2025-04-23

etc

• Car found in hangar of sunken WWII ship

• How pineapples got cheap

  Ordinary yellow pineapples were once so precious they were rented for display at dinner parties, but centuries of innovation made them commonplace.

Horseshit

• Over 1 in 5 boys and men in Canada and US may have an eating disorder

• Christian "TheoBros" Are Building a Tech Utopia in Appalachia

• Teens, Social Media and Mental Health

• Do You Know What Classical Music Is? Does Anyone?

• Why Narcissists Emerge as Leaders Even in Childhood

• European Neolithic farmers interbred their pigs with wild boar

  • They probably didn't have to work hard at it

• Evolution of the Manosphere Alpha Male Aesthetic

• Why California's dangerous drivers get to keep their licenses

• Man Buys Racetrack, Ends Up Launching the Netflix of Grassroots Motorsports

celebrity gossip

• Nobody Wanted to Publish Frank Herbert's Dune Except a Car Repair Manual Company

• The investigation, seizure and death of Peanut the media star squirrel

  Soon after the Oct. 30 seizure, both animals were euthanized and Peanut became a martyr – held up as a symbol of government overreach by political candidates, including Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who invoked Peanut’s name during a rally just days before the presidential election. State and Local officials were inundated with angry messages and even bomb threats.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab steps down from globalist body's board

  • World Economic Forum Opens New Probe into Founder Klaus Schwab

Musk

• Progressive Minnesota Prosecutor Lets State Employee Off with No Charges for Alleged Tesla Vandalism

  A progressive prosecutor is declining to charge a Minnesota state employee after he was caught on camera allegedly causing an estimated $20,000 worth of damages to Tesla vehicles in protest of billionaire Elon Musk.

• Fog ransomware channels Musk with demands for work recaps or a trillion bucks

• Tesla Is Losing to Volkswagen's EVs in Europe

  • "I bought this from Nazis" bumper stickers work either way

• Tesla's revenue and profits tank amid political chaos

• Tesla admits "political sentiment" may hurt the company

• Tesla Profits Drop 71% Amid Backlash to Elon Musk's Role Under Trump

Electric / Self Driving cars

• If the US Backpedals on EVs the Auto Industry Is Lost

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Pope Francis’s illusions - New Statesman

  The controversial liberaliser brought humanity to the Vatican – but he was unable to arrest the Catholic Church’s decline.

• The tragedy of Pope Francis

  There is a myth that the then Bishop [Jorge] Bergoglio was reluctant to become pope, as propagated by the Netflix drama, The Two Popes. In truth, as John Cornwell of Jesus College, Cambridge has written, the Argentine had a ‘well-planned set of policies ready ahead of his election’. And it was all thoroughly post-Benedict. The Argentine’s papacy would entail acceptance of ‘LGBTQ communities’, a rejection of clericalism, an openness to the idea of having female deacons, a reform of the church to make it less centralised around Vatican diktat, and – most strikingly – a new focus on the ‘climate crisis’. As Cornwell summarised it, Bishop Bergoglio, if elected, would ‘emphasis[e] sins against the environment’ rather than sins relating to ‘sex and “life” issues’. Forget fornication – it’s failing to recycle that will land you in Hell now.

• (2021) The Dangerous Ideas of "Longtermism" and "Existential Risk"

  So-called rationalists have created a disturbing secular religion that looks like it addresses humanity’s deepest problems, but actually justifies pursuing the social preferences of elites.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Student loans in default to be referred to debt collection, Dept of Ed says

  • Education Department to Restart Debt Collection on Defaulted Student Loans.

  About 38 percent of the nearly 43 million student loan borrowers are current on their payments, and a record number of borrowers are at risk of or in delinquency and default, the department said Monday. Borrowers default when they miss at least 270 days of payments.

• America's progressives should love standardised tests

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• GM Argues It Can Sell Your Data Because You Drive on Public Roads

• Bluesky Has an Impersonator Problem

  • Bluesky is adding blue checks for ‘authentic and notable’ accounts | The Verge

  Bluesky is also giving some organizations “Trusted Verifier” status, allowing organizations like The New York Times to verify users affiliated with them. Bluesky’s moderation team will then review each verification “to ensure authenticity.” Trusted Verifiers will have a checkmark in a scalloped circle next to their account name, instead of a rounded one.

• 4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere

• Google Paid Samsung 'Enormous Sums' for Gemini AI App Installs

• Google Says DOJ Breakup Would Harm US in 'Global Race with China'

• The Dumbfounding Dropping of the 'Google Domains' Ball

• Chrome on the chopping block as Google’s search antitrust trial moves forward.

• Google Chrome will now continue to use third-party cookies

• Google Messages can now blur unwanted nudes, remind people not to send them

• OpenAI Would Buy Google's Chrome Browser, ChatGPT Chief Says

  • OpenAI would buy Google's Chrome, exec testifies at trial

• Duolingo is getting a Chess course, allegedly

• Hollywood Execs Fear Ryan Coogler's Sinners Deal 'Could End the Studio System'

• Why Physical Media Deserved To Die | Hackaday

• Microsoft Purges Dormant Azure Tenants, Rotates Keys Prevent Repeat Nation-State Hack

• Yahoo to give to a fund for Chinese dissidents, decades after exposing user data

• The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

  The golden age of PC Connection raccoon ads began in 1983 and ended well over thirty years ago. After that, the characters retained a diminished presence in the company’s marketing into the early years of this century. Then they almost wholly vanished. They have, however, remained lodged somewhere in the back of my brain. Recently, I was shocked to find that nobody has ever told the raccoons’ story.

  In each ad, his art was accompanied by a few paragraphs of text by Blistein, full of terrible puns and sideways cultural allusions, celebrations of Marlow’s tininess, and reminders of the benefits of doing business with PC Connection. “Mostly, it was just ’Hey, these are nice people in New Hampshire—you don’t have to be afraid of computers,’” Blistein says.

• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Available Now

  • comments say its based on Unreal engine but effectively un moddable

• Matt Mullenweg is unbanning anyone ever banned from Wordpress.org

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• A weird phrase is plaguing scientific papers

• AI is helping fraudsters pump out scamming campaigns in minutes

• Apple drops 'available now' from Apple Intelligence page

• Millennials Got Cheap Ubers. Gen Z Gets Free SuperGrok. - The Atlantic

  The current discounts come at a cost. There are roughly 20 million postsecondary students in the U.S. Say just 1 percent of them take advantage of free ChatGPT Plus for the next two months. The start-up would effectively be giving a handout to students that is worth some $8 million. In Silicon Valley, $8 million is a rounding error. But many students are likely taking advantage of multiple such deals all at once. And, more to the point, AI companies are footing the bill for more than just college students. All of the major AI companies offer free versions of their products despite the fact that the technology itself isn’t free. Every time you type a message into a chatbot, someone somewhere is paying for the cost of processing and generating a response. These costs add up: OpenAI has more than half a billion weekly users, and only a fraction of them are paid subscribers. Just last week, Sam Altman, the start-up’s CEO, suggested that his company spends tens of millions of dollars processing “please” and “thank you” messages from users. Tack on the cost of training these models, which could be as much as $1 billion for the most advanced versions, and the price tag becomes even more substantial. (The Atlantic recently entered into a corporate partnership with OpenAI.) These costs matter because, despite AI start-ups’ enormous valuations (OpenAI was just valued at $300 billion), they are wildly unprofitable.

• AI researchers doubt current models will lead to achieving human intelligence

• Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back

• Annoyed ChatGPT users complain about bot’s relentlessly positive tone.

  • Yesterday it was "empty polite phrases use too much energy" ... Why have the propaganda masters decided "polite" is bad?

• Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Meteorites that hit Earth have less H2O than fragments brought back by probes

• Planetary alignment provides NASA rare opportunity to study Uranus

Crypto con games

• CryptoPunk NFT, Once Bought for $16M, Sold for $10M Loss

• Ether Whale Dumps $22M of ETH After 9 Years

• Tokenized Gold Nears $2B Market Cap as Tariff Fears Spark Safe Haven Trade

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Big Oil Is Offshoring Its Prized Engineering Jobs to India

• Gold-Silver Ratio: Measure of Fear and Confidence

• Airbnb Now Shows the Full Price of Your Stay by Default

• Internal MS email to managers details new policies to cull low performers

• Goldman's CEO Wants to Get Paid

• Boeing sold its digital business to Thoma Bravo for 10B

• Flash Boys Emerge from Shadows to Reorder Stock Trading

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• California Is About to Run Out of License Plate Numbers

• FAA Will Deploy a New Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) Service This Year

• Florida Bill Would Allow Shooting Down Intrusive Drones

Trump

• Trump Scoffs at SCOTUS Due Process Requirements

• Elon Musk says he's taking a step back from DOGE after Tesla "blowback"

  • Elon Musk says he'll step back from DOGE starting in May

• Trump says China tariffs will drop 'substantially – but it won't be zero'

Democrats

• Did Joe Biden Photoshop Himself Into an Easter Family Photo?

Left Angst

• Whistleblower: Doge Siphoned NLRB Case Data

• The many ways tarrifs will hit your electronics

• US stock markets fall again as Trump calls Fed chair 'a major loser'

• US sets tariffs of up to 3,521% on South East Asia solar panels

• Images could change cancer diagnostics, but ICE detained the Harvard scientist

• RFK Jr.'s autism study to amass medical records of many Americans

• Under Trump, You 'Petition the King' – An Interview with Francis Fukuyama

• NASA's Next Major Space Telescope Is Ready to Launch. Trump Wants to Kill It

• US FDA suspends milk quality tests

• Investors Worry Trump's Tariffs Could Cause a 'World of Hurt' for Startups

• Nature analysis signals the beginnings of a US science brain drain

• New NIH director defends grant cuts as part of shift to support MAHA vision

• Tech Workers Can Still Fight Silicon Valley's Overlords

• Trump reportedly drafted an executive order for ‘a disciplined reorganization’ of the State Department that would shut down embassies and cut climate change and refugee offices.

• A Ticking Clock on American Freedom

• The Government's Chemical Disaster Tracking Tool Just Went Dark

• Top Producer of '60 Minutes' Quits, Saying He Lost Independence

• Draft executive order outlines plan to integrate AI into K-12 schools

• Man told to leave U.S. despite being a born-and-raised citizen

  Frantz says he’s now spent the past seven days working with Senator Tammy Baldwin and the Department of Homeland Security to make sure they both know he’s here legally. Frantz says after spekaing with Senator Baldwin and the Department of Homeland Security, he believes he’s now in the clear. Frantz also says DHS has apologized “profusely” for the error, but he’s still frustrated that it happened in the first place.

• CISA officials jump ship, both proud of pushing for Secure by Design software

  • CISA's Secure by Design initiative in limbo after key leaders resign

• OMB suggests NOAA scale back plans for geostationary satellites

• Southeast Asians in L.A. are being detained, deported at routine ICE check-ins

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Wife of former US Sen. Bob Menendez convicted in bribery scheme.

• Pensacola man stole 171 iPhones while working as UPS employee

• FBI Claims It Lost Records About Its Mysterious Hacking Abilities

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• USA Unable to Make Drones Without Components from China

• Mexico bans 'foreign propaganda' after US anti-migrant ad

World

• India under tariff pressure to give Amazon and Walmart full market access

• The US ruled against Google's monopoly – Europe should do the same

• Major breakthroughs in UK munitions production

• UN says Asian scam call center epidemic expanding globally amid political heat

Iran / Houthi

• Houthis Claim Attacks On Two US Aircraft Carrier Groups Off Yemen | ZeroHedge

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine Finally Squeezed Out Of Kursk As Russian Army Retakes Key Monastery | ZeroHedge

  The remaining Ukrainian troops in Kursk appear to be squeezed and in the throes of their final effort to hold on to some Russian territory inside the border, as the liberated monastery is on the northeastern edge of Gornal and located less than 30 kilometers to the northeast of the city of Sumy inside Ukraine. Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov informed President Vladimir Putin on Saturday that 99.5% of the Kursk region has been regained by Russian forces. At the height of the cross-border offensive which began last August, Ukraine's military had seized just over 530 square miles, but regional reports now say that significant figure is down to less than just 20 square miles.

China

• China Has Remade the International System

• Chinese Plastics Factories Face Mass Closure As US Ethane Disappears | ZeroHedge

  The world’s dominant plastics manufacturer gets almost all its ethane, a petrochemical feedstock that is also a component of natural gas, from the US. But eye-watering tariffs on American goods mean plants that cannot process substitute raw materials will bleed money; their only alternative is to mothball production for the near (or not so near) future. "The situation is dire for China’s ethane crackers as they have no alternative to US supply,” said Manish Sejwal, an analyst at Rystad Energy AS, using an industry term for such facilities. "Unless they are granted tariff exemptions, they may have to stop production or close shop." Needless to say, that would be catastrophic for China's plastics industy. Most so-called crackers in China use naphtha as a feedstock, with processors that solely use ethane as raw material for petrochemicals making up is less than 10% of the total at about 4 million tons, according to Rystad. China is by far the biggest buyer of American supply, according to the US Energy Department.

• China can offer Trump the trillions of investment dollars America needs

Health / Medicine

• Marijuana hospital visits linked to dementia diagnosis within 5 years – a study

• Simultaneous alcohol, cannabis use may fuel more drinking

• Cigarette smoking: an underused tool in high-performance endurance training

• Pfizer scores FDA nod for hemophilia B gene therapy, will charge $3.5M per dose

• Hearing loss in older adults linked to nearly one-third of dementia cases

• FDA will phase out petroleum food dyes, authorize four natural color additives

  The FDA said it is initiating a process to revoke the authorization of synthetic food colorings, including those not in production – specifically citrus red No. 2 and orange B – within the coming weeks. The FDA is also taking steps to work with industry to eliminate six synthetic dyes – red No. 40, yellow No. 5, yellow No. 6, blue No. 1, blue No. 2 and green No. 3 – by the end of next year.

  • What the Science Says About Food Additives

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Anti-Vaxxers Are Grifting Off the Measles Outbreak—and Claim a Bioweapon Caused It | WIRED

  Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the measles public health crisis in Texas is caused by a “bioweapon” targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudo-scientific cures—some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence—that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles. The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by Mikki Willis, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his Plandemic series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge COVID-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has said, funded in part by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. Willis also created a video for Kennedy marking the announcement of his independent run for the presidency.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Warming Pulse in Antarctic Continent Changed Landscape During Middle Ages

• A rare, giant starfish could hold restore kelp forests on the California coast

• Calculate how much you have to donate to offset eating meat

• 50 years of climate change has changed the face of the 'Blue Marble' from space

• Activity in Earth's mantle led the ancient ancestors of elephants, giraffes

• Global plastic recycling rates 'stagnant' at under 10%: Study

• Eight of the top online shows are spreading climate misinformation

• Scientists stunned to find chimpanzees sharing boozy treats together

• The California grizzly bear, gone for 100 years, could thrive if brought back

• What to Read to Wrap Your Head Around the Climate Crisis