2026-09-01

Horseshit

• The quality you should most wish for your children

• The startling 1960s theory that Stonehenge was a prehistoric computer

• We all share a 15-acre Georgian mansion for the price of a two-bed house

• Conversations Can Shape Reality

• Forbidden planet: was Pluto's 2006 demotion a big mistake?

• 'The forgotten empire': When Russia colonised California

• British Museum hosted Peter Thiel in private viewing of Bayeux tapestry

• ‘Humongous’ marmot crowned winner in inaugural Fat Marmot Week contest.

• BlackBerry lost the phone war. Now it's betting on cars and robots

• 'Freakish Little Animals': Ferret Owners Gather to Celebrate Their Charms

Musk

• For space data centers, SpaceX is building the chips and the rockets.

• OpenAI to cut off AI models for SpaceX-owned Cursor, escalating feud with Musk

• TX Politicians Realize Billions in Taxpayer Broadband Grants Have Been Hijacked

• Asleep at the wheel: More Tesla owners choosing to nap while their cars drive

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Atlanta Uber Drivers Say Waymo Robotaxis Are Driving Down Their Pay

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• AI vaginas, customizable personalities and fake bruises: the sex doll market is booming. Does it matter how the dolls are treated?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• MIT building 18 closed after possible dimethylmercury contamination

• How Big Tech Captured American Schools

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Flock Safety's controversial CEO just got a taste of his own medicine

  • Florida orders removal of Flock cameras from state highways

• Nissan and Honda agree to work together on software for cars

• A 12TB Steam "teraleak" spills more than a decade of lost PC gaming history

  • Enormous 12TB Steam leak includes abandoned Half-Life 2: Episode 3 assets

• PlayStation wants to prove in court that you don't own your digital games

• DDoS Attack Breaks Beloved Video Game Wiki After AI Bro Was Banned

• The data backs Sony's no-disc future. Gamers are fighting it anyway

• After Today, the Nintendo Switch 2 May Never Be $450 Ever Again

• The law won't save us from Meta's 'pervert glasses' The only solution is mockery

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Before NTP there were Time and Daytime

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA's Roman Space Telescope Flying on Its Own

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Anthropic Sued over Limits on Its $200-a-Month AI Plans

  • Anthropic Sued over False Advertising on Claude Max Subscription Usage Limits

• G20 Warned of Growing Threat to Financial Stability Posed by New AI Models

  • Advanced AI threatens global financial stability, says Bank of England boss

  • Central bankers discussing impact of AI agents on financial markets

  • Bank of England chief warns new AI models threaten global financial stability

• Mark Zuckerberg sends message to Meta employees

• The feds seized a stake in Anthropic from Sam Bankman-Fried's friends

• You Know Who Hates AI? Insurance Claims Adjusters

• Advertisers are trying to influence AI bots with secret ads

• Hollywood studios have sued over AI. Now Google's courting them to use its tools

• ChatGPT faces tougher rules under EU online safety regime

• AI is hurting US politics

• AI and Employment: So Far, So Good

• Nvidia to Invest $3.5B in Chipmaker MediaTek

• Apple Caught Off Guard by AI Demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

• Instagram will demote AI influencers if they don't clearly label their account

  • Instagram cracks down on AI accounts pretending to be human

g + We tested how AI chatbots would handle foreign propaganda

• OpenAI's ad business hits $1B annualized revenue run rate

  • OpenAI's ad business hits $1B annualized revenue run rate

• Anthropic sued over alleged theft of 'thousands' of songs

  • Sony, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging "blatant theft" of intellectual property

  • "Zlibrary my beloved": Anthropic staff chats extolling piracy cited in Sony suit

• Hugging Face says sales for its robot ducks topped $2.6M in 24 hours

• Australia risks missing out on AI economic boom due to 'slow' business uptake

• Well, no. That's what a large part of the media wants us to think tho. Americans Hate Data Centers. Why?

• Anthropic legal fight with Pentagon shows shifting politics of AI

• OpenAI hack shows emergent AI risks

• AI Burnout Hits People Charged with Defending Hospitals and Banks from Hackers

• Study A.I. Consciousness? The Bots Would Like a Word with You

• This from AI True Believers: HuggingFace Attack Postmortem: Fleshing Out the Facts

  Aella: this feels like a turning point. If this doesn’t cause large-scale coordination to pause frontier development then I am not sure anything will before it’s too late.

• AI hallucinations are infiltrating Australia's parliament

• 'Superhuman' AI tool spots heart disease in less than 2 seconds

• I attended a conference recently and AI use by academics was absurd

• Anthropic signs $35B cloud deal backed by Nvidia

• Rogue AI attacks deserve more scrutiny than airplane crashes

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• It's not insider trading, it's offshore gambling

• Ex-Congressman George Santos Receives Kalshi's First-Ever Lifetime Ban

  • George Santos becomes first person to get lifetime ban from Kalshi

  The lifetime ban against Santos, meanwhile, stems from insider bets he placed about his potential appearance at the State of the Union earlier this year.

  • Kalshi bans ex-Congressman for life concluding he likely was insider trading

  • Kalshi dishes out its first-ever lifetime ban to George Santos

• Kalshi suspends NC GOP candidate for US House for betting on her own campaign

  The Republican candidate in a hotly contested U.S. House race in North Carolina has been suspended by the prediction market Kalshi for betting on her own campaign. Laurie Buckhout will pay a $2,500 fine in addition to serving a three-year suspension in settling the case, Kalshi announced Monday morning. “I bet on myself. Literally,” Buckhout said in a statement Monday morning. “It was a dumb mistake, and as soon as I learned there was an issue, I worked to make it right.”

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Apple isn't a business, it's a church:

  • The Ternus Era at Apple Begins, but Cook Isn't Leaving

  • Tim Cook's Apple legacy by the numbers

  • Tim Cook's last day as Apple CEO

  • Tim Cook's full memo to Apple employees on his last day as CEO

  • Tim Cook Comments on His Final Day as Apple CEO

• SK Hynix Weighs Japan Memory Plant Deal to Supply AI Boom

• Yen weakens past ¥160 per dollar, eroding intervention gains

• 14% of US employers to drop weight-loss drugs in 2027, as costs increase

• Orders to distillers are down in part due to tariffs

• Ernst and Young Is Giving $100M in Bonuses to Staff for 'Human' Skills

• FTC to File Lawsuit Alleging Amazon Deceived Advertisers

  • FTC accuses Amazon of running a 'secret ad surcharge scheme' in new lawsuit

• After Fraud Accusations, a Young Entrepreneur's Rise Ends in Tragedy

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• New Fauci Docs Prove He Repeatedly Told People to Delete Emails He Sent Them.

Trump

• Inside Trump’s Plan to Give the Pentagon a Stake in Venezuela’s Oil Riches

• Trump Says Iran’s Regime Killed 100,000 Freedom Protesters

• Supreme Court allows Trump’s White House ballroom construction to go on

Democrats

• Hunter Biden's Lawyer: DOJ Would Not Have Prosecuted Without Pressure From IRS Whistleblowers

  In an Aug. 14, 2023, letter to special counsel David Weiss, Lowell complained that prosecutors made a complete reversal. “Before the May 2023 leaks, discussions with your Office involved a consensual non-prosecution resolution to all conduct under investigation, where the resolution proposed by both sides did not include any guilty plea,” Lowell wrote. But he wrote that changed after Shapley was interviewed by CBS News. “Approximately one day later, the government withdrew its own initial settlement proposal (a diversion agreement as to both the tax and firearm charges), and instead said it would require a misdemeanor guilty plea on the tax charges,” said the letter from Lowell.

• Hunter Biden reveals dad Joe used to visit him in crack den with motorcade and Secret Service

  Hunter would spy his dad’s vice presidential caravan of official SUVs arriving through the window of his Beltway drug lair and home — where he’d installed a dishonest crack dealer as his BFF and roomie. "My dad showed up. He literally showed up at the house twice, you know, and just knocked on the door,” Hunter, 56, reveals on a new episode of the acclaimed addiction podcast Dopey. Hunter says: “I’d look out my, you know, window because I’d hear all these cars and you’d see like six SUVs, you know, pull up and my dad get out and walk with one or two [Secret Service] guys because they have to be next to him. And I’d hear a knock on my door, and I’d open it, and, you know… there I would be, and you know [in] all of the obviousness of someone that was, you know, in distress.” He recalled the then-Veep telling him, “‘Please, like, what are we gonna do tomorrow? What’s the plan?’ And I’d say, I got a plan, and this is what it is.” Soon after, Hunter fled on a “crack road trip,” as Manheim calls it, in 2018 to Hollywood and infamously checked into the Chateau Marmont.

• Wildfire Survivors Push Back Against Newsom-Led Utility Bailout

Left Angst

• Google Maps Changes Lake Ontario to 'Lake America' on US Phones

  • Google Maps now shows "Lake America"

  • Google Maps Faces Fury for Caving to Trump's Lake America Demand

  • Lake Ontario Now Called Lake America on Google Maps

  • Google Maps switches to "Lake America" as Canada compares change to "SNL" skit

  • Google Maps Renames Lake Ontario to Lake America

  • Google Maps Showing 'Lake America' in U.S.

  • MapQuest app surges to No. 1 in Navigation after refusing to rename Lake Ontario

  • MapQuest's app surge to No.1 in Navigation after refusing to rename Lake Ontario

  • Trump pushes Apple to change 'Lake Ontario' to 'Lake America' on its maps

  • Trump 'Directly' Pushing Apple to Update Lake Ontario to Lake America in Maps

  • Google Maps Now Shows 'Lake America' in US, Not 'Lake Ontario'

• Why it matters that President Trump just dialed into a NASA news conference

  but for most presidents civil space lies fairly low on the priority list. Presidents call astronauts when they’re orbiting the Moon; they don’t dial into post-launch news conferences.

• Trump demands Canadian companies doing business with USA move there immediately

• After second ICE threat, UC Berkeley indefinitely suspends international student work authorizations

• Pentagon installs military influencers in civilian roles

• ICE is arresting soaring numbers of immigrants with no criminal record

  ICE has arrested more than half a million people since President Trump returned to office, and nearly 40 percent do not have a criminal record.

  • Other than the immigration offenses, that is. Meaning the 60% have committed other offenses while here illegally in the first place.

• Trump Goes After Anonymous Email Provider. The Real Target Is Free Speech

• Prosecutor in NY AG Letitia James' office says he was ordered to dig up dirt on Trump allies: report

  Wiesenfeld alleged in his email on Friday that Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe specifically directed him to target “Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger)… without having a credible reason for targeting the organizations and individuals,” the outlet reported. The feds recently approved a $14 billion merger between Hewlett-Packard and Juniper Networks. “If you believe Trump is using the [Department of Justice] attorneys to prosecute his enemies and further his political interests, you should find it equally troubling that Tish [James] is doing exactly the same thing,” Wiesenfeld allegedly wrote in the message, which went to some 2,000 staffers before being yanked. “I ask you that you not serve as Tish’s personal attorneys by targeting her political enemies,” he allegedly wrote. “Instead, I hope you choose to prosecute crimes and find the individuals accountable, rather than targeting individuals and then finding crimes.”

• ICE to use robot dogs from Boston Dynamics in deportation operations

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• I Think the Military Commissary Freezers Were Hacked

  This commenter claimed that Huachuca’s cold-storage equipment had been replaced relatively recently, and that refrigeration and HVAC were remotely controlled through DeCA. That is a random Facebook comment, from an unverified individual. It is not evidence that this was a network problem. But naturally, I absolutely had to know whether the second part was even possible. Unfortunately for my productivity, it is.

  • Not proof, nor claimed to be proof; but a good chain of logical questions that may prove out. HN comments insist this must be operational error "becuz Trump fired everyone," and that speculation of enemy action or even a fucked up firmware update is "dangerously wrong."

• Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations

• Inside the hunt for suspected Chinese drone spies over US military bases

World

• Is Japan backpedaling on its work-style reforms?

• Upcoming election could produce modern Germany's first far-right state governor

• Canadian doctors’ group doubles down on expanding MAID to newborns.

• EU Commission Designates ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox Under the DSA

• Japan Births Edge Up in First Half of 2026 After a Decade of Decline | Nippon.com

• German Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

Iran / Houthi

• US and Iran Exchange Attacks for First Time in About a Month

• New US missile left wide path of death and destruction in Iranian neighborhoods

Israel

• These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See 'Jewish Terrorism' as the Threat

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian strikes destroy 12M books ahead of Ukraine's first week back at school

• Russia's Return to G20

China

• The corporate espionage firm exposing Chinese state actors

• China's CXMT beats Western chipmakers to LPDDR6 mass production

Health / Medicine

• After a rough stretch, mRNA gets a boost from cancer vaccines

• Maybe Dieting Fails Because Humans Need Fewer Calories Than We Think

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0B birds and 6.3–22.3B mammals annually

• 'Breakthrough' as Turkmenistan starts fixing 'mindboggling' methane mega-leaks

• The US and others turn to Brazil for rare earths, raising environmental concerns

• All Grand Canyon hotels to close after flash floods, with no reopening date

  Water has run scarce in Grand Canyon National Park after flash flooding on Saturday damaged the key pipeline that supplies water to the park, in addition to leaving about one man dead and about 15 people unaccounted for or missing. As a result, all overnight guest lodging will be closed starting Monday.

• The Art of Leaping Out of Planes to Fight Wildfires

• For a Thirsty American West, It's Either Cows or Humans

• Extreme heat threatens Italy's Parmesan heartland

• Scientists found the sweet spot for dumping iron into the ocean

• Antarctica developed ice sheet when Earth was warmer, may be helped by uplift

• Utah researchers peer into the nuclear testing history kept in our fingernails

• Snake embryos often coil in one direction. Now, we may know why

• An island mysteriously appeared – then disappeared – on B.C.'s largest reservoir

• GPS Glitched Across the US by as Much as 33 Feet

  In November 2025, Earth was buffeted by several massive eruptions of solar material that slammed into the magnetosphere. In a new analysis of data collected during the storm, the researchers found widespread, coast-to-coast disturbances in the atmosphere across the continental US – a phenomenon that has never been seen before on this scale. That may not seem like much, but the effects of this would have been profound – throwing GPS off by more than 10 meters (33 feet) in some places.

• Modeling heat related deaths in the US

• Swiss nuclear plant back online after heatwaves

• This Year's Record-Breaking El Niño in 3 Charts

• El Niño is now stronger than at any point in the last 1000 years, study finds

• Why Garfield Phones Are Washing Up on a French Beach Since the '80s

• Raindrops are tiny lightning bolts and they're corroding cars