2026-06-30

Horseshit

• NASA's X-59 "frankenjet" tests supersonic flight without the sonic boom

• (Apr 2026) The Lifecycle of an Apocalypse

  So far, however, civilization has not been destroyed. It seems the demand for techno-apocalypses is much greater than the supply. What’s going on here? Why are so many people always convinced that technology is on the cusp of destroying civilization?

• How can engineering leaders avoid becoming Bond villains?

• AirBnB anti-party system returns for July 4 weekend

• The No-Human Future

• Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die atop a mountain?

• Farming is Why Humanity is Fucked

• Did a bar scan your face this Pride weekend?

• In San Francisco, Even $180k Tech Salaries Are No Longer Enough

• Gen Z is afraid to drink, date, marry or have kids.

• JetBlue flight hits drone while landing at JFK: Officials

• The Billionaires' Vagina Club

  With her motto, “Sexual health is health,” Dr. Sally Greenwald aims to optimize orgasms for the women of Silicon Valley.

• What counts as cooking? In defense of the store-bought sauce

  • Nothing but the freshest, purest raw elements will do. Mix your own hydrocarbons or you might as well be microwaving popcorn.

Obit

• Dame Penelope Keith, star of The Good Life, dies aged 86

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The Onion's quest to turn InfoWars into a comedic revenge story

• 85% of kids are still using social media despite ban

• Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

• US lags other countries in social media restrictions, a reform push is growing

• How to lie about radiation

  Drinking one beer a night for a year is a lot less harmful than drinking 365 beers in one go. The same applies to radiation exposure, but regulation doesn’t agree.

  • "nuclear" == "death magic" was a big part of the Cold War, and was convenient for the "humans shouldn't have more energy" green propaganda after that. The recoveries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed the lies, for those who would look.

Musk

• SpaceX just landed in 401(k)s due to key index rule changes

• 'The cult of Elon': SpaceX investors grapple with volatility amid big swings

• Why SpaceX is the McDonald’s of AI

• Musk says SpaceX is putting top Starship and Starlink engineers to work on Grok

• Truckloads of Tesla Batteries Keep Getting Stolen Before They Leave the Factory

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Volkswagen ends self-driving partnership with Bosch

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Are Humanoid Robots Ready to Be Deployed?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why did this journal retract two 1940s papers by Max Planck?

• LAUSD's screen ban sets new milestone in tech backlash

• Universities are studying how they lost the public's trust

• CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Windows 10 support extended until Oct 2027, as users reject Windows 11

• David Sedaris on his Duolingo obsession

• Micron Suggests Apple Helped Cause Memory Price Crisis

• US seizes hundreds of FIFA World Cup illegal streaming domains

• Google's new hand-wave reCAPTCHA can be bypassed with a stock photo

• Comcast to Spin Off NBCUniversal

  • Comcast to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into separate company

  • Comcast Plans Company Split, Sending Shares Soaring 20%

• The cube is a lie: RIP Companion Cube

  Over the next seven months, we poured our souls into this project. More than a thousand hours went into engineering from our industrial design team. Forty-four sets of injection molding tools were developed, one for each of the cube's sub-components. The entire product was redesigned from scratch more than once, just to get the way it cradles the console exactly right. We literally rented out a university campus to film the launch video. By the end, we were losing money on every $99 Poverty Cube sold, but it didn’t matter. This had turned into a passion project for the entire organization. Unfortunately, being proud of the thing we made did not give us the right to make it. We launched around 3am on Monday, June 22nd. Overnight, it became the second-fastest selling product in our 15-year history, behind only the Switch 2 Killswitch. Shortly after, Valve’s legal team reached out. They stated that the Companion Cube is Valve intellectual property, for which dbrand does not have a license. They requested we take down the product and launch film immediately. This was entirely within their rights, and they were direct, fair, and respectful throughout.

  • Dbrand cancels Companion Cube because it didn't ask Valve for permission

• Roanoke homeowner says Flock Device was installed on her property without notice

• US offers $10M for info on group behind Signal and WhatsApp hacking

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• (2024) Open Source Software Is the Pastime of the Rich

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA’s canceled Artemis hardware contracts reached $5.9 billion, audit finds.

• Rocket Lab buys Iridium in $8B deal, to expand beyond launches

  • Rocket Lab Buys Satellite Operator Iridium in Bid to Challenge SpaceX

  • Rocket Lab Acquires Iridium Communications

• NASA races to save Swift telescope

  • NASA Aims to Catch a Falling Space Telescope and Push It Back Up

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• NASA tests AI medic for astronauts too far from Earth to call a doctor

• The Taser CEO Who Says AI Is the Future of Policing

• As AI costs rise, there is little evidence of major utility

• Anthropic CEO: Open-Source AI is getting dangerous

• The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age

• LLM Medical Triage: Same Symptoms, Gender-Dependent Urgency

• Welcome to Sloptopia: The Future of the Internet

• Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres

• Would Claude Refuse an Illegal Military Order?

• In 5 years, nobody will give a damn about AI-detectors

• AI Bust Risks Ripple Effects from Growth to Credit, BIS Says

• AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

• Why are there more top grades at university? ChatGPT is to blame

• AI 'exuberance' risks ending in lengthy investment bust

• AI coding costs are on track to match human payrolls.

• OpenAI, Anthropic new AI spending reality as users shift to efficiency

• The A.I. Race Isn't America vs. China

• Once, cyber-attacks required great skill. AI is changing that

• Teaching AI how people work is fraught with problems

• AI 'exuberance' risks ending in lengthy investment bust, BIS warns

• The Wyoming Town in Uproar over Plans for a Data-Center "Man Camp"

• A right-wing media chain tried to replace 47 newspapers with AI. They all died

• Low-cost Chinese AI models like DeepSeek gain traction in the U.S.

• WSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense

• Amazon Is Awash with AI-Written Guideslop for Games That Aren't Even Out

• Meta uses CXL to reuse old DDR4 and cut some inference fleets by 25%

• Bernie Sanders unveils $7T plan to give Americans control of AI industry

• Publishers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for training ChatGPT with their content

• Anthropic, Gavin Newsom make deal allowing CA gov to use Claude at half price

• A.I. 'Employees' Might Disrupt Work in Unexpected Ways

• How AI Is Changing the Way Politicians Run for Office

• New York's War on Compute

• Meta Posed as Teens to Prompt Rival Chatbots About Suicide, Sex, and Drugs

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Billionaire Jeremy Grantham says Bitcoin will 'dwindle away with a whimper'

• Polymarket traders revolted over one silly sillable

• Strategy Says It May Sell Up to $1.25B of Bitcoin

• People are betting on wildfires. Should they?

  Fire survivors say “it’s morally reprehensible,” and experts worry the wagering could lead to arson.

• Kalshi sues Illinois over new tax on prediction market sports bets

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Apple accuses India of 'copy-pasting' rivals' claims in antitrust investigation

• Inside Consultants' Messy Shift from Hourly Billing

• US Grid Constraints: Towards 40GW+ of Behind-the-Meter Datacenter by 2028?

• The Trillion-Dollar Borrowing Binge Lifting the Stock Market to Risky Heights

• Amazon seller reveals shadow bribery market within Amazon

• Why it's almost impossible to produce a smartphone in the United States

• Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

• The Cutthroat Battle to Become America's Rare-Earth Champion

• Super Micro Raided as Taiwan Expands Chip Smuggling Probe

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• A Baby Formula Probe Produced a Pile of Evidence. Then the DOJ Dropped the Case

• Supreme Court rules Trump cannot fire Fed member Lisa Cook

  The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a setback to President Donald Trump, rejecting his attempt to fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, while in a separate case giving him a freer hand to exert control over other hitherto independent federal agencies. The two decisions, issued at the same time and both authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, together marked another example of the conservative-majority court pushing back on one aspect of Trump’s broad exertion of executive power while giving him the green light on another.

  • US Supreme Court rejects Trump's unprecedented bid to fire Fed's Cook

  • Supreme Court expands Trump's power over the federal bureaucracy

• Supreme Court restricts use of geofence warrants

  • US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

  • Supreme Court rules geofence warrants are protected by privacy rights

• SCOTUS Whiffs on Election Day Showdown, 5-4.

  Barrett authored the decision overruling the Fifth Circuit, allowing ballots to be collected and counted after Election Day, in a 5-4 ruling in which Chief Justice John Roberts concurred.

• RNC sues Jena Griswold over ‘never-resident’ overseas voters.

  Griswold’s office claims that “if you are a United States citizen who has never lived in the United States, you can register to vote in Colorado if your parent, legal guardian, spouse, or domestic partner was a resident of Colorado before leaving the United States.”

Democrats

• An Open Letter to Pete Buttigieg

  What happened to you was a malicious false report, the kind often compared to “swatting.” It was resolved relatively quickly. For that, your family was fortunate. Your public profile, resources, and the anonymous nature of the claim likely helped authorities move fast and clear you. Most men in America are not so lucky when false or exaggerated allegations of abuse or danger surface in family matters. You experienced 24 hours of this nightmare. Many fathers would consider 24 hours a miracle. Countless others lose primary access, or see their role reduced to that of a visitor and paycheck for far longer—sometimes permanently—despite later exoneration or lack of evidence.

• AOC says 'we need to break up these companies' after Apple raises prices by $200

• Soros Family Pours $103 Million Into Midterms.

Left Angst

• Company Cleaning Up the Reflecting Pool Says It Has 'Nothing to Hide'

• Trump may be mystery patient in case of 79yo getting experimental obesity drug

• Communicating the Value of Publicly Funded Science

  • Science has no more right to tax monies than any other church; and is less suited to avoid the corrupting effect of public subsidy.

• The war against 'woke' could end US science as we know it

• Trump's U-Turn on Iran Sanctions Would Unravel Decades of Curbs

• New nuclear reactors for America 250 come with safety concerns

• The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the far-right Swedish Örebro party

  • Mullvad VPN co-founder donated ~500,000USD to Swedish far-right political party

  • Mullvad's co-founder is bankrolling the far right

• The DOGE Boys Get VC Funding to Support Their Latest Enterprise

• Poll: Most Democrats say they’d rather live outside the United States.

• New York Times Losing Its Mind Because GOP Women Are Having Kids.

• Is the vibecession real – or is the survey broken?

  A shift to online polling and undersampling of Republicans are skewing America’s most-cited measure of consumer sentiment.

• CNN star Anderson Cooper told colleagues he doesn’t want to work for Bari Weiss: report

• Feds Tracked Down an Anti-ICE Dad in NYC Hotel, but How?

• Uncapping the U.S. House is achievable and impactful

  Congress capped the House of Representatives at 435 seats in 1929 and has kept it at that number for almost a century. The country has added more than 200 million people since then. The number of representatives has stayed at 435. The cap is a statute Congress wrote, and Congress can remove it the same way it imposed it. Article I, Section 2 allows one representative for every 30,000 people and guarantees each state at least one seat. It sets no maximum number of members.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Prosecutors used ChatGPT logs in a wildfire trial; jury split 10-2 for defense

  Jonathan Rinderknecht was facing arson charges for setting a fire on New Year’s Day in 2025, which became one of the deadliest wildfires in LA history. To make their case, prosecutors turned to location data from his iPhone, security camera footage, and witness testimony. But they also turned to his ChatGPT logs. Prosecutors said that Rinderknecht had ChatGPT generate images of fire, asked the chatbot, “Why am I so angry all the time?”, and ranted to it about how the wealthy were destroying the world. They also pointed to a screen recording in which Rinderknecht asked ChatGPT whether someone could be blamed for a fire if it was lit by their cigarette. But the jurors were unconvinced. The trial ended in a deadlock when the jury voted 10-2 in favor of the defense. That led the judge to declare a hung jury and a mistrial.

  One juror told CBS LA that she didn’t believe the ChatGPT logs were proof of anything, saying, “I talk to ChatGPT all the time.” She said it actually made her “angry” that they were suggesting his use of the chatbot indicated some sort of character flaw.

World

• EU countries move to revive temporary message-scanning regime

• Greece's Parthenon gets a facelift, revealing a look not seen for 220 years

• White working-class children failed by education system, says inquiry

• Thai family mourns teen girl found dead in suitcase as Australian arrested

• Germans are researching their Nazi past as the far right urges them to move on

• Australia investigating five social media giants for not enforcing ban on kids

• 'Down from Londoners' Are Transforming England's Seaside Towns

• Australia toughens social media ban, doubles potential penalties for tech firms

• More fun with high-speed rail in the UK

• Why can't India's government build a decent website?

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

• EU introduces €3 customs charge on small parcels to curb cheap Chinese imports

  • "trade war" and "global economic crash" and such dire consequences will surely follow, right?

• Digital Sovereignty at the UN

• UK firm bombarded debt-ridden people with 5.5M texts

• South Korea announces more than $1T AI, chip investment drive

• Android's earthquake warning system alerted 11 Million people in Venezuela

• Google warns EU's plans to weaken its monopoly could expose user data

• How German trains became the shame of a nation

• UK Government defends plan to switch off terrestrial TV

• The High School Pipeline to South Korea's Chip-Making Fortunes

Israel

• CPJ undertakes review of documentation of journalists killed in Israel-Gaza war

  The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is conducting a full review of its database of journalists killed during the Israel-Gaza War after militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying as combatants individuals previously listed by CPJ as journalists.

• Israel deployed troops to Somaliland after recognition, source says

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's newest strike weapon, Balloons

• Putin says Russia will press on front line regardless of Ukraine proposals

• As the Tide Turns Against Putin, Beware the Drowning Man

• Putin is forced to admit the country faces shortages in wake Ukrainian attacks

China

• China cracks down on rule-bending offshore investments

• RedNote Xiaohongshu is said to ready Hong Kong IPO filing this month

• Baidu shares jump 7% as AI chip arm said to target $50B Hong Kong IPO

Health / Medicine

• The surprising reason a sleep tracker can wreck a good night's sleep

• Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?

• The church members disagree on politics. Together theyre wiping out medical debt

• Nearly 1 million bottles of heart and kidney medication recalled over foreign substance.

• $22,000 per Hour: Assistants Use a Legislative Loophole to Outearn Surgeons

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Menstrual Cycle Phase Alters Covid-19 Vaccine Outcomes

  Shortly after the COVID-19 vaccine became available, women started reporting changes to their menstrual cycles on social media—heavier bleeding, longer cycles, and more painful periods. What followed these anecdotes were several large-scale studies and surveys that confirmed these patterns. But the opposite effect had remained unstudied: How does the menstrual cycle affect COVID-19 vaccination outcomes?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Not just for rich people: the progressive case for air conditioning

  • Europe's record heat has overwhelmed Paris mortuaries; left families in distress

  • (Aug 2025) Europe's resistance to AC is driving it insane

  • France records around 1k excess deaths in heatwave

  • 'Kind of miracle solution': How Paris is harnessing the Seine to replace air-con

  • Europe heatwave halts Leipzig trams as soaring temperatures damage tracks

  • German State Media Campaign Against Air Conditioning as Country Faces Record Summer Heat

  • Europe heatwave: Air conditioning creates political divide as France records hottest day

  • France heat wave sparks air conditioner frenzy as shoppers clash in wild video

• Suffocating mega heat dome to engulf 35 states as forecasters issue urgent alert

• Why carbon capture and storage won't fix our climate crisis

• New model of ocean waves sheds light on the spread of microplastic pollution

• Camera traps exonerate endangered tapir blamed for crop damage in Honduras

• Solar outproduced coal in April but not on the grid