2025-04-15

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• (video) Demolishing the Fry's Electronics in Burbank

• Nihilism Is Not Enough

• Forecast for showers: Plenty of meteors to fill night skies for rest of 2025.

• After L.A. Fires, Edison Wants to Bury Power Lines in Altadena and Malibu

Horseshit

• Operation Atacama: The $1M cactus heist that led to a smuggler's downfall

• What I've learned after 40 years as the Observer's science editor

• Will sci-fi end up destroying the world?

• Older people who use smartphones 'have lower rates of cognitive decline'

• The Positively Correct Way to Load Your Dishwasher

• Baseball Reaches Its Breaking Point

• Fujitsu develops AI-powered device to assess tuna fat content

• Is This the Dominant Personality Type of Our Time?

  We’ve all become Clint Eastwood today. Okay, maybe not everybody. But the main forums of public discourse on social media are filled with flat emotionless people who flare up into anger at the slightest provocation. None of us saw this coming with the rise of the Internet. At least, I didn’t—nor did I hear anyone else predict the eventual effects back in the mid-1990s. But maybe we should have anticipated it. Can you really eliminate flesh-and-blood contact from every sphere of society without causing intense depersonalization? Can you really replace the human, lived world with data on flat screens without causing a comparable flattening of the users? Probably not.

  • there used to be plenty of personality and emotion available online, but then the Masters of Media declared that passion was bad, divisive, and racist. Any verbiage that risked engendering "bad feelings" was worth banning. Even Linus Torvalds had to be re-educated into speaking to consensus.

• 'Silicon Six' accused of avoiding $278B in US corporation taxes over 10 years

  • Who doesn't avoid every tax they can?

celebrity gossip

• Taylor Lorenz’s Horrible Take On Suspected Murderer Luigi Mangione Just Got Ten Times Worse

  “You’re going to see women especially that feel like, Oh my God, right? Like, here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart. He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find,” Lorenz claimed. Instead of pushing back, O’Sullivan joked, “Yeah, I just realized women will literally date an assassin before they swipe right on me. That’s where we’re at.”

  • California punk rockers call for an ‘army of Luigis’ during brash Coachella set

Obit

• Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-Winning Peruvian Novelist, Dies at 89

• Nicky Katt, Dazed and Confused and School of Rock actor, dies aged 54

• Jean Marsh, Upstairs, Downstairs actress and co-creator, dies, aged 90

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• In U.S., support dips for restricting false or violent online content

Musk

• Bought a Cybertruck for my business. I paid to teach my staff self-defense

• Data Protection Commission Announces commencement of inquiry into X

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The realism of religion - New Statesman

  A Christian revival won’t save the deluded West – but it might teach it to accept its fate.

  Among higher minds it is de rigueur to mock the declarations of conservatives who think the salvation of the  West lies in a religious reawakening. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London in February was ridiculed in the British media for its focus on the need for a return to “Judaeo-Christian traditions”. In identifying a crisis in religion as the root of Western disorder, however, the right – not for the first time – is ahead of the game. The fundamental fact of the age is the passing of liberal humanism, whose dwindling adherents grimly hang on to their mouldering creed for fear of something worse. Like liberals today, Mill could not conceive that rejection of Christianity would bring a celebration of cruelty and the reinvention of slavery, as it did in Nazism. But once Christianity is rejected, what reason is there for expecting Christian ethics to survive?

• Can God fix America’s housing crisis? - The Hustle

  The US has a severe shortage of affordable homes — and a staggering number of churches and synagogues with unused space for redevelopment

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why speaking different languages at home is great for your young child

• Fashionable Nonsense. Behaviorial Science Is Bullshit

  People named Dennis are more likely to become dentists. If you do a little ritual before you go on stage, you’ll perform better. If you give your employees chocolate chip cookies, they will become, as if by magic, more motivated. What you think, and the judgments you make, are conditioned by “bias” that you need to overcome with data. With statistics. With science. This heady cocktail of assertions and recommendations comes from the world of “behavioral science,” a strain of psychology with a storied academic history that has spilled into the worlds of publishing, public policy, and management theory. The problem is that it’s all bullshit.

• Librarians in UK asked to remove books as US pressure group influence spreads

• How Obama and Biden paved the way for Trump's attacks on universities

• Tenure-Track Faculty Raises Continue To Lag All Other Higher Ed Workers; Inflation-Adjusted Salaries Are 10% Lower Than In 2017.

• Google Hit with Lawsuit over Data Collection on School Kids

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Will Meta survive Judge Boasberg? The drama starts Monday

  • Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

  • Meta faces antitrust charges in court, FTC calls the company an illegal monopoly

  • What If Mark Zuckerberg Had Not Bought Instagram and WhatsApp?

  • Meta faces antitrust claims at trial over Instagram and WhatsApp ownership

  • U.S. Argues Meta Built a Social Media Monopoly

  • U.S. Prepares to Challenge Meta's Social Media Dominance

• Why is BBC Sounds not going to be available in Ireland?

• The Nvidia RTX 5070 is the latest Blackwell GPU to suffer a melted power cable and damaged connector

• Risks to children playing Roblox 'deeply disturbing', say researchers

• She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

• China and America Agree: Apple Is Too Big to Fail

• Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby losing popularity

• Smart Watch Users Pissed as Garmin Opens Door to Paywall Enshittification

• One of the Year's Biggest Games Is an Indie Drug-Dealing SIM Made by a Solo Dev

• Oregon lawmakers to decide if big tech should pay for local journalism support

• As Concert Ticket Prices Soar, More Than Half of Coachella GA Attendees Are Buying Tickets Through Payment Plans

  • Festival guests report stolen belongings from hotel rooms during Coachella

• The future of the internet is likely smaller communities

  • We had that; but big money got spent on eliminating the "echo chambers."

• 3000 days of Duolingo

  Over the past eight years, I completed the German course at least three times, dabbled in French, and breezed through the music and math tracks. In this article, I share my experience with the app and my motivations for quitting a habit I had for almost a quarter of my life.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI isn't ready to replace human coders for debugging, researchers say

• Google paying AI staff for a year to keep them from joining rivals

• For First Time, Artificial Intelligence Is Being Used at a Nuclear Power Plant

• Meta says it will resume AI training with public content from European users

• Elon Musk's Artificial God

  In the vision of Musk and other lords of Silicon Valley, the purpose of AI technology is to insulate them, and only them, from any hint that they might live in a society.

• Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military

• OpenAI Is a Systemic Risk to the Tech Industry

  OpenAI had revenues of $4bn in 2024. This deal values OpenAI at 75 times its revenue. That’s a bigger gulf than Tesla at its peak market cap — a company that was, in fact, worth more than all other legacy car manufacturers combined, despite making far less than them, and shipping a fraction of their vehicles.

• AI Boom to Fuel Surge in Data Center Energy Needs, IEA Says

• OpenAI plans to phase out GPT-4.5, its largest-ever AI model, from its API

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Katy Perry, Gayle King and 4 other women are headed for the 'edge of space.'

  • All-female crew, including singer Katy Perry, blast off on Blue Origin rocket

  • Katy Perry, 4 other women, return safely from spaceflight.

  • Blue Origin crew reflect on 'phenomenal dream' of travelling into space

  • Blue Origin’s all-female space flight was a step backwards for feminism | The Spectator

  Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-31 mission has attracted huge attention because it featured an all-female crew, including Lauren Sanchez (the soon-to-be wife of Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos). The others on board were pop star Katy Perry, TV presenter Gayle King, film-maker Kerianne Flynn, Amanda Nguyen (a civil rights activist and astrophysicist), and Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer who worked for Nasa. The rocket launched from Blue Origin’s site in the West Texas Desert and flew the crew over the Karman Line – the internationally recognised boundary of space – at an altitude of 100km (62 miles).

  Far be it from me to spoil the party, but this is not space exploration. Sanchez is a former TV presenter, about to get married to one of the world’s richest men who just happens to own the space rocket. It has been reported that the crew trained for all of two days ahead of the trip. Rather depressingly, much of the coverage of their journey into space featured talk of flared jump suits and other fashion accessories. The female crew appeared more than happy with this agenda, saying that lipstick, eyelash extensions and hair styles matter. The bible of female empowerment, according to Katy Perry, goes like this: ‘Space is finally going to be glam…We are going to put the “ass” in “astronaut”’.

• China is littering in LEO.

  While Western launch providers typically deorbit their upper stages after dropping off megaconstellation satellites in space, China does not. This means China is leaving rockets in orbits high enough to persist in space for more than a century

Crypto con games

• Canadian math prodigy allegedly stole US$65M in crypto

• Bitcoin's Hash Rate Hits Record High, yet Price and Activity Tell Another Story

• 7-Eleven Begins Accepting Bank of Korea's Digital Currency in CBDC Trial

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Revolut to take on American Express with move into reward credit cards

• US egg prices increase to record high, dashing hopes of cheap eggs by Easter

• A Frenzy at Trader Joe's: 'Everyone's Here for the Tote Bags'

  • $3 Trader Joe's tote bags resell for more than $1,500

• Intel Close to Unveiling Deal to Sell Altera to Silver Lake

  • Intel to sell majority stake in Altera for $4.46B

• Nvidia to Manufacture American-Made AI Supercomputers in US for First Time

  • Nvidia to mass produce AI supercomputers in Texas as part of $500B U.S. push

  • Amid Trump tariff chaos, Nvidia launches AI chip production on US soil

  • Nvidia stock leaps after massive U.S. investment surprise - TheStreet

• Hugging Face acquires open source robot startup Pollen Robotics

• Target suffers 10th consecutive week of foot traffic decline since caving on DEI

  • Target's foot traffic keeps falling amid boycotts and slashed DEI efforts

• Will Peak Demand Roil Global Oil Markets?

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Arizona to begin removing as many as 50K noncitizens from voter rolls following lawsuit.

• FEMA to end coverage for North Carolina recovery efforts

• How would I start an NGO to implement a conservative agenda in D.C.?

  • There used to be such organizations, often actual grassroots, poorly funded, barely surviving non-prfits. They mostly either went away or were taken down in 2007 or so when the IRS went to filtering 501(c) organizations by ideology.

• How Democrats used NGOs to end-run voters — and democracy

• North Dakota Lawmakers Pass Bill Restricting Library Books Deemed Obscene

• MTA says tolls keeping 82k drivers a day out of Manhattan

Trump

• Smartphone tariffs are coming back in 'a month or two,' says Trump admin

• Trump Signals New Tariffs on Chips, Calling Exclusions Temporary

• Trump threatens new tariffs on smartphones days after exempting them

• US considering tariff exemptions on auto parts while car companies adjust

Left Angst

• Dismay as cross-border library in US-Canada feud: 'We just want to stay open'

• Scores of Coal-Fired Power Plants Exempted from Rules by Trump

• Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk Call to Abolish Intellectual Property Law

• Tariffs, saving, and investment - by John H. Cochrane

  the whole business about saving, investment, “reserve currency” and so forth. Most economists reacted in horror at CEA chair Stephen Miran’s essay claiming that US reserve currency status — that we can print money, send it abroad and other countries work hard and send us stuff in return — is a burden for the US. Actually there is a kernel of logic here, and a great danger, though tariffs will do absolutely nothing to rectify the situation at least without huge economic cost. Start with Greece, a good source of cautionary fables. In 2001, Greece joined the euro. By doing so, it foreswore inflation and devaluation should it borrow too much and not be able to repay. European financial markets (especially banks) responded by offering very low interest rates. Greece could have used the money for productive investment. Instead, it largely went on a consumption boom. Porsches went south, paper promises went north. When the lenders figured out what had happened, they refused to roll over loans (all crises are crises of short term debt), and the famous Greek crisis erupted. (For more details, see Crisis Cycle with Luis Garicano and Klaus Masuch.) Something similar has happened to the US, on a grander scale and with nobody standing in the wings to bail us out. That’s the danger.

  From the US side, we are investing more than we are saving. China, in effect, wants to send us factories. But China doesn’t make portable factories. It’s great at making consumer goods. So China sends us consumer goods so that we can build our own factories without lowering consumption.

• Australian academics refuse to attend US conferences for fear of being detained

• Why China Can't Win a Trade War

• Side-Effect of Trump Flip-Flopping on Tariffs

  While the share price/value of these donors might have dropped since Trump took office, it might be that in the long run, the increased market volatility is actually a benefit for these companies since it will increase their profits.

• One of the country's leading Alzheimer's projects is in jeopardy

  A pause to NIH funding has researchers scrambling for contingency plans at the University of Washington’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The center’s brain bank is preserving more than 4,000 brains for research.

• Company's Surveillance Tech Makes Immigrants 'Easy Pickings' for Trump

• Learning from Conservative Talk Radio - by Cass Sunstein

  There is a lot of focus, here in April, on Joe Biden, and on how terrible and horrible and awful and unbelievably bad he was. It is a bit surprising to see such a focus on Biden. When things get hard or a little boring, one of the hosts’ strategies, or go-to moves, seems to be: “Talk about Biden’s terribleness!”

  These days, and maybe since February, there seems to be agreement on this proposition: President Trump can do no wrong. (And: He’s our guy.) I cannot recall any negative words above President Trump.

  • So, just like mainstream media with the names reversed?

• Doge Cuts Hobble Office That Would Aid NASA and SpaceX Mars Landings

• Why Xi holds a stronger hand than Trump

• Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

• It is difficult to imagine a post-American world. But imagine it we must

• Why Import Tariffs Are Identical to Export Taxes

• Three Reasons Apple tariffs won't be reapplied

• Pentagon celebrates snipping 0.58% from defense budget in IT, DEI cuts

• No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism

• Beyond Showerheads: Trump's Attempts to Kill Appliance Regulations Cause Chaos

• Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship US Citizens to El Salvador

• This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump's Trap, If They Dare

• Trump administration says it is not required to help wrongly deported man return

• White House Confirms Trump Is Exploring Ways to 'Deport' U.S. Citizens

• Harvard Will Fight Trump's Demands

  • Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

  • Harvard rejects Trump deal to avoid billions in funding cuts

• Trump's Unconstitutional Plot to Banish U.S. Citizens to Gulags

• Trump Tariffs Put US Services Trade Surplus with China at Risk

• NIH bans certain countries from accessing multiple databases

• CDC cruise inspectors laid off as ship arrives in Fla with norovirus outbreak

• Yes, Donald Trump Is Planning to Send U.S. Residents En Masse to Death Camps

• Resellers sitting on costly pile of regret after US smartphone shopping spree

• 'We are flying blind': RFK Jr.'s cuts halt data collection on abortion, cancer

• ICE: We're Here to Stop Illegal Ideas from Crossing the Border

• US judge asks if constitutional crisis looms in Tufts student's immigration case

• El Salvador won't return mistakenly deported man to U.S.

• Trump Is Defying the Supreme Court - The Atlantic

  The Court told the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison. So far, the administration is pretending to comply while refusing to do so.

• The FDA fired its tobacco enforcers. Now it wants them back

• Trump Official Declaring 'Anyone Who Preaches Hate for America' Will Be Deported

• Big Tech does a delicate dance as Trump tariffs loom

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro arson suspect arrested

  Cody Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg, is expected to face charges of attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson, and aggravated assault against an enumerated person, authorities said. Balmer was allegedly carrying homemade incendiary devices when he snuck into the gated compound that is the official residence of the governor by jumping a fence, according to police. Investigators believe the attack was “targeted,” but haven’t determined a specific motive, Shapiro said. Police did not release more details on Balmer’s actions.

  • What we know about suspect in arson at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• EU issues US-bound staff with burner phones over spying fears

• US Military Academies End Racial Preferences in Admissions.

• Navy secretary says Trump said to ‘fix the damn rust' on warships

  Navy Secretary John Phelan said he has a mandate from President Donald Trump: “Fix the damn rust.” “He has stated to me many times: ‘Shipbuilding, shipbuilding, shipbuilding. Get those ships out of maintenance yards. Fix the damn rust,’” Phelan said on Wednesday. “He does not like it, and I don’t like getting calls in the middle of the night.”

• Live demos test effectiveness of Revolutionary War weapons

• Troops arrive at the border to help with enforcement despite fewer crossings

• NATO acquires AI military system from Palantir

World

• India to Consider Blocking Wikipedia

• The Strange, Unsettling Story of British Steel.

• Haiti turns to weaponized drones to fight the gangs

• 5 years on: Brexit's affects on scientists who had moved to the UK from Europe

• British Laws Are Not Fit for Social Media Age, Says Report on U.K. Riots

• Security officials report a Beijing-linked online operation focused on Carney

• Japan sees record drop in population

• Canadian government freezes bank account of People's Party of Canada candidate

• How India's middle-class debt crisis is threatening growth

Israel

• Gaza hospital hit by Israeli strike, Hamas says

China

• China Allows New Coal Plants Through 2027 to Fill Renewable Gaps

• China nuclear fusion record generating steady loop of plasma for 1k seconds

• Can China fight America alone?

• Chinese solar cell manufacturer Longi sets another record with 27.81% efficiency

  • For the longest time, the US Government classed 20% efficient solar cells as "world changing" technology they'd appropriate rather than allow to be patented...

• Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy party moves to disband as freedoms dwindle.

Health / Medicine

• Childhood obesity requires early, aggressive treatment, new guidelines say

  The American Academy of Pediatrics' new guidance on childhood obesity — the first in 15 years — moves away from "watchful waiting," or delaying treatment to see if children outgrow obesity. The group is now advising pediatricians to "offer treatment options early and at the highest available intensity" for one of the most common chronic diseases among children. Untreated, obesity is associated with a range of long-term health problems including heart disease and diabetes.

  weight loss drugs should be considered for adolescents as young as 12, the AAP says, while teens 13 and older with severe obesity should be evaluated for weight loss surgery. This push to treat obesity earlier comes on the heels of the approval for children 12 and up of a new weight loss medicine called Wegovy, a weekly injection of a drug that is also used to treat diabetes.

• Dementia Is Much More Common Among the Married Than the Unmarried

• 'Low-sugar' vaccine can provide broad immunity against coronavirus variants

• The Chinese CEO Who Believes Her Cancer Drug Can Beat Merck's Bestseller

• Political beliefs affect patients' trust in doctors, study finds

• Dental flossing may lower risk of stroke from blood clots, irregular heartbeats

• FDA to phase out animal testing in drugs in what it calls a 'paradigm shift'

• Also the broadest standards for "pegnancy related death": The US has highest rate of pregnancy-related death among high-income countries

• Radiation from CT scans could account for 5% of all cancer cases a year

• FDA warns about fake Ozempic in U.S. supply chain.

• Cutting Edge: The Cautious Optimism for Psychiatric Brain Surgery

  Originally known as psychosurgery, this uncommon approach to mental health care involves operating on the brain to alter its function. After lobotomies left many vulnerable patients disabled in the mid-20th century, the practice lost momentum and acquired a stigma. But surgeons in the field continued to refine their techniques. Now, psychiatric neurosurgery, a more nimble descendent, has seen an uptick in the treatment of conditions like severe OCD, and — more rarely — treatment-resistant depression and anxiety.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• A hidden strategy: How SARS-CoV-2 uses fibrinogen to evade the immune system

• Is Covid Rewriting the Rules of Aging? Brain Decline Alarms Doctors

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Gas boilers now biggest source of air pollution in central London, study shows

• Dead trees keep surprisingly large amounts of carbon out of atmosphere

• Farmers' Favorite Weedkiller Nears Its End, Bayer Warns

• 'Parkinson's is a man-made disease'

• Scientists discover new microbes in Earth's deep soil

• More Greenhouse Gases Means Less Room for Satellites

• Global EV adoption fails to cut CO₂