2025-05-21

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• The Wonder of Modern Drywall

  If you fast-forward through the reel of history fast enough, it’s remarkable how consistent some activities are throughout the ages. The tried-n-true technique of slathering a moldable workable paste onto a rigid canvas as a way of constructing walls has barely budged across eons. Even past the industrial revolution, the cutting edge technique at the turn of the 20th century was plaster-n-lath. Instead of random sticks, you use uniform wooden strips. Instead of dirt, you use plaster made out of gypsum — a mineral known for its fire resistance. Same, but different.

Horseshit

• How's Life for Children in the Digital Age?

• Why men feel sad when their wives earn more

• Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry

• UK study: Almost half of young people would prefer a world without internet

• Austin's Reign as a Tech Hub Might Be Coming to an End

• Magnus Carlsen is forced into a draw in a showdown against 'the world'

• Shipwrecks From Franklin's Arctic Expedition Were Where Inuit Said They Would Be

• A Comedian Saves a Model Railroad with Purchase of a New Jersey Home

• DARPA zaps popcorn with laser power beamed 5.3 miles through air

  DARPA reported that the system achieved just over 20 percent efficiency from laser output to electrical power at the receiver, but only at shorter distances. The agency didn't disclose the efficiency at the full 5.3-mile range, but it's safe to assume the real number is lower. That means the 800 watts received was just a slice of the total beam energy fired downrange.

• A Fire Sale of Portland's Largest Office Tower Shows How Far the City Has Fallen

• Claims that "the Universe will end sooner than expected" are false

• How Elite Athletes Train Their Eyes to See the World in Slow Motion

  • redneck way: fight wasps with a flyswatter

celebrity gossip

• Can Sam Altman Be Trusted with the Future?

Obit

• Cheers star George Wendt dies at 76

  George Wendt, who starred as Norm Peterson in the popular comedy series Cheers, has died at the age of 76.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Russia's Pravda Network: AI-Driven Disinformation on a Global Scale

• How the Indian Media Amplified Falsehoods in the Drumbeat of War

• Nonprofit news media leaders are struggling to stop leaning on foundations

Musk

• The Mars Vanity Project

  I have immense respect for Elon Musk’s accomplishments and his skill and acumen as an entrepreneur. He gave me two personal tours of SpaceX, which blew me away, and I have always admired his ability to think outside the box when creating new technologies. I am not alone in this regard: given his many successes, a lot of people are willing to give him a pass when he makes outrageous proposals that don’t pan out, such as the claim that his boring company will soon allow the supersonic transportation of people in underground tunnels between LA and San Francisco, or beneath the Atlantic.

  His Mars plans are dangerously different, however. First, we should ask: why the rush for Mars now? It has been more than fifty years since humans last walked on the Moon, which is vastly simpler to access and could serve as a wonderful testing ground for construction projects in harsh extraterrestrial environments, as well as providing the perfect launching pad for future deep-space travel. Why leapfrog this natural first destination to undertake a far more expensive and risky mission to Mars? The rationale seems to be primarily based on bravado.

• Tesla Owners Are Installing DIY Rip Cords to Avoid Being Trapped in Case of Fire

• Elon Musk materially lied to Tesla shareholders – transcript and proof

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo gets OK to expand robotaxi service into more of Silicon Valley

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Gitpod is being sued for sex discrimination

• Russia fines Apple two seconds of profit over promoting LGBTQ+ rights

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Evidence-based policy is hard when social science journals publish poor research

• It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple Might Be Forced to Bring Fortnite Back to U.S. App Store

  • Judge pressures Apple to approve Fortnite or return to court

  • Apple Fucks Around with Court Order, Finds Out

  An hour after I published this piece, Apple let Fortnite back in the App Store.

• What a Binance CAPTCHA solver tells us about today's bot threats

• Hasbro, the custodians of D&D, have no idea what to do with BG3's success

• Delta Air Lines can sue CrowdStrike over outage

• Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet

• Microsoft's Edit on Windows is a new command-line text editor

• Intel Unveils New GPUs for AI and Workstations

  • Intel bets you'll stack cheap GPUs to avoid spending top dollar on Nvidia Pros

• Sag-Aftra Responds to Fortnite's AI Darth Vader with Unfair Labor Complaint

• Adobe turns subscription screw again, telling users to pay up or downgrade

• Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books

  • Newspapers Are Recommending AI-Hallucinated Novels

  • Chicago Sun-Times publishes made-up books and fake experts in AI debacle

• The Onion's Ben Collins Knows How to Save Media

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Axios'management Pushes AI Internally

• AI is more persuasive than people in online debates

• Microsoft used AI to invent a safer coolant – and dunked a PC in it

• AI attempting to rewrite its code to escape human control

• Microsoft's plan to fix the web: letting every website run AI search for cheap

• AI is improving more quickly than we realize. The impact could be massive

• OpenAI Wins Libel Lawsuit over Hallucinated Embezzlement Claims

• The trouble with AI art isn't just lack of originality. It's far bigger

• OpenAI co-founder wanted to build doomsday bunker to protect company scientists

• Google's AI tools are the culmination of its hubris

• SF startup Anthropic, valued at $61B, sees legal drama caused by own errant tech

• Fidji Simo, the Instacart CEO Tasked with Getting OpenAI to Turn a Profit

• DoorDash Ends AI Voice-Ordering Product for Restaurants

• AI poses a bigger threat to women's work, than men's, says report

• Google launches AI Ultra: A $3k/year 'VIP pass' to its most powerful AI tools

  • Google Wants You to Pay $250 for a God-Tier Subscription to AI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Some answers on those Martian streaks

• Unknown Species of Bacteria Discovered in China's Space Station

Crypto con games

• Coinbase becomes first crypto exchange to join the S&P 500

• Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky sentenced to 12 years for "unbank yourself" scam

• Coinbase Data Breach Will Lead to People Dying, TechCrunch Founder Says

Economicon / Business / Finance

• U.S. banks are sitting on $500B worth of unrealized losses

• Klarna's revenue per employee soars to nearly $1M thanks to AI efficiency push

  • Buy Now, Pay Never? Klarna's Losses Double As US Consumers Fall Behind On Payments | ZeroHedge

  • Klarna Hits 100M Users as revenue and onetime costs jump

  • After Firing 700 Humans for AI, Klarna Now Wants Them Back

• Why Does the U.S. Always Run a Trade Deficit?

• I'm a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking

• Chinese exporters offering sweet deals to US businesses, often wrapped in fraud

• Ray Dalio says the risk to U.S. Treasurys is even greater than what Moody’s is saying.

• Hit hardest in Microsoft layoffs? Developers, product managers, morale

• Intel explores sale of networking and edge unit

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Supreme Court Lifts Injunction Blocking Trump From Ending Protections for Venezuelans.

• Senate Advances Crypto Regulation Bill with Bipartisan Support

Trump

• Trump Signs the Take It Down Act into Law

Democrats

• Marriage Mystery: AOC's Engagement Ring Disappears From Her Hand As Fiancé Reaps Benefits

  Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t been pictured wearing her engagement ring since November 2023, according to an extensive Washington Free Beacon review of Getty and Associated Press images, as well as the lawmaker’s social media posts and public appearances. The ring’s 17-month absence, which has gone unnoticed in the press until now, raises questions about the status of her betrothal to her low-profile fiancé, web developer Riley Roberts, who proposed to Ocasio-Cortez during a vacation to Puerto Rico in April 2022. No news of their nuptials has emerged in the three years since.

• Former Jill Biden press secretary exposes transparency issues in Biden White House | Fox News

• Tax filings reveal Biden cancer charity spent millions on salaries, zero on research.

• Joe Biden’s WH doctor was a longtime family friend who once worked with his shady brother — as cancer ‘cover-up’ speculation mounts.

Left Angst

• Wendy McMahon Resigns as CEO of CBS News and Stations

  “At the same time, the past few months have been challenging. It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership.” Her exit comes as the network has been in negotiations with Donald Trump’s team over a settlement of a $20 billion lawsuit he filed over the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. Many legal experts see the lawsuit as without merit, but Paramount Global is seeking the administration’s approval over the Skydance merger.

• Where does your weather forecast come from?

• The FCC Must Reject Efforts to Lock Up Public Airwaves

• In Reversal, Trump Officials Will Allow Offshore N.Y. Wind Farm to Proceed

• Just like the M.I.A. stock market crash, the long-promised airline travel slump is nowhere to be found.

• (Mar 2025) Black Saturday the Day the United States Ceased to Be a Constitutional Democracy

  Saturday, March 15, 2025, may have seemed unremarkable to most Americans. But in time, history will remember it as Black Saturday—the moment the United States ceased to function as a constitutional democracy. For the first time in modern American history, a sitting president openly defied a direct federal court order—and nothing happened. No intervention. No enforcement. No consequences. A legal ruling was issued, and the White House simply ignored it.

  Fox News did not issue the order, but it made this moment possible. In the aftermath of Trump’s defiance, Fox put the judge’s face on screen, not as part of neutral reporting, but as a deliberate act of intimidation. They did not need to explicitly declare that judicial rulings no longer mattered—they had already spent years training millions to believe it. Through relentless framing, they had conditioned their audience to see the courts as corrupt, as partisan, as obstacles to be overcome rather than institutions to be respected. Trump did not invent this strategy; he simply acted on it, carrying their rhetoric to its logical conclusion.

• What happened to American manufacturing is not unusual

  President Trump’s chaotic implementation of new tariffs has roiled markets and wrecked decades of international cooperation and free trade agreements. At the heart of these actions, and one of the motivating forces of his political movement, is the belief that the de-industrialization of the U.S. economy can somehow be reversed by protectionist trade policies. Unfortunately, this is not going to work. Manufacturing’s share of the U.S. economy has been falling since the 1940s. While the decline has slowed in the past decade, the shift has already devastated communities across the country that were previously dependent on manufacturing activity.

• Trump's Pick to Lead IRS Promoted a Nonexistent Tax Credit

• FBI Closes Unit That Policed Compliance with Surveillance Rules

• Bodybuilders, Joe Rogan and the Modern MAGA Male Style

  This new wave of hypercurated masculinity is a backlash against a cultural landscape shaped by gender fluidity, body positivity and an ongoing renegotiation of gender roles. As celebrities like Harry Styles and Lil Nas X pose in dresses and blur the traditional lines between masculine and feminine, another current rushes in to reassert the old order. It pulls from earlier models: The mythic strength of Sandow, the beachside bravado of the Venice bodybuilders, the greed-soaked tailoring of 1980s finance and the tight-fitting clothes once labeled metrosexual. Today’s fixation on muscularity, discipline and traditional masculine aesthetics feels like a new chapter in that same historical cycle.

• The Trump Administration Is Tempting a Honeybee Disaster

• 'Big Beautiful Bill' would create a regulation-free AI hellscape, AGs warn

World

• Phone networks down across Spain with emergency services out of contact

  • Spain struck by phone and internet blackout

• Spain's consumer rights ministry blocks more than 65k listings for rentals

  • Spain blocks 65,000 Airbnb holiday rental listings

• The Tech Industry Is Huge–and Europe's Share of It Is Small

• Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

• France Becomes First Government to Endorse UN Open Source Principles

• Activism, hacking or campaigning: Why it's so easy to win the vote at Eurovision

• Ransomware attack on food distributor spells more pain for UK supermarkets

• India's 'Silicon Valley' flooded after heavy rains

• Solar panels to be fitted on all new-build homes in England by 2027

• Nvidia part of plans for mega 1.4 GW AI datacenter near Paris

• European editors oppose Hungary's move against foreign-funded groups

• French police launch prison hunt for mini Chinese-made phones

• Malaysia Downplays Huawei Deal as US Checks China's AI Reach

• Sweden bans buying OnlyFans content

Israel

• UN warns 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours under Israel siege of Gaza

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• What happened after Prigozhin's mutiny in June 2023?

China

• China's Effort to Build a Competitor to Starlink Is Off to a Bumpy Start

• China's space economy flies high with record investment surge

• Huawei widens lead in global telecom race, Western giants retreat under pressure

• China launches orbital data center satellites

Health / Medicine

• Is it better to shower in the morning or at night? What a microbiologist says

• A Genetic Clue to Why Men Are Taller Than Women

• Ice cream and foods with emulsifiers may upset your gut health

• Fingers Wrinkle in the Same Pattern Every Time After Long Exposure to Water

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• US hasn't seen a human bird flu case in three months. Experts are wondering why

• FDA announces change to future Covid-19 vaccine approvals

  The US Food and Drug Administration is changing the way it approves Covid-19 vaccines for Americans — a move that will limit future vaccines to older Americans and people at higher risk of serious Covid-19 infection. The agency is changing the standard of evidence required for Covid-19 vaccine approval in the US, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the new director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, said in an editorial published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The change means that Covid-19 shots will likely be available in the fall for adults ages 65 and older and those with underlying conditions that may put them at higher risk of a Covid-19 infection, but not for everyone who was previously eligible for an updated shot. Nearly three-quarters of Americans age 6 months and older have an underlying medical condition that puts them at higher risk, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Yearly Covid shots will no longer be approved for healthy adults and children

  • FDA will limit Covid vaccines to people over 65 or high risk of serious illness

  • FDA to limit access to Covid-19 shots

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• We need 'revolutionary' cooling tech

  The refrigerants typically used in cooling today are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of synthetic gases with high global warming potential. HFCs are much more potent than carbon dioxide. So one option is to replace the refrigerants with more climate-friendly versions. But the candidates with the lower global warming potential, also have problems. For instance, propane is highly flammable. Ammonia is toxic. Carbon dioxide works at high pressures, requiring specialised equipment. But as many places phase down HFCs, alternative refrigerants will remain important.

• Video suggests capuchin monkeys 'kidnap' baby howler monkeys, scientists say

  • Monkeys are kidnapping babies of another species, perplexing scientists

• Texas considers allowing treated fracking water released into rivers

• Coastlines in danger even if climate target met, scientists warn

• Sea level rise will cause 'catastrophic inland migration', scientists warn

• Binary presentation of climate data makes people take notice

• Despite strict regulations, California still has the nation’s dirtiest air

• 'Delaying extinction': The last-ditch race to save the Orinoco crocodile

• High Levels of Arsenic Found in Rice Sold Across the U.S.