2026-08-24

Horseshit

• Automakers Keep Adding Screens, but Buyers Want Something Else

• This Silicon Valley campus was a paradise. Bulldoze it

• We're Not Taking Harmful Cat Behaviors on The Internet Seriously Enough, Researchers Warn

  "Our findings highlight a critical need for educating the public about recognizing, and more crucially, respecting cat dissent, as well as cat preferences for touch and interaction and the serious human health risks of cat bites and scratches." Veterinary scientist Julia Henning and her colleagues found 11 human-cat interaction videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, which had all been labeled 'play' by their creators, and which all featured visible signs of cat distress – like hissing or attempting escape.

  • Eleven videos! OMG get the UN on this immediately!

• Using a shock collar to stop myself doomscrolling

  Did it work? A little too well. I’d set it to 2 and just about threw my phone at the wall when it triggered. I did this twice. The pain was akin to a cramp with a much more sudden onset. I’d imagine the full 16 would reset me to default factory settings. I was now too scared to use my phone. I was also too scared to keep using the collar. As an initial investigation - it could work - I’d just have to switch it to the annoying high pitched beeping setting instead of the abuse settings.

  • Most dogs have more fur than most humans.

• 20 years after Pluto was made a dwarf planet, some still can't let go

• Being nude in public can make us feel better about our bodies

• Volcanoes that made history

• Single adults in early midlife often prefer cohabitation over marriage

• The Strange Allure of Fake Shopping Sites

• Does Chess Make You Smarter? What Chess Can Teach Us

• Yahoo, the internet's 'OG', wants to win over Gen Z

Musk

• Before-and-after images show where SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Move over, Usain Bolt: Humanoid robots smash human records at Beijing games

• Across Nashville, Parked Waymos Are Recording Your Neighborhood

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How Big Tech Captured American Schools

• British Kids Are Skipping Top Colleges for White-Collar Apprenticeships

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Amid intense backlash, people are vandalizing Flock surveillance cameras

  • As Flock battles public scrutiny, other surveillance companies see an opening

  • Flock camera backlash adds fuel to midterm anti-AI frenzy

  • Flock CEO calls for 'compromise' as surveillance company faces growing backlash

• Meta is latest "tech" giant to land in her courtroom. Meet YGR

• Oura smart ring sued: sleep-tracking accuracy is wildly exaggerated

• Microsoft Blames Windows Gaming Issues on RGB Lighting Devices

• Wicker Man director's sons complete their late father's film trilogy

• Are Refurbished Phones Dangerous?

• LinkedIn Has Accidentally Become a Dating Site

• Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

  • Don't build your house on other people's sand

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Python documentation is now available in Russian

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Real AI Crash Will Start This Year

  Railroads changed America and destroyed fortunes. Fiber optic cable became the backbone of the internet after helping bankrupt the companies that laid too much of it. The internet itself exceeded almost every grand prediction made about its importance in 1999, while the Nasdaq still managed to fall roughly 80 percent. The technology is extraordinary, but the capital cycle built around it has gone much further than the economics can support, in my opinion. Investors have taken perhaps the most consequential technological development since the internet and done what investors reliably do with consequential technological developments: extrapolated the eventual destination backward into today’s valuation, financed the intervening decade (or even more) in advance, and then congratulated themselves on the resulting growth.

  The circularity is simple: Nvidia helps finance the companies buying Nvidia-powered compute, those purchases become Nvidia revenue, and that revenue gives Nvidia more firepower to finance the next round. Nothing about that is inherently improper, but it makes Nvidia not just AI’s dominant chip supplier, but one of the financial engines keeping the entire boom moving. If Nvidia were to…say…ever miss earnings, it’s not hyperbolic to say it could put a dent in the entire global economy overnight. US markets would get hit, as would overseas markets. Sentiment across millions of trading desks would change instantly.

• AI has failed to win people's trust. Its makers? less trusted

• Austrian mountain town Leoben finds niche in AI boom

• Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

• My Recent Visit to Anthropic

• Harvard Is Selling a $699 Course Taught by A.I. Clones of Its Faculty

  • Harvard's $699 startup bootcamp offers AI avatars of its instructors

• A mysterious free AI model is impressing developers. Nobody knows who made it

• Rare-Book Sales Are Booming. They're Getting Sliced Up and Fed to AI

• Are You in Danger of Becoming a Robot?

• Palantir's Karp – frontier AI labs that are 'trying to drug addict us'

• 'AI refuser' quit her dream job, and hopes others follow

• Yuval Harari: AIs will control civilisation and what it would mean to be human

• Nvidia Is Spending $6B to Build a Powerful U.S. Alternative to Chinese AI

• OpenAI leader warns of threat of 'persistent' AI cyber-attacks

• We must not grant AI agents legal personhood

• Erik Brynjolfsson says an AI "job apocalypse" is unlikely

• AI robotics companies love San Francisco. They're just too big to stay

• Is there a pending AI 'debt bomb' crisis? No. This isn't Enron 2.0

• Hugging Face has been exploring a sale that could value it at $13B+

• The $28,000 Course for an AI Job Nobody Quite Understands Yet

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Four Years Ago, a Crypto Boss Went Missing. Now His Successor Has.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• What retailers are doing with tariff refunds

• US corporate AI debt surge tests investor limits as fatigue emerges

• Andreessen Horowitz Focus of DOJ Probe over Board Directors

• Airbus bows to remote working demands after series of strikes

• It's OK to not be passionate about your job

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The USA's real Covid-19 scandal is still unfolding

  • "Why did so many Americans die?" ... Because the stats were jinked to call every death a "COVID death" when that was what they wanted.

• FCC pulls HoverAir Versa certification three days after launch

• America Is Building a Surveillance State Like China's

Democrats

• Bill Clinton's Funeral 'Being Planned by Wife Hillary,' Source Claims

Left Angst

• NY Times proposes default as a way to deal with US National debt

• Liberal Families Are Looking Pretty Traditional

  What I see in my deep-blue D.C. neighborhood undermines the simplistic culture-war narrative.

• Trump administration's 75-country visa ban was illegal, judge rules

• The Feta War: U.S. Targets Greece's Cheese

• Go Ahead, Sean Duffy. Let Your Daughter Go to Harvard

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• A Masked Man Was Scaring Philadelphians. Then He Picked the Wrong Woman

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Canada now 'at war' with United States over trade, Prime Minister says

• US Military newspaper editor voices censorship fears after being fired

World

• Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium

• While government reviews aged care algorithm, waitlists are growing

• Japan's music cafés are striking a chord abroad

• The quiet tycoons powering Africa's rise

• Dutch regulator fines Uber $966M for automating driver suspensions

• Rural Village in Spain Is Welcoming Digital Nomads with Open Arms

Iran / Houthi

• Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for 4 days

  • Iran hacked and shut down a British power plant for days

• Traffic through Strait of Hormuz skyrockets nearly 400%

  Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, according to data from the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center. The surge brings total traffic along the passage route to about 20% of pre-war levels, through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil flowed in peacetime.

• Are America's Gulf bases worth rebuilding?

China

• China Is Building AI Models of American Voters

• China’s Chang’e 7 moon probe will launch this weekend on the most ambitious lunar mission in history.

• Chinese parents pay for 'hardship camps' to teach children family appreciation

• Due to need for 'absolute success,' China delays critical Moon launch to 2027

Health / Medicine

• A heart surgeon's confession: it was never the cholesterol

  One of the central lines in the new book is that meat is medicine. He argues the nutrients we actually need are easiest to get from meat, and that plant nutrients are often poorly absorbed. His co-author, Joshua Lisik, spent years vegan, saw early gains, then watched his health come apart. Ovadia is not a zealot. He will support any pattern that reverses disease on labs you can measure. He is just unwilling to pretend a plan is working when it is not. Two people can eat the same menu and get different results, because the question is what you absorb, not only what you swallow. Gut health, bioavailability, and plant compounds that block absorption all matter. Swallowing a nutrient is not the same as using it.

• Membership Fees Are Coming for Your Doctor's Office

• Moderna, Merck breakthrough could usher in wave of cancer vaccines

• Ooops: Wrong antibody used in over 50 cell aging studies

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• European wildfires expose, detonate buried bombs and mines from past wars

• Flooding of ancient Salton Sea linked to San Andreas earthquakes

• Personal care products are awash in unlabeled toxic chemicals, study finds

• Coconut Oil Jet Fuel Matches Kerosene's Efficiency in Engine Tests

• Are Raccoons Evolving into Pets?