2025-06-21

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• Gigantic dome that ‘looks like an eyeball’ falls from sky, lands on Indiana street during storm

• Kilauea - Volcano Messages | U.S. Geological Survey

  Kilauea Message 2025-06-20 02:23:33 HST

  Episode 26 of the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption began at approximately 1:40 AM HST, June 20, with lava fountains and flows erupting from the north vent. Fountain heights are well over 1,000 feet (300 m). Plume is over 20,000 ft (6,000 m).

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Horseshit

• America's ideal woman got jacked

• What did GothamChess say? Creator responds to drama over FIDE Head's viral tweet

• 'Your bones rattle': Thrill of chasing rocket launches on California coast

• Our crisis is not loneliness but human beings becoming invisible

• Why Gen Z Feels Stuck in This Economy

• Hey aliens, here's our new album. How to follow up a record hurtling in space?

• Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back. - The New York Times

  So many men have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling. We miss you.

• Brain physically changes when you work too much, scientists warn

• Cyclist who was unable to walk breaks world record

• Brooklyn judge rules pet dogs are family members

  The decision centers on a dachshund named Duke, who was hit by a car and killed two years ago in Mill Basin on July 4. Justice Aaron Maslow ruled Duke’s connection with his human family was so deep that they should be eligible for a type of compensation previously limited to people who witness a human family member being injured or killed. Legal experts say the decision could pave the way for more New Yorkers to seek compensation by claiming their pet dogs as family members, not just property, when they are hurt or killed.

• When Towns Rebuild from Disaster, Some Get Priced Out

• Not alive, alas: Scientists Discover New Species of Pterosaur in Japan

• 1.1-acre underwater property listing in San Francisco real estate market

• Wayne County overpays employee $1.6M in single paycheck, 2 fired

celebrity gossip

• Venice divided ahead of billionaire Bezos' 'wedding of the century'

• Mike Lynch's superyacht Bayesian raised from seabed off Sicily

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Obama: Distinguishing Between Fact And Opinion Will Require Government Constraints, "We Don't Want A Diversity Of Facts"

Musk

• Details about Teslas 'Robotaxi' launch: there's a 'safety monitor' in front seat

• X app code points to a physical card coming to X Money

• Accounts peddling child abuse content flood X hashtags as Thorn cuts ties

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Amazon hopes to deliver 10k robotaxis annually with new factory

• Waymo brings its cars to NYC for testing, applies for autonomous driving permit

• $4k: Ford Mustang E-Bike

• Audi Isn't Abandoning Gas Engines for EVs by 2033 as It Planned

• S.F. cyclist 'doored' by driverless Waymo sues, claiming safety tech failed

• Autonomous cars will never work in cities because AI can't drive

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Adobe launches a new 'computational photography' camera app for iPhones

• Microsoft's next Xbox has an AMD chip and is 'not locked to a single store'

• Rise in alert fatigue risks phone users disabling news notifications study finds

• Google looks likely to lose appeal against record $4.7B EU fine

• 16B accounts exposed in one of the largest data breaches in history

  • 16B passwords from Apple, Facebook, Google leaked. Why no one heard of it

  • The 16B credentials leak is not a new data breach

  • Billions of login credentials have been leaked online

• BitTorrent Pirate Gets 5 Years in Prison, €10k Fine, for Decade-Old Offenses

• Afrinic election proceeds after ICANN's attempt to replace officials fails

• Scientists Agree That Everyone Hates Your Terrible Zoom Mic

• Adobe Project Indigo is a new photo app from former Pixel camera engineers

• Why Is Google Still in One Piece? The Terminating a Monopoly Problem

• Meta announces Oakley smart glasses

  • Oakley Meta Glasses

• WhatsApp won't roll out ads in EU until 2026

• Reddit in talks to embrace Sam Altman's iris-scanning Orb

• Broadcom's answer to VMware pricing outrage: You're using it wrong

• Cybercriminals invade Aflac in a wave of hacking

• Rise in 'alert fatigue' risks phone users disabling news notifications

• Microsoft Is Deleting Old Drivers from Windows Update and It Might Break Your PC

• Amazon issues urgent warning to all Prime users over hack stealing accounts

• James Bond owners say name battle is 'assault' on 007 franchise

• Washington State Patrol to Find Speeding Hot Spots Using Harvested Phone Data

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Linux Delivering Driver Fix for 30 Year Old SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA Sound Card

  Now with these patches coming to the Linux kernel, the Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA sound card can work on modern Linux desktops if you so choose without the system freezing. Then again, running any modern Linux desktop with PipeWire and friends is likely to be rather sluggish on any ISA-equipped aging PC.

• The Tandy Corporation, Part 1 - by Bradford Morgan White

  The following week, Don French took all three existing computers to the Boston Computer Show. Tandy’s booth was quite busy, and the three TV networks all wanted access too. This should have been an indicator that the company had something worthwhile, and... French got back to the office to find that he couldn’t place any calls. The company phone system was getting constant calls from people wanting to buy a TRS-80, but Tandy hadn’t actually made any just yet; they were still planning to use them for inventory control when the product failed. There were also precisely two people at the company well versed in computers, and of French and Leininger, it was French who was the more social. So, French it was who had to talk to all of these excited people. When the company finally had quantities of computers to ship in March of 1978, all of them sold. Within the first month of availability, 55,000 sold, and by 6 months the computer accounted for about 40% of Radio Shack’s business. In the first 12 months, 100,000 TRS-80s were sold. Radio Shack held almost two thirds of the microcomputer market.

• Understanding Camera Lens Construction: What Every Photographer Should Know | PetaPixel

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Tech giants unleash AI on weather forecasts: are they any good?

• Meta tried to buy Ilya Sutskever's $32B AI startup, now plans to hire its CEO

• BBC threatens legal action against AI startup over content scraping

  • BBC threatens legal action against AI startup Perplexity over content scraping

• Masa Son Pitches $1T US AI Hub to TSMC, Trump Team

  • SoftBank Son reportedly pitches $1T Arizona AI hub

• The Entire Internet Is Reverting to Beta

• Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book

• Mark Zuckerberg is spending megabucks on an AI hiring spree

• Bosses want you to know AI is coming for your job

• 'catastrophic risk to humanity': New York is pushing back against AI

• Apple sued by shareholders for allegedly overstating AI progress

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Leakage on ISS Forces NASA to Delay Shubhanshu Shukla's Ax-4 Mission

• Firefly Aerospace aims to deploy first commercial lunar imaging service

• France to double stake in Eutelsat as Europe looks for Starlink rival

• Mystery Powerful Radio Pulse Traced Back to NASA Satellite Dead Since 1967

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Nvidia joins Bill Gates in backing TerraPower building nuclear reactors

• Why Long Bonds Are Falling Out of Favor

• Tech Companies Double Down on Remote Work as America Returns to the Office

• Amazon under UK investigation over alleged failure to pay suppliers on time

• Accenture says CEOs are postponing hiring consultants due to uncertainty

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Mississippi Online Age-Verification Law Blocked for Second Time

• Announcement of Expanded Screening and Vetting for Visa Applicants

  • US now requires public social media profiles from student visa applicants

• Congestion pricing in Manhattan is a predictable success

Trump

• TikTok ban enforcement delayed another 90 days to September 17

  • Why Won’t Trump 47 Enforce the Law Trump 45 Wanted? – PJ Media

  Just days before Trump 47 resumed office, SCOTUS upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law gave ByteDance until January 19 (270 days from enactment) to find a buyer, but granted POTUS the power to grant a single, 90-day extension. Trump granted it, giving ByteDance until April 19. Then — and this was illegal — Trump granted another extension, giving ByteDance until June 19.

  • A TikTok Ban Is the Law of the Land. Time to Enforce It, Mr. President.

  “Essentially with TikTok I have the right to sell it or close it,” said Trump when he signed the executive order. That’s wrong. Trump doesn’t have a right to sell or ban the app but an obligation. “A president virtually always has some leeway in deciding how and when to enforce a law,” Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute with expertise in the Supreme Court and the administrative state, told The Free Press. “But at this point, it’s impossible to explain President Trump’s nonenforcement as anything other than outright nullification. To accept this is to accept utter disdain for the rule of law.” It’s actually worse than that.

  The same administration that is choosing not to enforce legislation passed by overwhelming majorities from both parties and upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court is also trying to resurrect archaic laws on the books. That includes the Alien Enemies Act, a relic from the John Adams administration, which allows the federal government to deport visa holders without due process. As White told us, “That juxtaposition speaks volumes.”

Left Angst

• What explains the liberal-conservative happiness gap?

  conservatives have much higher self-reported mental health than liberals. It’s a wide gap: according to the 2022 Cooperative Election Study (CES) — a very large sample survey (60,000 respondents) that provides the opportunity for highly detailed demographic analysis — among people who report “excellent” mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals 51-20. But liberals outnumber conservatives 45-19 among those voters who say they have “poor” mental health

• Trump doesn't have a foreign policy

• The Most Dangerous Corporation in America – Robert Reich

  Draw a circle around all the assets in America now devoted to Artificial Intelligence. Draw a second circle around all the assets devoted to the U.S. military. A third around all assets being devoted to helping the Trump regime collect and compile personal information on millions of Americans. And a fourth circle around the parts of Silicon Valley dedicated to turning the United States away from a democracy into a libertarian dictatorship led by tech bros. Where do the four circles intersect? At a corporation called Palantir Technologies and a man named Peter Thiel.

• False Flags and Fake MAGA

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Dark web's longest-standing drug market seized in multinational effort

• Illegal jammers used in Vermont bank robberies, DHS says

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• With only 8% built, Texas defunds state border wall program

World

• A popular manga predicted catastrophe – and Japanese tourism took a hit

• As Pakistan Moves to Ban Black Magic, Astrologers See a Bad Omen

• Australia finds age detection tech has many flaws but will work

  • VPNs, naughty parents: Australia won't test teen social media ban circumvention

  • Social Media Ban Moves Closer in Australia After Tech Trial

• Europe must bet bigger on young founders, tech leaders urge at TNW Conference

• Europol chief says Big Tech has 'responsibility' to unlock encrypted messages

• Pro-Palestinian Activists Break into RAF Brize Norton

• Assisted dying set to become law in England and Wales after bill passed by MPs

• A Man Drove a Car Down Rome's Spanish Steps. It Did Not Go Great

• Under shadow of Trump warning, Africa pioneers non-dollar payments systems

Iran / Houthi

• Iranian missile strikes tech park housing Microsoft office in southern Israel

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia prepares to get rid of WhatsApp and possibly Telegram

China

• When two satellites love each other very much... 2 Chinese spacecraft just met up 22,000 miles above Earth. What were they doing?

• China's $5T Industrial Policy Weapon: State-Backed Finance

• China just two years behind USA on chip design, says White House tech Czar

• China has millions of single men – could dating camp help them find love?

Health / Medicine

• ProPublica Sued the FDA for Withholding Records About Generic Drugs' Safety

• The continuous glucose monitor is emblematic of new emphasis on self-reliance

• Calorie restriction can help animals live longer. What about humans?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• USDA seeks to combat spread of New World screwworms into U.S.

• Scientists discover promising new way to filter microplastics out of human body

• Tarantulas bend rules to keep running after losing two legs

• Colorado hookless cactus thrives, exits endangered species list

• The Future of Weather Forecasting Is Hyperlocal

• Banks Are Financing Their Own Multitrillion-Dollar Fossil Fuel Nightmare

• Plastic bag bans work, new study shows

  • Plastic bag bans and fees reduce harmful bag litter on shorelines

• First methane-powered sea spiders found crawling on the ocean floor