2025-06-16

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• A Tax On Life - Rob Henderson's Newsletter

  In the middle of the conversation, O’Neal observes that it wasn’t until he was 40 years old that he fully recognized and understood that he had grown up without a father. He didn’t know what it meant to have a dad, and the role such a figure plays in the life of a young man. O'Neal had never had a father. A lot of the people he knew growing up were also fatherless. As a result, it hadn’t occurred to him until relatively late in his life what a sharp deficiency this was.

Horseshit

• Photos of secret Caltrain station apartment show $40k in illicit renovations

• The Reasons Your Appliances Die Young

• 5k-Year-Old Color Reborn: Scientists Recreate Ancient Egyptian Blue

• Dan Luu and I consider possible reasons for bridge collapse

  t many pastimes are time-bound in their popularity. Bridge was huge for a roughly fifty-year period during the early part of the twentieth century–for example, Wikipedia says, “The number of people who play contract bridge has declined since its peak in the 1940s, when a survey found it was played in 44% of US households.” At that point, there’s nowhere to go but down.

• In 'Mountainhead,' a Copper Pot Offers a Subtle (and Silly) Display of Wealth

• Competitive Hormone Supplementation Is Shaping America's Future Business Titans

• Should We Embrace Boredom?

• Stop Adding More Drive Modes and Just Build a Car That Drives Properly

• Soon Your Orange Juice Will Have Even Less Real Orange in It

Obit

• John Wells, 64, Who Fled New York for the Solitude of the Desert, Dies

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Sci-Fi Writer John Scalzi Admits Social Media Site BlueSky Is Failing Because The Left Are "Humorless Scolds"

  Scalzi posted, “ALSO, those article writers moaning about the lefties being humorless scolds here on Bluesky are carefully eliding their memories of the lefties being humorous scolds on Twitter too, look, some lefties are just humorless scolds, just like so many righties are just fxxxing fascist shxxbunglers.” The lack of self awareness of being part of the reason normal people don’t want to be around places like BlueSky is entertaining, but he continues, “I mean, if the choice is between exhaustingly hectoring lefties being mean kids and bootlicking righties who will happily rat out their neighbors to masked thugs for not being potential cover models for Aryans Illustrated, I have a pretty good idea about who I'd rather be loitering with online.”

  Even though Scalzi seems to recognize there’s a problem, and also recognize that his attitude is a large part of it, he’d still rather watch his own circle crash and burn into irrelevancy than treat anyone else who disagrees with him on a topic as a human. This is the hallmark of the left and exactly what establishment science fiction and fantasy publishing has become in recent years, and why their networks are failing not just through this site, but everywhere as institutions like Worldcon and SFWA descend into further irrelevancy.

• Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?

  • Is 50 years of media monolith "all Evil is Republican" and "It's different when we do it" on the Left a factor at all?

Musk

• How to modify Starlink Mini to run without the built-in WiFi router

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The State of Rideshare and Autonomous Vehicles

• Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• 'Ghost' AI students being enrolled in college as a financial aid scam

• How scammers are using AI to steal student aid.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The root cause of the huge Google Cloud / Clouflare outage a couple of days ago.

• YouTube tests 30-second non-skippable ads in standard campaigns

• Switch2 fastest selling, ex-marketing leads say this is abetting price hike

• That 'unsubscribe' button may be a scam

• Studio Ghibli marks 40 years, but future looks uncertain

• A Google Shareholder Is Suing the Company over the TikTok Ban

• Meta Busted Spying on Android Users in Creepy New Way, Then Lies About It

• YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads

• Influencing Shouldn't Be Professional

• Fake bands and artificial songs are taking over YouTube and Spotify

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Latest X.org Server Activity Are a Lot of Code Reverts

  Many Phoronix readers have been asking why I haven't been covering news of the "X11Libre" fork of the X.Org Server or if I somehow missed it... No, simply a vote of no confidence. It's highly unlikely to succeed long-term given the very limited experienced developers / resources and none of the major Linux stakeholders (companies) backing it. A great example now are all of the reverts hitting the X.Org Server Git code after longtime X.Org developers began going through the code committed by the "X11Libre" developer prior to his ejection from the FreeDesktop.org camp.

• Inside the Apollo “8-Ball” FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator)

  During the Apollo flights to the Moon, the astronauts observed the spacecraft's orientation on a special instrument called the FDAI (Flight Director / Attitude Indicator). This instrument showed the spacecraft's attitude—its orientation—by rotating a ball. This ball was nicknamed the "8-ball" because it was black (albeit only on one side). The instrument also acted as a flight director, using three yellow needles to indicate how the astronauts should maneuver the spacecraft. Three more pointers showed how fast the spacecraft was rotating.

  Why doesn't the wiring get tangled up as the ball rotates? The solution is two sets of slip rings to implement the electrical connections. The photo below shows the first slip ring assembly, which handles rotation around the roll axis. These slip rings connect the stationary part of the FDAI to the rotating roll gimbal. The vertical metal brushes are stationary; there are 23 pairs of brushes, one for each connection to the ball mechanism. Each pair of brushes contacts one metal ring on the striped shaft, maintaining contact as the shaft rotates. Inside the shaft, 23 wires connect the circular metal contacts to the roll gimbal.

• Modifying an HDMI dummy plug’s EDID using a Raspberry Pi

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta AI searches made public – but do all its users realise?

• Have LLMs Mastered Geolocation?

• New York passes a bill to prevent AI-fueled disasters

• New York State Updates Warn Notices to Identify Layoffs Tied to AI

• Beware General Claims about "Generalizable Reasoning Capabilities" of AI Systems

• AI Overviews hallucinates that Airbus not Boeing involved in Air India crash

• The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever

• Mozilla frets about Google's push to build AI into Chrome

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Companies may soon pay a fee for their rockets to share the skies with airplanes

• ESA's Nuclear Rocket: Faster Mars Missions

• NASA sets new potential launch date for Ax-4 mission to ISS

Economicon / Business / Finance

• 23andMe founder buys back genetic testing company in second auction

• Boeing trims projection for 20-year jet demand

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Boulder braces for $10M budget shortfall, freezes hiring

  The City of Boulder is facing an estimated $8 to $10 million budget shortfall, prompting officials to freeze hiring and ask departments to rein in spending for the remainder of the year.

Mostly Peaceful Riots

• Return the phones!: Apple sends warning to thieves who looted iPhones during Los Angeles riots - The Economic Times

  The video, of BG on the Scene, was shared by startup founder Mario Nawfal who wrote on X, "Looters ransacked the Apple Store at Tower Theatre during downtown LA protests. They smashed glass, grabbed phones, laptops, and whatever else wasn’t nailed down. But Apple doesn’t play. The stolen iPhones were display models. When stolen, they locked up, blared alarms, and flashed this message: “Please return to Apple Tower Theatre. This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted.” Translation: Congratulations, you’ve stolen a brick that tattles."

• Old White Boomers By Day, Antifa By Night: 'No Kings' Color Revolution  | ZeroHedge

  Our preliminary assessment of the command and control structures supporting the 'No Kings' color revolution operation by the Democratic Party has been propped up through dark money networks that continue to finance radical left-wing NGOs engaged in what appears to be a sustained, low-grade color revolution during the day and riots at night. These NGOs, operating with logistical sophistication, have aimed to undermine societal cohesion and erode public trust in the Trump administration. On Saturday, a coordinated series of demonstrations unfolded across major metropolitan areas, including New York, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles. The protests—supported by a network of nearly 200 entities, many of which include ideologically aligned and far-left NGOs—appear to follow a highly structured mobilization effort reminiscent of prior failed "Tesla Takedown" operations observed earlier this year. Notably, the demographic composition of participants was strikingly consistent across many of the protest areas: predominantly elderly, white, college-educated liberal elites with many of whom are likely regular viewers of leftist corporate media brainwashing networks, such as MSNBC, CNBC, The View, and so on.

• Watch: Shots Fired At Utah 'No Kings' Protest: Two Wounded, Three In Custody | ZeroHedge

  In an incident captured in dramatic bystander videos, gunfired erupted at Salt Lake City's "No Kings" protest march on Saturday evening, sending participants running for cover and sending a victim to the hospital in critical condition, as well as a suspect who himself has a serious gunshot wound. Three people are in policy custody, yet the precise circumstances and motive for the shooting are far from clear as the story develops. In one of many demonstrations against the Trump administration's immigration and other policies held across the nation on Saturday, some 10,000 people were marching in Salt Lake City when a series of shots rang out on South State Street at 7:56 pm local time.

  • SLCPD Investigating Shooting During Downtown Demonstration

  • Salt Lake City No Kings march: 1 'critically injured,' 1 arrested

  Salt Lake City police said they have taken three people into custody after a shooting near the “No Kings” march downtown Saturday evening left a man with a “critical” gunshot wound. The injured man was seen collapsed on State Street with emergency responders providing care to him, directly in front of the Liberty SKY apartment complex. The motive for the shooting and the events that led up to it remained under investigation, police said. Preliminarily, a news release said, the department believes the shooting “involved four people,” which included the critically injured victim.

• North Carolina State Rep Waves Trump’s Decapitated Head at ‘No Kings’ Protest: ‘Some Cuts May Be Necessary’ | The Gateway Pundit | by Ben Kew

• Feeling cautiously optimistic about American democracy

  In almost every city, protests were completely peaceful — the only city to see significant violent clashes between protesters and police was Los Angeles, where leftist career-activists have gathered in recent days. Certainly, the SF protest I attended was totally nonviolent — I didn’t even see a single police officer. No stores were looted, no windows smashed, no cars overturned, no bricks thrown. This was also the single most patriotic protest I’ve ever been to. Tons of people were carrying American flags — they absolutely overwhelmed the number of Palestine, Mexico, trans, Ukraine, and other flags. Many of the signs referenced the Constitution, the Statue of Liberty, or the American Revolution of 1776.

Left Angst

• What Will the World Cup Stand for in an Isolationist America?

• FAA pick has claimed 'commercial' pilot license he doesn't have

• Government Science and the Prestige Economy

  Should government fund science? We may believe that the private sector can produce the right levels and types of scientific funding, for normal capitalist reasons. Businesses have incentives to pursue research paths that will be profitable, unlike government, and may carry out their work more competently. The most common argument for state involvement is that there are certain kinds of basic research that the market will underprovide. There can be knowledge that is expensive to produce, but with diffuse potential benefits that no one firm can sufficiently capture. The state is therefore available to solve a collective action problem. It helps pay for the research that no company has an incentive to provide but that will hopefully make society better off. I would argue that there is furthermore a category of research that may never have an economic payoff but is valuable for its own sake. My go-to example here based on my own interests is the David Reich lab at Harvard, which uses ancient genomics to reconstruct the deep human past. It costs a lot of money to find ancient fossils, and develop new ways to extract DNA from them and models to interpret the resulting data. Does anyone become tangibly wealthier when we learn which modern races have Neanderthal or Denisovan blood, or that the caste system has created substantial genetic stratification in the modern Indian population? Probably not. But I still want to know these things.

  • Great. Scientific societies used to do that; without using the force of government to extort support from the unwilling and ignorant as well as the supporters.

• Silicon Valley wants to ban Chinese drones while covering SF in their own

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Charlottesville activist facing vandalism charges for makeshift crosswalk

  Cox is facing misdemeanor charges for the intentional destruction of property with a value of less than $1,000. That means up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

• MN lawmaker shootings: Vance Boelter listed pro-choice supporters; No Kings papers found in fake police car

  A law enforcement official who saw the suspect's hit list told FOX 9 the suspect’s list targets prominent pro-choice individuals in Minnesota, including many Democratic lawmakers who have been outspoken about pro-choice policy positions.

  • About 2 a.m. on June 14: A 911 call in Champlin was made at about 2 a.m. Saturday. Police then found that Minnesota Sen. Hoffman and his wife had been shot. Both Hoffman and his wife are recovering from gunshot wounds after undergoing surgery at the hospital.

  • 3:35 am.: Brooklyn Park police officers then "proactively" went to the home of Rep. Hortman, authorities say. It was there that they encountered the suspect, who was dressed up as an officer with a fake police vehicle. The suspect opened fire on officers, but the suspect fled. In the suspect's vehicle, authorities found a manifesto with lawmakers' names on it and papers with "No Kings" written on them.

  • Unanswered question: Did law enforcement "proactively" go to anyone else's house?

  • There’s Been a Shocking Twist in the Manhunt for the Minnesota Shooting Suspect – PJ Media

  Tom Hauser of ABC 5 Eyewitness News reported that the stop occurred between 10 and 11 a.m. Saturday near a convenience store outside Onamia, roughly 90 minutes north of the Twin Cities. “Law enforcement made a traffic stop involving a vehicle carrying several relatives of Vance Boelter, including his wife,” Hauser said. An eyewitness told the station that about a dozen police vehicles converged on the car, surrounding it for two to three hours. The vehicle reportedly contained “a weapon, ammunition, cash, and passports,” according to Hauser’s law enforcement sources. “At this point, no one in that group has been arrested, just detained for questioning,” Hauser noted. He added that it’s unclear why the group was stopped—whether it was planned or incidental—but later confirmed that at least one of his sources said the stop was no accident. “She was being tracked,” Hauser reported of Boelter’s wife. “So, this was not a random traffic stop. They had an idea of where she was, and they were able to track her down.”

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trade with China Is Becoming a One-Way Street

World

• The English have become wine producers as well as wine consumers

• Ireland became the Saudi Arabia of siphoned-off global profits

• India reportedly suspending rare earth exports to Japan amid domestic needs

• Sweden gets help pulling its sovereign AI socks up

• Somalia's construction boom in Mogadishu gives women high ambitions

• UK govt. rollout of Humphrey AI tool raises fears about reliance on big tech

• Traveling to Europe? Here's What to Expect from Tourism Protests on June 15

• The families paying £1,500 for 'private bobbies' to police their homes

• Vietnam scraps two-child policy as it tackles falling birthrate

Iran / Houthi

• Israel urges US to join war with Iran to eliminate nuclear program

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's increase in killer drone attacks is overwhelming Ukraine

Health / Medicine

• My Pharmacy's $2M Ozempic Problem

• Novo Nordisk's Canadian Mistake

  that Novo did file a patent there for semaglutide. . .but the last time they paid the annual maintenance fee on it was 2018! You can even find a letter where their lawyers send a refund request for the 2017 maintenance fee ($250) because Novo apparently wanted some more time to see if they wanted to pay it. On the same date in 2019, the office sent a letter saying that “The fee payable to maintain the rights accorded by the above patent was not received by the prescribed due date. . .” By that time it was $450 with the late fee added, but that was apparently too much for Novo. They had a one year grace period to make it up, and apparently never did, so their patent lapsed in Canada. And as the Canadian authorities remind them, “Once a patent has lapsed it cannot be revived”.

• 'Gas station heroin' is technically illegal and widely available

  Sometimes called “gas station heroin,” the products are usually marketed as energy shots or cognitive supplements but actually contain tianeptine, an unapproved drug that can be addictive and carries risks of serious side effects. U.S. poison control centers have reported a steady rise in calls linked to the drug for more than a decade. And last month the Food and Drug Administration sent a warning to health professionals about “the magnitude of the underlying danger or these products.”

• Sperm are very different from all other cells

• Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable

• Nurse practitioners step in as geriatrician ranks shrink

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• N. Korea discharges uranium waste into waters flowing to S. Korea

• Why nuclear energy is not the answer to solve climate change

• Vienna could be the model to tackle the housing crisis and climate change

• Biofuels Policy, a Mainstay of American Agriculture, a Failure for the Climate

• Scientists want to test a solar umbrella that could help fight climate change