2025-07-21

etc

• Airbnb allowed rampant price gouging following L.A. fires, city attorney alleges

  • How eager is the City of LA to get rebuilding done? 116 permits issued

  • Rebuilding – LA County Recovers

  On Monday, July 7, 2025, Governor Newsom signed an Executive Order that suspends rooftop solar and battery storage installation requirements for those rebuilding homes that were lost in the January 2025 wildfires. Residents rebuilding their homes are no longer required to install rooftop solar panels or battery storage systems. However, homes must still be solar-ready and include the wiring and space needed for solar in the future.

• Fury Erupts Over CA’s Plan to Convert Fire-Ravaged Lots into Low-Income Housing.

  Promises made by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to streamline the rebuilding process in the aftermath of the January wildfires have gone largely unfulfilled. Despite their public assurances, city agencies have been slow to issue building permits, leaving many displaced homeowners in limbo and frustrated by bureaucratic delays. It now appears that the pair either never intended to help homeowners rebuild — or they saw an opportunity to advance a broader agenda by introducing low-income housing into high-value real estate markets. Either way, SB 549, introduced by Democratic State Senator Ben Allen, whose district includes much of the area impacted by the wildfires, seemed well on its way to passage last week, signaling a dramatic shift in how the state may repurpose fire-destroyed land.

  • Wildfire victims want to rebuild with natural materials. Some say L.A. County is making it onerous - Los Angeles Times

• Jeremy Clarkson: How is food made? How should I know, I’m only a farmer

  I’ve been farming now for six years and every day I realise how many things I don’t understand. And one of the things I don’t understand is how, for example, you turn a pig into a sausage. I could kill the pig, for sure. I have a gun. But then what? Things are even worse when it comes to cows because, first of all, you have to peel them. And how do you do that? Cows are massive and incredibly heavy. And if you’ve ever seen inside a cow, which I have, you’ll know they are also phenomenally complicated. It’s nigh on impossible to deduce which bits are used to make steaks and which are for mincing and whether that bulbous-looking thing is incredibly tasty or a bowel.

Horseshit

• The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

  It’s as if the smell of burnt plastic from a dollar store has permeated the world. Things are worse: chipboard furniture, T-shirts unrecognizable after a second wash, packaged foods with more preservatives than ingredients. Airplane seats turned into backrests. Automatic restroom lights that turn off at a whim. But also newspaper articles shamelessly written with ChatGPT and its algorithmic prose. Nothing is made to be loved. Only to be bought. Riezu explains via email that consumers’ growing preference for novelty over durability has created a generational divide in how quality is understood. “It’s a change in mentality that our grandparents (and some of our parents) don’t conceive or understand: buying to discard after a short time.” According to Riezu, the fast fashion industry encourages impulse and material reward. He warns: “There is no attachment, respect, or emotional journey with a garment you spend less than 20 years with.”

• Frontier is helping Arbor build a "vegetarian rocket engine"

• NYC intersections see 1/3 less injuries when pedestrians get 7-second head start

• The 'Smart' Restrooms That Can Solve America's Public Bathroom Crisis

• Dystopia or utopia? The futuristic visions driven by billionaires

• 'Ghostbusters' Fans Be Warned: Those Old Ecto-Coolers Are Exploding

  Due to the product’s scarcity, many fans have been hoarding the 2016 line of Ecto-Coolers and selling them on eBay. Sure, they’re pretty old by now, but that hasn’t stopped some folks from donning Ghostbusters jumpsuits and risking their digestive health to taste the forbidden nectar that is expired Ecto-Cooler. But according to Ghostbusters News, the host of the Extraplasm Podcast “recently discovered that all of his unopened cans were showing signs of internal pressure build-up, becoming noticeably harder to squeeze,” meaning that they “may eventually burst” on their own, and are already exploding “like seltzer bottles” if they’re opened. While Ecto-Coolers aren’t carbonated, each drink contains a whopping “10 percent juice blend” and “that small amount of real juice is enough to ferment over time.”

• Texas ranks as No. 1 state with the most people in financial distress

• Longevity Expert Breaks Down the Science and Hype of Biological Aging Tests

• Every hour 100 people die of loneliness-related causes, UN health agency reports

Obit

• Heritage Foundation Mourns the Loss of Its Founder, Ed Feulner | The Heritage Foundation

• D-Day veteran "Papa Jake" Larson who became TikTok star dies aged 102

Musk

• Musk Says XAI Will Make Kid-Friendly App Called Baby Grok

• How Tesla is proving doubters right on why its robotaxi service cannot scale

• A MAGA bot network on X is divided over the Trump-Epstein backlash

  A previously unreported network of hundreds of accounts on X is using artificial intelligence to automatically reply to conservatives with positive messages about people in the Trump administration, researchers say. But with the MAGA movement split over the administration’s handling of files involving deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the accounts’ messaging has broken, offering contradictory statements on the issue and revealing the AI-fueled nature of the accounts. The network, tracked for NBC News by both the social media analytics company Alethea and researchers at Clemson University, consists of more than 400 identified bot accounts, though the number could be far larger, the researchers say. Its accounts offer consistent praise for key Trump figures, particularly support for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. As often is the case with bot accounts, those viewed by NBC News tended to have only a few dozen followers, and their posts rarely get many views. But a large audience does not appear to be the point. Their effectiveness, if they have any, is in the hope that they contribute to a partisan echo chamber, and that en masse they can “massage perceptions,” said Darren Linvill, the director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which studies online disinformation campaigns.

• Could NASA Function Without Elon Musk?

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Growing Challenge of Radar Interference in Autonomous Vehicles

• China's BYD Takes the Lead over Tesla in the Self-Driving Car Wars

• Science Explains Why People Get More Carsick in EVs

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students.

• In fact, young men with a college degree now have the same unemployment rate as young men who didn’t go to college, completely erasing the graduate employment premium.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies

• Microsoft scraps the new Windows 11 system tray after user criticism

• ByteDance AI Empire: Inside the $12B Race Beyond the "For You" Page

• Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1B web users

• Steam gaming comes to RISC-V

• Nvidia Bringing CUDA to RISC-V

• Google's Android boss suggests ChromeOS could be on borrowed time

• The First Foldable iPhone Will Arrive Next Year in Un-Apple-Like Fashion

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta Swears This Time Is Different

• AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?

• AI groups spend to replace low-cost 'data labellers' with high-paid experts

• Chatbots in the classroom: how AI is reshaping higher education

• OpenAI launches $50M fund to support nonprofits, community organizations

• What Would a Real Friendship with A.I. Look Like? Maybe Like Hers

• ChatGPT Is Changing the Words We Use in Conversation

• Death by AI - Dave Barry’s Substack

  Give Google AI credit for what it got right: That is, in fact, a picture of me, and I did, in fact, win a Pulitzer Prize (trust me, I'm just as shocked as you are). But to the best of my knowledge, I did not pass away last November 20. That is not just my opinion. In recent months I have been examined by two different licensed physicians, and if I had been dead, I'm pretty sure at least one of them would have mentioned it. ("Dave, your pulse is zero, and your blood pressure is zero over zero. I'm going to try your other arm, but frankly at this point I'm concerned.")

• How A Video Studio Embraced A.I. and Stormed the Internet

• Stop pretending you know what AI does to the economy

• He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse

• In recent layoffs, AI's role may be bigger than companies are letting on

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Boeing's Starliner Won't Get to Fly This Year, but Spacecraft Is Far from Dead

• What happens once we spot the asteroid that will hit Earth?

• After a partly successful test flight, European firm eyes space station mission

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Should Banks Do More to Fight 'Pig Butchering'?

• Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's Wide-Ranging Investments in China

• Intel is laying off 5500 employees in Oregon, California, and Arizona.

• In-N-Out Owner Rips California Policies, Is Moving To Tennessee.

  • In-N-Out Burger breaks ground on Middle TN headquarters

• Employers planning to pass the rising healthcare costs to the employees in 2026

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• New York’s bill banning One-Person Train Operation

• Why Tax Breaks for Data Centers Could Backfire on States

• US signals intention to rethink job H-1B lottery

Trump

• US Plans Steep 93.5 Percent Tariff on Chinese Graphite, Key EV Battery Material

• Trump Aides Discussed Ending Some SpaceX Contracts, but Found Most Were Vital

• Trump signs new stablecoin regulations into law

• Trump threatens stadium deal unless NFL team readopts Redskins name

Left Angst

• Allentown man said to have died in ICE custody is alive in Guatemala

• Previously Unknown People on Three Deportation Flights to El Salvador

  Hacked data obtained by 404 Media reveals dozens more people on deportation flights to El Salvador who are unaccounted for.

• Smithsonian Fights Back Against $85M Space Shuttle Kipnapping to Texas

• Community radio stations are collateral damage as Congress cuts NPR funding

• Why the federal government is making climate data disappear

• PBS’s Frontline Didn’t Hold Back: Trump ‘A Travesty in All of American History.’

  Even as the Senate was preparing to take up defunding PBS, the taxpayer-funded network was shamelessly airing another Trump-trashing Frontline documentary on Tuesday evening. The online blurb to “Trump’s Power and the Rule of Law" claimed to go "inside the high-stakes showdown between President Donald Trump and the courts over presidential power. Trump allies, opponents and experts talk about how he is testing the extent of his power; the legal pushback; and the impact on the rule of law.”

  The New York Times reporter/front-page editorialist Peter Baker claimed that under the Trump regime, he had “never seen people in Washington scared the way they are now…they are scared to talk, they are scared to pop their head up.” Frontline sure found plenty of them.

• David Sacks and the blurred lines of government service

  The announcement has raised questions about conflicts of interest in the Trump administration, where Sacks serves as both AI and crypto czar while maintaining his role at Craft Ventures — an arrangement that critics see as a new model of government service where the lines between public duty and private gain have become unclear.

• Naturalized Citizens Are Scared

• ICE deported Pennsylvania grandfather, 82, after he lost green card

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• French Data Under U.S. Firms Is Not Protected from U.S. Government Access

• What Makes Boeing's Doomsday Plane Different from Air Force One?

World

• The 'Millionaire Exodus' the UK Media Told You About Never Happened

• Denmark card payment outage last night – Nets terminals down nationwide

• Face age and ID checks? Using the internet in Australia is about to change

• Community-owned digital infrastructure could transform local economies in India

• National Crime Agency officer jailed for stealing £4.4M worth of seized Bitcoin

• Banning Alternative für Deutschland: A Nightmare Scenario

  Since the end of the Merkel era, the German left has become thematically scattered, and so they have retreated to the only coordinating issue the German left has ever had, which is hating the right. As climatism started to fade, the social welfare state exceeded its limits and mass migration went sour, AfD bashing became the sole unifying principle for much of the SPD, Die Linke and the Greens. Hating the right is particularly important because it keeps leftist politicians and their activist class on the same page. Without a crusade against the right, a great chasm opens between the antifa thugs who want to smash the state and destroy capitalism on the one hand and the schoolmarm leftoid establishment functionaries in the Bundestag who want to mandate gender-neutral language for the civil service on the other hand. What is more, the firewall against the AfD splits the right and keeps the shrinking left in government. It is a win-win for leftoids everywhere. Recent events, however, show why things cannot continue as they are now indefinitely. Over time, our Constitutional Court will begin to fill with leftist justices supported by the left parties, who like the rest of the left will also want to ban the AfD. Brosius-Gersdorf and Kaufhold are omens here. Right now the system is held in perfect balance; the left talks a big game about wanting to stamp out the AfD, but they can always justify their hesitation by saying the outcome of ban proceedings is too uncertain. When the necessary judicial majority for an AfD ban is finally secured in Karlsruhe, everything changes. At that point, there will be no excuse for not proceeding with a ban. The activists and the NGOs will take to the streets if their political masters in Berlin don’t begin the process. The CDU will be brought around by media smear campaigns and antifa intimidation. Keep in mind that this is not about the AfD, but about imperatives within the left itself. No amount of moderation, polite messaging or triangulation on the part of the AfD can get the left to stop or pursue other goals. Unless some exogenous force introduces a new unifying obsession for the left parties and their activists, they will never stop gnawing on this particular chew toy.

• Leaders are using appeals to nostalgia, nationalism to attack higher education

• EU commissioner shocked by dangers of some goods sold by Shein and Temu

• 'Sleeping prince' dies 20 years after being left in coma in London accident

• Brazil AG Wants Probe of Possible Insider Trading on US Tariffs

• UK government seeks way out of clash with US over Apple encryption

Israel

• Israel levelling Gaza civilian buildings in controlled demolitions

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukrainian drones attack Moscow as Zelenskyy suggests fresh ceasefire talks

China

• Chinese graphite is crucial to electric car batteries

• China's Richest Man Buying Water Supply of New Hampshire Town Sparks Alarm

• U.S.-Based Wells Fargo Banker Blocked from Leaving China

Health / Medicine

• A Push for More Organ Transplants Is Putting Donors at Risk

• Canned cocktail hitting you hard? As ready-to-drink cans grow in popularity

• The landlord gutting America’s hospitals

• Why the Amish have almost no allergies

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Scientists discover Pfizer Covid jab linked to major eye damage

  Results revealed that taking both doses of the vaccine led to thicker corneas, fewer endothelial cells in the eye and more variation in size of these specialized cells that form the endothelium. In the short term, these changes suggest the Pfizer vaccine may temporarily weaken the endothelium, even though patients didn't suffer clear vision problems during the study. For people with healthy eyes, these small changes likely won't affect vision right away.

• Superbugs could kill millions more and cost $2T a year by 2050, models show

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Humans Felt The Effects of Weird Space Weather 41,000 Years Ago.

  Researchers are on firmer ground when it comes to the physiological impacts of increased UV radiation. With the weakened magnetic field, more harmful radiation would have reached Earth's surface, elevating risk of sunburn, eye damage, birth defects, and other health issues. In response, people may have adopted practical measures: spending more time in caves, producing tailored clothing for better coverage, or applying mineral pigment "sunscreen" made of ochre to their skin. As we describe in our recent paper, the frequency of these behaviors indeed appears to have increased across parts of Europe, where effects of the Laschamps Excursion were pronounced and prolonged.

• Microsoft announces deal to purchase 4.9M metric tons of human waste

• Southwestern drought likely to continue through 2100, research finds

• Environmental Costs of Lithium Mining

• The Foehn effect: why it's warmer on one side of a mountain than the other

• Dam removals? Lack of maintenance of levees? The summer of flooding across the US, and scientists know why

• Earth's magnetic field is weakening