2025-04-30

etc

• United Airlines engine fire after takeoff due to apparent rabbit strike

  United Flight 2325 had departed Denver International Airport en route to Edmonton, Alberta, on Sunday when the incident occurred. LiveATC audio documents the flight crew asking that the plane be inspected for an engine fire and being told that it was a rabbit that apparently got sucked into an engine. "Rabbit through the number 2, that'll do it," the pilot responded.

  "Our flight from Denver to Edmonton (UA2325) returned safely to Denver to address a possible wildlife strike," United said in a statement. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane returned around 8:05 p.m. local time on Sunday "after the crew reported striking an animal while departing."

Horseshit

• The 4 a.m. Wake-Up Is Not Just for Superman CEOs Anymore

• New York City Transit System Chips Away at Subway Fare Evasion

• Car Subscription Features Raise Your Risk of Government Surveillance

• Child damages Rothko painting worth tens of millions of pounds in Rotterdam

  The abstract artwork, named "Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8", by Mark Rothko was on public display in a storage facility next to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam when it sustained "superficial damage". A spokesperson for the museum told Sky News that a child "touched the painting when it was on display". They added in a statement: "As a result, small scratches are visible in the unvarnished paint layer in the lower part of the painting.

• (2023) How the climate crisis fuels gender inequality

• The last masters of Afro-Colombian machete fencing fight to save their tradition

• What's the best way to peel a boiled egg?

  An early study from the 1960s indicated that the pH of the egg white needs to be in the range of 8.7–8.9, quite alkaline, in order for the egg to be easier to peel. Storage temperature has a role to play, too. A study from 1963 showed that storing eggs at about 22 degrees Celsius (or 72 degrees Fahrenheit) gives a better peelability result than storage at lower temperatures of 13°C, or even fridge temperatures at 3–5°C.

• Could DNA Testing Exonerate the Lindbergh Baby's Kidnapper?

• Where Did All the Classy Americans Go?

celebrity gossip

• George Lucas Reveals Why Yoda Talks Backwards at Anniversary Screening

• Complete Set of Shakespeare Folios Could Sell for $6M

• LeapFrog founder Mike Wood dies by physician-assisted suicide following Alzheimer’s diagnosis

  Mike Wood, the founder of the LeapFrog toy company, died earlier this month by physician-assisted suicide. He was 72.

• Ted Kaczynski's Brother Wrote Him for Decades to Explain Why He Turned Him In

Musk

• A Major Canadian Union Is Calling for Pensions to Divest from Tesla

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo partners with Toyota to bring autonomous driving to personal vehicles

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Gen Z flocks to Catholicism in search of ‘truth’ and ‘order’ as young people reject leftism.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• GenZ grads say college degrees a waste of time/money as AI gets into workplaces

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Swiss admit to secretly posting AI-penned posts to Reddit in the name of science

  • University of Zurich has been using AI bots to manipulate Redditors

• Intel admits what we all knew: no one is buying AI PCs

• Apple Airplay-Enabled Devices Can Be Hacked via Wi-Fi

• Marks and Spencer breach linked to Scattered Spider ransomware attack

• Firefox tab groups are here

• Meta's new moderators face worst conditions yet

• Electronic Arts Lays Off Hundreds, Cancels 'Titanfall' Game

• Google Play sees 47% decline in apps since start of last year

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Hugging Face releases a 3D-printed robotic arm starting at $100

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Altman and Nadella, Who Ignited the Modern AI Boom Together, Are Drifting Apart

• Deplatforming: AI edition - by Rohit Krishnan

• OpenAI Lets Users Go Shopping with ChatGPT, Challenging Google

• ChatGPT Started Sucking Up Lately. Sam Altman Says a Fix Is Coming

  • OpenAI rolls back update that made ChatGPT 'too sycophant-y'

• Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI

• AI-generated code could be a disaster for the software supply chain

• Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

• A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

• Meta launches a standalone AI app to compete with ChatGPT

• Conservative Activist Sues Meta over AI Answers About Him

• Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Amazon Launches First 27 Project Kuiper Internet Satellites

  • Amazon Wants to Be a Satellite-Internet Powerhouse. It Has a Long Way to Go

• After 53 years, a failed Soviet Venus spacecraft is crashing back to Earth

  The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. “As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact,” Langbroek wrote in a blog update. “The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero.”

Crypto con games

• Crypto Casino Founder Richard Kim Arrested After Gambling Away Investor Funds

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Palantir is soaring while its tech peers are sinking. Here's why

• IBM Plans to Invest $150B in US over Next Five Years

• UPS says it's cutting 20k jobs amid reduction in Amazon shipments

  • UPS to cut 20,000 jobs as it prepares to halve Amazon shipments

• Uber raises in-office requirement to 3 days, claws back remote workers

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Washington State Tax Hikes Target Tech Giants That Made It Rich

• Congress passes Take It Down act despite major flaws

• NYC to lift lottery requirements for "re-rentals"

• New Atomic Fountain Clock Joins Elite Group That Keeps the World on Time

• EPA allows high-ethanol gasoline to be used all year

Trump

• Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens – The White House

  My Administration will therefore: establish best practices at the State and local level for cities to unleash high-impact local police forces; protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials; and surge resources to officers in need. My Administration will work to ensure that law enforcement officers across America focus on ending crime, not pursuing harmful, illegal race- and sex-based “equity” policies. The result will be a law-abiding society in which tenacious law enforcement officers protect the innocent, violations of law are not tolerated, and American communities are safely enjoyed by all their citizens again.

• The Rise of Trump's Crypto Firm

• Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

  • White House: Amazon tariff price announcement is hostile

  • White House slams Amazon tariff price display "hostile and political"

  • White House: Amazon tariff display is "hostile and political"

  • "Never A Consideration" - Amazon Denies Media Claims Of 'Tariff-Tracker' | ZeroHedge

  Amazon has just issued a statement denying PunchBowl's reporting and explaining that showing tariffs costs on the main Amazon site was "never a consideration":

  “The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”

  • Amazon Denies Tariff Label Plans

  • White House Attacks Amazon over Idea of Showing Tariffs' Cost

  • Amazon says displaying tariffs 'not going to happen' after White House blowback

  • White House lashes out at 'hostile and political act by Amazon'

  • Amazon Should Show Tariff Price Increases, Despite Trump Bezos Call - Bloomberg

Democrats

• I Worked for Harris and Biden. Here’s the Missing Link for Democrats. - The New York Times

  Opt-out voters aren’t watching CNN or paying for news subscriptions, but they still get a lot of information from social media, friends and family. Politics, for them, tends to show up as cultural drift — bits of stories, values and secondhand outrage shared online by friends, influencers and nonpolitical creators. It’s ambient, not deliberate. It’s culture, not news. A young dad scrolling Instagram for parenting tips stumbles across a clip about traditional family values. A small-business owner watching finance videos gets fed posts about why woke policies are destroying the economy. A 25-year-old gym enthusiast on TikTok starts seeing content about masculinity, personal responsibility and — soon enough — right-wing politics.

  This is the fundamental challenge for Democrats. If you think the system is broken, we’ve been the ones defending it. If you don’t trust the mainstream press, we’re not for you — because it’s the only way we know how to reach people.

  Right now we win opt-in voters — people who read the mainstream press, who see themselves as part of the civic process, who believe the basic institutions of society still work, even if imperfectly. People who are most likely well educated and well off, perhaps for whom inflation is less of a concern. People who show up for obscure, off-year elections in swing states. People who read, say, navel-gazing guest essays about the future of the Democratic Party in The New York Times.

Left Angst

• After 100 Days, Most Americans Hate What Elon Musk Is Doing to the Government

• Irish woman living in US for decades detained by immigration officials

• Seasonal Covid shots may no longer be possible under Trump admin

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

• DOGE may help Elon Musk's biz empire dodge $2.4B in liabilities

• Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas

• Palantir's Justification for Building ICE's Master Database

• Elon Musk is wrong about GDP

• Tariffs expose US weak flank in services

• Firm Predicts 'Empty Shelves' And Recession By June

  Asset management firm Apollo Global Management (APO) forecasts trucking demand stopping in about a month resulting in empty shelves and a recession this summer as President Donald Trump's trade war policies are bringing about changes in global shipping not seen since the coronavirus pandemic, with ocean carriers readying for significantly reduced demand, according to analysts and observers.

• White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On

• What Happens When There Are No Deals? - Paul Krugman

  Trump could just say, “I’m imposing huge tariffs, and that’s that.” But he keeps insisting that he’s imposing tariffs because other countries treat America unfairly, and that he’ll force them to stop. This fantasy of dominance runs into two problems: most countries aren’t treating us unfairly, and trade negotiations are going badly if they’re happening at all. Yet Trump keeps insisting that big deals with other countries are just around the corner. At some point, and soon, Trump’s fantasy of trade dominance will become unsustainable. And he’s hitting the wall on many other fronts, including his other signature issues, the economy and immigration. Recent polling has been brutal: Trump has no strengths left. Ler me be clear: Trump hitting the wall this early is a good thing for the survival of U.S. democracy. Consolidation of one-party rule looks a lot less likely today than it did a few weeks ago.

• Gun Group Seeks Federal Probe of Firearms Industry's Secret Sharing of Data

• Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE mistakenly raids their home

• Doge could help Musk firms avoid $2.3B in government penalties, Democrats say

• Trump Administration Dismisses Researchers Working on Climate-Change Report

• UPS Earnings: Trump Aimed at China and Hit US Small Businesses Instead

• Will US science survive Trump 2.0?

• Made-in-USA Wheelbarrows Are Now Made in China

• USPS investigators join Trump immigration crackdown, records show

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• China now America's number one cyber threat – US must get up to speed

World

• The Power Outage in Portugal and Spain Casued by Large Oscillations

  • Is Green Power/Net Zero to Blame for Spain Blackout Chaos?

  • Power Is Largely Restored in Spain After Widespread Outage

  • The Agonizing Task of Turning Europe's Power Back On

  • Cybercriminals Take Responsibility for Spain and Portugal Power Outages

  • Spain and Portugal power outage: what caused it, and was there a cyber-attack?

  • Spain power cut 'caused by solar farm failures'

• Canadians give Liberals 4th mandate as Carney leads party to minority win

  • Canada votes for Mark Carney as prime minister

• Panic in Pakistan as India vows to cut off water supply over Kashmir

• India Accuses Pakistan of Supporting Terrorism

  A group calling itself the Resistance Front emerged on social media to say it was behind the slaughter. Indian officials privately say the group is a proxy for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization based in Pakistan. But India, citing national security concerns, has publicly provided little evidence linking the attack to Pakistan, which denies involvement and says that Lashkar-e-Taiba is largely inoperative. Pakistan has also called for an international investigation into the episode.

• Delta Routes New Airbus Plane to Tokyo to Sidestep Trump Tariffs

• Pakistan's solar revolution leaves its middle class behind

• Indian court orders blocking of Proton Mail

• Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout

• EU Bans Sale of 'Golden Passports' as Trump Opens Doors

• Why Britain’s police forces have taken to cultivating cannabis

  When the police bust a cannabis farm, they often seize plants that have yet to fully mature. That means the crop is still wet, weighs more and doesn’t contain the concentrated THC that gets smokers high. Dealers with good lawyers were able to argue successfully against confiscation orders, claiming that plants were “mouldy”, and therefore worthless, or that the yield had been estimated inaccurately. This is where Mr Hughes’s scheme comes in. When Essex Police busts a weed farm, it now nurtures and dries the plants it keeps for evidence, in a “bespoke facility”. A team of six officers have learned to do it “just as well as the criminals”, says Mr Hughes, ensuring they harvest as much as the dealers would have. It’s a busy job: the team deals with around 1,000 busts each year. Last month a Colchester drug dealer was ordered to pay £53,000 or face prison. Essex Police is not alone. Several other large forces are rumoured to be tending the herb. One is using a converted shipping container. Essex has adapted a portakabin with climate and temperature controls. The public can celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurialism or bemoan clumsy laws that divert the police into pointless pot-cultivation. Or, perhaps, do both.

Iran / Houthi

• Missile fuel from China caused Iran port explosion

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• 'Numerous signs of torture': a Ukrainian journalist's detention and death

China

• Why translating Chinese food names into English is 'an impossible task'

• China is using AI to sharpen every link in its attack chain, FBI warns

Health / Medicine

• Oracle engineers caused five days software outage at U.S. hospitals

• Drinking champagne could reduce risk of sudden cardiac arrest, study suggests

• The Death Metal Singers Changing Vocal Health Research

• Two cities stopped adding fluoride to water. Science reveals what happened

• Gilead Sciences agrees to pay $202M to settle claims of kickbacks for HIV drug

• The end of the 'Golden Hour' and the transformation of U.S. combat medicine

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Heart disease deaths worldwide linked to chemical widely used in plastics

  • Common chemicals in plastic linked to over 350k deaths from heart disease

• The satellite that will 'weigh' 1.5T trees

• One-sixth of the planet's cropland has toxic levels of one or more metals

• Balcony solar took off in Germany. Why not the US?

• Rattlesnake venom evolves and adapts to specific prey, study finds

• Researchers are studying how to minimize human impact on public lands

• Minnesota Passes Rollbacks to Climate Action, Doubles Taxes on EVs