2026-08-10

Horseshit

• Solitude as a new aspirational lifestyle: 'We are not lonely'

• The West's Demographic Math No Longer Adds Up

• Gen Z Is Drinking Alcohol As Much As Older Generations, Data Shows

• Play is at the core of a meaningful life

• Tom Stanton's supersonic trebuchet breaks sound barrier with gravity alone

• Porter Airlines Flight to Toronto cancelled over child standing on seat

• How Tippi Hedren made Vietnamese refugees into nail salon magnates

• Ice Age humans preferred hunting female woolly mammoths

  • Same reason we castrate male pigs raised for food: they taste nasty when uncut.

• Therapy Needs to Get Help

celebrity gossip

• Banksy works cost public almost £150k

  Three artworks by street artist Banksy have cost taxpayers almost £150,000 in cleaning operations and security so far, with the bill expected to rise. The largest single cost relates to a mural painted on the Royal Courts of Justice in September 2025, where removal efforts and security have so far cost more than £85,000. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) says it has spent £50,000 trying to remove paint from the wall of the Grade II-listed building in Carey Street. A further £35,300 was spent on overtime and security costs.

• How long will the Grateful Dead's songs survive?

• Zuckerberg faces questions over why superyacht declined to help stranded boat

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Meme factories: Indonesians trade political outrage clicks for Facebook cash

Musk

• Delta Passed on Starlink Wi-Fi. United and Virgin Atlantic Are Seeing the Payoff

• X is replacing its revenue sharing program with payments for original content.

• Tesla Driver Tries 'I Wasn't Driving' Excuse to Get Out of Speeding Ticket

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo opens up robotaxi service in Dallas to everyone

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• An Israeli professor lost a prestigious US job offer after speaking out on Gaza

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Internal documents show how US tech companies captured children's attention

• Six months of action gaming alters brain networks and improves visual attention

• Why MySpace fans want it back as relaunch hinted

  • Myspace eyes comeback as an an 'antidote' to social media fatigue

• Illinois just told every operating system to start reporting your kid's age

• Why is gaming giant Roblox losing billions in market value?

• Computer maker Framework notifies 'all customers' of a data breach

• Three in five Americans favor stronger oversight of social media companies

• Social Media Makes Our Lives Smaller

• Apple lied under oath to a federal court. The decision to lie came from Tim Cook

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The first self-driving vehicle on Mars has proven to be a smashing success

• See the Sun like never before with most detailed images yet

• Blue Origin traces origin of huge New Glenn rocket explosion to oxygen valve, CEO says.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• China's Top AI Model Evaded Testing Environment, Researchers Say

  • What Happened: OpenAI and HuggingFace

  • Israeli startup was linked to rogue AI hacks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta

  • "Us too!" AI assistant hacks gym website in first known Australian autonomous cyber attack

• Meta CTO: employees should use AI productivity to do more work – not time off

  • Meta CTO told employees AI gains should go into more work

• ByteDance Pretraining 10T Parameter Model

• AI creates 16 new viruses from scratch after training on 9T nucleotides

• ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style

• Five of America's top tech companies - Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle - are expected to burn through $125 billion in cash this year on their AI rollouts.

= Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

• The Long, AI-Powered Quest to Perfect Pringle-Making

• Expertise Formation as the Deeper Consequence of the GenAI Revolution

• AI Barons Are Ready to Give Away Their Fortunes

• DeepMind AI gives an extra day of warning ahead of deadly cyclones

• AI push is putting banks at mercy of tech firms, warns Moody's

• As AI guzzles water and energy, we are facing a choice: datacentres or homes?

• Anti-AI Populism Is Reshaping American Politics

Economicon / Business / Finance

• If You Get in a Car Crash, the Risk Is Growing Your Insurance Won't Pay

• High car prices lead to long-term auto loans

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• NYC Tenants Sue over Spying Operation in Public Housing

Trump

• Trump drops BBC's commercial arm from Panorama lawsuit, but main case remains

• Trump administration warns against using federal dollars on fentanyl test strips

Left Angst

• The Wild West of Private Schools That Collect Taxpayer Dollars

• Trump Crypto Took $100M from a Businessman with Red Flags

• Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

• Donald Trump is dismantling US guardrails

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Georgia police officers fired after Flock camera misuse

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• New 'Water Watch Center' launched to help small utilities stop cyberattacks

• Pentagon gives contractors 21 days for plans to boost weapons production

• FCC moves to ban Lidar-equipped foreign drones from US

• US banning Chinese networking tech in data centers

World

• South Korea, Taiwan top Japan in exports for first time on AI boom

• Taliban Administration Announces South Asia Internet Transit Through Afghanistan

• UAE oil output hits all time high in 2026

• Toronto mayor wants to ban surveillance pricing. Does she have the power?

• Newfoundland has a hard bread shortage, but why do they eat it?

• The rise of illegal tobacco in Australia tracked in wastewater

China

• Climate Change and Tariffs Help China Raise More Cattle

• Apple says Mac users in China can connect to Alibaba's Qwen AI service

• A Lost Civilization Is Baffling Experts and Rewriting China's Origin Story

• China overtakes US to lead global R&D spending, hitting $615B

• How a Drone 'Hellscape' Might Stop a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

Health / Medicine

• ‘Japanese Walking’ Is Going Viral, and Doctors Say It Actually Works.

  You speed up, then slow down, then speed up again, switching every few minutes instead of holding one pace the whole time. No gym membership, no equipment, just a sidewalk, a track or a treadmill and a willingness to change gears.

• Testing is underway on vaccines to intercept brewing colon cancer

• Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

• The sneaky kind of cholesterol that may be threatening your heart health

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Taco Bell fans won't let cyclospora come between them and food

• Covid can wake up a slew of dormant viruses inside you

• Louisiana reports 5 deaths from flesh-eating Vibrio bacteria in seawater

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Maryland Closes More of Cunningham Falls State Park After Second Beaver Attack

• 2025 set a record for global vegetation greenness

• El Niño could push 50M people into acute hunger before end of next year

• Lake Mead hits historic low water level as Colorado River struggles

• A weapon that could help red squirrels in their Battle of Britain

• Archive of Animal Photography Reveals 18,000 Species and Counting

• A viral mosquito-killing laser device could be coming to the U.S.

• Flesh-eating screwworms feast on humans in Mexico; human cases top 500

• Kleenex maker plots toilet paper made from desert plants

  Kimberly-Clark said on Monday it was testing hesperaloe, a drought-resistant plant native to the American South West, as a possible replacement for wood fibre used in toilet roll, kitchen roll and tissues.

• Dutch bank: Extreme heat could wipe out Dutch, EU economic growth this year

• Drought Threatens the Rhine, a Vital Economic Artery in the Heart of Europe

• Scientists turn to sharks to improve hurricane predictions

• Mount Toba eruption doesn't seem like it could nearly kill our species

  the effects of the Mount Toba eruption lasted under two years and amounted to perhaps half a degree of cooling.

• Rabies in Cape fur seals highlights an unprecedented shift in rabies ecology

• Harvesting rainwater from rooftops could cut the number of heatwave days

• Romania Extends Nuclear Reactor Output by Nine Days After Danube Blasts

• Black lung rates in Appalachia are high as the 1970s

• Polyethylene may be causing liver damage