2026-07-30

Horseshit

• The mystery of why Sonia Exelby paid a man to kill her

• Hiker Trekked 10 Miles to Safety After Impaling Himself on Pole

• New airliner sets record flying 24 hrs nonstop from Australia to France

• What Has Happened to Taste?

• History remembers two Robert McNamaras

• Could the Most Radical Plane Design Since the Concorde Take on Boeing?

• Can We Lower Construction Costs with Cheaper Labor or Materials?

  Another barrier that can prevent the reduction in building materials is code requirements. Requirements for electrical wiring, for instance, were set assuming the use of relatively power-hungry incandescent lighting. With the rise of LED lighting, there’s an opportunity to reduce wiring requirements for lighting by using low-voltage DC wiring; some startups have been founded to try and tackle this, but the use of lower-voltage wiring has been limited by building code restrictions.

• What screen time does to children's brains is more complicated than it seems

• Americans say large tech companies have too much power

• Things Experts Wish You'd Do in Midlife to Increase Longevity

• The Silicon Valley Health Trend Making Doctors Nervous

• Stop Pathologizing Ordinary Life

• Why too much time online makes us unhappy

• Mathematicians Reveal Why Humans Keep Becoming Cannibals

Obit

• French musician Kavinsky found dead

  • French DJ Kavinsky known for Drive soundtrack Nightcall found dead in Paris home

  • French DJ and electronic musician Kavinsky found dead aged 50

• Singer-songwriter Glen Hansard dies in Dublin crash

  • Irish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard has died

Musk

• Elon Musk sues MN over law to bar manipulated images to fake nudity

  • Elon Musk's xAI sues Minnesota over law to ban 'nudify' apps

  • SpaceXAI sues Minnesota AG over ban on nudifying apps

• Why Do We Tolerate Elon Musk's Racist Commentary?

• Fired Tesla Manager Says Full Self-Driving Cars Were 'Rolling Hazards'

• Musk settles long-running legal battle with X advertisers

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Estonia's first remotely operated taxi crash raises accountability questions

• Why Mexico Built an $8,500 Electric Car

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Trump administration bans new Chinese humanoid robots

  • US bans humanoid robots from China, citing 'unacceptable risks'

  • The US government just banned Roombas

  • Who wins and who loses after US bans foreign robots?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Canvas Breach Exposed the Risk of One-Platform Education

• CO, FL, GA schools testing pepper-spraying Mithril drones to stop shooters

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• New Massie bill aims to block federal funds from cities, police that use controversial Flock Safety cameras

• Rare Nintendo Famicombox units found in perfectly operational state in a Japanese "love hotel"

• Unreleased Versions of Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt Discovered in Warehouse

• Windows 11 is quietly installing OneDrive Photos

• Apple's iMessage Scanning Flagged a Video of My Friend's Dog as Nudity

  • The dog was, in fact, nude.

• One year into the AI-induced RAM apocalypse — how much does memory actually cost, and is there hope for a more affordable future?

  Even 16GB of DDR5 6000 will set you back more than $200 these days, which is double the price for half the capacity you could buy a year ago. Large kits, like Corsair’s Vengeance 192GB (4x48GB) offering, now cost upwards of $2,600, more than most pre-built PCs.

• A requiem for Intel's Optane, which could have eased the RAM price crunch

• Keychron announces first open-source firmware for gaming mice

• The Growing Threat of Docusign Phishing Attacks

• HP once updated printers to reject ink they owned, and it worked

• Peppa Pig owners win copyright battle against 'impostor' Wolfoo

• Why Kids Can't Quit Roblox

• Home design simulation: The coolest use for the Vision Pro

• After laying off Battlefield 6 devs, CEO gets $38M for Battlefield 6 performance

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Reaction wheel failures leave Swift rescue mission spinning in orbit

  Nearly a month since its launch, a first-of-its-kind commercial satellite built to save NASA’s Swift gamma-ray telescope from a fiery reentry is having problems of its own, the agency announced Tuesday. The Link satellite developed by Katalyst Space Technologies “experienced issues with attitude control” over the weekend, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications. “Preliminary investigation shows that two of Link’s three reaction wheels currently are not operable, and there is some loss of functionality in its cold gas thruster system,” NASA said.

  • Link rescue mission for NASA Swift Telescope suffers critical malfunction

• Boeing still working with NASA to schedule next Starliner flight

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI models used Artifactory zero-days to escape to the internet

  • OpenAI's rogue models roamed the internet for 4 days and staged a second attack

  • ChatGPT claims rogue AI attacked more companies

  • We now have a better understanding how OpenAI hacked into Hugging Face

  • OpenAI's rogue agent compromised a customer at a second tech firm

  • OpenAI's rogue models roamed the internet for 4 days and staged a second attack

  • OpenAI's rogue agent compromised a customer at a second tech firm

  • Rogue OpenAI agent that hacked startup tried to attack other firms

• AI helps Stanford scientists discover natural Ozempic without usual side effects

• Sam Altman is ready to decelerate

• Sam Altman says AI won't shorten the workweek because humans enjoy being busy

• Sam Altman says people don't want an AI to act as CEO

• Google DeepMind Disbands AlphaFold Team as AI Strategy Shifts Toward Gemini

  • Google DeepMind dismantles Nobel-winning AlphaFold team in strategy shift

  • Google shuts down Nobel Prize winning AlphaFold

• OpenAl, Anthropic ask U.S. government to consider slowing down Al

  • Scientists at OpenAI and Anthropic ask U.S. for tools to pace AI development

• Can the New York Times Save Journalism from Our AI Overlords?

• The Actual Reason Why Google "Fell Out" of the AI Race Changes Everything

  Hassabis is betting on something else: world models. Models that can understand and simulate the real world, not just predict the next token. And he’s steering Google accordingly.

• Three big AI trends collide

• The Cost of China's Free A.I

• Proposed UK data centres could pay £100M in deposits for power demands

• AI companies buy, scan, shred rare and out-of-print books

  • AI companies are reportedly shredding books after using them to train AI models

• A Backlash Against Anthropic Is Brewing in Silicon Valley

• AI-found bugs aren't proving any easier to exploit despite the hype

• Mark Zuckerberg Disapproves of Centralization of A.I. Power

• AI tokens could become the kilowatt-hour of the AI age.

• Teacher arrested for clapping in opposition at an AI data center meeting

• Substackers Say New AI Detection Tool Is a 'Witch Hunt'

• Moonshot AI Raises $3.5B at $35B Valuation

• A.I. Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters by the Thousands

• Writers Are Creating an Anti-AI 'Literary Counterculture'

• In China, people are renting out their faces to AI

• OpenAI's First Devices: Speaker, Smartphone, and More

• Open weights vs. closed: An AI civil war's afoot, and the stakes are existential

• Mark Zuckerberg says US should not ban Chinese AI

• Because of enormous regulatory burdens: Data Centers Are Easy to Build. Powering Them Is Complicated, Slow and Expensive

• Data centers are slowing America's shift away from coal

• A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat

• Anthropic Doesn't Want Open Weight Models Banned. Just All That Makes Them Good

• Lilian Weng joins OpenAI after saying Thinking Machine's pace hurt her health

• China's Moonshot AI reportedly used Nvidia Blackwell chips for training Kimi K3

• Anthropic's Lonely Island

• AI's top startups are barely publishing their research

• Microsoft keeps capex unchanged, the only datacenter giants to hold AI spending

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

• Judge blocks first state law that would have banned prediction markets

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Growth of the Vacant Housing Stock in the US

  population growth has faded amid a crackdown on illegal immigration. over the five-year period through July 2026, the US population is estimated to have grown by 10.4 million people, including the two-decade-record surge in 2023 and 2024. In other words, over this five-year period, the housing stock has grown substantially faster than the population, and this is showing up in the data on vacant housing units.

• Equities surpass real estate as top US wealth driver for first time since WW2

• Chip stocks slide in US and Asia as AI jitters rattle investors

• Chip stocks shed more than $1T as selloff hits AI companies

• Hedge funds face demands to stump up collateral as AI stocks tumble

• Wall Street Picks AI Winners and Losers as Credit Swaps Surge

• Google reported its first negative quarter since going public

• Amazon, Meta, Microsoft face skeptical investors, Google report sparks sell-off

• Meta shares fall as frustration grows over AI spending plans

• Kospi Plunges After Nvidia CEO's Visits Spark 'Huang Curse' Fears

  • Korean Stocks Plunge 16% in Two-Day Burst of Retail Selling

• eBay agrees $56M settlement with bloggers over harassment case

  • eBay agreed to pay $50M to couple sent cockroaches, bloody pig mask

  • eBay pays $46M to journalists it targeted in harassment campaign

  • eBay and ex-executives to pay $55.7M to couple sent cockroaches

  • eBay reaches $56M settlement with e-com newsletter writers it terrorized in 2019

  • eBay's cyberstalking saga ends with a $56M settlement

• BMW to cut several thousand jobs in latest blow to German auto sector

• DoorDash Takes to the Sky with Its Own Drones

  • DoorDash unveils its own drone delivery service after FAA approval

  • FAA Approves DoorDash Delivery Drones

• Big Companies Are Starting to Hire Again, Defying Predictions of AI Wipeout

• Florida's Fix for Insurance Crisis Puts More Risk on Homeowners

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions at Covid hearing, calls Sen. Rand Paul ‘unhinged’

  Fauci pointed to Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me” and his decision to publicly release the doctor’s personal journal. “The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words — quote — ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said. “Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

  • Fauci Takes the Fifth

  pardons create the rare exception to the use of the Fifth Amendment. Joe Biden granted a full pardon to Fauci shortly before leaving office for any federal crimes he may have committed during a ten-year period prior to 2025. That covers all of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then some. Fauci cannot be prosecuted or charged for any federal crimes that took place in that period, so he has no criminal liability in testifying. That puts Fauci in the rare position of being unable to refuse to testify under oath in any legitimate trial or hearing, including those in Congress.

  • Senator Hawley Hilariously Forces Fauci to Plead the Fifth on His Tie Color and the Day of the Week

  Hawley: What day of the week is it today?

  Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the fifth amendment to the constitution.

  • Rand Paul Orders Fauci’s Lawyer Removed As Hearing Grows Chaotic

  • Deep State Mafia Boss Anthony "Little Bones" Fauci Pleads the Fifth

  • Tony Fauci takes the Fifth - by Alex Berenson

  Four years ago, Fauci was being seriously considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. Today he sat in the Capitol invoking his Constitutional rights against self-incrimination, like a mob boss. (If only the Biden Administration had taken MY Constitutional rights as seriously.)

Democrats

• Gavin Newsom’s ex-mistress drops bombshell essay on affair that nearly destroyed him.

• Mamdani’s grocery stores will be the most expensive markets in NYC — paid for by you, the taxpayer.

  The first city-run grocery, in East Harlem, will cost $30 million to build — and perhaps more. It will never need to pay this money back nor factor it into its prices. The “warmth of socialism” will cover it; that is, you. In reality, Mamdani will be selling apples at a far greater cost than any competitor, but those true costs will be buried in the city budget and paid for by the taxpayers.

Left Angst

• Most Americans favor political changes that require amending the Constitution

• Trump's diversity crackdown reverberates through US boardrooms

• A U.S. Citizen Deleted His Phone's Data. Now He Faces a Felony Charge

• Ross Douthat joins revamped 60 minutes

• ICE Arrests Surge at Airports: Arresting spouses of American tech workers

• US to loosen environmental safeguards on space industry

• FDA panel recommends loosening regulations for some peptides

  • Millions could gain easier access to popular peptides after FDA panel vote.

• Trump administration needs to stop 'public harassment' of Fauci and scientists

• How Trump's "self-deportation" machine has ramped up

  President Trump's controversial "self-deportation" program, which pays unauthorized immigrants to leave the U.S., is on pace to account for more than 200,000 departures, according to internal data shared with Axios.

• People can be born without doctors: Rural America's Maternal-Health Crisis Is About to Get Worse

• Trump administration Is Repurposing Federal Land for A.I. Data Centers

• EPA Has Put a Value on Human Life: Zero Dollars

  • People are priceless. Democrats cannot give up the notion of humans as a commercial resource.

• Turns Out We Blew Up All Those Boats in the Caribbean for Nothing

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• FCC bans foreign-produced solar inverters, grid lockout begins today

• New 3D-printed barracks open at Fort Bliss

  Built by ICON, an Austin, Texas-based company that specializes in 3D-printed construction, the barracks cost about $62.8 million, Army officials said in March as construction began. The printing phase of all 10 buildings took 58 days with an estimated contract-to-delivery time of just nine months, the base said. The Army achieved a 9.3% cost savings compared to traditional military construction

• Ukrainian drone boat deal to build in US could be ‘one of the most consequential partnerships.’

World

• Pakistan accused of fatally shooting 30 unarmed protesters in Kashmir

• These European airports now allow up to 2 litres of liquids in hand luggage

• From Ukraine and Sudan to Gaza: why have hospitals become a target of war?

• Google rivals line up seeking damages after record $1B EU fine

• Japanese population logs sharpest drop on record

• Do they also carry Crunchy Frog? His restaurant put edible ants on the menu. He could face one year in prison

Iran / Houthi

• Allies shrug as US pushes for Strait of Hormuz patrol

• Iraqi armed groups condemn ‘dangerous escalation’ after US-Saudi strikes

  Saudi Arabia and the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said early Wednesday that joint air strikes targeted Iran-backed militias in Iraq responsible for attacks on American troops and Saudi energy infrastructure.

• Iran to get Chinese shoulder-launched missile systems in weeks

• Yemen's Houthis considering fees for ships sailing through Red Sea

• Melania and Barron Trump targeted by Iran in disturbing video encouraging assassinations

  A new video out of Iran is encouraging supporters of the Islamic regime to assassinate President Trump’s wife. Entitled “How to Kill Melania Trump,” the video shows images of the first lady in the motorcade and in some locations around New York City, even naming some of the designer stores that she shops.

• Explosion hits LNG terminal at Egypt's Damietta port, two gas ships on fire

  A US-owned and operated, Marshall Islands-flagged LNG floating storage facility was struck by at least one unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone hit floating storage tanker Energos Winter, causing a fire that then spread to another vessel, Gaslog Salem, three trading sources familiar with the incident said. Two separate security sources said the cause of the blast was a drone strike, Reuters reported.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia charges Telegram founder Durov with facilitating terrorism

  • Russia charges Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism

  • Russia charges Telegram founder Durov with aiding terrorism

  • Russia issues international wanted notice against Telegram founder Pavel Durov

  • Russia charges Telegram founder Durov with facilitating terrorism

  • Russia issues international arrest warrant for Telegram founder Durov

  • Russia Charges Telegram's Founder with Facilitating Terrorism

  • Moscow slaps Telegram founder on wanted list, Durov responds one-finger salute

China

• China's commercial space boom poses strategic challenge for the US

• The Great Chinese Oil Mystery

• China’s reported chip breakthrough comes with some big caveats.

• Commercial sea drone approaches and films Chinese warship close up

• China Closes the Satellite Gap in Space Race with the U.S.

Health / Medicine

• What happens if you eat too many gummy vitamins?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• College lab class ends with 32 people on antibiotics for deadly germ exposure

• US diners avoid restaurants as Explosive Diarrhea fears cut sales

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Underwater oxygen loss threatens earth's stability, researchers warn

• Iceberg capsizes off the coast of Greenland

• Wage law for California goat herders could worsen wildfire crisis

• As extreme heat grips the South and West, here's how to stay safe

• All living things emit a faint glow. Could this light be useful?

• Europe's fires are just the start

• The Great Lakes' most emblematic fish could be consigned to history books

• Notes from a burning Paris

  All heat records have been broken. Paris became one of the hottest places on the planet. The average June temperature here in Paris is 23C. It’s been over a week now of temperatures 15C over that. And 38C is, on the treeless, stone-lined streets here, experienced as 44C. I walked past one of those iconic green cross pharmacy lights yesterday. It was recording 48C. And it ain’t the half of it. Minimums have barely dropped below 30C. And it only does so around 5am (it takes that long for the concrete jungle to cool after the sun finally sets at 11pm).

  this is what collapse looks like. It’s the breakdown of the systems and routines that keep life rolling comfortably in the way that we expect and in the way that the system demands.

• Manage yer forests: Spanish PM Sánchez calls out climate denial after devastating week of wildfires.