2026-06-29

Worthy

• How Europe Became the World Champion of Heat Deaths

  why does Europe recoil from a technology which the rest of the developed world (and even large parts of the developing world) take for granted? Part of the answer is historical and cultural. Northern Europe in particular, with its cool climate and mild seasonal swings, had little need for cooling until a few decades ago. But that excuse no longer cuts much ice. The deeper cause is an ideological “less is more” sensibility, more potent in Europe than anywhere else, which frames artificial cooling as a decadent indulgence—something for profligate Yankees with oversized SUVs and backyard pools. That this instinct is especially rampant among European progressives is even more puzzling. Leftists of old such as Karl Marx and Sylvia Pankhurst dreamed of universal abundance and denounced the scarcity mindset; they wanted the masses to share in the comforts once reserved for the rich, not to ration them in the name of nature or virtue. Today’s green gospel of restraint quietly inverts that aspiration, with comfort itself becoming suspect.

  The common thread is a lite-version of the degrowth creed: the conviction that energy use is a kind of sin that we should atone for and reduce as much as possible. Until the 1960s, politicians and utilities promised an age of energy “too cheap to meter.” Now Shell, Engie, and EDF buy advertising space to urge customers to consume less of their own product, peddling slogans such as “the cleanest energy is the energy not consumed.” How strange it is for a private company to coach its customers to buy less of what it sells—a commercial squeamishness that makes sense only in the light of the European doctrine of secular penance.

Horseshit

• When Cybercriminals Hire Burglars

• 'We were guinea pigs': The Gen Zs who grew up online reflect on social media

• The Doomers Are All Right

  A few interviewees — mostly employed by frontier AI labs — expected the world to become unimaginably strange in a good way. One put a 30% chance on utopia, a 30% chance on dystopia, a 30% chance on extinction, and a 10% chance on something too weird to imagine. Several refused to make any prediction; several more said only that they still had hope. About half echoed one of my most blunt respondents: “I don't think humanity is going to make it.” What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end?

  • Nukes were gonna kill everyone in the 80s. then Global Warming, and plagues, and so on. Eventually you should conclude that humans aren't good at predictions.

• Scientists Think They've Uncovered the 15M-Year-Old Origin of Laughter

• Restaurant Matchbooks Are Having a Comeback Thanks to Gen Z

• Food defined social hierarchy in 1776. Here's what was on the table

• These Are the Most Beautiful Equations, According to Mathematicians

• Gracie the giraffe found in Texas after wandering off ranch

  Gracie the Giraffe, who went missing for about two weeks in Texas after wandering off a remote private ranch, was finally found Friday — and the open range appeared to have agreed with her. The giraffe was spotted about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) south of her enclosure during an aerial search in the Texas Hill Country, according to Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson. He said Gracie’s owner, Vick Jones, contacted a veterinarian and began putting together a team to bring the giraffe safely back to the ranch. “She’s in good shape,” Jones said. “She’s standing there, swishing her tail.” Gracie, who is about 3 years old and weighs at least 1,200 pounds, was found within a half-mile of a pond and creek and had plenty of vegetation to feed on, said Jones, adding that she appeared to have been in that area for about a week.

• The Ethical People-Smuggler

• 'Humans behave better when they're being watched'

• The 'Almost Homeless' Subreddit Is a Stark Glimpse at Soaring Wealth Inequality

• Who are the ‘fire-taming’ healers of modern France?

  As a fire-tamer, Mme Abgrall can’t ask for money, my colleague warned me, or her ‘gift’ would disappear. after our visit, I can’t stop thinking about the woman, her humility. The quiet power that enveloped the kitchen scene. Within weeks, the warts have gone and my daughter’s skin is clear; they never reappear. Questions inundate my mind: was it real? Did Mme Abgrall cure the warts?

• Your Kids’ School Bus Is About to Become a Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

• There are 5.7M more childless women of prime child-bearing age than expected

celebrity gossip

• Still blazing after all these years: Mel Brooks at 100

  • 'Born to make people laugh': Comedy legend and Jewish icon Mel Brooks turns 100

  • Mel Brooks is 100 today

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• A Media Watchdog Released An AI ‘Fact-Checker.’ It Says There May Be 72 Genders. NewsGuard’s AI tool denied that biological sex is a binary and said affirmative action has ‘benefited’ white men.

  • Horseshit remains the same even with "AI" sprinkled over it.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo. That Should Terrify You

• The human eye may hold the fix for self-driving cars

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The parents movement that banned cellphones has a new target

• Study highlights CERN's socio-economic contributions as a global research hub

• The origins of the school system aimed to produce independent, critical thinkers

• More than 3M college students are raising kids. Most won't graduate

• Higher Ed Is Sorry

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• One Million Passports Leaked Online

• Intel's next-gen 52-core Nova Lake CPU could pull up to 474W

• Reservations for Valve's Steam Machine are being resold on eBay for $2700.

  • "Not clear if that includes the cost of the Gabe Cube or if it's just the reservation."

  • Scalpers List Steam Machine Reservations at $1,700

• The PlayStation 6 is expected to cost at least $1000.

• Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

• Lenovo saying RAM prices may never go back to how they were

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Examining circuit boards from the Space Shuttle's I/O Processor

• The Curious Case of aa.ns.charter.com

  I started this expecting a five-minute mystery. It turned into a few hours of investigation, a bug report to a major ISP, and a blog post.

  • The deeper details of DNS in the wild are full of Lovecraft grade monsters that will eat your sanity.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA races to save Swift telescope from falling back to Earth with daring rescue

• Boeing’s Starliner Is Such a Disaster That We Don’t Even Have Words.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Powerful Anthropic model, Fable 5, on track to return soon

  • Trump Admin Releases Anthropic Mythos

  • Expect Claude Fable 5 to Be Turned Back on in a Matter of Days, Report Says

  • Austria Lobbies EU to Host Anthropic After US Access Curbs

• White House Will Ad Hoc Decide Who Can Individually Access GPT-5.6

• Nifty: AMD Strix Halo RDMA Cluster Setup Guide

• China Has Matched Anthropic in Cybersecurity, Resetting AI Race

• Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly

• Could A.I. Find Brazil's Next Pelé?

• Google rejects claims of AI in Search hurting web traffic

• Pentagon Sees Bigger Role for AI in Setting Military Targets

• Google caps Meta's Gemini use as AI demand strains capacity

• 'Once you have a machine think and write for you, you're cooked as a species'

• AI Is Making Silicon Valley Productive, Anxious and Afraid to Log Off

• Nearly Three-Quarters of Dutch Responses to EU Tobacco Rules Were AI-Generated

• In the AI era, be a builder or a seller, not a measurer

• Global recession and the end of the middle class: What 'AI exuberance' could do

• If you thought the global financial crisis was bad

• How People in China Keep Outsmarting Anthropic's Geolocation Restrictions

• Microsoft's Satya Nadella says every company should build its own AI model

• Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown University

• AI is creating America's next underclass

• Nvidia Partner Wants to Put a $150k AI Data Center in Your Yard

• AI glasses are aiding cheating in exams. Test-obsessed Asia is ground zero

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• The Donk-Ing of a Truth Machine

• Polymarket customers lose $3M in supply-chain attack

• Why prediction markets aren't popular

• Wall Street regulator investigating prediction market giant Polymarket

• 'Crypto vs. community': local US lenders join forces to fight 'stablecoins' law

Economicon / Business / Finance

• How Some Private-Equity Managers Collect Big Fees on Paper Gains

• Oracle stock worst week since 2001 dot-com bust, AI financing concerns escalate

• Starbucks Is One of the Largest Banks

• Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

• A 'perfect storm' points to a much smaller U.S. auto market by 2040

• Utility boss warns US faces blackouts due to power supply shortfall

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Fauci, the CIA, and the Unanswered Questions of COVID.

  The public has a right to know about clandestine meetings between public health officials and the CIA. And if true, it is not out of the realm of possibility that there was self-serving connivance between Fauci and the agency, or that a self-justifying information loop kept the American public at bay.

• DOJ Sues Four States That Refused to Hand Over SNAP Data.

  • Justice Department sues 4 states for not sharing SNAP data after it was requested .

• California's landmark anti-plastics law sparks anger as 17 states move to sue

Trump

• Donald Trump is kicking out Chinese firms and keeping their tech

Democrats

• A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family

  You’ve probably heard of “swatting.” It’s a cruel and dangerous kind of hoax that has started happening more frequently in recent years. Someone anonymously calls 911 with a false report of imminent danger, such as a hostage situation, at the home of a public figure. Law enforcement swarms the house, guns drawn, terrifying the unsuspecting homeowner and family and sometimes even leading to deaths or injuries in the confusion. It’s happened to dozens of lawmakers, judges, celebrities, and others. (When I was in the Cabinet, someone attempted to do this to our home, but fortunately the hoax was quickly detected.) It’s become enough of a problem that the FBI now has a dedicated database to track such incidents. Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.

  • the only thing new about this story is that it happened to a Democrat

Left Angst

• FCC accused of hiding Chairman Carr's messages with DOGE and Musk

• The Court That Will Believe Anything Is 'Race-Neutral

• Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit

• Another ICE threat visit: How did agents track down this critic on his vacation?

• Redesign of US Government websites stokes surveillance fears

World

• Phones alerted millions before quakes shook Venezuela

• Australia to double maximum penalty for platforms in breach of social media ban

• South Korea plans to train military as "drone warriors"

• The BBC shuts down its longwave radio service

• Hungary holds first post-Orban Budapest Pride march

• Virtual AI police chief introduced in Osaka amid rising imposter scams

• North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un is illegitimate because his mother was Japanese

Iran / Houthi

• Iran, US continue escalating attacks, recriminations over peace deal

• Iran Attacks Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraqi Government Upheaval

• US launches second night of strikes on Iran after ship hit by drone

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Peruvians promised jobs in Russia, but landed on the front lines in Ukraine

China

• Chinese tech hub's shift into robotaxis leaves drivers by the wayside

• China's CXMT Is Set to Challenge DRAM Incumbents

• Can China build its own ASML?

• Chinese cars go blacker than black via hybrid nano tech

• A plane crashed into tallest skyscraper in Beijing.Hours later,all news scrubbed

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• France records around 1k additional deaths amid extreme heat wave

  • The Overlooked Reason Europe Doesn't Have AC

  • France Is Too Hot for Shutters and Ceiling Fans

• Can we create a shield to protect Earth from solar storms?

• Atlantic "Warming Hole" Heat Content Variations Caused by Ocean Heat Transport

• Artificial rain isn’t a solution to drought, according to a cloud-seeding expert

• How Corporations Convinced America That Litter Is Our Fault

• 'An Inconvenient Truth' 20 Years Later

  The film’s deepest failure was selling Americans on fear instead of innovation. The smarter path is hiding in plain sight: fund green innovation — advanced nuclear, next-generation batteries, fusion, geothermal — so that clean energy can finally undercut fossil fuels on price. Invest in adaptation that saves lives at a fraction of the cost, from sea walls to drought-tolerant crops to early warning systems. And help poor countries grow richer, because prosperity is the most reliable form of resilience. The real lesson of “An Inconvenient Truth” is that panic makes for lousy policy. Trading the doomsday script for innovation, adaptation and development would save trillions — and do far more for people and the planet.

• Rats and mice are mutating and becoming resistant to poison, researchers warn