2026-03-26

Horseshit

• Is the Male Loneliness Epidemic Just for Wealthy White Men?

• Is lighter sleep a normal part of ageing – or a sign of something more serious?

• Primary School Children Face Having to Work Until They Are 75

  Children who are in primary school today could face working until they are 75 before receiving a state pension, a think tank has warned. Declining birth rates combined with rising life expectancy are forcing the country off a “demographic cliff edge”, according to a report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Analysis in the report shows that in 1970 there were four working-age people for every pensioner, a figure that dropped to 3.5 by 2025. If current trends continue, this ratio could drop to around two workers per pensioner within a century. Given the state pension system is funded by taxpayers, the decrease in people of working age compared to pensioners would make it unsustainable, the CSJ warns.

  • Pyramid schemes rely on continuing growth, which wasn't a realistic projection. "Population Bomb" scare stories regardless.

• Why Is Vogue Suing a Dog Fashion Magazine?

• The scammer, the fixer and the cop: Inside LA's world of millionaire crypto kids

• What the heirs to General Electric did next

• The Brigade System Helps Restaurants Succeed. Does It Also Lead to Abuse?

• My quest to preserve VHS- era gaming culture, one eBay bid at a time

• They're Rich but Not Famous–and They're Suddenly Everywhere

• New 'Lord of the Rings' Movie from Stephen Colbert in Development at WB

  • If ‘Lord of the Rings’ Isn’t Quite Dead, This Guy Can Finish It Off.

  • Stephen Colbert to write new Lord of the Rings film after talk show ends

• The demise of public key encryption will come sooner than thought, Google warns

• Depends on the circumstances: Mathematicians can't agree on whether 0.999 equals 1

• Bond between dogs and humans dates back more than 15,000 years, study finds

• Cannabis Through the Ages

celebrity gossip

• BTS comeback concert on Netflix draws 18.4M global viewers

• Musketeer d'Artagnan's remains believed found under Dutch church

Obit

• Tracy Kidder, Author of 'The Soul of a New Machine,' Dies at 80

Musk

• Elon Musk demands judge's recusal over LinkedIn post after $2B verdict

  Elon Musk is demanding a Delaware judge step aside from a high-stakes Tesla case after she allegedly “supported” a LinkedIn post mocking a $2 billion verdict against him in a separate California case. Lawyers for Musk and Tesla filed a motion in Delaware’s Court of Chancery seeking the recusal of Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick from overseeing consolidated shareholder lawsuits, arguing her conduct “create[s] a perception of bias” that taints the proceedings. The explosive filing centers on activity tied to McCormick’s LinkedIn account following a federal jury verdict in California that found Musk liable over tweets he posted in 2022 about his $44 billion Twitter deal.

  • Musk lawyers try to bar judge over LinkedIn 'like' cheering legal defeat

• Newsom calls Musk "one of the great disappointments" of this era

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Electric Motorcycles are a Security Nightmare

  Around the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Mitchell Marasch and I performed a security assessment of the Zero Motorcycles Android app, which quickly ballooned into an assessment of their PCB potting strategies and bike firmware. And fam, the results were bad. We were able to bypass authentication, sign arbitrary firmware, and even pseudocoded out The Malware That Kills You Instantly. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

• Honda cancels the two electric vehicles it was developing with Sony

  • Sony and Honda Hit the Brakes on a $102,900 EV

• Fire risks and ugly designs are stalling EV charger adoption

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why colleges are turning to oral exams to combat AI

• San Francisco Killed 8th-Grade Algebra. Now It's Set to Come Back

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Meta told to pay $375M for misleading users over child safety

  • Meta ordered to pay $375M in New Mexico trial over child exploitation

  • New Mexico just handed Meta its first courtroom defeat over child safety

  • Meta must pay $375M for violating New Mexico law, jury rules

  • New Mexico seeking changes to Meta's platform after jury finds company liable

  • What could come next for other social media firms after Meta Platforms verdict

  • Jury says Meta knowingly harmed children for profit, awarding landmark verdict

  • Meta and YouTube designed addictive products that harmed young people

  • Meta hit with $375M verdict in New Mexico child safety case

• Intel's Binary Optimization Tool may be cheating on Geekbench 6

• Ads are coming to Apple Maps, as Apple expands its business offerings

• Half of VMware users plan to reduce usage by 2028

• Open source isn't a tip jar – it's time to charge for access

• A man who coined Metaverse now says Meta's glasses are creepy

• ProPublica's union authorizes the first U.S. newsroom strike over AI protections

• An Aural Companion for Decades, CBS News Radio Crackles to a Close

• FCC imposes ban on foreign-made routers, affecting all new models

• Zuckerberg Launches Meta Small Business

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• In Edison’s Revenge, Data Centers Are Transitioning From AC to DC

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• UFO ‘Gatekeeper’ General VANISHES Days After Trump’s Full Disclosure Order

  President Trump’s order to release every UAP and UFO file appears to have triggered a wave of vanishings and deaths among the very insiders who guarded those secrets — and now Congress is being actively blocked from investigating. The general is retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He walked out of his Albuquerque home on February 27 with only hiking boots, a wallet, and a revolver. No phone. No glasses. No trace since.

  Newsmax reported Rep. Tim Burchett directly accusing intelligence agencies of obstruction: some intelligence agencies have thwarted his attempts at finding out what happened to the several prominent scientists and researchers in the U.S. who have reportedly died or gone missing over the past year. This cluster of at least six dead or missing insiders — all tied to the same classified aerospace network — exploded into public view just as Trump’s February 20 directive kicked into high gear.

• A rare active volcano on Mars may be causing the whole planet to spin faster

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI ends Disney partnership as it closes Sora video-making app

  • OpenAI shutters AI video generator Sora in abrupt announcement

• Why AI hasn't caused a job apocalypse – so far

• From Chile to the Philippines, meet the people pushing back on AI

• Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them

• OpenAI Hires CEO of India's JioStar to Head Up Asia-Pacific

• AI automation is quietly de-skilling white-collar workers

• So far AI has mostly proven the inherent worth of menial laborers

• Behind the Curtain – America's next class war: AI fluency

• OpenAI's plans to make ChatGPT more like Amazon aren't going so well

• Washington passes new AI laws to crack down on misinformation, protect minors

• China AI labs face growing open-source dilemma

• I Let AI Plan My Seaside Break and Wound Up Swimming in the North Sea

• Is Taste the One Thing A.I. Can't Replace?

• A.I. Chatbots Want Your Health Records. Tread Carefully.

• Does A.I. Need a Constitution?

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Sports Betting Is Everywhere, Especially on Credit Reports

• Polymarket Bets on Trump Actions Under Scrutiny

• The Casino That's Eating the World

Economicon / Business / Finance

• VW in talks with Israel's Iron Dome maker to shift from cars to missile defence

  • Volkswagen to shift from cars to missile defense in deal with Israel’s Iron Dome maker

• Some Meta employees were told to work remotely for the day as layoffs loom

  • Meta Lays Off 700 Employees, While Rewarding Top Executives

  • Meta Targets $9T Valuation with New Executive Incentive Program

  • Meta is laying off employees, source says

  • Meta cutting several hundred jobs across Reality Labs, Facebook and others

  • Meta Is Cutting Several Hundred Jobs Amid Record AI Spending

• Brewdog founder admits 'many mistakes' as hundreds lose jobs in sale

  The company's brewery and 11 bars were bought by US firm Tilray for £33m after it went into administration on Monday - but 38 other pubs closed and 484 staff have been made redundant. n a statement posted online, Watt said it had been an "incredibly hard" week and that he was "heartbroken" for those who had lost their jobs and invested in its Equity For Punks scheme.

• Oil at $150 will trigger global recession, says boss of financial BlackRock

• Epic Games lays off more than 1k amid slowing Fortnite engagement

• Connecticut law lets lenders go after small businesses nationwide

  Legally, there's no limit to fees on an MCA. That's because a merchant cash advance is technically not a loan but a purchase of the borrower's future sales. So most lending laws don't apply. In most states, MCA lenders don't have to be licensed.

• Oil Theft Is Burning a Billion-Dollar Hole in the West Texas Economy

• Home Loan Demand Drops 10.5% as Rates Climb

• Average gas price poised to hit $4 a gallon

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Delta suspends major travel perk for members of Congress

• Push to close data broker "loophole" in upcoming FISA 702 reauth. bill

• Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider in Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music

  At issue for the justices was whether providers like Cox could be held legally responsible and required to pay steep damages — a billion dollars or more in Cox’s case — if they knew that customers were pirating music but did not take sufficient steps to terminate their internet access. In its opinion released on Wednesday, the court said a company was not liable for “merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.”

  • Supreme Court Wipes Out Record Labels' $1B Piracy Judgment Against Cox

  • Supreme Court makes it harder to sue for copyright infringement

• Bill to prohibit members of Congress, president from prediction market trading

• California Billionaires Are Spending Big in Costly Wealth-Tax Fight

Trump

• Donald Trump: Iran gave US 'big present' on oil and gas related to Strait of Hormuz

  President Trump said Tuesday that Tehran gave the U.S. a “present” related to oil and gas as the countries look toward a potential ceasefire, though he did not specify exactly what the gift was. “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money,” Trump said of Iran. “It wasn’t nuclear-related, it was oil and gas-related,” he added, though he did not offer further details. He described it as “very significant.” Asked if it was related to the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping channel that has been effectively blocked since the war began, Trump answered affirmatively. “It was related to the flow” and the strait, he said. The White House did not immediately respond to a question from The Hill about what exactly the gift was.

• Trump Names Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Jensen Huang to Tech Panel

  • Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang are part of Trump's new 'tech panel'

• Trump administration waives gasoline regulations to address surging fuel prices

Democrats

• Bernie Sanders and AOC introduce bill to pause building of new datacenters

  • A movement to ban data centers gains steam across the U.S.

  • Bernie Sanders and AOC introduce bill to pause building of new datacenters

  • New Bernie Sanders AI Safety Bill Would Halt Data Center Construction

  • Sanders and AOC unveil data center moratorium bill

• Chevron gives Gavin Newsom the middle finger with dramatic move that could help California drivers.

  “We’re going to run Sable’s crude at El Segundo in April,” Chevron executive Andy Walz told the outlet, adding that the Los Angeles-area refinery — which can process about 269,000 barrels per day — is set to handle the supply. Sable announced on March 16 that it had restarted production at its Santa Barbara offshore platforms, sending oil through the region’s controversial pipeline for the first time since 2015.

Left Angst

• Like Putin, Trump is a megalomaniac. In Europe, we can shield ourselves

• US should give up on trying to change EU tech rules, lawmakers say

• Trump, Lost in the Failure of His War, Blinks

• The U.S. attacked Iran to show its power but the war is already lost

• The War in Iran

  for the United States this war was an unwise gamble on extremely long odds; the gamble (that the regime would collapse swiftly) has already failed and as a result locked in essentially nothing but negative outcomes. Even with the regime were to collapse in the coming weeks or suddenly sue for peace, every likely outcome leaves the United States in a meaningfully worse strategic position than when it started.

• Tulsi Gabbard plans to shift In-Q-Tel to her office

• All of DOGE's work could be undone as lawsuit against Musk proceeds

• Where Are All the Campus Protests?

• Scientists Sound Alarm over Federal Plan to Dismantle Weather and Climate Lab

• ‘A new world is being born’: author Rebecca Solnit on the ‘slow revolution’ the far right cannot tolerate | Rebecca Solnit | The Guardian

  yes, we’re living through a political revolution, but it’s not the one you think. It’s not the fast-paced hurtle towards fascist necropolitics we wake up to every day, atrocities constantly exploding, always demanding our attention. Instead, it’s the slow revolution that’s been happening since the 50s, seismic changes in our attitudes to everything, from gender to race to sexuality to science to the climate. Every battle we wage builds on one that was won before. A government can take away your rights, but no one can take away your belief in those rights. The first points of challenge to fascism are memory and history.

• Don't bring shit to the airport: How to Keep ICE Agents Out of Your Devices at Airports

• War in Iran exposes US's shift from a global guardian to an arbiter of chaos

• Melania Trump brings an AI-powered robot to the White House

• Airport wait times are longest in TSA history, agency says

• Migrant children detained California used as bait to arrest and deport parents

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• She uncovered a terrifying lab hidden in California, with alleged ties to China

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US Deploying 3,000 Troops from 82nd Airborne.

  The Pentagon has announced the deployment of 3,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, The National Pulse understands. This move comes amid escalating tensions and reports of potential military operations targeting Iranian assets such as Kharg Island, a major oil export hub.

• US Army raises enlistment age to 42, eases marijuana rules

• Drone Attack on Parked U.S. Army BlackHawk in Iraq a Harbinger of What's to Come

World

• Spanish court order Airbnb to pay €64M fine and refuses to suspend sanction

• The Rise of the 'Backup Passport'

• Social media bans and digital curfews to be trialled on UK teenagers

• ECB ready to hike rates even if expected inflation surge is short-lived

• Apple launches age verification for UK iPhone users

  • Apple introduces age verification for iCloud accounts in the UK

  • Apple begins age checks in the UK with latest iOS update

• Europe facing fuel shortage within days, warns Shell boss

• Europe's Tech Exodus Drained $1.4T in Value

• Anarchists blew themselves up when building bomb in Rome

  The bodies of an anarchist couple were found beneath the rubble of a cottage on the outskirts of Rome after they blew themselves up while making a bomb. Police believed Alessandro Mercogliano, 53, and 36-year-old Sara Ardizzone were plotting an attack against a police station and Leonardo, a defence contractor, which made parts for F-35 jets. Traces of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used to make explosives, were found in the debris of the abandoned building beside an ancient Roman aqueduct on Friday. Police said the pair were supporters of Alfredo Cospito, the jailed figurehead of a loosely organised anarchist network called the Informal Anarchist Federation.

• Slovenian officials catch Israeli firm Black Cube trying to manipulate vote

• Crypto donations to UK parties to be banned

• EU Moves to Ban AI That Creates Nonconsensual Sexual Images

Iran / Houthi

• 70s oil schock: By some metrics, the Iran crisis is worse

• Iran camera network to control dissent turned into Israel targeting tool

• The Cost of Closing the Strait of Hormuz

• Iran Rejects US Peace Plan in Blow to Efforts to End War

Israel

• Palestinians warn of expanding West Bank settler violence

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• At least 40% of Russia's oil export capacity halted, Reuters calculations show

• Russia sending drones to Iran, western intelligence says

China

• Hong Kong police can now demand phone passwords under national security law

• China mapping the ocean floor as it prepares for submarine warfare with the US

• How China Made Itself Tariff-Proof

• China's fight on air pollution has slowed

• China's new masterplan for its tech economy in 2030 and beyond

• Toyota cuts EV prices in China, some now under $15,000

• China reviews $2B Manus sale to Meta as founders barred from leaving country

• China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000

Health / Medicine

• More frequent ejaculations may boost men's fertility, research suggests

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The great fish migrations are collapsing

• El Niño could be here soon, bringing wild weather and a hotter climate

• Population's cadmium overexposure requires urgent action, French agency tells

• The frantic, high-tech fight to stop climate-fueled dengue fever

• The polar bear 'umbrella': How protecting one species saves many

• Cancer-causing chemical found to be leaking from gas cookers

  Nearly 10 per cent of homes tested in the UK, Netherlands and Italy had leaks large enough to exceed exposure limits for the cancer-causing chemical benzene.

• US has caused $10T worth of climate damage since 1990, research finds