2025-04-24

etc

• How old are you compared to the rest of the world? - Our World in Data

  Imagine we sorted all 8 billion people alive today from youngest to oldest. The person standing right in the middle would be about 30 years old; that's the median age today. The chart shows the global median age and the UN’s projection to 2100. In 2025, if you are over 30, you are older than most people in the world. The chart also shows that if you were born in 1950, you stopped being “young” when you passed 20, as that was the median age in 1970.

• The record-breaking tunnel being built from Denmark to Germany

Horseshit

• The Quest to Build a Perfect Protein Bar

• The evolution of the Alpha male aesthetic

• How Does Gen Z Feel about Democracy?

• Government Solicit Ideas to Raise Birthrate: Baby Bonuses, Fertility Planning

• Eric Tulsky, an Ivy League scientist, changing what it means to be an NHL GM

• Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs - The Atlantic

  From almost the moment Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, tariffs were at the top of his government’s economic agenda. The agricultural sector’s demands for higher tariffs “must be met,” Hitler’s economic minister, Alfred Hugenberg, declared on Wednesday, February 1, 1933, just over 48 hours into Hitler’s chancellorship, “while at the same time preventing harm to industry.” Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath was concerned about lumber imports from Austria and a 200-million-reichsmark trade deal with Russia.

• Lion Bite to the Butt May Be First Proof of Human-Animal Gladiatorial Combat

• Fusion must be a national priority for the future of US energy security

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Bug And Tug: WEF Investigates Klaus Schwab Over 'In-Room Massages' And Other Allegations | ZeroHedge

  • World Economic Forum Opens New Probe Into Founder Klaus Schwab

  • The have a replacement

  Former Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has been named interim Chairman, replacing Klaus Schwab at the helm of the World Economic Forum. Brabeck-Letmathe is known for his stance that water is not a human right but a commodity.

Musk

• They Criticized Musk on X. Then Their Reach Collapsed

• Tesla reports 20% drop in auto revenue as first-quarter results miss estimates

• Tesla's Cure for Musk's Missteps Is More Musk

• Voters Cast Ballots for a New Town: Starbase, Texas

• Regulatory credits keep Tesla profitable

• Tesla profits drop 71% on weak sales and anti-Elon Musk sentiment

• Tesla's Remarkably Bad Quarter Is Even Worse Than It Looks

• Tesla's Optimus can't roll without rare earth magnets, and Beijing ain't budging

• Elon Musk's robotaxi fantasy is starting to unravel

Electric / Self Driving cars

• California customer can't find his dream electric truck

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Ancient DNA poses puzzle of why Phoenicians spread culture but not their genes

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Yale Signals That Private Equity May Have Peaked

• State Bar of California admits it used AI to develop exam questions

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• OpenAI wants to buy Chrome and make it an "AI-first" experience

  • OpenAI rubs salt in Google's wound, wants Chrome if Google's forced to sell

• U.S. Asks Judge to Break Up Google

• Instagram co-founder says Meta starved his business after buying it

• Hugging Face to sell open-source robots thanks to Pollen Robotics acquisition

• MPA and RIAA Want to Be Heard in Crucial DMCA Subpoena Appeal

• How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

• Meta 'hastily' changed mod policy without regard to impact, says oversight board

  The oversight board raised concerns about the company’s announcement in January that it was removing factcheckers in the US, reducing “censorship” on its platforms and recommending more political content. In its first official statement on the changes, the board – which issues binding decisions on removing Meta content – said the company had acted too quickly and should gauge the impact of its changes on human rights. “Meta’s January 7, 2025, policy and enforcement changes were announced hastily, in a departure from regular procedure, with no public information shared as to what, if any, prior human rights due diligence the company performed,” said the board. It urged Meta to live up to its commitment to uphold the United Nations’ principles on business and human rights, and urged the company to carry out due diligence on the impact.

• 5th Circuit Lets AT&T Off the Hook for Major Location Data Privacy Violations

• Nintendo Says Demand for Switch 2 Console in Japan Overwhelming

  • Switch 2 demand in Japan exceeds the number of consoles that can be delivered

• Max is going to make you pay for people you share your password with

• Cyberattack Hits British Retailer Marks and Spencer

• First, Microsoft tapped the AI data center brakes. Now Amazon

• Blue Shield shared the private health data of millions with Google for years

• 4chan may be dead, but its toxic legacy lives on

  • Comparison of Altchans (4chan alternatives)

  The hobby & interest boards are still quite slow on all of the altchans and there's no real replacement for 4chan yet.

• The Gruen Transfer is consuming the internet

  Have you ever walked into a supermarket, pharmacy, or department store looking to buy a specific item, only to find the layout confusing? Perhaps you ended up aimlessly strolling around, purchasing other items? This is deliberate, and known as the Gruen Transfer. The 'Transfer' part is the moment that you, as a consumer surrounded by a deliberately confusing layout, lose track of your original intentions.

• YouTube turns 20 and is on track to be the biggest media company by revenue

• Jason Citron stepping down as Discord CEO

  • Passing the Torch

  We have hired a new CEO to lead Discord through our next chapter of growth and someday becoming a public company. I am thrilled to share that Humam Sakhnini will take on this role, and I will continue as a member of our Board of Directors and Advisor to the CEO.

• The Future of SCOTUSblog - SCOTUSblog

  SCOTUSblog is delighted to announce that it has been acquired by Dispatch Media, Inc., and will round out The Dispatch’s coverage of the Supreme Court and the rule of law. This blog began nearly a quarter of a century ago as a way to promote our legal work. Over the years, it has evolved into a resource on all things related to the Supreme Court, from soup-to-nuts coverage of the cases argued at the court to retirements, confirmations, and other special features. We have scaled back our coverage in recent years as the costs of that coverage grew, but through our partnership with The Dispatch, we will be able to restore SCOTUSblog’s publishing capabilities, including expanded analysis for all merits cases and oral arguments.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• How a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2 | Silent’s Blog

  I want to make it clear: all these findings prove that the bug is NOT an issue with Windows 11 24H2, as things like the way the stack is used by internal WinAPI functions are not contractual and they may change at any time, with no prior notice. The real issue here is the game relying on undefined behavior (uninitialized local variables), and to be honest, I’m shocked that the game didn’t hit this bug on so many OS versions, although as I pointed out earlier, it was extremely close. San Andreas still supported Windows 98, which means it got away with this bug in at least a dozen different Windows versions and many more releases of Wine!

  …or, did it? I found it hard to believe that the game would never hit this issue on any of the many, many platforms it released on, so I looked into the binary files of some other releases. While this bug was not fixed in the official 1.01 PC patch, it was fixed in the original Xbox release, where a “reasonable default” of 1.0 was added to the code, much like in my fix. This fix was then “inherited” by many future versions of San Andreas,

• The Rocks That Heard the Voice of America - Radio World

  If you look down in the woods, you would see a sort of sparkle in the soil and dust. The resident glacial granite rock was filled with mica and quartz — the same material you might recognize as used in frequency-control crystals in radio transmitters. When the moisture outside was just right, the rocks and surrounding ground acted like a great big radio detector and resolved The Voice of America without any human electronic effort at all!

  Just across the street from their home was a 58 acre plot filled with antennas. It was no wonder we could hear their broadcasts with very little help! The Voice of America was broadcasting with 50 or even 100 kW into directional arrays. How’s that for field strength?

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Geoff Hinton: training large AI models is worsening climate change

• Our Approach to Understanding and Addressing AI Harms

• Washington Post partners with OpenAI on search content

• Ex-NSA chief warns AI devs: Don't repeat infosec's early-day screwups

• DeepMind CEO: AI could end disease in ten years, lead to "radical abundance"

• OpenAI Admits Newer Models Hallucinate Even More

• Ex-OpenAI staff and top AI experts seek to block proposed for-profit restructure

• Empty Calories of AI: A Cure for Loneliness Worse Than the Disease?

• AI images of child sexual abuse are becoming "significantly more realistic"

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Honda Will Test a Fuel-Cell System in Space

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Intel to cut 20pc of global workforce, putting Irish jobs at risk

  • Intel to announce 20% workforce reduction

  • Intel to cut over 20% of workforce, Bloomberg News reports

  • Intel reportedly set to announce layoffs – 20% of workforce could be cut

• Jane Street trading revenues nearly doubled in 2024 to more than $20B

• US Banks Navigate Market Turmoil Due to Capital Buildup They Opposed - Bloomberg

• Why American tech stocks are newly vulnerable

• 'China Track' bank netting system shields Russia-China trade from Western eyes

• More rich Americans are opening Swiss bank accounts fearing U.S. risks

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• 'Building 7 Controlled Demolition?': Republican Senator Plans Shock 9/11 Hearings, Says 'My Eyes Have Been Opened' | ZeroHedge

• Dozen states sue Trump in bid to block new tariffs

• Chinese-owned farms press for repeal of California animal welfare law

Trump

• Elon Musk to pull back in Doge role starting May amid 71% dip in Tesla profits

• Trump admin files first racketeering charges against massive migrant terrorist group present in U.S..

• Crypto ally Paul Atkins sworn in as SEC Chair

• Building an America First State Department

  I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century. This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist.

• Vance Outlines U.S. Plan for Ukraine That Sharply Favors Russia

• White House Considers Slashing China Tariffs to De-Escalate Trade War

• Trump Offers Private Dinner to Top Investors in His Memecoin

Democrats

• The ACLU’S Ex Parte Voicemail To Seek An Ex Parte Injunction.

Left Angst

• America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

  • These would be the "defenses" that had government emails being read for months, and every phone tapped by China?

• Vizio Shows What Happens When U.S. Fascism and TV Enshittification Meet

  Walmart-owned Vizio has been trying to leverage standby mode for a while via what it calls “scenic mode.” Vizio’s “scenic mode” is supposed to display “relaxing, ambient content when your TV is idle for a period of time” which Vizio claims “adds to the environment of your home or office.” Except one Vizio owner was recently a bit annoyed to leave his room and come back to authoritarian propaganda sponsored by the Department For Homeland Security:

  “I left the [TV] idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about a half an hour, I started hearing [US Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem praising Trump and telling immigrants to get out of America, over and over. I went in to check, and caught this video looping 3 more times before it went back to the nature clips.”

• The Tent Company Profiting from Trump's Deportation Plans

• NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women

• RFK Jr calls sugar ‘poison’ but says government probably can’t eliminate it

• 'Unconscionable': Three former Pentagon officials say they don't know why they were fired - POLITICO

  POLITICO reported this week that the advisers were under investigation for a series of leaks that included reports about Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon, military plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine. The former officials contradicted the allegations.

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom Sues DOGE Over AmeriCorps Cuts.

• Virginia task force arrests over 500 illegal immigrants, including over 130 gang affiliates.

• The Impossible Four-Hour Test You Need to Pass to Become a Tariff Pencil Pusher

• '60 Minutes' chief resigns, saying show's independence was compromised

• When will the US economy crash?

  Trump is trying to destroy all those things. That, after all, is his aim. Project 2025, the thing that he is seeking to deliver, deliberately set out to destroy the idea of the nation state, and its right to intervene in an economy and its right to supply services. That is what he wants to do. We need politicians who will understand that the reaction to the catastrophe that he's going to create as a result requires them to deliver exactly the things that he does not want. If they don't, we're going to be in even deeper trouble because we're going to have a financial crash. It's unavoidable now. We cannot have gone through what Trump has done without this happening. Even if he reversed everything he had done, and there is absolutely no sign that he will, even if he cancelled every tariff, the confidence is already gone. The capital will flow out of America. The confidence will fail, and the crash will follow.

• America's historic crops at risk as DOGE cuts funding for seed bunkers

• Several hundred workers who keep invasive pests out of the US accept Trump’s buyouts  - Investigate Midwest

  About 3,000 employees work in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Protection and Quarantine division. They inspect luggage at airports and shipments at ports of entry to ensure invasive species stay out of the country. They also survey forests for pests. As many as 700 employees, including in the agency’s administration and field operations, decided to accept the administration’s resignation offer, said the sources, who requested anonymity over fears of retaliation. High-level administrators at the division, known as PPQ, are also expected to leave.

• The desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion

• Judge blocks Trump administration plans to dismantle Voice of America

• US Science Agency NIH Says It Will Cut Funding to Researchers Who Protest Israel

• Harvard professor offers a grim assessment of American democracy

• Manufacturing jobs are never coming back

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Lockheed wants to turn F-35 into a 'Ferrari' with sixth-gen tech

  • How Europe is caught between F-35 dependency and strategic autonomy

• China invites European countries to form united front against Trump tariffs

World

• Commission Finds Apple and Meta in Breach of the Digital Markets Act

  • Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

  • Europe whacks Apple and Meta with combined $797M fine

• France and Germany unveil Docs, a homegrown alternative to Google Docs

• Open Source Projects Receive Funding to Reclaim the Public Internet

• At least 26 tourists killed by suspected militants in Kashmir attack

• Russian Secret Service allegedly behind sabotage of German air freight

• The wholegrain revolution! How Denmark changed the diet and health of the nation

• European biz calls for Euro tech for local people

• A New Plan to Fix Mexico's Housing Crisis

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• 'They cannot be jammed': fibre optic drones pose new threat in Ukraine

China

• China EV giant BYD reboots Europe operations after strategic stumbles

• How Severe Are China's Food Security Challenges?

• China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War

Health / Medicine

• 'One-of-a-kind' girl born with heart outside chest has pioneering surgery

• Smoking Rates Continue Historic Drop

• Cluster headaches are 'the most painful condition on the planet'

• MAHA Rising: HHS, FDA Announce Phase-Out Of All Artificial Food Dyes | ZeroHedge

  • US to phase out many synthetic food dyes, Kennedy and FDA head say

• Why Do Most People Quit Ozempic After Two Years?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Pollen-replacing food for honey bees brings new hope for survival

• More than 80% of reefs hit by bleaching after worst global event on record

  • World’s coral reefs hit by worst bleaching event on record

• Three ways to cool Earth by pulling carbon from the sky

• Experiments to dim the Sun will be approved within weeks

• xPrize in Carbon Removal Goes to Enhanced Rock Weathering

  • Transforming US agriculture for carbon removal with enhanced weathering

• Practice ‘enoughness’ for ‘climate change’: Scholars say cut back on kids, travel, meat.

• Fighting Louisiana Floodwaters with Patches of Green

• Study Reveals an Amount of Plastic in the Arteries of Stroke Patients

• Scientists say they've calculated a tab for oil giants' climate damage