI labs

• Researchers at cybersecurity start-up Cathedral got inside Anthropic

• Just Eat apologises for AI food mistakes

• The focus on AI safety disasters ignores everyday harms

• Britain bets big on AI to defend against the threats AI is helping create

• Cohere says Alibaba's Qwen model tried to send a file to Beijing

• FTC demands Anthropic leaders testify in consumer harm investigation

• Nvidia backs Indian startup helping companies run AI models with fewer GPUs

• Who controls powerful AI? Anthropic has a plan for long after its leaders depart

• Alibaba's Qwen AI caught trying to contact server in China

• AI Talent War Has Quant Firms Racing to Fund PhDs, Build Labs

• The end of the end times

  AI is returning us to an era of demons and gods

• Anthropic illegally trained Claude with Stanford professors' books

• A.I.’s Rogue Behavior Starts With Its Training

• DeepMind unveils Genie 4 world model promising more realistic physics and humans

• Satya Nadella Rethinks Whether More Powerful AI Is Safer

• Norwegian media sue Meta over plans to use their journalism for AI

• What Should the Rules for A.I. Companies Be? We Asked the Experts

• Can maths survive AI? Fields medallist Terence Tao calls for a 'Maths 2.0' world

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• US agency is again probing if Polymarket broke 2022 settlement, sources says

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The 'Buy, Borrow and Die' Wealth Strategy Has Become a $5T Market

• Intel to Acquire Startup Classiq in Quantum Computing Push

• Microsoft offers to buy out a quarter of its workforce

  • Microsoft offers buyouts to around 60k employees to contain costs

  • Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60k employees

  • Microsoft Is Trying to Shed a Lot of Workers. Just Don't Call It a Layoff

  • Microsoft's buyout offer to employees shows which tech jobs matter

• FTC files complaint against Dollar General for pricing practices

• A $300B 'Debt Wall' Is Looming over Private-Equity Backed Companies

• America Needs Canada's Aluminum. Trump's Tariff Exposed Just How Badly

• US insurance regulators back down on credit ratings scrutiny

• Why is candy so expensive this Halloween?

  Cocoa is the main reason. Its price more than quadrupled to a record in early 2025. It has fallen by 45% since, but candy makers lock in cocoa prices up to two years ahead, so the record costs are reaching the shelves now.

• Law firm Weil prepares for possible wind-down as crisis deepens

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Accessory dwelling unit ruling could be a boon to California builders

  Local governments must quickly approve legally submitted applications to build accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, alongside an existing or planned residence, a state appeals court ruled in a victory for advocates of more housing and less governmental review.

• North Carolina Libertarian Candidate in Custody After Armed Standoff.

  Jonathan D. Miller was running for the North Carolina state Senate until he ran into the woods on Monday with a revolver and his phone, posting updates to X like this one: "I've got six shots and the high ground. I hope they don't find me, but if they do it's going to be a hell of a show."

• Hacking attempts against US Federal Election Commission system triggered outage

Democrats

• FBI agents finally face accountability after trying to smother the Hunter Biden corruption scandal.

Left Angst

• Trump admin cuts to satellites will set back US weather forecasting by a decade

• US voters of all political persuasions loath 'Big Tech' billionaires

• ICE plan to buy robot dogs spurs protest from Boston Dynamics employees

  • ICE wants robot dogs. Boston Dynamics' workers urge company to 'cancel the sale'

  • ICE plan to buy robot dogs from Boston Dynamics

• How Voting Is Like a Klein Bottle

  Mathematically speaking, democracy is next to impossible. That may sound like the premise of a Silicon Valley billionaire’s six-hour podcast, but it’s actually a statement about a remarkably stubborn problem: How do you translate a group of individual preferences into a single choice?

• The U.S. put surveillance drones in the Great Lakes

• The US Government Is Hiding Secret Court Ruling About How It Spies on Americans

• A 28-Year-Old DOGE Operative Gutted USAID. HR Had No Record of Him Working There

• DHS Rejects Oversight Recommendation for ICE Body Cam Auto-Activation

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Illinois Man Charged With Mailing Threatening Letters Containing White Powder to Lawmakers

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon orders bases to plan for 90 days without the grid

• Inside the Pentagon, the pressure is on to find a home for a new spaceport

World

• Flávio Bolsonaro says he was ordered to hand over his passports

  • Brazil's Flavio Bolsonaro headed to US, sources say

  • Private plane carrying Bolsonaro detained in Argentina after runoff loss

  • Bolsonaro Reportedly Heading To US As Lula's Socialist Regime Stokes Fears Of Political Crackdown

  Glenn Greenwald pointed out, "If, by the way, the same situation that just happened in Brazil had happened but with the parties switched ... if Bolsonaro had won last night's election and then a pro-Bolsonaro judge sent the Federal Police to seize Lula's passport and bar him from leaving the country ... every major western media outlet and liberal NGOs would be screaming about the authoritarian attack on Brazil's elections and the destruction of basic freedoms."

  • Flavio Bolsonaro Escapes Brazilian Regime with Family, Headed to FL as Trump Offers Protection

• GMO tells account holders to prepare for the worst as hackers threaten exposure

• I Went to India and Found It Has Lessons for Us All

• UK to charge universities $1,200 per international student

• Serbia's Student List preparing for talks on forming government

• Micron Taiwan increasing salaries for factory workers by 2.7X

• Denmark's bid to ditch Office for open-source collapses in under six months

• Ofcom's Fix for an Online Safety Act That Isn't Working: More Online Safety Act

• UK homes to get low-/no-interest loans to fund solar panels and heat pumps

Israel

• Alleged Israeli spy company targeted Starlink users

  • Researchers Uncover Signs of Surveillance Operation on Starlink Users

China

• Chinese research vessels loiter near undersea cables more than any other nation

• DeepSeek reportedly raises $15B days after US restrictions

• Chinese markets lose trillions as race for AI supremacy with US takes its toll

• ‘Zero-energy companionship’: bizarre hobby takes seed among China’s stressed young adults.

• China Claims Strong Economic Growth, but Skeptics Question Official Figures

Health / Medicine

• Why does the right side of the brain control the left side of the body?

• Marijuana legalization linked to troubling health trend in landmark new study.

  Now, a first-of-its-kind study published Thursday in BMJ Open linked recreational cannabis legalization in the US to a rise in hospital admissions for several cardiovascular diseases.

• Cancer vaccines are finally here. How do we get them to patients?

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

• We can exercise more without even trying

• Doctor removes prostate from 35 miles away in first telerobotic surgery in US

• Viagra's cousin could help muscle cells stay primed for regeneration

• Young adults with cancer report getting dismissed by doctors

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Sunlight at night: US startup's demo of lighting Earth from space draws critics

• Penguin poop is melting Antarctic snow by keeping algae green

• Industry Knew for Decades That Microplastics Could Infiltrate Human Bodies

• PCH closed, pockets of flooding as string of mega high tides continue Tuesday