2026-11-08

etc

• A short history of the Troubled Teen Industry

  The Supreme Court held in Parham v. J.R. (1979) that the only check required was a doctor’s judgment, and that a doctor on the hospital’s own staff was good enough. The Court wrote that “a staff physician will suffice, so long as he or she is free to evaluate independently.” In Georgia and Texas, where I was committed, the child has no way to object. Justice Brennan, dissenting the 1979 decision, wrote that children “are entitled to some champion who can speak on their behalf.” They got none. Parham removed the last legal obstacle and what followed was a business.

Horseshit

• Custom NY plate "Blank" results in $40k of fines

• Meteorite found in the Sahara shows what Mars was like 4.1 billion years ago

• Man reaches the Bay Area after walking across the country from New York City

• 4.2-Kiloyear Event May Have Helped Cause the Collapse of Egyptian Old Kingdom

• They Can Barely Drive, They're Flying Planes: The Surprising Rise of Teen Pilots

• Why the 300-year-old novel Gulliver's Travels is so misunderstood

• How Earth Lost a Billion Years of Its History

• Mighty and mysterious Celts hailed from the heart of Europe

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• About a Third of Americans Have Left an Online Community

  About a third of U.S. adults say they have ever left an online community, according to the survey conducted May 26-June 1, 2026. This includes both some who currently are in an online community and some who are not.

• Retracted Article – The Diplomat

  On November 5, The Diplomat published an article purporting to quote the CEO of Newtype on his company’s interactions with Ukrainian partners. The author presented themselves as a South Korean freelance journalist and claimed to have interviewed Newtype’s CEO. We now know that the journalist fabricated the interview and may not even be who they claimed to be. Additional scrutiny of the exchange between the journalist and The Diplomat revealed evidence that the emails originated in Russia, suggesting this article was part of a disinformation operation.

Musk

• A Preposterous, Overpriced, Beautiful Disaster of a Car

  • Good Riddance to the Cybertruck, the Chariot of the Dumbest Gods

• Ex-Tesla Autopilot head calls vision-only a 'weird religious stance'

• Musk reposts tweet calling Starlink service for Ukraine 'mistake'

• Elon Musk Staked His Empire on Texas. Now State Democrats Want to Rein Him In

• Tesla's quiet EV software update is unplugging Australian homes

Electric / Self Driving cars

• NHTSA proposes cyan lights for robotaxis, following Mercedes/China

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Six humanoid robots worked a 24-hour shift at a convenience store

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Do Not Tread Lightly

  people should be allowed to tastefully disappear their bodies if they like. And yes, burials can be expensive. What concerns me is the lack of choice we possess over the largest span of our existence—our post-sentient state—during which the rights over our bodies are artificially limited by the confluence of regulatory capture, inflated costs, and unquestioned cultural assumptions.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why astrophysics needs to abandon the 'Big Questions'?

• The School Apps Are Out of Control

• Quantum Physicists discover nothing can be fully transparent

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Every Windows 11 app should kill Electron, and Discord just showed why

• Apple to Drop the iPhone's Action Button Next Year

• Google, Meta and TikTok Sue to Block Law Curbing Addictive Social Media for Kids

• Applebees left its database password in its Android app, installed by over a million people.

• Re-Releases of Wing Commander, Ultima Titles Hit Steam and GOG

• Apple Keyboard has a blacklist of phrases you can't swipe

• Fox Bought Roku

• Good Luck Getting a Cheap GPU. AMD Is a 'Data Center First Company,' CEO Says

• World of Warcraft: Forever Has Its First Level 60 Player

• HP and Asus shift some PC making back to China due to AI-driven cost hikes

• Ex-PlayStation boss says "true innovation" would be making a $300 console again

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• His Job Is to Turn Walmart's Customer Data into Profit

• Consumer brain wave headsets threaten privacy

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Blue Origin announces 3rd stage for its powerful New Glenn rocket — and a new engine.

• NASA accepting astronaut applications until December 3

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The AI Business Model Just Collapsed

  They still aren’t reading the room. Consider the case of Google, which is trying to bully schools that limit student access to AI. When they shove AI down the throats of parents and teachers, they are breaking the law—at least based on my reading of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits companies from using their strength in one product category to force the use of other offerings. But even if they get away with this, they still do irreparable harm to their reputation. Tech needs to act more responsibly, or government will step in and force their hand. The situation will get worse for them, if they continue to bully and manipulate.

  • The AI sell-off compared to well-known stock market crashes

  • OpenAI reportedly raises an additional $11B at a $1.25T valuation

  • Ramp data shows AI spending stalling just as Anthropic nears its IPO

• Why does America hate AI?

• Climate skeptics used AI to review their work. It told them they were biased

• Google says there's no way to use Search without using artificial intelligence

• Layoffs that smells like conspiracy, hard to digest

• Quantum Computers Are Poised to Crack Encryption. AI Could Beat Them to It

• YC Backed Bron AI Accused of Using LeBron's Name and Likeness

• Meta introduces Spaces: custom app views built by your Muse agent

• Brave Sells Its Search Index to AI, and Your Website Is Probably in It

• I Tested a Popular A.I. Slop Detector. It Felt Empowering

• AI is turning protectionists into free traders

• AI is a technological version of the Homeric songs

• GPT-6 Astra Covertly Underperforms on Safety Research Tasks

• Nvidia hardware worth $11.4M vanished between Oakland and Texas

  • Six Pallets of Nvidia Hardware Worth $11.4M Stolen on the Way to Texas

• Sama Wants You to Have More RAM, Not Less, Changes Name to "RAM Altman"

• AI agents enter the 'wet lab'

• Exponential time hypothesis refuted by AI

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Meta joins Microsoft and Google in offering employees voluntary exit packages

  • Google extends voluntary buyout offers to employees in several countries

• Major strawberry grower for Driscoll's calls it quits in coastal California

• America's renters are in serious trouble

• America's economy is becoming zero-sum

• U.S. Refineries Make Dramatic Shift Away from Gasoline

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• US air traffic control enters the 21st century, starts to abandon floppy disks

• California Voters Reject Billionaire Wealth Tax, DDHQ Projects

Democrats

• California governor to grant clemency to all 548 death row inmates

Left Angst

• Data centers backlash fueled historic blue wave

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Only Congress can do that: US believes Nvidia's Huang had romantic relationship with alleged Chinese spy

  • US intelligence: Jensen Huang had affair with Chinese spy; linked to smuggling

  • The US let Nvidia sell chips to an empty office in China

• Phony visa application and passport sites face U.S. government crackdown

• US sanctions Canadian money-exchange firms over Iran ties

World

• Activists breach Microsoft data centre construction site; protests spread in EU

  • Activists break into building site of Microsoft datacentre in Amsterdam

  • Activists across Europe prepare two days of protests against datacentres

  • riots are for "disaffected youth", or "cost of living", or "data centers", but somehow the "Free Palestine" flags fit all these causes...

• Paraguay bank collapse fells a presidency and leaves millions broke

• British soldier ignored order to pull his SIM card, then got blackmailed

• What happens if all the lights go out? This is the plan for a 'Black Sky' event

• TikTok's For You page needs to change, says the EU

  • EU accuses TikTok of trapping users in harmful 'rabbit holes'

• Report alleges China linked to at least 18 overseas police stations in Canada

• Canadian economy lost 4,700 jobs in Oct as unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7%

  • Canada's unemployment rate edges up to six-month high in October

• Five killed and a dozen more injured in Krakow shooting, police say

  Six people have been killed - four women and two men - police say. At least 15 are injured, according to local authorities. The shooting took place at about 15:00 local time (14:00 GMT), when a man drove onto the city's Main Market Square and began firing "at random" from his car, local police say. There is only one suspect at this stage and he is in police custody, the Polish interior ministry says

• Indonesia deploys over 20k troops, generals arrested for wiretapping allegations

• Hackers pull off $133M French bank heist via service provider

• Massive expansion of immigration detention under new EU deportation rules

Iran / Houthi

• Major construction ongoing near Iran missile bases, satellite images suggest

Israel

• 60 years of denial about Israel's nuclear weapons program confronts new reality

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• An injured Ukrainian soldier was evacuated by drone

China

• China sees nearly 10% drop in marriages, foreshadowing lower birth rate in 2027

Health / Medicine

• FDA Approves First Drug Offering a ‘Functional Cure’ For Chronic Hepatitis B.

• Vibrating Mattress Helps Clear Alzheimer's Protein from the Brain

• Vapes, pouches and now tablets: The tobacco industry's newest nicotine product

• Is Full-Fat Milk Actually Bad for You? New Study Challenges Old Advice.

• Are humans getting less hot scientists say our body temperature falling 200yrs

• Cardiologists' High Hopes for Two Drugs Were Dashed

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• AI can track a single bird over time–based solely on its song

• New "high safety" chemicals in plastic food packaging linked to low birth weight

• York teenager invents device to stop rats damaging railway

• African elephants putatively self-medicate with medicinal plants in Kenya

• Project will harness technology to track Amazon biodiversity in real time

• A renowned scientist, a deadly snakebite, and a diary that documented it all