2025-05-30

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• You can make fair dice from any shape you like

Horseshit

• Astronomers discover strange new celestial object in our Milky Way galaxy

• Fake My Run Is What It Sounds Like

• The New Dream Job for Young Men: Stay-at-Home Son

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• How "Do Your Own Research" Became a Slogan for Epistemic Collapse

  Everyone should be encouraged to do their own research. It’s the only reasonable way to make informed decisions. But we all have limits—of time, knowledge, education, access to information, and cognitive capacity. If you’ve taken a Logic course or explored the subject casually, you’ll be familiar with the appeal to authority fallacy. This fallacy warns against accepting a claim solely because it’s endorsed by a perceived expert. And in the context of formal argumentation, that’s absolutely right. However, applying this standard rigorously to everyday decision-making would require endless specialized training and unlimited time. The reality is that no one can be an expert in everything. Even world-class specialists must rely on the authority of others for most of what they believe.

• MCC Brussels Exposes EU's Covert €649M Propaganda War Against Free Speech

  The report uncovers how the Commission has funded hundreds of unaccountable non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and universities to carry out 349 projects related to countering ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ to the tune of almost €650 million. This massive allocation of taxpayers’ money has been consciously used to fund an Orwellian disinformation complex to dictate and control the language of public debate. The report argues that this is not a benign act of responsible government but a systematic assault on free speech in Europe. The EU is engaged in a silent war to regulate language, aiming for a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus, where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission.

Musk

• X hits pause on its encrypted DMs feature

• A Song of “Full Self-Driving”: Elon Isn’t Tony Stark. He’s Michael Scott.

• Tesla is losing money insuring its own cars

• Pension Fund investors demand Musk put in a 40 HR week at Tesla

• Man jumps in front of a Tesla and kicks it, gets fatally shot by driver

• How Wall Street offloaded $13B of debt tied to Elon Musk's Twitter deal

• Elon Musk's plans to go to Mars next year are toast

• Tesla shareholders demand Elon Musk commits to 40-hour week

• Self-driving Tesla fails school bus test, hitting child-size dummies

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• If Publishing's Efforts to Diversify Haven't Done Anything, Why Did You Fight for Them? Why Do You Defend Them Now?

  But things change. This is important to remember if you are a left-of-center person, because the core of all left belief is precisely that things can change and change for the better. And here the status of the left in the entertainment business is important. Because while this is still capitalism and cash still rules, Hollywood is very close to a liberal monoculture, and this means that liberals have a great deal of influence over which stories get told. So, LGBTQ characters on television. Have things changed, for the better? It’s very difficult to say that they haven’t.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• A Library in New Zealand Replaces Dewey with System Rooted in Māori Tradition

• San Francisco scraps ‘equity grading’ program — in which homework and attendance wouldn’t affect grades — one day after unveiling it.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Victoria's website laid bare for three days after 'security incident'

  • Victoria's Secret takes down its website after a security incident

• Intel Shows Off Professional Battlemage Cards

• YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom

• Phone's Next Big Innovation Is a Dedicated AI Button?

• Data broker giant LexisNexis breach exposed information of over 364K people

  • LexisNexis leaked SSNs and other personal data of over 364,000 people

• Someone Got Their Hands on a Switch 2 Early, and the Video's Been Taken Down

• Discord lures users to click on ads by offering them new Orbs currency

• Indian News Agency is abusing YouTube copyright strikes as an extrotion tool

• Apple will jump straight to "iOS 26" in shift to year-based version numbers

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• In German dialogues, Claude becomes more assertive in his claimed consciousness

• Behind the Curtain: A white-collar bloodbath

• Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu: Don't Believe the AI Hype

• The Times and Amazon Announce an A.I. Licensing Deal

  • The New York Times and Amazon Ink AI Licensing Deal

• Grammarly secures $1B to build AI productivity platform

Crypto con games

• Block’s bitcoin checkout goes live in Vegas

• The Las Vegas Bitcoin Party: 'Whales', JD Vance and the Trump Sons

• Vitalik Buterin Wants to Make Ethereum as Simple as Bitcoin

• NYPD detectives may be tied to crypto millionaire torture case

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Nvidia is in constant 'cat-and-mouse game' with US regulators

  • Nvidia expects to lose billions in revenue due to H20 chip licensing requirement

• More bad news for people looking for a job

• 5 Charged in $600K insider trading scheme tied to Novartis' Chinook acquisition

• US economy shrank at 0.2% rate in first quarter

• Northrop Grumman Invests in Defense-Focused Space Startup Firefly Aerospace

• Meta Fired Palmer Luckey. Now, They're Teaming Up on a Defense Contract

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• US Trade Court blocks Trump tariffs

  • Trade Court Strikes Down Trump's 'Liberation Day' Tariffs

  • US trade court rules Trump overstepped his authority with global tariffs

  • Court says Trump doesn't have the authority to set tariffs

  • US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal

  • Which Trump tariffs are thrown out? Which are still on? Here's what to know

• Appeals court pauses ruling that blocked Trump's tariffs

  • Trump tariffs reinstated by appeals court for now

• Bowser to replace D.C. Streetcar with ‘next generation streetcar.’ It’s a bus

Trump

• Elon Musk's stint in the US government is coming to an end

  • Elon Musk exits US Government after breaking with Trump on tax bill

  • Musk 'disappointed' by Trump's tax and spending bill

  • Elon Musk is leaving the Trump administration

  • Elon Musk leaving Trump administration, White House official confirms

  • A Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He’s Exiting Washington

  • Elon Musk to exit government, upset that Trump bill undermines DOGE's work

  • it has now been 130 days, the maximum number of days permitted for a "Special Government Employee" under law

Democrats

• Inside the Democratic Party’s Strategic Efforts To Enhance Receptivity in Masculine-Coded Heteronormative Cohorts Through Data-Driven Holistic Outreach

Left Angst

• US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

  • Trump administration cancels plans to develop a bird flu vaccine

  • U.S. Cancels Contract with Moderna to Develop Bird Flu Vaccine

  • HHS cancels nearly $600M Moderna contract on vaccines for flu pandemics

• Emergency We Cannot Feel: On the Psychological Unreadiness for American Collapse

  We treat an existential threat to self-governance as if it were merely another election cycle. We discuss the potential end of constitutional democracy in the same register we might debate tax policy or infrastructure spending. We have normalized what should never be normal, accommodated what should never be accommodated, and rationalized what should have provoked immediate, sustained resistance. The gap between the emergency and our feeling of emergency is not accidental. It is the product of specific psychological defenses, media failures, and deliberate manipulation—all combining to protect us from the emotional and moral burden of confronting our situation honestly.

• Systems are crumbling – but daily life continues. The dissonance is real | Well actually | The Guardian

  “Hypernormalization” is a heady, $10 word, but it captures the weird, dire atmosphere of the US in 2025. First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.

• Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID

• The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don't Exist

• Wildlife crime crackdown in jeopardy worldwide after US funding cuts

• Did Smoot-Hawley Cause the Great Depression?

• RFK Jr. says he may bar scientists from publishing in top medical journals

• RFK Jr.'S MAHA Report Cites Research Studies That Don't Exist

• Founder Sahil Lavingia says he was booted from DOGE after just 55 days

• The US Is Storing Migrant Children's DNA in a Criminal Database

• As Public Records Are Wiped, Independent Databases Are Keeping Separate Archives

• After Elon Musk Fired Her, She Kept Showing Up to Work–For Free

• Trump administration backtracks on Harvard foreign student policy

• VA-based DOGE associate gets 'the boot' after publicly discussing his work

• The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• 'To Easy LoL' – New Orleans jail break may have been inside job

• ICE Agents Routinely Mask Up When Seizing People–That's Wrong

• Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for Woman Who Got Abortion

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US says it will start revoking visas for Chinese students

  • U.S. says it will start revoking visas for Chinese students

  • The United States will 'aggressively' revoke visas of Chinese students

• US will ban foreign officials to punish countries for social media rules

  • US will refuse visas to foreign officials who block Americans' social media

• US curbs chip design software, chemicals, other shipments to China

• China deep in US networks? 'They're preparing for war,' HR McMaster to lawmakers

• Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop Will Be the Reason Why US Could Lose the Next War

World

• Global Leaders Discuss the Next Steps for Space Exploration

• UK tax collector puts half a billion on table for call center services

• RAAF recruit had chilli in eyes and was set afire and choked in hazing ritual

• Social media lies fuelled a rush to war between India and Pakistan

• Haiti's Beleaguered Government Launches Drones Against Gangs

• Glacier collapse buries most of Swiss village

  • Alpine village is largely destroyed when a Swiss glacier collapses

• India none-too-subtly reminds Big Tech that local laws prohibit dark patterns

• Czech Republic says China behind cyberattack on ministry

• UK Justice Secretary Confronts Fare Dodger

• Germany Vows To ‘Do Everything’ to Prevent Nord Stream Resurrection | OilPrice.com

  Germany plans to do all it takes to keep the Nord Stream 2 pipeline offline, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday at a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin. “We will do everything in this context to ensure that Nord Stream 2 cannot be put back into operation,” Merz said, as quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP). Germany will continue to increase the pressure on Russia, the chancellor added. Nord Stream 2, an $11-billion project to carry Russian natural gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea following the Nord Stream route, was built at the end of the 2010s. However, the pipeline was never put into operation after Germany axed the certification process in early 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia, for its part, shut down Nord Stream 1 indefinitely in early September of 2022, claiming an inability to repair gas turbines because of the Western sanctions.

• Apple has only 30 days to comply with EU DMA rules

• Why are rice prices still high?

• Step by Step Through Călin Georgescu's TikTok Campaign Playbook

  According to initial reports from Romanian secret services, the rigged campaign to support Călin Georgescu, who won the first round of the autumn elections, was supposed to start with a large network of fake TikTok accounts. These were supposed to boost the candidate’s reach by commenting, liking, and sharing posts. A network of activist accounts of real users, coordinated outside TikTok, mainly on Telegram and Discord, was also involved. Paid influencers with varying degrees of reach were then supposed to spread the content further. According to the investigation so far, one of the main sponsors of this massive campaign, which catapulted Georgescu to become one of the most successful TikTokers in Romania, was Bogdan Peșchir (known by the nickname BogPR). In March 2025, he was arrested by the police and spent a short time in custody. The prosecutor’s office has charged him with 265 counts of voter bribery totaling $879,000. He faces up to three years in prison. Călin Georgescu himself was arrested at the end of February 2025. The prosecutor’s office charged him with six criminal offenses, but none in connection with the TikTok election campaign itself. However, neither the court’s decision nor the secret service report address how the entire operation affected the functioning of the TikTok algorithm or the voting itself. Although Georgescu’s presentation was more visible on TikTok than that of the other candidates, there are no strong arguments to suggest that the pro-Russian candidate’s victory in the first round was determined solely by the social media campaign.

• Gabon longs to cash in on sacred hallucinogenic remedy

• NHS accused of 'abject failure' on ADHD as 550k await assessment in England

• Germany eyes 10% digital tax on tech giants

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

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

China

• China is quietly preparing to build a gigantic telescope

• Chinese paraglider survives accidental 8k-metre-high flight above the clouds

  • Chinese paraglider cheats death after flying to 28,000ft

  • Chinese paraglider survives accidental 8,000M-high flight

• China extends its reach into the Solar System with launch of asteroid mission

• China to visit Earth's 'quasi-moon' and bring a chunk of it back home

• Analysis: Xi Jinping resuscitates Hu Jintao's parting words

• China's first 6nm domestic GPU with purported RTX 4060-like performance

• Brazil sues Chinese electric carmaker BYD over slave-like conditions of workers

Health / Medicine

• Can Sunlight Cure Disease?

• Hormel recalls 256,000 pounds of canned beef stew over wood fragments

• Androgenic alopecia may protect men vs prostate cancer by increasing UV exposure

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• If India chokes less, it will fry more

• Derek Muller Confronts PFAS "Forever Chemicals"–In His Own Blood

• Penguin poop may help preserve Antarctic climate

• Weaponized AI chatbot floods Canadian city councils with climate misinformation

• The Bold Geoengineering Work to Refreeze the Arctic's Disappearing Ice

• Newtok, Alaska, Was Supposed to Be a Model for Climate Relocation

• Two of the Worst Termites Hooked Up in Florida–and Now We're Screwed

• The rise and fall – and rise again – of white-tailed deer