2025-03-22

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• 25 models: Manual Transmission Cars and Trucks You Can Buy in 2025

  Acura Integra and Integra Type S, BMW M2, BMW M3 and M4, BMW Z4, Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing, Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, Ford Bronco, Ford Mustang, Honda Civic Si and Type R, Hyundai Elantra N, Jeep Wrangler, Lotus Emira, Mazda 3 Hatchback, Mazda Miata, Nissan Versa, Nissan Z, Porsche 718 Boxster and Cayman, Porsche 911, Subaru BRZ, Subaru WRX, Toyota GR86, Toyota GR Corolla, Toyota Tacoma, Toyota GR Supra, Volkswagen Jetta GLI,

• Delta plane that flipped over in Toronto last month showed high rate of descent

  • TSB issues preliminary report on Feb. accident of Endeavour CRJ-900 at Toronto

Horseshit

• Boston Dynamics shows off another major leap in humanoid mobility

• Everything TV Taught You About Autopsies Is Wrong

• Denny's Debuts New Nvidia Breakfast Bytes

  Denny’s unveils a special menu item with a tech-inspired twist: the limited-edition NVIDIA® Breakfast Bytes. The delicious new breakfast item pays tribute to NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s remarkable journey from Denny’s dishwasher and server to a tech titan. This innovative dish debuted at NVIDIA’s GTC Conference in San Jose, Calif., showcasing the connection between a Silicon Valley pioneer and America’s Diner. The new NVIDIA Breakfast Bytes feature four sausage links that guests can wrap in Denny’s signature buttermilk silver dollar pancakes and dip in maple syrup – mirroring Huang’s favorite way to eat the dish. The culinary creation also fueled the next generation of visionaries and AI enthusiasts at the NVIDIA GTC Conference this week.

• Food Items You Should Buy When They're on Sale

• 2025 World Happiness Report shows U.S. in lowest-ever spot on list

• The Cult of the American Lawn

• UK cybersecurity agency warns over risk of quantum hackers

• How the language of job postings can attract rule-bending narcissists

• Octopus jumps shark and goes for a ride on its back

• Coca-Cola's new hydrogen-powered vending machine doesn't need a power outlet

Obit

• RIP Kanzi, the Bonobo Who Mastered Language and Minecraft

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Miami Beach mayor backs down from 'No Other Land' theater threat - Los Angeles Times

  A series of showings of the documentary “No Other Land” at a single-screen art-house theater in Miami Beach has become a flash point of controversy. Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner sent a letter dated March 5 to the O Cinema ahead of the screenings imploring the organization not to screen the film, which recently won the Academy Award for feature documentary. The mayor’s letter called it “a one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.” When the theater decided to screen the film despite his protests, Meiner put forth a formal resolution to the city commission to discontinue grant funding from the theater and, more crucially, to terminate its lease from the theater’s current location on city-owned property.

  • Free Speech means you can show your propaganda; but using taxpayer resources to do so is a bit sketchy... Can the house do a showing of something from the other side and claim balance? Would they?

• ‘Independent’ anti-Russia outlet Meduza faces collapse after US funding slashed - The Grayzone

  Now that the self-exiled troll’s former employers at Meduza have been plunged into a financial crisis by the Trump administration’s pause on foreign development assistance, Kovalev’s smears of The Grayzone have been exposed as an exceedingly embarrassing exercise in projection. As The New York Times reported this February 26, grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reportedly accounted for 15% of the outlet’s budget. So while The Grayzone accepts no foreign state support, it turns out that Meduza can not survive for a day without a constant cash infusion from its government sponsors in Washington.

Musk

• Domestic Terrorism Alert

  In what I believe is an unprecedented action, the U. S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has issued a nationwide “Threat Advisory” to all of its personnel who are Tesla owners.

• A website mapped Tesla owners and their personal info amid a wave of attacks

• Elon Musk Asks Tesla Employees to Hang on to Stock Despite 40% Drop

• Elon Musk sues India's government over takedown orders on X

• From Ford to Musk, the Perils of Trying to Build a Global Auto Empire

• Vivian Jenna Wilson on Protecting Trans Youth and Taking on the Right Online

• Tesla trade-ins on pace for record high amid Musk backlash

  • Tesla owners are trading in their EVs at record levels, Edmunds says

• Over 80 Tesla vehicles damaged at a single location

  The Hamilton police in Ontario announced that over 80 Tesla vehicles were damaged in a vandalism attack at a Tesla service center. It’s the latest example of a series of vandalism attacks against Tesla over the last few weeks.

• Elon Musk joins surprise Tesla all-hands meeting

• Elon Musk's 'truth-seeking' chatbot often disagrees with him

• Feds charge three over Molotov attacks on Tesla sites in multiple states

• Elon Musk Gets Ready to Enter the Restaurant Business

• Elon Musk is paying voters again ahead of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The slow but steady advance of driverless vehicles

• EVs are starving states of tax money to fix potholes and build roads

• Ford Recalls F-150 Lightning Over Fire Risk

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Reinterpreting/Reconciling the Periodic Table with Buddhist Elemental Theory

• Trans girls playing girls’ sports? How about a more radical idea: Abolish the gender divide in athletics altogether

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Future of Higher Ed Is in Austin

• The Dawn of Post-Literacy

  So we have two trends in learning: answer-first interfaces, and video for skills acquisition and information transfer. Couple that with voice-first interfaces (Alexa, Google, Siri, and all the LLMs doing audio work), and you've got the recipe for post-literacy in the sense of a strong decreasing reliance on text (Terminal to GUI, anyone?) in favor of graphical and audio interfaces. That gets us to "post-literacy" as a non-hypothetical evolutionary endpoint if trends persist. So the next logical question is, "Are those trends actually persisting (at least prevalent enough)?" Given that this is a blog post and not a formal paper for publication, I'll stake a "yes" in the ground. It's my opinion and particularly my _vibes-_based opinion (the word of late 2024, eh?).

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Names, bank info, and more spills from top sperm bank

• Lapham's Quarterly Finds a New Home

• EU forces Apple to open up notifications and other iOS features to third-party

• Comcast and Spectrum join in on the satellite messaging wave

• Harvard study: open-source has an economic value of 8.8T dollars

• iPhones were being stolen off porches right after delivery, and now we know how

• Google is bringing every Android game to Windows in big gaming update

• It's Official: The DVD Business Died in 2024

• FCC Cutting Red Tape for Investments Streamlining Retirement of Old Copper Lines

  Adopts a waiver that allows providers to retire copper networks, not only in cases where replacement voice services are available on a stand-alone basis, but in cases where those services are available on a bundled basis. The FCC’s pro-consumer pricing protections will remain in place.

• Google claims news is worthless to its ad business after test in 8 EU markets

• Here’s the Steam on Xbox evidence Microsoft didn’t want you to see | The Verge

• EU to take action to protect children from harmful practices in video games

  The key principles outline the minimum requirements for the purchase and use of virtual currencies, including:

  • clear and transparent pricing and pre-contractual information;
  • avoiding practices hiding the costs of in-game digital content and services, as well as practices forcing consumers to purchase virtual currency;
  • respect of consumers' right of withdrawal;
  • respecting consumer vulnerabilities, in particular when it comes to children;

  The key principles published today address concerns raised by the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC). They will help create a safer, more transparent experience for players. The European Commission will be hosting a workshop where gaming companies operating in the EU will be encouraged to present concrete steps, they will take to implement these key principles. The CPC Network will monitor progress and may take further actions if harmful practices continue.

• Full-Size Amiga Replica Delayed by Legal Action, Will Be Called 'The A1200'

• Yahoo sells TechCrunch to investment firm Regent

  • Yahoo Is Selling TechCrunch

• Microsoft ducks questions on Copilot bundling, lack of consent amid price hikes

• GM Reportedly Blocks Dealership from Installing CarPlay in Newer EVs

• Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

• 'More are published than could ever succeed': are there too many books?

  • How does one define "succeed"?

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Gitlab is sued by its own investors over misleading AI hype

• Russian disinformation 'infects' AI chatbots, researchers warn

• Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

• Apple sued for false advertising over Apple Intelligence

• CEO of AI ad-tech firm pledging "world free of fraud" sentenced for fraud

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Overtime Pay for 9 Extra Months in Space? Nope

• Europe is finally getting serious about commercial rockets

• German company set for first commercial rocket launch from Europe

Crypto con games

• Director Charged with Fraud After Blowing $4M Netflix's Cash on Dogecoin

• Tornado Cash Delisting

  Based on the Administration’s review of the novel legal and policy issues raised by use of financial sanctions against financial and commercial activity occurring within evolving technology and legal environments, we have exercised our discretion to remove the economic sanctions against Tornado Cash as reflected in Treasury’s Monday filing in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• A look at some of the creative ways companies try to dodge high tariffs

• PG&E asks to raise rates for California customers so it can pay investors more

  • They need some money to cut line right of ways and other maintenance too, no?

• Boston Celtics Sold for $6.1B, a Record Price for Pro Sports

• DoorDash Offering Payment Plans for Food Delivery Sparks Backlash

  • DoorDash and Klarna signed deal where customers can pay for food in installments

  • DoorDash, Klarna sign deal for deferred, installment food delivery payments

• As a Berkeley Professor, I've Seen How H-1B Visas Are Impacting Tech Jobs

• Foreigners Dump U.S. Treasuries. Here's Who Did the Most Selling

• Uber offers 20 hours of free childcare in bid to lure female drivers

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• LA Faces $1B Budget Hole, Warns of Layoffs

• People named in JFK assassination documents are not happy personal info released

• New York state's top court blocks New York City law to allow noncitizen voting - POLITICO

  New York’s top court has struck down a law that would have let noncitizens vote in New York City elections, with the court’s progressive majority overwhelmingly siding with Republicans who challenged the idea. The law would have made more than 800,000 people eligible to vote in municipal contests such as mayoral races. “We file some lawsuits that are stretches,” said Joe Borelli, the former Republican minority leader of the New York City Council and one of the plaintiffs who challenged the law. “This one was, from the beginning, an open-shut case.” The law was approved in the waning days of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. When neither he nor successor Eric Adams issued a veto, it automatically became law in early 2022.

• S.F.'s top-paid employee made $840K. Here's what every city worker gets paid

• Some Questions About An Autodidactic Autopen

• DOGE Staffer Drops Bombshell After Bombshell About Inner Workings of IRS/Treasury Dept.

  "A typical midsize bank will have somewhere between 1 and 200 people in IT and they have an operations and maintenance budget in like the $20 million a year range. We have 8,000 people in IT, and our operations and maintenance budget is $3.5 billion a year. I don’t really know why yet.”

• U.S. to open millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining

• The future of internet liability is uncertain as Congress targets Section 230

Trump

• Trump signs executive action to dismantle the Education Department

• Trump rescinds executive order as law firm agrees $40M in free services

• Trump awards Boeing much-needed win with fighter jet contract, sources say

• US Could Join British Commonwealth

Left Angst

• US tech giants lobby Trump to tackle Australian social media rules

• What Happens to Student Loans If the Education Dept. Closes?

• Musk threatens Pentagon leakers after NYT report on secret China war briefing

  • Musk Set to Get Access to Top-Secret U.S. Plan for Potential War with China

  • Musk Set to Receive Top-Secret Briefing on U.S. War Plans for China

  • Elon Musk Is Said to Be Getting the War Plan Against China

• Germany tightens travel advice to US after three citizens detained

  • Britain Issues Travel Warning for US

  • Germany and Britain issue warnings about traveling to America

• When Will US Academia and Business Speak Up Against Trump?

• 'Startup Nation' Groups Say They're Meeting Trump Officials

• Green Card Holders Warned Against Leaving the United States

• Trump suggests sending Tesla vandals to El Salvador prisons

  • Trump Touts Prison in El Salvador for Tesla Attackers

• What does Maga-land look like?

• Accenture is DOGE's first corporate casualty, shares dive on warning of cuts

  • Accenture: DOGE's Federal procurement review is hurting our sales

• U.S. Says Decision to Turn Back French Scientist Had Nothing to Do with Trump

• Universities are caving to Trump with a stunning speed and scope

  • How long have they touted their intellectual independence, while bowing to every fad that came by? Perhaps getting them hooked on a stream of Federal money wasn't an integrity enhancing strategy in the first place?

• Members of British punk rock band UK Subs denied entry into the US

• Vaxart lays off 10% of staff after HHS demands halt to Covid vaccine trial

• How the Education Department cuts could hurt low-income and rural schools

• Silicon Valley Has Gone from 'Think Different' to 'Yes, Sir'

• The EPA wants to roll back rules essential for protecting from chemical disaster

• FCC's Carr Threatens to Block M&A for Companies with DEI Plans

• Federal workers say DOGE makes government inefficient

• Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle over Federal Funding

• Trump Administration Begins Shifting Cyberattack Response to States

• President Musk Declares War on American Workers

• Trump and Musk's Takeover of NASA

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

• Nonprofit’s Leader Convicted of Siphoning Off $240 Million in Federal Food Aid - The New York Times

  The leader of a Minnesota anti-hunger nonprofit was convicted in U.S. District Court on Wednesday of masterminding a brazen scheme that reaped more than $240 million in pandemic relief funds with a network of bogus food kitchens that billed the government for 91 million meals. The nonprofit’s leader, Aimee Bock, 44, was convicted by a jury of seven counts, including wire fraud and bribery. Another defendant, Salim Said — a 36-year-old who oversaw one of the bogus kitchens — was convicted of 20 counts, also including wire fraud and bribery. When Ms. Bock was charged in 2022, federal prosecutors said her scheme was the largest known fraud against the government’s Covid-19 relief programs.

  Ms. Bock ran a sponsor nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors said she had conspired with dozens of people to set up 250 nonexistent feeding operations around Minnesota and used her oversight power to hide that network from the government. By law, Ms. Bock’s nonprofit got a cut of the money. Prosecutors said it had eventually totaled $18 million. Many of the fake operations submitted invoices for implausibly large numbers of children: Mr. Said’s operation, for instance, said it had fed 6,000 a day, more than all the children in its ZIP code. In another instance, a man said he was feeding 5,000 children a night — from a location that turned out to be a second-floor apartment.

• Cori Bush's Husband Indicted for Wire Fraud, Allegedly Submitted False Applications To Obtain COVID Relief Funds

  Former left-wing congresswoman Cori Bush’s husband was charged on Thursday with defrauding the federal government to illegally collect tens of thousands of dollars in loans under COVID-era small business relief programs. Cortney Merritts, who secretly married Bush in 2023, falsified details about his purported businesses in order to obtain more than $20,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration in 2020 and 2021 under the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Department of Justice said in a statement. The indictment comes roughly one year after the DOJ launched an investigation into Bush over a separate ordeal: Bush's campaign payments to Merritts. Bush used her congressional campaign budget to pay for more than $812,000 on questionable private security services. She paid more than $150,000 to her husband.

• Conservative Influencers Targeted by 'Swatting' Calls

• Feds indict ex-Michigan FB coach Matt Weiss: Hacked computers to spy on women

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The ax has become an important part of the Space Force's arsenal

• Would Americans Go to War Against China?

• U.S. limits Canadian access to iconic Stanstead, Que., border-straddling library

• Putting Missile Interceptors in Space Critical to Defending U.S. Citizens

• The Warship That Shows Why the U.S. Navy Is Falling Behind China

• First US sixth-gen fighter jet will be the F-47, and Boeing is going to build it

World

• London Heathrow closure – Friday 21 Mar 2025

  • Power Outage Shuts Heathrow, Snarling Air Travel

  • Heathrow Airport to close Friday after fire knocks out power to part of London

  • Huge Fire closes UK's Heathrow Airport, flights disrupted

  • Heathrow airport closed: more than 1k flights affected after substation fire

  • London's Heathrow Airport Halts Operations, Throwing Global Travel into Disarray

  • Heathrow closed all day after nearby fire causes power outage

  • London's Heathrow Airport Shut Friday Due to Power Outage

  • London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

  • Heathrow Airport closes due to major power outage caused by substation fire

  • Heathrow airport closed after huge fire causes power outage

  • Flight chaos across the world with hundreds of planes forced to divert or turn around as huge fireball shuts London’s Heathrow Airport… and disruptions could last days

  • Counter-terror police investigating 'unprecedented' fire that shut Heathrow

  • What We Know About the Closure of Heathrow Airport

• Canada should mend ties with China to build a new world (trade) order

• The head of South Korea's guard consulted ChatGPT before martial law was imposed

• Canada Prepares to Join E.U. Military Industry Buildup

• 'Buy European': call for sovereign fund and higher Europe tech autonomy

  • "Buy American" is racist xenophobia, according to many of these folks...

• EU Pushes Ahead with Big Tech Antitrust Enforcement

• The sun has literally set on the British Empire | Popular Science

  a major chapter in world history has just now come to a close. As first highlighted last year on Reddit, the spring equinox on March 20 marked the sun’s passage over the celestial equator, kicking off half a year of darkness around the South Pole. And given last year’s deal with Mauritius, this means Thursday night at 10:50 PM EST (2:50 AM on March 21 in London), the sun finally, literally set on the British empire.

Iran / Houthi

• Iran's water crisis became a national emergency

Israel

• Israel's war on Gaza is deliberately targeting children – new UN report

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Putin's Police State Increasingly a State Without Enough Police

China

• Five Chinese satellites practiced 'dogfighting' in space, Space Force says

• China is developing some startling new kit in its quest to reclaim Taiwan

• China's military is going to war against itself

• Western Ignorance: Failure to See China Beyond the Party

• Canada condemns China after it executes 4 Canadians over 'drug-related crimes'

• Studies show strong public support for China's political system

Health / Medicine

• Is the FDA cracking down on poppers? And if so, why?

• Do Viruses Trigger Alzheimer's?

• Your Poop Schedule Says a Lot About Your Overall Health, Study Discovers.

  • Products promoting "regularity" used to be a major sector of the advertising business.

• Dreams of improving the human race are no longer science fiction

  But the “enhancement” industry is still hobbled by out-of-date regulation

  Human enhancement, from wearable devices that monitor health to neural implants intended to overcome paralysis, is already a $125bn industry, according to imarc, a consultancy, and is growing by more than 10% a year. Firms seeking to increase longevity, just one element of enhancement, attracted almost $5bn in venture capital in the first half of last year. Tech luminaries such as Peter Thiel, co-founder of both PayPal and Palantir, and Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, are pouring money into the idea that the human body can be improved. It is not just the vision of a future in which ageing is held at bay and Olympic feats of strength, speed or endurance are commonplace that is exciting investors. They are also energised by the sense that America’s current leaders are open to this sort of techno-utopianism and may help foster it. Last month Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son and namesake of America’s president, joined Messrs Angermayer and Thiel as an investor in the Enhanced Games. The competition, the younger Mr Trump explained, embodies “excellence, innovation and American dominance on the world stage—something the MAGA movement is all about”. Could the combination of enthusiastic investors and official encouragement pave the way for treatments that redefine the capacity of the human mind and body?

• Urgent recall for popular laundry detergent over potentially deadly bacteria contamination | Daily Mail Online

  A recall has been issued for Woolite laundry detergent due to possible contamination with bacteria that can cause serious, sometimes deadly infections. The voluntary recall applies to more than 16,000 bottles of certain 50 fluid-ounce bottles that were sold on Amazon in January. Consumers who purchased the detergent have been urged to immediately stop using it and check bottles for lot codes S24364, S24365 or S24366, which are found near the lid on top.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Internationally coordinated glacier measurements: a lofty challenge

• Can Earth's rotation generate power? Physicists divided over controversial claim

• First evidence of microplastic buildup in bird lungs

• Net zero could CRASH Britain’s economy with poorest in society hit hardest, leaked document admits.

  A leaked Whitehall assessment has revealed that the UK’s rush to achieve net zero could wipe 10 per cent off economic growth by 2030 and potentially trigger a financial crash. The never-before-published Government document contains stark warnings about the economic consequences of poorly planned carbon neutrality efforts. It claims the transition to net zero by 2050 comes with the “potential risk of destabilising the financial system”. The assessment, seen by The Sun, also suggests the poorest in society will bear the heaviest burden of these economic changes.

• Unknown microorganisms used marble and limestone as a habitat

• Violent supernovae 'triggered at least two Earth extinctions'

• The Lonely Life of a Paper Straw Crusader

• We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky

• Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated