2025-11-12

Horseshit

• The perplexing rise of protein shakes: how it became a billion-dollar industry

• Gen X may be the first to need a UBI after late-career job loss

• He Erased Memory in Mice. Then Thought About Erasing His Own

• Sarah Jessica Parker's Year of Judging the Booker Prize

• Family receives letter from WWI relative more than a century after it was sent

• Why Don't People Return Their Shopping Carts?

  Some responded with anger and aggression. They yelled, cursed, and mocked. Some threatened to (or did) call law enforcement. Others escalated further, brandishing weapons like guns, tasers, or knives. “I’m gonna slash your face,” warned one man. “Why don’t I kick your ass?” asked another. A third shopper told the Cart Narc, “This is how you get killed.” If only returning the cart stirred as much passion as did refusing to. Then there were the many, many excuses. In over half of the encounters I watched, shoppers provided at least one justification for their choice to abandon the cart (see Figure 2).

• Researchers 'decode' Mandarin Chinese from neural signals

• The Perplexing Appeal of The Telepathy Tapes

  The Telepathy Tapes aims to do more than share feel-good stories. It seeks to lend credence to a truly radical claim that nonspeakers — not just the few featured on the show, but all nonspeakers — have tapped into something the rest of us have allowed to atrophy, a part of the mind capable of accessing a universal collective consciousness.

  • Talking to animals should be easy for these folks then

• Hyundai Is Now Locking DIY Owners Out of Their Own Brake Repairs

celebrity gossip

• A shy NBA player negotiated growing up a star in the social media era

• Talking Oglaf with Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne: 'We'd stay up all night drawing stuff to make each other laugh'

Obit

• Tatsuya Nakadai, actor of Kurosawa films, dies

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• What Happened with the CIA and the Paris Review?

Musk

• Siddhant Awasthi head of Tesla cyber truck programme has left the company

  • Tesla’s Engineering Exodus Comes Amid Shift From Core EV Mission.

  • The Head of the Cybertruck Program Quit Tesla. Model Y Leader Left Hours Later

• What does Elon Musk do with all his money?

• SpaceX and Musk called on to rescue China's Shenzhou-20 crew

• Elon Musk's $1T pay deal is a troubling display of corporate capture

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Xpeng Shares Surge on Optimism over Progress in Humanoid Robots

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Transgenderism Is in Rapid Decline Among Young Americans

  the share of students identifying as a gender other than male or female—that is, as non-binary—peaked in 2023 and has halved in the two years since. This is a stunning reversal in the culture that will reverberate through society and politics in the coming years.

• (PDF) Scaling back DEI programmes and the loss of scientific talent

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• my experience at the orientation night when my son joined elementary school band

  To say that band night was feminine coded would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that feminized modes of behavior and communication were embedded in every single interaction. It was a totally alien environment for anyone who isn't well versed in navigating the social codes of progressive leftist institutional spaces. It was like the slogan "the future is female" was taken to be a command delivered from God Himself turned into an education program.

  Now, I want you to imagine what it is like for an 11 year old boy to be saturated in that environment day after day. he is an alien in his own school who is treated essentially like a ticking time bomb who needs to be effectively managed rather than engaged with an taught, and he knows this is happening. It is hard to overstate the level of hostility towards boys that is floating around in the ambient culture of the school system. It isn’t so much that there is an explicit form of anti-male bigotry (although examples of that exist) it is more that there is an overall attitude of distaste for anything masculine and an utter indifference towards the interests, fortunes, and inner lives of young boys. The expectations, norms, rules, and standards of behavior cater to the sensibilities of girls and women.

  This is the entire social system that a young boy goes through from when he is 6 years old all the way until he is graduated from university.

  It’s an old trope on the right to say “imagine if the roles were reversed,” but that would be to miss the point. I know that many on the left will say that all of this is perfectly acceptable because of historical injustices and the pursuit of Social Justice. What I want to point out to you is how absurd the world must appear through the eyes of the average 11 year-old boy. He is basically told he has a host of social advantages (white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, etc) that he has never experienced and will never benefit from, and this justifies the system which he is immersed in. And the worst part is, if young men point any of this out, the very people who are doing it will look them in the eye with a straight face and deny that any of this ever happened. Making matters worse these men begin to figure out that the institutions have been used to advance a leftist political agenda that scapegoated their group (young white men), and when they point this out everyone in authority calls them evil bigots. And all this happens during their formative years.

• The College-Coaching Carrousel Is Completely Out of Hand

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The Algorithm Failed Music

• Has Apple lost its way? iPhone Pocket: a beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone

  ISSEY MIYAKE and Apple today unveiled iPhone Pocket. Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth,” its singular 3D-knitted construction is designed to fit any iPhone as well as all pocketable items. Beginning Friday, November 14, it will be available at select Apple Store locations and on apple.com in France, Greater China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S. iPhone Pocket features a ribbed open structure with the qualities of the original pleats by ISSEY MIYAKE. Born from the idea of creating an additional pocket, its understated design fully encloses iPhone, expanding to fit more of a user’s everyday items. When stretched, the open textile subtly reveals its contents and allows users to peek at their iPhone display. iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).

  • Apple Debuts iPhone Pocket, a Limited Edition iPod Sock-Style Accessory

  • Apple made a $230 crossbody sock

• $230 socks will make up for it... iPhone Air Sales Are So Bad That Apple's Delaying the Next-Generation Version

• MrBeast adds to his executive team with new hires from TikTok, Snap, and more

• Another chance for JPEG XL? PDF will support format as 'preferred solution'

• Google adds tracking to HTML/ePub exports from Google Docs

• Nest Thermostat: Now 100% Less Evil

  If you have a Nest thermostat of the first or second generation, you probably noticed it recently became dumber. Google decided to pull the plug on the servers that operate these devices, turning them into — well — ordinary thermostats.

• Firefox Expands Fingerprint Protections

• Google claims Microsoft 'bribes' people to use Edge

• Former Trump Official to Lead Israeli Spyware Maker NSO Group

• Paramount Plus is getting a price hike in early 2026

• Facebook ads are advertising illegal drugs for sale, so we ordered some

• Authorities took down Streameast, the largest illegal sports streaming site

• YouTubers aren't relying on ad revenue anymore

• Reddit mod jailed for sharing movie sex scenes in rare "moral rights" verdict

  A Reddit moderator known as “KlammereFyr” was recently convicted by a Danish court after clipping and posting hundreds of nude scenes that actresses filmed for movies and TV shows but apparently never expected to be shared out of context. As TorrentFreak reported, dozens of actresses had complained about the mod’s sub-reddit, “SeDetForPlottet” (WatchItForthePlot), with some feeling “molested or abused.” Demanding Danish police put an end to the forum, the Rights Alliance—representing the Danish Actors’ Association, two broadcasters, and other rightsholders—pushed for a criminal probe. The groups argued that KlammereFyr removed the artistic context and immorally sexualized actors, sometimes by cropping scenes or “changing the lighting to accentuate certain features,” TorrentFreak reported.

• Facebook's ad targeting algorithm is inherently biased

• PS5 Has Now Officially Outsold Every Xbox Console Ever Released

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Meta's Omnilingual ASR: Open-Source Speech Recognition for 1600 Languages

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to exit and launch own startup

  • Yann LeCun reportedly leaving Meta to launch new AI startup

• OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

• AI chatbots could help stop prisoner release errors, says justice minister

• UK minister unveils plan to cut animal testing through greater use of AI

• Time Magazine Launches Time AI Agent

• Netflix issues GenAI rules:no generative AI in final deliverables

• The AI Cold War That Will Redefine Everything

• Microsoft's Dealings with OpenAI Still Need More Sunlight

• Anthropic Is on Track to Turn a Profit Much Faster Than OpenAI

• AI's bubble just entered a new phase. This one's debt-fuelled

• The New Brutality of OpenAI

• LLM-Driven Robots Risk Enacting Discrimination, Violence, and Unlawful Actions

• Wikipedia urges AI companies to use its paid API, and stop scraping

• AI adoption in US adds \~900k tons of CO₂ annually, study finds

• AI Country Singer Breaking Rust Tops Billboard with 'Walk My Walk'

  • The No. 1 Country Song in America Is AI-Generated

• Superintelligence probably not happening, but AI will still reshape society

• Michael Burry accuses AI hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings

  • The AI Bubble Is Ignoring Michael Burry's Fears

• Google announces more AI in Photos app, powered by Nano Banana

• AI's $5T Cost Needs Every Debt Market, JPMorgan Says

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The First Radio Signal From Comet 3I/Atlas Ends the Debate About Its Nature | WIRED

  More evidence has emerged to support the natural origin of comet 3I/Atlas. After several weeks of conspiracy theories, social media debates, and speculation on popular podcasts such as Joe Rogan's, this interstellar object is still a comet. The most recent confirmation came from an observatory in South Africa that detected the first radio signal from 3I/Atlas. But how? A radio signal? That would have to confirm the object is technlogical in nature, wouldn't it? The thing is, this isn't a radio signal like a transmission emitted by a spacecraft. It's instead a radio frequency pattern detected by MeerKAT, a radio telescope composed of 64 antennas—each with a diameter of 13.5 meters—operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. And what did it detect? "OH absorption was detected on the 1665 MHz and 1667 MHz lines," according to the researchers.

  • Observe how "Science" has become insistence that everything is normal, explained, and that questions are not appropriate. To the point of making nonsensical mis-statements such as "we received a radio signal from it" instead of "radar reflections"

• Key Antenna in NASA's Deep Space Network Damaged

  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed Nov. 10 that the 70-meter antenna at the Deep Space Network (DSN) site in Goldstone, California, has been offline since Sept. 16, with no timetable for its return to service. “On Sept. 16, NASA’s large 70-meter radio frequency antenna at its Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, over-rotated, causing stress on the cabling and piping in the center of the structure,” JPL said in a statement to SpaceNews. “Hoses from the antenna’s fire suppression system also were damaged, resulting in flooding that was quickly mitigated.”

  The antenna, designated DSS-14, is the largest at the Goldstone site and among the largest in the entire DSN. Two other 70-meter antennas operate at DSN sites near Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia. The 70-meter antennas are essential for communicating with spacecraft in the outer solar system and can also be used for closer missions requiring higher data rates or experiencing technical problems.

• Sun unleashes strongest solar flare of 2025 – radio blackouts in Africa, Europe

Crypto con games

• Cryptoqueen who fled China for London mansion to be sentenced over £5B Bitcoin

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Battle over Chinese chip maker rocks global car industry

• SoftBank sells its entire stake in Nvidia for $5.83B

  • SoftBank Sells Its Nvidia Stake for $5.8B to Fund OpenAI Bet

• Investor angst over Big Tech's AI spending spills into bond market

• Paramount Cuts 1,600 More Jobs as Part of Plan to Save $3B

• Recessions have become ultra-rare. That is storing up trouble

• Will a 50-Year Mortgage Make Homes More Affordable?

• Micron has pressed pause on its new facilities in upstate New York, but has simultaneously hit fast forward on its work on factories in Idaho.

• Warren Buffett’s investor letter may be his last as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO.

• UK banks send regulation warning as private credit threat rises

• US Companies Shed Jobs in Late October, Weekly ADP Data Show

• Airbnb competitor Sonder files for bankruptcy after raising $680M

• How HR Took over the World

• Tech stocks suffer worst week since April after $800B AI sell-off

• Reasons people quit a job on the spot

• 'Ghost job' postings are adding another layer of uncertainty to jobs picture

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Virginia Teen Narrowly Defeats His Former Civics Teacher in County Election

Democrats

• Another House Dem drops out of 2026 rat race as party faces generational reckoning.

  (80 year old) Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., announced that she will not seek re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives next year.

• Jasmine Crockett Makes Her Own Dominion Voting Claim In Conspiracy Shocker

  Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said Monday that Dominion Voting Systems ― yes, the same company that Donald Trump and conservatives falsely accused of stealing votes from him in 2020 ― could potentially cheat against Democrats in the 2026 midterms. The Texas Democrat told host Marc Elias that secretaries of state should be “educated” not to purchase Dominion machines.

  “I personally believe that that ally purchased Dominion so that he could potentially play with the machines,” Crockett said. “Because we know that they’re trying to cheat by changing the lines for the midterms, and I think that they’re trying to solidify their cheat potentially with the voting machines.”

  She did not cite evidence for her claims.

  • Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett Raises Alarm: Is Dominion Sale A 2026 'Rigging' Plot?

  • Jasmine Crockett Accuses Republicans of 'Trying to Cheat'

  • Will she be sued for a billion dollars?

• 'Thank you, Nancy': $531M now rides on tech startup's 'Pelosi Tracker'

• Newsom mounts a lonely stage at COP30

Left Angst

• Senate Passes Bill to End Longest Government Shutdown in History

• Democrats rage as government funding bill heads to House

• Chuck Schumer stares down progressive fury over handling of government shutdown 

• Media figures tear into Democrats, accuse party of caving on shutdown vote | Fox News

• Schumer didn’t vote for bill to reopen the government. He’s facing liberal fury anyway. | CNN Politics

  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went out of his way to embody the anger of his Democratic base during this fall’s funding showdown with Republicans — an intentional turnaround from his capitulation in March that turned him into a villain in his own party. He’s still taking the blame from many in his party anyway. Despite voting against the final deal on Monday night, the New York Democrat is again being pummeled by vocal Democrats across the party, who argue he allowed his centrist members to strike a deal with the GOP that fails to prevent spiking health care costs for tens of millions of Americans.

• Schumer faces mounting Democratic calls to resign as leader

• Democrats' shutdown rage erupts in call: "People are f**king pissed"

• This Is No Way to Rule a Country

• Republicans Are Damaged by Their Own Cruelty

  • As the Democrats force people out of social circles and careers for daring to say that shooting Charlie Kirk sucked. As they attempt to justify the pointless shutdown snit they just had.

• The Political Left Is Dialing Up Scrutiny of Data Centers

• The Obamacare secret at the heart of the shutdown: insurers made billions at taxpayer expense

  The 42-day federal shutdown forced by Democrats thrust the economics of Obamacare into the limelight, and exposed an uncomfortable truth: An insurance industry whose executives are increasingly liberal donors has seen its earnings soar with the injection of taxpayer-funded subsidies that propped up Barack Obama's signature health program from collapse. The nation’s largest health insurance companies have seen good business since Obamacare was first passed in 2010 and fully implemented in 2014. This has come in no small part because of federal government subsidies to the insurance industry, which government estimates show totaled $1.8 trillion in 2023 alone. Those subsidies were greatly expanded by the Biden administration during the COVID-19 pandemic as an emergency measure, but Democrats have fought to keep them permanent.

• DHS Agreement Reveals Risks of Using Social Security Data for Voter Citizenship Checks — ProPublica

  This year, when states began using an expanded Department of Homeland Security system to check their voter rolls for noncitizens, it was supposed to validate the Trump administration’s push to harness data from across federal agencies to expose illicit voting and stiffen immigration enforcement. The initial results, however, didn’t exactly back up President Donald Trump’s contention that noncitizen voting is widespread. Texas identified 2,724 “potential noncitizens” on its rolls, about 0.015% of the state’s 18 million registered voters. Louisiana found 390 among 2.8 million registered voters, a rate of about 0.014%. Instead, experts say, the sweeping data-sharing agreement authorizing DHS to merge Social Security data into SAVE could threaten Americans’ privacy and lead to errors that disenfranchise legitimate voters.

• US states could lose $21B of broadband grants after Trump overhaul

• Week After Week, the US Is Dismantling Knowledge Infrastructure

  The dismissals are part of a coordinated assault on America’s knowledge infrastructure. From statistical agencies to national scientific research, the massive defunding threatens profound risks to economic competitiveness that Wall Street has yet to fully price in. The systematic targeting spans the entire knowledge production chain, from soup to nuts. The National Science Foundation has already terminated hundreds of previously approved grants, stopped paying out those that remain, and is no longer awarding new ones. Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would slash NSF funding from $9 billion to $4 billion, a 55% reduction, the deepest cuts to American scientific research since the agency’s founding.

• The Kennedy Center Crackup

• Wikipedia, under fire from conservatives and shaken by AI

• MAHA Is Embracing Elizabeth Holmes. Here's Why.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• From whom? US Army to buy 1 million drones, in major acquisition ramp-up

  The U.S. Army aims to buy at least a million drones in the next two to three years and could acquire anywhere from a half million drones to millions of them annually in the years that follow, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said. Driscoll detailed the major ramp-up in the Army's drone acquisition plan in an interview with Reuters, acknowledging the challenges given that the biggest branch of the U.S. military acquires only about 50,000 drones annually today.

• Steve Blank The Department of War Just Shot the Accountants and Opted for Speed

  Last week the Department of War finally killed the last vestiges of Robert McNamara’s 1962 Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). The DoW has pivoted from optimizing cost and performance to delivering advanced weapons at speed. Taking decades to deliver weapons is no longer an option. The DoW has joined the 21st century and adopted Lean Methodology. Two organizations ought to be very concerned – China and the defense prime contractors.

  One of the biggest changes is the mandate for PAEs to buy Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) products, modify them if necessary and only buy bespoke products as a last resort. This change by itself is going to send shockwaves through the existing Prime contractors. It’s telling everyone that the playing field is now open to everyone. Forget who has more lobbyists on K-Street. Speed, mission impact, and innovation is what will be rewarded. What this means for startups is that if you can execute and deliver (not just PowerPoints) you can become a supplier to the DoW.

• UK suspends some intelligence sharing with US over boat strike concerns

World

• EU to replace cookie consent pop-ups with browser-based mechanism

• Saudi Arabia's Dystopian Futuristic City Project Is Crashing and Burning

• Suicide bombing in Islamabad kills 12, says Pakistan's interior minister

  • PM Modi speaks to Amit Shah on phone from Bhutan; 13 people dead.

• UK asks cyberspies to probe whether Chinese buses can be switched off remotely

• Ofcom is monitoring VPNs following Online Safety Act

• International conflict: Havana Club rum tears 3 countries apart

  Despite these legal turbulences, the rum market is experiencing remarkable growth.

  • But the entire liquor industry is having existential crisis levels of market shrink?

• How Syria's President Transformed His Image

• Prosecutors open war crimes investigation into "sniper tourists" in Sarajevo

  • Wealthy foreigners paid for opportunity to kill civilians during Sarajevo siege

  • Milan prosecutors investigate alleged 'sniper tourism' during Bosnian war

  • These would be the people who shot at Hillary Clinton, presumably.

• Norway Suspended Wealth Fund Ethics Rules to Avoid $230B Tech Sale

• Abe shooting suspect Yamagami pleads guilty to murder

• Ontario considering order that would kill new rental homes

Israel

• Hamas Says Fighters Holed Up in Rafah Will Not Surrender | Algemeiner.com

  Hamas fighters holed up in the Israeli-held Rafah area of Gaza will not surrender to Israel, the group’s armed wing said on Sunday, urging mediators to find a solution to a crisis that threatens the month-old ceasefire. Sources close to mediation efforts told Reuters on Thursday that fighters could surrender their arms in exchange for passage to other areas of the enclave under a proposal aimed at resolving the stalemate. Egyptian mediators have proposed that, in exchange for safe passage, fighters still in Rafah surrender their arms to Egypt and give details of tunnels there so they can be destroyed, said one of the sources, an Egyptian security official. Sunday’s statement from Al-Qassam Brigades held Israel responsible for engaging the fighters, who it said were defending themselves. “The enemy must know that the concept of surrender and handing oneself over does not exist in the dictionary of the Al-Qassam Brigades,” the group said.

• How the BBC became the propaganda arm of Hamas

• BBC forced to correct two Gaza stories a week

• Reuters Pulls Article Which Called 200 Armed Hamas Combatants 'Civilians'

  Despite the fact that Hamas openly acknowledges that some 200 armed combatants holed up in tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip are its fighters, Reuters’ headline out of Istanbul earlier today had alleged: “Turkey seeks safe passage for 200 civilians trapped in Gaza tunnels, official says.” The article’s first sentence repeated the mischaracterization of the armed Hamas combatants as civilians: “Turkey is working to ensure the safe passage of some 200 civilians trapped in tunnels in Gaza . . . “

China

• Apple removes gay dating apps from Chinese App Store at Beijing's request

• Chinese Diplomat Threatens to Behead Japan’s PM Takaichi.

• China's Newly Opened Hongqi Bridge Collapses, Crashing into River Below

  The 758-metre Hongqi Bridge, part of a major national highway linking China’s interior with Tibet, gave way after heavy landslides struck the surrounding mountainside, authorities in Maerkang city told Reuters. Officials added that there were no reports of injuries or fatalities.

• China's new scientist visa is a 'serious bid' for the top talent

Health / Medicine

• The Young Women Grappling with an 'Old Man's Disease'

• Colon cancer is rising in young people and scientists got a clue about why

• Dundee and US surgeons achieve world-first remote stroke surgery on a human body

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Abandoned coal mine drainage identified as a significant source of CO2 emissions

• Scientists discover new "lucifer" bee with devil-like horns

• Rising Prevalence of Sleep Apnoea During Nighttime Heatwaves Across Europe