2026-08-06

Worthy

• Incentives are for losers

  incentives are like batting helmets: if you don’t bring your own, you’ll have to use the crappy ones that are provided for you. A critical part of human development—in fact, the most human part of human development—is to acquire a purpose. That means refining your sense of right and wrong and figuring out how you, personally, can increase the right and decrease the wrong. Once your neural tube has ballooned into a brain, once you can poop without issue, conjugate irregular verbs, and feed yourself solid foods, you ought to ask yourself, “Why am I doing these things?” What’s it all for? How can I make myself useful? It’s fine if you’re still working on your answers to those questions. It’s fine—and good!—if you have multiple answers, or if your answers change over time. But it’s not fine to pass on the questions entirely. We owe these answer to each other, and we owe them to ourselves, because a sense of purpose is both prosocial and protective. If you have a void where your moral convictions should be, then that cavity of your personality will get filled up with tumorous desires—for money, power, fame, status. This is the kind of person who “responds to incentives”.

  for some reason, the second we start talking in terms of incentives, we also start acting like courage doesn’t exist and can’t exist. Bad incentives have become our generation’s version of “I was just following orders”, an excuse that should be an indictment.

etc

• The Grid That Doubles the Strength of the Ground

Horseshit

• The possible fine? $192. His crime? Being a tennis dad

  SF fined a dad $195 for teaching his kid tennis on a public court without a coaching permit.

• To Save Japan's Heritage Homes, People Are Shipping Them Across the World

• Why Can't You Pack a Bag?

• Why Paris Is Obsessed with Chartreuse Liqueur

• America's obsession with whey protein has a delicious consequence: More cheese

• Australia's Jetstar to charge for carry-on bags in overhead lockers

• People are ghosting long-term partners. Some don't regret it

• The Universe May Not Be Accelerating After All

• Objects That Explain America

• A unique South African plant became a global tea sensation

• The Live Shopping App Where Some People Bid Until They're Broke

• Better Posture Linked to Better Decision Making and Mood

• The secret codewords that scammers hate

• How—and Why—to Cull Your Book Collection

  “Books make me so mad.” That’s what my friend, who used to work part-time as a mover, told me when he learned that my husband and I found a new place to live and I had a lot of books that I needed to pack up.

  • at least they're not (yet) declaring that AI will make books obsolete.

• A new kind of rental scam strikes SF: He lost $18,000 to a duped Zillow listing

celebrity gossip

• Perez Hilton livestreams apparent self-harming video, cops respond

• Bill Gates Was Embedded in U.S. Agencies During COVID Era

  Emails show that NIH Director Francis Collins in 2018 wrote staff and received confirmation of the foundation funding parts of the federal health agency. Gates was lobbying President Donald Trump for a universal flu vaccine, and Collins wondered if “Bill [were] going rogue?” Collins did later, however, brag about bringing NIH closer to the foundation. Gates bragged at the World Economic Forum Davos conference in 2019 that he has made billions off investing in vaccines. The Gates Foundation also, for some reason, received multiple briefings about military biological threat programs, so he was also evidently involved in our national security.

• Not dead yet: 'Game of Thrones' George RR Martin speaks out about depression amid book delays

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The journalist taking on the 'tech fascists' of Silicon Valley

Musk

• Out-of-control SpaceX rocket believed to have smashed into the Moon

  • SpaceX rocket part believed to have hit Moon as NASA prepares to study crash

  • SpaceX rocket thought to have crashed into the moon in unintentional collision

  • On the fifth of August of this year, SpaceX will blow up the Moon.

  • Piece of SpaceX rocket believed to have crashed into the moon

  • A SpaceX Rocket Is About to Crash into the Moon

  • A Four-Ton SpaceX Rocket Stage Hit the Moon, but No One Saw It

  • SpaceX Rocket Crashes into Moon

• SpaceX has doubled its revenue since the same quarter last year.

  • SpaceX's AI Splurge Puts a Damper on Debut Earnings After IPO

  • SpaceX's AI ambitions burning through Starlink revenue

  • SpaceX's AI spending unnerves Wall Street despite promises of quick payoff

  • SpaceX hit by surging AI costs as insiders prepare to sell their shares

  • SpaceX revenue rockets while AI spending burns billions

  • SpaceX shares sink after first earnings report reveals AI spending plans

  • SpaceX spooks investors with debut earnings report

  • Elon Musk's SpaceX unnerves investors with lavish AI spending plans

• SpaceX plans to become a mobile carrier

• Lockup expiry will offer the next test of investor appetite for SpaceX shares

• SpaceX's Starfall program offers validation and competition for reentry startups

• The Walls Are Closing in on Musk in Wisconsin Criminal Bribery Investigation

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Ferrari's Controversial Luce EV Has Reportedly Sold Out

• Lidl Group stops buying company EVs:Why the Schwarz group is turning back to ICE

• Uber pledges $10B to win robotaxi race

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Funding found for free meals in Seattle schools

• Jason Arday, Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism, lying about career, resigns — as elite school launches investigation

  • Police investigated journalist who tried to expose Cambridge professor

  Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education (THE), was accused of harassment after he emailed a series of questions to Prof Jason Arday about his academic record. Mr Grove said officers told him to stop contacting the professor because his “mental health” had been affected by the questions. Prof Arday also hired the law firm Carter-Ruck, which suggested in a letter to THE that its “apparent attack” on him “may be... racially motivated”.

• Mexico's top univ orders 58k students to retake entrance exam:suspected cheating

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• LAPD Abandons Flock Contract After Making a Horrifying Discovery

  • Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines for a Pretextual Weed Search

• Ambulance Worker Sues After Being Fired for Disabling Cameras That Filmed Patients Without Consent

  Martin claims that the privately owned ambulance company began installing cameras in late 2025 or early 2026. However, patients were not informed that they were about to be video and audio recorded. Her lawsuit says she believed that these cameras in the patient compartments of ambulances violated Oregon law.

• The sale of Electronic Arts has been finalized

  • Electronic Arts Officially Sold For $55 Billion

  • Saudi wealth fund and Jared Kushner's Affinity finalize $55B EA Sports deal

• Telegram Briefly Removed from App Store

• AMD's datacenter revenue doubled over last year, but gaming revenue declined by 30%.

• Microsoft never learns, IT admins rage as a new OneDrive app invades Windows 11

• Linux didn't just eat 10% of Windows market share, AI bots inflate the numbers

• DuckDuckGo's Smart Glasses Have No Camera, No AI, and No Electronics

• Google Assistant will disappear from your phone next month

  • Google is killing Google Assistant next month

• Microsoft Is Quietly Deleting Mentions of 32 GB RAM Recommendation for Win 11

• Meta Backs Off Sloppy Gambit to Nickel-and-Dime AI Glasses Customers

• DDR5 Prices Surge 7% in July, Reaching New Highs

• TikTok A/B testing withheld safety feature from \~10% of US users, lawsuit claims

• Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery

• Disney and TikTok strike deal to let creators make videos with its characters

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA's new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI, Anthropic AI Models Breached Systems During UK Safety Tests

  • OpenAI and Anthropic models 'went rogue' during UK cybersecurity test

  • OpenAI and Anthropic models went rogue in cyber tests, UK watchdog says

  • OK, Well, Rogue AI Agents Are Hacking Again

  • AI used new levels of 'autonomy and deception'

  • Safety testers find more examples of OpenAI, Anthropic models hacking

  • OpenAI, Anthropic AI agents implicated in new security breaches

• White House AI Guidelines Exempt U.S. Open Models from Government Review

  • The White House Is Keeping Its AI Cybersecurity Framework Secret

  • Trump administration drafting ban on Chinese data center devices, sources say

  • Winners of Trump's A.I. Safety Plan

• Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down

  • Jeff Dean leaving Alphabet

  • Google's Chief Scientist Is Leaving After 27 Years–To Start His Own AI Company

  • Google chief scientist Jeff Dean leaving in AI reshuffle

  • Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis steps down

  • Google shakes up AI leadership as DeepMind chief shifts role

• Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash

• AI's Arctic Land Grab

• AI-generated stories rated better quality than human-written ones, study finds

• Hackers' AI chat logs reveal evolving tactics

• The workers caught in the AI transition

• Time travellers are using LinkedIn to teach us about artificial intelligence

• AI search is turning Reddit comments into ads

• I'm Begging You: Never Write with AI

• Banks to offload $15B of debt for Anthropic data centre backed by Google

• ChatGPT accounts for 80% of identifiable House AI spending

• Hollywood is entering its AI era

• Anxious Chinese students are trusting AI to help pick colleges and majors

• The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I

• America's Bet on AI – The winner takes it all. What if we lose?

• Why is Anthropic destroying books?

• Data-centre reality check could slam brakes on AI earnings boom

• Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

• OpenAI settles claims of discrimination against US workers for $3.2M

• OpenAI fires back at Apple, publishing private emails to counter claims

• OpenAI's first-ever influencer brand trip is sparking online backlash

• Niall Ferguson: AI Is the Most Dangerous Arms Race in History

• People who tell you 'AI is changing everything' are lying

• Anthropic Inks $10B Computing Deal with New Startup Volta Park

• Inside the Long, AI-Powered Quest to Perfect Pringle-Making

• Anthropic Is Building Its Own Chip

• The Three AI Pills

  Most people have no idea what frontier AIs can do for them. They are unaware of coding agents. They have used only ChatGPT, for harmless trifles, and they hold years old memories of its failings. They mock any failure anywhere as ‘what AI can do.’ When you discuss AI with people who are fully unpilled, your goal is usually to first give them the AI pill. Show them that AI can do the things it can already do.

  • all religion begins with zealots.

• A Fed official is asking whether AI is becoming 'too big to fail'

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Senators demand crackdown on wildfire "prediction markets"

• After $140M hack, Bitcoin users 'soul-searching' over self-custody

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Yen stuck at 157 as markets weigh limits of US-Japan intervention

  • Scott Bessent's yen intervention signals new era of US 'currency activism'

• Fed's Schmid calls for tighter monetary policy, inflation too high

  • Fed's Kashkari says 'now is the time to start slowly moving' rates up

• It looks like 'Big Short' investor Michael Burry nailed bet against chip stocks

  • Mark Cuban, Michael Burry send strong warning on Nvidia, AI stocks

• Airlines Don't Want You to Buy Their Cheapest Tickets

• Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

  According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve, existing automotive assembly plants in the U.S. are currently running at less than 70% of capacity. That means we already have nearly 4 million units of manufacturing capacity sitting entirely idle, gathering dust. And yet, we’re about to aggressively add more supply to a market that is already struggling with excess capacity.

• David Ellison: Here's Why You Can Trust Me with the News

• The Investing Heavyweights That Backed Situational Awareness Before It Blew Up

  • Situational Awareness hedge fund meltdown was a warning shot BofA CEO says

• Caterpillar lifts 2026 sales growth target on strong data center demand after quarterly profit beat.

• Airtable Acquisition Is Kick in the Gut for Software Unicorns and Their Backers

• Major Hedge Funds Targeted in Wave of Attempted Cyberattacks

  • Major Wall Street hedge funds targeted in attempted cyberattacks

• Grocery prices are Americans' top affordability challenge, report finds

• FDIC Floats Standard-Setting Body for Banks' Fintech Partners

• AI-Focused Altimeter Sinks 11%, Joins Funds Hit by Brutal July

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Gov. Lee aims to make Tennessee ‘global epicenter’ of nuclear renaissance.

• Why It Takes the Feds So Long to Stop Sending Benefits to Dead People

• US refunds $100B of Donald Trump's 'liberation day' tariffs

Trump

• Trump administration drafting ban on Chinese fiber transceivers

• US judge grants DOJ request to dismiss January 6 cases against Oath Keepers

• 'All hands on deck': Oil industry rallies to keep Trump from stopping export

Democrats

• Congressional Candidate Arrested After Maui Beach Altercation

  Kirill Basin, 40, was charged with two counts of first-degree terroristic threatening, and his bail was set at $1 million. the incident began when a 61-year-old man asked Basin to lower the volume of his music. Basin allegedly threatened the man by implying he had a firearm and would shoot the victim’s wife. A bystander intervened, leading to a physical altercation during which Basin allegedly armed himself with a knife and threatened multiple people before throwing it into the ocean. The knife was later recovered by police. Video of the incident was widely shared on social media

  • FAFO: Democrat Candidate Threatening Beachgoers Gets Knocked Out Cold On Beach

  A Democrat hopeful gunning for a seat in Congress is sitting behind bars on $1 million bail after police described a chaotic beachside confrontation on Maui that involved a knife, repeated threats, and the candidate left unconscious in the sand. It started with a request to turn the music down. A 61-year-old man asked Basin to lower the volume, and Basin, police say, replied by implying he had a firearm and threatening to shoot the man's wife.

  On May 29, Basin allegedly entered a county building in Wailuku while brandishing a firearm and got into a verbal altercation with county employees; police said additional charges from that incident remained under review. Court records show a history of arrests for assault and property damage. Several people have taken out temporary restraining orders against him. Among them is Maui County Council member Thomas Cook, who said he feared for his own safety and his staff's after Basin disrupted a council meeting in May, becoming "aggressive and confrontational" and threatening violence against police and a council ambassador.

• What's behind the $4B funding cut for California's high-speed rail?

• Data center foes win big in Tuesday's primaries

  • Lawmaker Who Wants Data Center Pause Wins Kansas Democratic Primary

Left Angst

• Trump's Push for More A.I. Data Centers Will Mean Major Air Pollution

• Trump's AI protectionism has come for robotics

• CFPB supervisor warned staff of unpleasant fallout if they go too hard on firms

• Armed suspect arrested at SoCal golf course days before Trump’s visit.

• Let's call Trump's approach to Iran what it is: kindergarten diplomacy

  • Whereas Iran's approach to diplomacy is the gold standard everyone should aspire to.

• "Tied" by reporters... Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

• Social Darwinists to tech bros: tracing the long fight against equality in US

• 86 47 Is Silly and Serious

• Traditional economics is wrong: Donald Trump has proved it

  Donald Trump’s war on Iran is proving what really limits governments. He’s running into problems. But he isn’t running out of dollars. What he’s doing is running out of weapons and military capacity. That’s the real lesson from this conflict. And what that does is something quite curious. It confirms exactly what modern monetary theory (MMT) says.

  • Old folk who thought in the 1990's that it was a bad idea to ship our machine tools to China, and outsource our manufacturing to "anywhere but here," predicted this tho. MMT brought us Biden's "report it right!" economy that made Carter's years look better.

• Trump pushes ahead on false claims that Reflecting Pool was vandalized

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Cyberattacks target water systems in at least 12 states

World

• Companies once tied to Assad kept winning UN contracts under Syria's new rulers

• The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

  • Tech giant Palantir accused of 'agressive tax avoidance' at Europe's expense

• Japan casts military buildup as path to economic prosperity

• More than 400 detained, 156 of them minors, due to the wave of fires in France

  security forces have arrested more than 400 people, among them 156 minors, of which 36 remain in custody, for their alleged participation in some of the 14,000 fires recorded in France "since the beginning of the season."

• Germany's Electricity Rationing Is No Longer Unthinkable

• Kerala wants some of its forest spots taken off Google Maps

• Apologise or Lose Safe Harbour: Parliament Panel's 3-Day Ultimatum to Zuckerberg

• Fashion brand Jaded has ad banned for 'glamorising smoking'

• Woulda been hailed as a hero during COVID: Man arrested for Grim Reaper costume on hospital roof and staring at patients

• Migrants plan ANOTHER Ceuta invasion in days - after ‘convicted terrorists among thousands who stormed Spanish enclave’

• How chip-fuelled wealth is reshaping South Korea

• 'I want to rejoin the EU Brexit has been a disaster' – Andy Burnham

• Drone carrying explosive device causes disruption at major German airport

• Alberta food banks adopt grocery-style model to give families more choice

• 9 out of 10 bestselling novels in UK have 1 thing in common: a woman is murdered

• Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism UK appeal tribunal confirms in landmark ruling

  • So "Kill the Jews" isn't hate speech as long as you add "in Israel".

Iran / Houthi

• Yemen's Houthis say they attacked Saudi oil tanker in Red Sea

• US nears Iran deal to reopen Strait of Hormuz

• Trump says Strait of Hormuz deal could happen today or tomorrow amid Iran-Oman talks

• Iran threatens to hit Gulf states if US launches new strikes

Israel

• Israel Pays Trump's Ex-Campaign Chief $46M to Shape What ChatGPT Says About Gaza

China

• Samsung, SK Hynix test Chinese chip tools as hedge against US risks

• China Builds Nuclear Power While the West Reinvents It

• China's A.I. Is Surging Across Africa. That Should Worry Silicon Valley

Health / Medicine

• New Research Questions Decades of Low-Fat Dairy Advice.

• Could a change in diet improve mental health? Metabolic psychiatry explained.

• Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

• U.S. Cuts Ties with Organ Donor Group After Reports of Abuses

• Killing for Organs Gets a Prestige Endorsement

  The legalization of assisted suicide/euthanasia corrupts medical ethics and not just because killing patients or assisting their suicides is a direct violation of the Hippocratic oath. No: Transforming sick and disabled people into a killable caste also objectifies them as potential natural resources to be mined or harvested. Hastened death and organ-harvesting have already been conjoined in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. (In the latter two countries, some cases have involved mentally ill patients.) The practice has been supported in prominent medical journals. It is not alarmism to note that the idea is gaining ever wider acceptance among the medical and bioethics intelligentsia.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Weeks into explosive diarrhea outbreak, sluggish CDC plans response team

  • step 1: Wash the shit off yer fruits and veggies.

• The Typhus Rats of Los Angeles

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A heat spike in March ruined pistachio pollination, decimating crops

• July breaks drought and heat records in France

• Italy putting nearly all major cities on highest heat alert

  • Italy to place all 27 of its major cities on highest heat alert

• Mysterious elephant deaths in Kenya raise questions around pesticides

• New museum find shows nature can't stop inventing seahorses

• DiCaprio and Bezos set USD$200M fund to recover endangered species

• An Invasive Mosquito Spreading with Alarming Speed, Threatening Africa's Cities

• UK newspaper opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time

• East Africa's iconic snow peaks will soon disappear for good

• The World Is Running Out of River Sand, and That's an Issue

• The ultimate horse

  This is the paradox of the thoroughbred: breeders have spent centuries trying to create a faster horse, but in doing so, they may have bred away the very genetic diversity that would allow the horse to keep improving, or even to remain robust

  • There's a lot more diversity at the bottom end of the market. Minis especially are breeding fairly freely with little human culling or control for diseases.

• Earth hits lowest recorded temperature in over a decade.

  On July 18, Antarctica's Concordia station, a remote research base home to a small winter-over crew (run by a joint French-Italian research facility), recorded a temperature of –119.4°F twice that morning at 6:25 a.m. and nine minutes later.

• Extinct toad from the Ice Age discovered at Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits