2025-05-23

etc

• All that and a bag of chips: Ohio's long history of potato chip production

• How Japan Invented Modern Shipbuilding

  After the war, Ludwig continued to build tankers: between 1948 and 1950 he built 5 Bulkpetrol-class tankers, then the largest tankers in the world. Ludwig wanted to build even larger ships, in part to capitalize on the burgeoning iron ore trade with Venezuela, but was limited by the size of the berth at Welding Shipyards. Unfazed, Ludwig dispatched his lieutenant Elmer Hann to find a shipyard with the capacity to build larger vessels. The search brought Hann to a former naval shipyard in Kure, Japan, near Hiroshima. The Kure facilities were enormous: they had been used to build the Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, and had a 100-ton gantry crane and a drydock capable of building ships of 150,000 tons deadweight. (By comparison, a Liberty ship is about 10,800 deadweight tons.) In 1951, Ludwig signed a 10-year lease for the Kure shipyard.

• It's Far Too Soon to Let Supersonic Flights Rip Across the Country

Horseshit

• (Jun 2023) Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis

  At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack. Almost half a million intermodal containers sat on cargo ships unable to dock at Los Angeles ports. A train carrying thousands of tons of hazardous and flammable chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio. Air Traffic Control cleared a FedEx plane to land on a runway occupied by a Southwest plane preparing to take off. Eye drops contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria killed four and blinded fourteen.

  The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.

• Pro-doping Enhanced Games to debut in Las Vegas in 2026

• Decibels are ridiculous - lcamtuf’s thing

  What’s a decibel? Well, the most common answer is “uhh". The second most common answer is that it’s “a way to measure loudness”. But it isn’t! A decibel is not a unit in any conventional sense: it’s more akin to a prefix such as mega- in megabyte. It describes a change in magnitude.

• Can You Fool the Audience? - by Ted Gioia

  The insiders running the system have a very short window for fixing this mess. I doubt they will take advantage of it. It’s more like they will get ousted or displaced by the rising indie culture. Either way, a change is coming. And I have a hunch that, this time, the new boss will actually look very different from old one.

• In Search Of /r/petfree - by Scott Alexander

  The condition this reminds me of, more than any other, is misophonia. Misophonics - and I say this as one of them - are angry. As I discuss in the link above, the anger seems more characteristic of the condition than the sensory sensitivity. If they go deaf, they’ll still be angry that people are making the noises they hate, even though they can’t hear them. Confronted with the noises they hate in a context where they don’t know it’s the noise they hate, it won’t bother them. I think of misophonia (again, explained at the link - the rest of this post won’t make sense without it) as a superstructure of anger/trauma/phobia/rumination built on top of a foundation of otherwise-non-disabling noise sensitivity. This isn’t to belittle misophonics’ problems - they genuinely hate the noise exactly as much as they say they do, and there’s no way for them to “turn it off” or “just get over it”. But the condition only enters full bloom when you take it from the neurological context of noise to the social context of people making noise.

• The Epic Rise and Fall of a Dark-Web Psychedelics Kingpin

• The Weird World of Animal-Robot Research

• Near-infrared spatiotemporal color vision enabled by upconversion contact lenses

  • Infrared contact lenses let you see in the dark

  • Contacts let you see in the dark with your eyes closed

• Archaeologist sailing like a Viking makes unexpected discoveries

• Yes, Social Media Might Be Making Kids Depressed

celebrity gossip

• Can Sam Altman Be Trusted with the Future?

  • The rise, fall and comeback of Sam Altman

Musk

• SpaceX Transformation

  SpaceX is destined to become a space titan in the coming decade, unrivaled by any other company. Effectively they will be the facilitators for space, due to their low cost, unrivaled reliability and technical acumen.

• The Decline and Fall of Elon Musk

• Why does Elon Musk love this socialist sci-fi series?

  • Lots of people like Banks' "Culture" books, partly because the required "socialism is superior" preachments are subtle and don't interfere much with the stories.

• BYD Beats Tesla in Europe for First Time with 169% Sales Surge

  • Tesla crushed in Europe as BYD outsells; BEV sales surge 28%

  • China's BYD Outsells Tesla in Europe for First Time

• FTC probes Media Matters over Musk's X boycott claims, document shows

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• College English Majors Can't Read

  To summarize even further for those skimming:

  • 58% of students understood very little of the passages they read
  • 38% could understand about half of the sentences
  • 5% could understand all seven paragraphs

  These are college students majoring in English. About half of them are English Education majors, which means they will be teaching books like Bleak House to high school students after graduating. But they themselves cannot understand the literal meaning of the sentences in the opening paragraphs.

• Can We Trust Social Science Yet?

• Kermit the Frog set to deliver University of Maryland commencement address: ‘I’ll be there!

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• "Microsoft has simply given us no other option," Signal blocks Windows Recall

• News publishers call Google's AI Mode 'theft'

• Popular Fitness App Strava Clinches Valuation of More Than $2B

• Apartment living to get worse in 5 years as 6 GHz Wi-Fi nears 'exhaustion'

• Google Beam: AI-first 3D video communication platform

• Google pretends to be in on the joke, but its focus on AI Mode search is serious

• Arguments Meta presented in court to refute that they are a monopoly

• Signal's new Windows update prevents the system from capturing screenshots

  • Signal shuts the blinds on Microsoft Recall with the power of DRM

• TeleMessage customers include DC Police, A16Z, JP Morgan, and hundreds more

• Microsoft files legal action against information-stealing malware Lumma Stealer

• Fortnite Takes Top Spot on App Store Charts

• NTT Docomo, popularizer of emoji, ends own emoji set after 26 years

• AirPods Are Still Untouchable as Apple Crushes the Competition in 2025

• Mysterious Database of 184M Records Exposes Array of Login Credentials

• Hollywood's New Studio System Is Being Built by Creators Themselves

• Mozilla to shutdown Pocket on July 8, 2025

• Oodle 2.9.14 and Intel 13th/14th gen CPUs

  Intel’s statement on the issue confirms that it’s a hardware problem where there’s physical degeneration of the clock tree circuitry over time resulting in clock skew which ultimately makes affected CPUs behave in increasingly glitchy ways. This is a hardware issue, and Intel has now released multiple versions of microcode updates to try and prevent or at least limit that degradation. But the symptoms are just frequent crashes or errors in certain components.

• Apple adds official Vision Pro support to Godot game engine

• Google is paying Samsung an 'enormous sum' to preinstall Gemini

• Universal's $7B Theme Park Sparks Arms Race with Disney

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Display any CSV file as a searchable, filterable, pretty HTML table

• The IBM Enhanced Keyboard turns 40

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Former Apple Design Guru Jony Ive to Take Expansive Role at OpenAI

  • OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's AI hardware company

  • OpenAI to buy Jony Ive's io for $6.4B in hardware push

  • OpenAI buys iPhone architect's startup for $6.4B

  • Jony Ive to lead OpenAI's design work following $6.5B acquisition of his company

  • What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He's Making with Jony Ive

  • AI Age Brings the Biggest Acquhire

  • Jony Ive and OpenAI Make a Long-Shot Bet to Kill the iPhone

• Researchers pioneer use of AI to reduce bias in sports scouting

• Judge rejects arguments that AI chatbots have free speech rights

• Foxconn chairman predicts AI will end manufacturers' search for cheap labor

• Nonprofit used AI to document 77M miles of unmapped waterways

• By putting AI into everything, Google wants to make it invisible

• OpenAI Will Build Data Centers in the UAE

• Microsoft-backed Builder.ai collapsed after finding potentially bogus sales

• AI Is Eating Data Center Power Demand–and It's Only Getting Worse

• Claude Opus 4 turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• SpaceX's Starship cleared to return to flight with expanded 'hazard areas'

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin hits new all time high near $110K

• The SEC has charged crypto company Unicoin and three of its top executives directly with fraud.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Apologetic Amazon belatedly refunds years-old returns

• Kevin Boone: No, eBay: it isn’t “free to sell”

  It isn’t just these fees –transparent or not – that create a selling cost for private sellers. For example, eBay will always allow buyers to return items they don’t want, for any reason or no reason at all, with the seller covering the cost of return postage. There’s no way a seller can decline to accept returns, even where it would be perfectly legal to do so: eBay now retains the seller’s income for a period of time, to make it easier for them to enact this policy. In short, when eBay says it’s “free to sell”, they are lying. Sellers still pay eBay’s costs, but in a way that is now non-transparent. eBay’s previous fees were ruinously high, but at least eBay was up-front about them.

• Klarna used an AI avatar of its CEO to deliver earnings

• HSBC high street bank staff face bonus cuts over remote working

• AT&T agrees to buy Lumen's consumer fiber business for $5.75B

• Apple, Tesla and Nvidia Shares to Trade as Digital Tokens on Kraken

• Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

• Klarna's losses widen after more consumers fail to repay loans

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Fish & Wildlife has expanded its regulatory rule to every tree in much of the U.S.

  If you are building anything that involves cutting down any trees, you will be subjected to Fish & Wildlife supervision that could block construction. And the area this new rule covers includes almost the entire eastern and northern parts of the United States,

• Senate votes to block California 2035 electric vehicle rules

Trump

• A Crypto Billionaire Who Feared Arrest in the U.S. Returns for Dinner with Trump

• The Treasury unveils its plan to kill the penny

  • Treasury Sounds Death Knell for Penny Production

  • US Mint moves forward with plans to kill the penny

• Top DOGE Official Details Discovery Of Shocking Voter Fraud: "Tip Of The Iceberg" | ZeroHedge

Democrats

• Democrats Throw Money at a Problem: Countering G.O.P. Clout Online - The New York Times

  Six months after the Democratic Party’s crushing 2024 defeat, the party’s megadonors are being inundated with overtures to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop an army of left-leaning online influencers. At donor retreats and in pitch documents seen by The New York Times, liberal strategists are pushing the party’s rich backers to reopen their wallets for a cavalcade of projects to help Democrats, as the cliché now goes, “find the next Joe Rogan.” The proposals, the scope of which has not been previously reported, are meant to energize glum donors and persuade them that they can compete culturally with President Trump — if only they can throw enough money at the problem. Democrats widely believe they must grow more creative in stoking online enthusiasm for their candidates, particularly in less outwardly political forms of media like sports or lifestyle podcasts. Many now take it as gospel that Mr. Trump’s victory last year came in part because he cultivated an ecosystem of supporters on YouTube, TikTok and podcasts, in addition to the many Trump-friendly hosts on Fox News. The quiet effort amounts to an audacious — skeptics might say desperate — bet that Democrats can buy more cultural relevance online, despite the fact that casually right-leaning touchstones like Mr. Rogan’s podcast were not built by political donors and did not rise overnight.

• Meet the Biden ‘politburo’ accused of running the country in secret

  “They did such a disservice to Joe Biden and to the country. The family as well. I don’t understand how you could see him in the condition he’s in and think, ‘Yeah, you oughta go [run for president again].’ To do that to someone you love?” This is the verdict of President Obama’s long-time adviser David Axelrod in Original Sin, the new Biden tell-all by the journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on the inner circle that kept Biden in the race for a second term even when the president’s own cabinet was raising alarm about his mental acuity.

  The blame game is moving to a cabal of advisers, dubbed the “politburo” by colleagues in a nod to the highest decision-making body of the Soviet Union, a group said to have enjoyed unprecedented power. “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board,” one cabinet member claims. “I’ve never seen a situation like this before, with so few people having so much power. They would make huge economic decisions without calling [Treasury] secretary Yellen.”

Left Angst

• RFK Jr. calls WHO "moribund" amid US withdrawal; China pledges to give $500M

• Trump's trade war risks splintering the Internet, experts warn

• White House purges transcripts of President's remarks from its website

  Government stenographers are still recording and transcribing Trump’s remarks, a White House official said. But in an internal policy change in recent days, the White House took down the transcripts in favor of audio and video of his appearances. In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The president’s remarks are live on the website for every person in the world, including journalists, to access and watch for themselves. The Trump White House is the most transparent in history.” Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance’s office continues to make public transcripts of his remarks, sending them out to the media. Since last month, Vance’s office has shared eight transcripts with reporters. Asked why Vance is putting out official transcripts while Trump is not, Vance’s office declined to comment.

• Even Nate Silver Couldn't Take What These Yale Professors Did Seriously in Response to Trump

• Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades

• Why Everything Is ‘Coded’ Now - The New York Times

  People have often signaled their values in the shows they watch (“The West Wing”), clothes they wear (white pantsuits) and restaurants they frequent. But it has become wildly popular in recent years, and especially in recent months, to read cultural tea leaves with the word “coded.” In group chats, on Reddit and on X, we’re calling anything and everything right or left “coded.” It’s like playing a game of charades, gesturing at the qualities a certain celebrity or bar or podcast has without saying exactly what you mean. Linguists notice it too, pointing to Google data that shows a spike in the use of “coded,” with its current meaning, since the 2010s. “It’s a way of acknowledging that even when something isn’t literally conservative, it can still convey conservativeness,” said Lal Zimman, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

• The provision in the Big Ugly Bill that makes Trump king

  I want to alert you to one detail inside it that’s especially alarming. With one stroke, it would allow Trump to crown himself king. As you know, Trump has been trying to neuter the courts by ignoring them. What can the courts do in response to Trump’s open defiance of judges and justices? The courts have one power to make their orders stick: holding federal officials in contempt and enforcing such contempt citations against them. Enforcing a contempt citation means fining or jailing the Trump lawyers who argue before them and possibly invoking contempt all the way up the line to Trump. So what’s next? Will the Supreme Court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce contempt citations? Not if the Big Ugly Bill is enacted with the following provision, now hidden in the bill:

  “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….”

  Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation. Obviously, courts need appropriated funds to do anything because Congress appropriates money to enable the courts to function.

• What happens if investors lose faith in America?

• Harvard University Loses Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certification

  • Trump Administration Halts Harvard's Ability to Enroll International Students

  • Trump Admin Revokes Harvard's Authorization to Enroll International Students

  • Trump administration blocks Harvard from enrolling international students

  • Homeland Security blocks Harvard's ability to enroll international students

  • Trump administration blocks Harvard's ability to enroll international students

  • Trump Administration Blocks Harvard from Enrolling Foreign Students

  • Trump administration bars Harvard from enrolling international students

• Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears

• HOPE Conference says US Immigration Crackdown Caused Massive Ticket Sales Crash

• The Christians Who Believe Empathy Is a Sin

  Evangelicals as I knew them loathed abortion and women in the pulpit and the prospect of same-sex marriage, but that is not enough for Garrett and his peers. They want a Christianity with teeth, a fighting religion that will not only vanquish but eradicate their foes. When Garrett spoke of sinful empathy, he merely echoed writers like Joe Rigney, who helped popularize the idea years before publishing The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits in February.

• MAGA's assault on science is an act of grievous self-harm

• "C" Is for Censorship: PBS Cuts 'Art Spiegelman' Doc

  • PBS Is Censoring a Film About Free Speech

• DOGE used Meta AI model to review emails from federal workers

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• 2 Killed in Shooting Outside Capital Jewish Museum, Including Israeli Embassy Staffer

  • Communist Terrorist Kills Engaged Couple Outside Israeli Embassy | Frontpage Mag

  Elias Rodriguez, reportedly a member of the Communist front Party for Socialism and Liberation, opened fire outside the Israeli Embassy in D.C., killing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a pair of staffers who were about to be engaged. The Communist terrorist shouted, “Free Palestine,” as he was taken into custody. “A young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. They were a beautiful couple,” Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter said. Unlike many Muslim terrorist attacks, it’s important to note that this was a Communist terrorist attack. Photos appear to show Rodriguez at an ANSWER coalition rally. ANSWER was the anti-war front group for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. PSL originated as a series of originally Trotskyist splinter groups that became more radical with every splintering. PSL in recent months has been loudly accusing Israel of ‘genocide’, but its larger mission is to radicalize members into a revolution against the United States. In short, it’s a treasonous enemy organization that has been allowed to operate inside the United States.

  • Two Israeli Embassy Staff Members Gunned Down Outside Jewish Museum In D.C. | ZeroHedge

• Person in custody after shooting outside CIA headquarters | Reuters

  • Guards at CIA headquarters shoot woman in 'security incident' just hours after DC Jewish Museum shooting

  A female driver was shot at CIA headquarters early Thursday in what the agency called a “security incident” after she refused to follow commands at a checkpoint, according to law enforcement sources and local police. The “non-fatal shooting” occurred before 4 a.m. outside the agency’s main gated entrance in McLean, Va., a Fairfax County Police Department spokesperson confirmed.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• China and Russia are deploying powerful new weapons: ideas

• NSA Publish Advisory on Russian Cyber Campaign Targeting Western Logistics

• U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

• DJI drones are everywhere. The U.S. may still ban them

• Chinese snoops tried to break into US city utilities, says Talos

World

• UK-wide parking app to be rolled out by industry bodies after pilot scheme

• Indian police trying to read minds of suspects, over neuroscientists' objections

• Affordable housing initiative aims to empower South Africans

• Norwegian man woke up with container ship in his garden

• 'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

• India plans massive $10B purchase of over 100 Make in India crude oil tankers

• Shady price hikes mean Netflix must refund customer, German court rules

• Switzerland plans surveillance worse than US

• Administrative court: Cookie banner must contain "Reject all" button

• Kim Jong-un Vents Fury After Botched Launch of North Korean Destroyer - The New York Times

  North Korea’s attempt to launch its second navy destroyer in a month has failed, dealing a huge embarrassment for its leader, Kim Jong-un, who called it a criminal act and indicated he would punish those responsible. A “serious accident” occurred on Wednesday when North Korea tried to launch a new 5,000-ton destroyer in Chongjin, a port city on its northeastern coast, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday. While Mr. Kim was watching, the ship lost balance when its stern slid down the launch slipway while its bow section failed to leave the ramp, it said. The accident tore holes in the ship’s hull, it added.

• Irish privacy watchdog OKs Meta to train AI on EU folks' posts

• UK signs deal to hand over Chagos Islands

• Finland Court: Food couriers are employees, not entrepreneurs

Israel

• Israel will control all of Gaza, Netanyahu says, as 82 killed

• EU, Arab diplomats come under Israeli fire in occupied West Bank's Jenin

• Microsoft Bans the Word "Palestine" in Internal Emails

  • Microsoft blocks employees from sending email that mention "Palestine" or "Gaza"

• Why is your open source project still hosted on GitHub?

  Perhaps the younger generation don't know anything about the past "evils" of Microsoft and naively believe that Microsoft is now the good friend to open source, but the truth is that all Microsoft acquisitions of open source projects is a business tactic that is put in place to improve Microsoft's loosing position to open source. It is a matter of control. And you should not host your open source project on GitHub. The Israeli military has utilized Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform and AI services during the Gaza war to identify targets. The Israeli Ministry of Defense is Microsoft's second largest military customer. This relationship has led to protests within the company. In response, Microsoft employees founded the "No Azure for Apartheid" campaign to advocate for the company to cut ties with Israel. The group is a part of the larger No Tech for Apartheid movement.

  • "They steal your shit" or "its where projects go to die", is less of a reason for these folks than "they help Israel."

• Microsoft fires employee who interrupted CEO's speech to protest AI tech for Israeli military | AP News

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia to enforce location tracking app on all foreigners in Moscow

• Arms Race in Ukraine

China

• New Bacteria Have Been Discovered on a Chinese Space Station

• China's $10 EV Battery Could Upend the US Auto Market

• National Museum of Asian Art Announces Transfer of Manuscript Fragments to China

Health / Medicine

• A Genetic Clue to Why Men Are Taller Than Women

• Too Much Grit Can Damage Your Brain

• Blue light may not affect your sleep-wake cycle, study finds

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• COVID Vaccine “Safe and Effective” Narrative Collapses on Camera

  The “safe and effective” narrative collapsed on camera during Senator Ron Johnson’s explosive Senate hearing on COVID-19 vaccine injuries Wednesday afternoon. Senator Ron Johnson brought the receipts, exposing how the Biden administration DELIBERATELY hid vaccine harms from the public. Then Dr. James Thorp (OB-GYN) revealed miscarriage data so disturbing, it left the room silent.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Brembo develops brakes with almost no brake dust and less wear

• Analysis: Clean energy just put China CO2 emissions into reverse for first time

• Is Earth's core leaking? Volcanic rocks provide strongest evidence yet

• Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds

• Bear cub rescued from woods is being raised by humans dressed as bears

• First gene-edited spider produces red fluorescent silk

• Humpback Whales May Not See Their Most Dangerous Threats

• Mexico's act of resistance over GM corn