2026-03-11

Horseshit

• His Mother Vanished When He Was 14. 33 Years Later, He Found Her

• FAA grounds all JetBlue flights after request from airline

  The Federal Aviation Administration briefly grounded all JetBlue flights early Tuesday due to a request from the airline, the agency said in a notice posted to its website. The ground stop was lifted about 40 minutes after it was imposed.

  • US FAA issues ground stop for all JetBlue planes

• 5,200 holes carved into a Peruvian mountain left by an ancient economy

• Whether you have heard of the Extropians or not, they have influenced you

  A group of a few dozen prolific posters are the seeds of the online intellectual communities around AI, existential risk, accelerationism, effective altruism, rationalism, libertarianism, and cryptocurrency. Prominent members such as Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, and Eliezer Yudkowsky formulated the central ideas that they would pull through their entire career on the Extropian forum in the late 90s.

• Fifty years of sexing up tech: Apple's epic hits – and misses

• I'd rather be uncool than be a nihilist

• Haarp: A Never-Ending Conspiracy Theory in Remote Alaska

  • (2011) The Antenna Array of Intrigue

• The Met Opera's Desperate Hunt for Money

• The FAT Ice Race Is a Reminder that All Cars Are Meant To Be Driven

  "You know, as opposed to putting it away and just letting it sit there, you might as well invest in artwork or something," Barry Lundgren told The Drive just before taking his Ferrari Enzo ice racing.

Epstein

• 'The cover-up is brazen': one journalist's fight to expose Ghislaine Maxwell

  With Epstein dead and Maxwell in jail, who was paying these men? “It could be any of the people who are not yet facing charges,” says Osborne-Crowley when we meet. “Firstly, they can afford it. The weekend I was in Miami, there was a person following me, a person following a survivor in South Africa who was in my book, and a person following a survivor in the UK. Just so that we all were aware.” Two women withdrew from The Lasting Harm after receiving threats. “Ghislaine used to tell them: ‘If you ever tell anyone what’s going on here, no matter how far into the future, we will find you and we will stop you.’ And in a lot of ways, that promise was kept.”

Obit

• Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed Watergate tapes, dies at 99

• Turing Award winner and former Oxford professor Tony Hoare passed away

• Tommy DeCarlo, Boston Fan Who Became Their Lead Singer, Dead at 60

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us

• Who really killed German nuclear?

  The first German chancellor to phase out nuclear power went on to chair the board of the pipeline company owned by the man he called his friend. A regional minister built a climate foundation that was used to funnel Gazprom money into that same pipeline. And environmental groups across Europe took Russian money, lobbied against nuclear energy and convinced the German public that it was unsafe and unnecessary.

  • Not just in Germany...

• White supremacist social media grips teens plotting attacks in Southeast Asia

Musk

• Cybertruck in Autopilot mode tried to drive off Houston bridge, suit says

• Amazon tells FCC to bin SpaceX's million-satellite datacenter dream

  Amazon wants US regulators to reject a SpaceX application for permission to launch a fleet of orbital datacenter satellites, criticizing it as incomplete, speculative, and unrealistic. In a filing dated March 6, Amazon Leo claims the application provides only the barest outline of how SpaceX will deliver on its “grand claims.” SpaceX is seeking authority to operate a constellation of up to a million satellites in low Earth orbit, a remarkable number given that around 15,000 satellites in total are currently circling the planet. Amazon Leo argues the SpaceX application lacks basic details including satellite design, the radio frequency characteristics of the units, and "any plan for managing conjunctions or interference at million-satellite scale." In short, it says, the application seems to describe a lofty ambition rather than a real plan, and derides it as a "speculative placeholder rather than a complete application under the Commission's rules."

• X suspends 800M accounts in one year amid 'massive' scale of manipulation

• Tesla FSD drives through railroad crossing barriers in viral video

• NASA and SpaceX disagree about manual controls for lunar lander

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Ideology, not science, drove the global prohibition of psychedelics

• How God Got So Great

  What monotheism means is surprisingly hard to pin down, but there’s a reason it swept the world.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Ig Nobels to move awards to Europe due to concern over US travel visas

  • Ig Nobels ceremony moves to Europe over security concerns

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max CPU Analysis – M5 Max Is Not Much Faster Than the M4 Max

• Meta, Google Pivot in Addiction Trial to Accuser's History

• EQT eyes potential $6B sale of Linux pioneer SUSE, sources say

• An iPhone-hacking toolkit used by Russian spies likely came from U.S. contractor

• Breaking free from smartphone addiction: Defensive tactics against algorithms

• Trial against Meta in New Mexico highlights video depositions by top executives

• Sony is testing dynamic pricing in the PlayStation Store

• Sony's PlayStation 6 won't be delayed due to high memory prices.

• Hisense TVs add unskippable startup ads before live TV

• Traffic from Russia to Cloudflare is 60% down from last year

• Today Is the 150th Anniversary of the First Telephone Call

• Clean your feed: Dodge TikTok's powerful algorithm

• System76 tries to talk Colorado down over OS age checks

• Internet Archive Faces Copyright Lawsuit over 'Myspace Dragon Hoard'

• Nvidia is bringing X-Plane to the Apple Vision Pro

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• 1,300-pound NASA satellite will crash to Earth on March 10

  The spacecraft in question is the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) Van Allen Probe A, which launched in August 2012 along with its twin, Van Allen Probe B, to study the radiation belts around Earth for which they're named. Both spacecraft were deactivated in 2019, and Van Allen Probe A's time off Earth is now nearly up. As of Monday afternoon (March 9), the U.S. Space Force predicted that the satellite will reenter Earth's atmosphere on Tuesday at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT), plus or minus 24 hours. "NASA expects most of the spacecraft to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, but some components are expected to survive reentry," NASA officials wrote in an update on Monday. "The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low — approximately 1 in 4,200."

  • A 1,300-pound NASA spacecraft to re-enter Earth's atmosphere

• SETI admits its search for alien life may be too narrowly focussed

• Meteorite Crashes Through Roof in Germany After Fiery Light Show

• After falling far behind the rest, Blue Origin creates new stock option plan

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI on Surveillance and Autonomous Killings: You're Going to Have to Trust Us

  • Anthropic Claims Pentagon Feud Could Cost It Billions

• The lawyers and scientists training AI to steal their careers

• An Ode to Craftsmanship in Software Development

• Yann LeCun Raises $1B to Build AI That Understands the Physical World

  • Yann LeCun's AMI Labs raises $1.03B to build world models

  • Yann LeCun's AI startup raises $1B in Europe's largest ever seed round

  • Yann LeCun's AI startup raises $1B seed round

• New Study Finds 'AI Brain Fry' Hitting Workers – Marketing and HR Top the List

• AI agents now help attackers, including North Korea, manage their drudge work

• Amazon holds engineering meeting following AI-related outages

  • After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes

• Family of Tumbler Ridge shooting victim suing OpenAI

  • Family of child injured in Canada school shooting sues OpenAI

• AI chooses nuclear escalation in 95% of simulated crises

• A college student's perspective on using AI in class

• New AI Agent Could Transform How Scientists Study Weather and Climate

• Para-biathlete wins silver using ChatGPT as his coach

• Mira Murati's Thinking Machines strikes multibillion chip deal with Nvidia

• Amazon Wins Court Order Blocking Perplexity AI Shopping Bots

  • Judge blocks Perplexity's bot Amazon shopping in early test of agentic commerce

• Meta acquires AI agent social network Moltbook

  • Meta Is Buying Moltbook

  • Meta acquires Moltbook

• Professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI

• Jigsaw puzzles: The hobby that AI is ruining for its fans

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Nasdaq partners with Kraken to distribute tokenized stocks globally

  • Nasdaq Partners with Kraken in Plan for 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading

• Bitcoiners celebrate as the network produces its 20Mth coin

• Prediction market firms could be making $10B in yearly revenue by 2030

• From millions of dollars to under a grand: The dramatic fall of the NFT

• Ohio judge rules that Kalshi is sports betting and must adhere to state law

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Nexperia China says it has begun producing its own chips

• SEC Holds Roundtable on the "Retailization" of Private/Alternative Investments

• Something feels weird about this economy

  in terms of the headline numbers, everything is kind of just bumping along. From a bird’s-eye view, this economy looks pretty normal and healthy. Under normal circumstances, I’d be inclined to not even write a post about the macroeconomy this month. But underneath the surface, two interesting things are happening. The first is that productivity growth has accelerated; the second is that job growth has stalled out. On its face, this sort of pattern might suggest that AI is finally starting to take Americans’ jobs — and lots of people are suggesting this conclusion. But when we look closely at the numbers, the story becomes more complicated.

• Inside one of the wildest days the oil market has ever seen

  Over the next 23 hours, the benchmark Brent crude price surged to as high as $119 a barrel before plunging to $84, the biggest intraday swing in dollar terms on record.

• First Brands row hints at banks' shadow exposure

• Uber rolls out women-only option in the US

• Orange County homeowner says insurer used drone to inspect her roof

• Oracle beats Q3 expectations, raises 2027 revenue outlook sending stock higher

• Deleted Tweet from Energy Secretary Sends Oil Markets on Another Wild Ride

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Financial group probed by congressional committee over Chinese stock scams

Trump

• Trump Advisers Urge Him to Find Iran Exit Ramp

• Trump considering taking over Strait of Hormuz

Left Angst

• Trump more popular than Harris, Newsom: Survey

• ProPublica Wins Lawsuit over Access to Court Records in U.S. Navy Cases

• Palantir's lethal AI weaponry deployed to find chairs for US Government staff

• Left-Wing Activist Group Teaches Liberals How To Get Through Jury Selection and Vote 'Not Guilty' on Trump DOJ Prosecutions, Recordings Show

  'Never mention jury nullification' during jury selection, Freedom Trainers advises its attendees. Then, vote 'not guilty' for 'any reason you believe is just.'

  • Hm. I remember it being worth a FBI file to even mention "jury nullification" during the Clinton years. It was a "tool of white supremacy" then. I've had a Federal judge release me from jury duty because I knew what it was.

• The Pete Hegseth Exception

• Pete Hegseth Blew Billions on Fruit Basket Stands, Chairs, and Crab

• US added more solar than any other technology in 2025, but is down 14% from 2024

• Trump Plots Petty Revenge on Anthropic CEO

• The Latest Republican Efforts to Make It Harder to Vote in the Midterms

  • AKA "Democrats can't win without fraud, no fair taking steps to impede it"

• DOGE member took Social Security data on a thumb drive, whistleblower alleges

• RFK Jr. Says ‘Malevolent Forces’ Can Be Beaten With ‘Sacred Ritual’ of Eating Dinner

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Texas women used crow drones to fly drugs into Louisiana prison

• Treasure hunter freed after decade of refusing to reveal site of shipwreck gold

  • Treasure hunter released from prison after refusing to disclose location of gold

  A deep-sea treasure hunter who made one of the great shipwreck discoveries in American history and spent more than a decade in jail after refusing to disclose the whereabouts of some of its missing gold coins is now out of prison. Tommy Thompson, who in 1988 located what was known as the Ship of Gold off the coast of South Carolina, was released last Wednesday, according to federal Bureau of Prisons records reviewed by The Associated Press

• Bay Area man gets 11 years for $1B solar Ponzi scheme

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• GPS jamming: The invisible battle in the Middle East

• Bell's X-76 Fold-Away Rotor Aircraft Is DARPA's Newest X-Plane

• Trump cancels sanctions against countries buying Russian oil

• It is time for the world to move on without the United States

• The U.S. Israel war with Iran could shatter the United Nations led global order

• Gunmen open fire on U.S. consulate in Canada, none injured

  Police in Toronto, Canada, on Tuesday announced that gunmen had fired on the U.S. consulate, resulting in no injuries. The suspects reportedly drove a white Honda CR-V, stopped in front of the building, and fired multiple rounds, before returning to the vehicle and fleeing the scene. None were injured in the incident.

  • Canada boosts security at U.S., Israeli diplomatic buildings after consulate shooting

World

• MPs reject ban on social media for under-16s

• German Court Rules TCL QLED Advertising Misleading, Orders Halt

• Government panel to compile groundwater report, includes users' nationalities

• German publishers reject Apple's revised app tracking rules, urge antitrust fine

• Scotland becomes first UK country to legalise water cremations

• Calls grow for Australia to give Iran's women's soccer team asylum after anthem protest | The Times of Israel

• Iran war shows Green Deal 'fundamental' to EU security

• Volkswagen to cut 50k jobs as China offers cheaper electric cars

  • Volkswagen to cut 50k jobs as profits drop

• Germany's Solar Boom Eases Power Costs as Gas Price Jumps

• Meta drops appeal against ruling requiring non-algorithmic social media timeline

• Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief says

• White men will have 'fewer board seats' in future, says UK diversity chair

• Sweat of Tourists Has Covered Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Fresco in White Film

• Philippines shifts to four-day work week as Iran war pushes oil prices up

Iran / Houthi

• Actuarial Warfare: How Seven Insurance Letters Closed the World’s Most Critical Chokepoint and Why Markets Are Mispricing Duration by 300%

  At midnight Greenwich Mean Time on 5 March 2026, seven of the twelve International Group Protection and Indemnity clubs that collectively insure roughly 90% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage executed identical cancellation notices for war-risk coverage across the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and Iranian territorial waters. Gard, NorthStandard, Skuld, Steamship Mutual, the American Club, the Swedish Club, and the London P&I Club withdrew coverage. They did not act because a government ordered them to. They did not act because a naval commander declared a blockade. They did not act because a single mine had been laid in the shipping channel. They withdrew because their London treaty reinsurers, confronting unlimited tail exposure in an active combat zone, could no longer satisfy the 99.5% Value-at-Risk capital charges mandated by the European Union’s Solvency II directive. The reinsurers pulled capacity. The clubs, which operate as mutuals whose losses fall directly on member shipowners, had no mathematical alternative. In that instant, seven letters accomplished what the entire Iranian navy could not.

  This is not a geopolitical risk overlay. This is the first live demonstration of Actuarial Warfare: a paradigm in which private reinsurance desks, operating under regulatory capital constraints, exercise de facto sovereignty over the planet’s most critical maritime chokepoint more durably than navies, missiles, or executive orders. The closure mechanism is financial, not kinetic. Its reversal requires not military victory but the sequential, multi-party reconstruction of a commercial risk market that was already structurally hollowed by 26 months of Houthi losses before the first bomb fell on Tehran. And this mechanism is now interacting with four other channels, each independently severe, in ways that produce emergent dynamics no compartmentalised institutional framework can synthesise.

• IRGC commander issues ‘shoot-to-kill’ warning as anti-regime chants echo across Iran.

• The 'number station' sending mystery messages to Iran

• Air strikes cause black rain and 'unprecedented' pollution in Tehran

• Steve Rosenberg: Russia seeks diplomatic and economic gains from Iran war

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's deportation of Ukrainian children amounts to crime against humanity

China

• China's AI giants are handing out cash to lure in users

• China Deploys 30k-Ton Liaowang-1 "Floating Supercomputer" to Gulf of Oman

• There are 56 ethnicities in China–and 55 are getting squashed

• China issues second warning on OpenClaw risks amid adoption frenzy

• China’s 1st moon astronauts could land in Rimae Bode, a ‘geological museum’ on the lunar near side.

• Toyota’s $15,000 EV surpasses 80,000 deliveries in China in its first year

Health / Medicine

• Three distinct ADHD biotypes identified using brain-first, data-driven approach

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• We now know why some people had blood clots after Covid shots

• Scientists Get a Glimpse of How New Pandemics Are Made

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• What the EU's new industry and 'Made in Europe' rules mean for climate action

• Against the unchecked growth of satellite mega constellations

• Scientists detect a sudden acceleration in global warming

• Can pumping chemicals into the ocean help stop global heating?

• Reese's changed its chocolate because of climate change

• The Deadliest Animals

  biggest killers, by far, are mosquitoes. They have been one of our biggest threats for millennia, and still kill approximately 760,000 people every year.2 Over 80% of those deaths are the result of malaria, which is transmitted and spread by the Anopheles mosquito. Malaria still kills close to half a million children every year. Another 100,000 people die every year from other mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue fever and yellow fever (spread by the mosquito species Aedes aegypti) and Japanese encephalitis. Snakes are one of the most common phobias, and you can see why. They are the second largest killers. The death toll from venomous snakes is surprisingly uncertain, as many of these deaths occur in rural areas where death records are often poor. But the figure is likely to be around 100,000 deaths per year. That means snakes kill more than all animals below them on the list combined. Most of those remaining deaths are caused by dogs, the animals that humans have grown to love as domesticated pets. The majority are due to rabies, rather than direct wounds.

• Longest snake ever measured is over 23.5 feet long

• Winter getting shorter in 80% of major US cities, new data shows