2026-06-23

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• In Defense of the Marginal Baby

  This Father’s Day, I took some notes on parenting and put them together here. The purpose of this post is to strongly advocate for people to increment their child number, ideally recursively. If you have two, go for three! Five? Six is barely 16% more. I currently have four children, and I think I’m just getting the hang of it.

Horseshit

• Hacking their bodies for a longer life: is there science behind their methods?

• The deepest and longest subsea road tunnel

• If You're Searching for a New Skillet, Consider Stainless Steel

• Gen Z earning more than millennials did at the same age

• SC law legalizes pinball for youth, ending decades-old prohibition

  For the first time in nearly 70 years, children and teenagers in South Carolina can legally play pinball. A law the governor signed last month removed the arcade game from the list of so-called status offenses outlawed for anyone under the age of 18, following a decade-long effort. The original ban was never enforced, but it remained a source of anxiety for law-abiding business owners, supporters of the bill said.

• DNA from 2k-year-old grape seeds points to origins of modern winemaking

• Becoming a dad changes men's brains

• Astronomers Discover Third Galaxy Without Dark Matter

• Biggest obstacles to AI data centers in space

• Former hacker saw the light–and now wants to collect all of it

• San Francisco is booming. Why is Oakland still slumping?

• Younger workers avoid phone calls and it might cost them opportunities

• The Repo Man Coming for Your Ride

• New Presidential Executive Orders to Fast-Track Quantum Computing

  • White House Executive Order on Quantum Innovation

  • Trump signs executive orders to drive development of quantum computer by 2028

Obit

• Alan Greenspan, RIP

  • Alan Greenspan Dies at 100

  • Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Fed, dies at age 100

  • Alan Greenspan Dies at 100; Led Fed During Boom Before 2008 Bust

  • Alan Greenspan, economist and longtime head of the Federal Reserve, dies at 100

  • Alan Greenspan has died

• Clive Davis dies at 94: Music executive titan responsible for careers of Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen passes away

Musk

• Tesla driver says it was on Autopilot before fatal Texas home crash

  • Doorbell cam filmed Tesla Autopilot crash that killed woman in her home

• SpaceX Shares Poised to Fall Again as US Market Reopens

  • SpaceX Drops 14% in One Day, Price Now Below IPO Launch

• SpaceX signs computing power deal with AI startup Reflection worth up $6.3B

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Plans for battery swapping Electric trucks in UK

• Mexico Just Showed Off a New Cheap, Government-Backed EV

• Lucid to lay off roughly 18% of U.S. workforce, COO Marc Winterhoff leaves

  • Lucid Reduces Production and Lays Off 18 Percent of Its Workforce

• Xiaomi's New EV Just Set the First Autonomous Speed Record at Nürburgring

• GM installs robots at flagship EV factory after laying off 1,300 workers

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Robots Will Replace 700k Workers

  • Robots will replace 700k delivery workers 'sooner or later' warns JD.com boss

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Study finds no clear advantage for trans women over cisgender women in sports

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Parent Uprising Against Screen Time at School

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Older iPhones are vulnerable to a flaw Apple likely can't fix

• Telegram founder accuses Meta of sabotaging access in India with BGP hijacks

• Former Unreal Engine 'Lead Evangelist' Sjoerd De Jong Leaves Epic Games

• Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux FLOSS Drivers

  it's not surprising that after a careful study, my technical contact (representing many brands) decided against opening their specifications. Especially if the open-source infrastructure is branded after the industry's largest competitor. I understand their move.

• Court orders Ohio restrictions on kids' use of social media restored

• A copyright law quirk may let Lord British reclaim Ultima from EA

  a US copyright law allows for creators (or descendants) to reacquire the rights to properties 35 years later, and, since Garriot had sold the rights way back in 1992, he’s liable to get them back in 2027. He said, “and so, I have been waiting… finally, the time has come!” The only thing is that Garriott cannot get the trademark back, only the copyright, meaning that he cannot use just the Ultima name in his game, a problem he’ll easily fix by calling it “Lord British’s Ultima.”

• Google is investing around $75M in 'Backrooms' studio A24

• The Steam Machine is the most ambitious game console I've ever played

  • I thought "For $1k it had better be" but the competition is $100 less, and much less capable.

  • The Steam Machine is the biggest victim of the RAMpocalypse to date

  • Steam Machine Review – PC Gamer

• Valve says SteamOS will be installable on custom desktop PCs

• Tata Electronics cyber breach claiming to expose Apple, Tesla trade secrets

• AMD releases FSR 4.1 upscaling for older graphics cards

• Meta's WhatsApp to be led by Indian startup founder Kunal Shah

• Memory crisis is getting so bad that even retro RAM prices are going to the Moon

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Interstellar comet may be oldest object seen in our solar system, scientists say

• Report: Kennedy Space Center not ready for era of super heavy rockets

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Anthropic's Mythos mess just keeps getting more complicated

  • Anthropic’s Mythos AI Cracked ‘Almost All’ US Classified Systems in Hours, NSA Chief Reportedly Said.

  • How Anthropic may have talked itself into an AI export ban

  • Anthropic's Mythos AI breached almost all NSA systems in a red-team tests

• Data centers become the face of AI backlash

• Why an AI company cleaned my New York City apartment for free

• Microsoft's Satya Nadella: We Can't Let AI Giants Eat the Economy

• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky Plans to Start a New AI Company

• Sam Altman's Orb startup investigated financial misconduct allegations

• Democracy Needs Friction to Function

  AI promises to help us find common ground. But democracy was never meant to resolve our disagreements.

• AI will create more jobs for humans, not replace them, says Bezos

• Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the US

• The World Is Waiting for the Next Adam Smith

  we have built powerful AI systems, but have we built the economic imagination needed to live with them? The question matters because every great technological age needs two foundations. The first is a developmental engine: a new way to boost productivity and expand human capability. The second is an economic model: a way to distribute incentives, coordinate labor, allocate capital, and give society confidence that the new engine serves human progress rather than destabilizing it.

• Microsoft considers DeepSeek as OpenAI costs mount

• Companies are scrambling to curtail soaring AI costs

• 'I got crushed': AI giants are funding ad wars in races across the country

• OpenAI hit with multistate probe into possible user harm as its IPO looms

• OpenAI signs deal to show Getty's images in ChatGPT results

• Five Eyes warns AI models capable of toppling governments are months away

• A viral doomsday scenario aims to shake Europe out of its AI complacency

• Godot confirms it tolerates 'some AI assistance' but rejects 'vibe coded' tag

• A.I. Doomaxxing Is Bad for Our Economy

• AI law firm wins UK court case for first time

  • Artificial intelligence-based law firm wins in court

• People training new AI models admit they just get chatbots to do it

• Will AI spark a scientific Renaissance – or a diffuse monoculture?

• Some Electricians Think Building Data Centers Is for Sellouts

• Why American data centers can't plug in

• OpenAI Codex has a bug that could kill your SSD in under a year

• 1 in 3 Americans use chatbots for health advice

• ChatGPT app store falters six months after launch

• We are witnessing the slow death of the prestige career

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Bitcoin is stuck near $64,000 as ETF outflows reach a sixth week

• Infamous Front-Running Crypto Bot Gets Tricked and Drained for $7.5M

• Binance set to lose permission to operate in Europe

• Economists have long pushed for prediction markets

• Andrew Cuomo to lead joint venture between NYSE parent and crypto exchange OKX

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley

• The Reason Bosses Want You Back in the Office Full Time

• Accenture's crash shows the consultancy racket is finished

  • Accenture shares fall to lowest since 2017 as AI threat mounts

• Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

  this email shows that the investments were motivated by the fees and GenieDB was being used to siphon investor money away. I felt like an ant. My career, my family, my citizenship all would be completely different except for this fraud. This story plays out between investors, multi-millionaire VCs, judges, and my entire life isn’t even a footnote.

  • Not only is it common, the self justification help group is lively: HN comments

• Meta Taps New WhatsApp Boss as Part of $900M Investment

• Meta to Address Low Employee Morale With Snacks

• Do US insurers arbitrage capital regulations with private ratings?

• Uber-backed Lime seeks up to $1.66B valuation in US IPO

• DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships

Democrats

• Gallego tapped campaign cash for family travel, Super Bowl tickets, records show.

• Inside California’s Gay-Certification Program

  In California, state Democrats have embraced another kind of favoritism: contracts for state-certified gay-owned businesses. How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an “LGBT organization” attesting to their sexual preferences; proof that a newspaper identified them as “LGBT”; or three letters from “personal contacts” written “on company letterhead” attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who “falsely represent” their business as gay face up to a year in county jail. Supplier Clearinghouse also accepts gay-certification letters from the National LGBTQ+ & Allied Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints or police records claiming LGBT discrimination.

• What to know about the DOJ inquiry into the Newsoms

  • Behested payments aren't illegal, but they are a problem

  It may seem absurd that the Trump administration could be investigating Newsom for questionable ethics, when Trump has hawked everything from crypto-coins to sneakers from the Oval Office. But the problem Newsom now faces is that behested payments are actually skeevy, and legal or not, they make an excellent target for pummeling the presidential contender. Especially because some of the charities are tied to his wife.

Left Angst

• An Ascendant Constitutional Theory Is a Threat to American Science

  This isn’t merely an attack on science; it is part of a deeper ideological vision that many within the Trump administration have been championing for years: moving power from Congress and executive-branch agencies to the president and his appointees. This vision of increased presidential power permeates Project 2025—a plan co-authored by Russell Vought, now the OMB head. And it is backed by a legal idea known as the unitary-executive theory, which asserts, as Justice Antonin Scalia put it in 1988, that the president possesses all federal executive power

• Mars Is Spending Millions to Give M&M's a MAHA Makeover

• National Science Foundation slashes basic science to fund new tech initiative

• Justice Department Makes It Easier to Bypass Pollution Controls on Pickups

• 'The View' Asks Its Audience for Help in Battle with FCC

• AI and tech are trying to influence the midterm elections

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Staggering amounts of fentanyl hit streets as the DEA watched and took no action

  Even as it battled the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, according to three current and former DEA agents and government records reviewed by The Associated Press. DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers of a synthetic opioid that the White House last year designated a “ weapon of mass destruction.”

• Former Olympic Athlete Among Those Arrested for Reflecting Pool Vandalism.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• China targets U.S. firms in retaliation for Pentagon blacklist

World

• Rightwing populist 'El Tigre' wins Colombia election

  • Trump Ally Wins Colombia Election, Heralding Pro-Market Turn

• Britain's prime minister to step down, Burnham puts himself forward as successor

  • FTSE 100 slips after PM Starmer says will resign

  • Keir Starmer announces his resignation as prime minister

  • UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer expected to step down after Labour rival Andy Burnham wins by-election.

  • UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces he will resign

  The Prime Minister announced his intention to step down after admitting the Labour Party was questioning whether he could lead it into the next general election, which must be held before July 2029, just 23 months after leading his party to a landslide win. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace,” Starmer said outside 10 Downing Street in London.

  • Starmer resigns as Prime Minister

  • It helps sell the fable of an elected government: Why does Britain keep changing prime ministers?

  • Andy Burnham sworn in as MP after Keir Starmer announces resignation

  Andy Burnham is sworn in as the MP for Makerfield hours after Keir Starmer announces his resignation as Labour Party leader. Burnham says he will stand to replace the prime minister, with backing from former Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

  • Burnham ally to unveil ambitious plan to reverse decades of privatisation

• Therapy ferrets used to kill rats at UK's largest children's prison

• Small island nation tries bold tech education strategy

  Is the UK's social media ban for kids just reverse psychiatry?

• South Korea chip workers' bonuses puts central bank on inflation alert

• Europe's heat pumps replace Middle East gas imports twice over

• Danish privacy activist Lars Andersen raided by police

• Japan to raise visa fees for foreign nationals

• Branko Milanovic, economist: 'There will be no return to neoliberal ideology'

• Instagram sued over illegal gambling ads in the Nederland

• Europe faces rising competition for energy from Asia

• Canada is looking to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years

• Iran war supercharges electric vehicle uptake in Africa

• Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says

Iran / Houthi

• Sen. Lindsey Graham predicts Iran peace talks will fail — and Trump will take Strait of Hormuz ‘by force’.

• DHS Says Iranian World Cup Team Tried to Smuggle IRGC Members Into the United States.

  • Trump Secretary Claims Iran Tried To Smuggle Operatives Into U.S. With World Cup Team.

• Vance suggests US, Iran could ‘transform’ relationship but Tehran officials insist they’re not making friends: ‘Primary option is jihad.’

China

• China is having another AI moment

• Can You Pass the Test That Strikes Fear into China's High-Schoolers?

Health / Medicine

• Epidurals Are a Miracle Technology

• When Diets Don't Work: Parents Turn to Wegovy for Elementary School Kids

• Research Suggests the Older You Get, the More Weed You Should Smoke.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• World-first catch: new shark species

• Climate Change Stings Beekeepers

• A New Interpretation of the Rise of Intelligence: Falling CO2 Levels Was Key

  High intelligence arose in the biosphere during the past few tens of millions of years as a result of a metabolic boost generated by the decline of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

• Biggest whale graveyard found in Indian Ocean off Australia

• Stressed-Out Soil Bacteria Adapt to Environmental Conditions

• Could lightning-inspired fertilizer be climate-friendly for Canadian farmers?

• Wolves are reconquering Europe. Can people learn to live with them?

• Wildlife thrives in solar farm built on restored peatland

• Could Bug Spray Attract Mosquitoes?

• Paradise Revisited: What Darwin Saw in the Galápagos