2025-07-26

etc

• Life might have come from outer space, scientist say

• Where Are Vacation Homes Located in the US?

  Florida leads the pack with over 800k vacation homes, followed by California at 360k and New York at 309k. Michigan (at 260k) and Texas (at 201k) round out the top five. At the bottom of the list, you have several Great Plains states: Kansas at 12.9k, South Dakota at 13.7k, and North Dakota at 11.6k.

Horseshit

• Smartphone Gambling Is a Disaster

• Why many Americans still think Darwin was wrong, yet the British don't

• Spontaneous human combustion: around since 1833

• Red-letter day as gemologists discover why crimson diamonds are so rare

• Why are young adults in the English-speaking world so unhappy?

• Unitree R1 Humanoid for $5900 a pop

• Study sheds light on why some people keep self-sabotaging

• Air Canada returned lost bag, it now had knife,toiletries, ticket scanner inside

• Taste testing battery-flavored tortilla chips

• Pura Scents recalls more than 850K diffusers due to ingestion hazard

• Goodbye Gentle Parenting, Hello 'F–Around and Find Out'

  • pain is the most effective teacher. Parental supervision should not seek to prevent educational suffering, but rather to limit its cost to something the child can bear.

• Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?

• Science Is Winning the Tour de France

• How to stop Hertz's AI from charging for minor scrapes on your rental car

• Uranus Is Hotter Than We Thought and Probably Deserves a Visit

Musk

• Ike Barinholtz Cast as Elon Musk in OpenAI Film from Luca Guadagnino

• Tesla faces ban from selling cars in California

  The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) claims that Tesla’s promotion of its autonomous features do not match the cars’ abilities, calling on lawmakers to block the firm’s ability to sell vehicles for at least 30 days.

• Musk ordered shutdown of Starlink satellite service as Ukraine retook territory

• Tesla tells staff it plans to roll out Robotaxi in San Francisco this weekend

  • Tesla plans to launch Robotaxis in San Francisco this weekend

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Ford's CEO says China's EV progress is 'the most humbling thing' he's ever seen

• European Solution for Burning EVs: Drop Them in a Dumpster Filled with Water

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Is this the end of genderism? - UnHerd

  Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling, some parts of the UK seem more stuck in transactivist delusions than ever. But this week, tantalizingly, I discerned signs of imminent collapse. The Scottish media appears gripped by the Sandy Peggie tribunal, with daily revelations of unsympathetic NHS managers defending the presence of a male doctor in the nurses’ female-only changing room. One newspaper even referred to the man at the heart of the case as “he”. Down south, the NHS has announced the terms of reference for a rapid investigation into a Brighton GP practice that prescribed puberty blockers to minors, and it sounds like it is not messing about. And in academia, Oxford philosophers Daniel Kodsi and John Maier just published an excoriating takedown of the Yale philosophy department’s own attempt to prop up child transition.

• "Whites-only" community plotting expansion to another US state

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Economics teaching has become the Aeroflot of ideas

• After 15 years of controversy, Science retracts 'arsenic life' paper

• The Cool Professor: When Your "Student Centered" Classroom Is All About You

  The Cool Professor fundamentally does not want to teach, as teaching requires the teacher to sometimes be the bad guy. The Cool Professor can’t stand to be the bad guy, chafes at the very idea. That’s the core of all of this. The posture, the cultivated aesthetic of rejection, the performance of cool - none of it’s about students, even though Cool Professors will not shut the fuck up about how they run a “student-centered classroom.” Their affect isn’t about pedagogy. It’s about insecurity and narcissism, their desperate need to be perceived as the rare exception, the rogue academic, the anti-institutional rebel. Cool Professors aren’t trying to liberate students. They’re trying to be loved, and in being loved by students stave off their horror about growing old. And if that means letting students drift intellectually, if that means mistaking chaos for creativity, if that means failing to ever give anyone a hard but necessary lesson, then so be it. Because the thing the Cool Professor wants to avoid at all costs is being perceived as an authority figure, and that is precisely what students most need them to be.

  Cool Professor behavior also represents a betrayal of the implicit contract between student and teacher, a dereliction of personal duty. The university may be many different things to different people, but in the context of a classroom it is, at the very least, a place where students pay exorbitantly to be taught by people who know more than they do. If you won’t do that, if you pretend that you’re just a peer, you’re running a scam. The fact that you dress your scam in a smiling face makes no difference.

  There’s something deeply patronizing about that whole style of performance. Beneath the posture of equality is a soft bigotry of low expectations: the assumption that students cannot handle critique, cannot endure rigor, cannot be asked to strive. So instead they’re pandered to, told that everything they say is brilliant, that their half-formed opinions are radical insights, that reading is oppressive and grading is authoritarian. It’s helicopter parenting without the excuse of a parent’s necessarily irrational desire to protect their kids. In the context of the modern university and the modern labor market, that treatment isn’t kindness. It’s condescension decorated with Harry Potter tattoos.

  Perhaps this is all a consequence of the fact that college came to be seen as a necessary step for almost everyone, in the past thirty or forty years, pushing marginal students onto our campuses when they didn’t want to be there and didn’t really belong there.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Chinese Hackers Are Exploiting Flaws in Widely Used Software, Microsoft Says

  • US nuclear weapons agency 'among 400 organisations breached by Chinese hackers'

  • Microsoft says Chinese hacking groups exploited SharePoint vulnerability

• First permanent Pokemon theme park to open in Tokyo

• Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors

  • Steam, Itch.io Are Pulling 'Porn' Games. Critics Say It's a Slippery Slope

  • After removal of Steam games, journalists investigating the censorship resign

  On July 19th, Ana Valens published a story on Vice (archive available) entitled, "Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies — And Targeted Popular Games With Outlandish Claims." It discussed how the Australian-based Collective Shout took credit for the removal of many of the Steam games in question. Its own website describes a crusade against the "objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls." Valens describes the group as a "radical feminist organization" that supports the censorship of any adult content.

  Valens revealed on social media that Vice's owner instructed the journalist to take down content related to Collective Shout. The basis for the removal was that they included controversial subject matter. After refusing to comply, she decided to stop writing for Waypoint, the gaming arm of the website. Then, several of her co-workers also resigned in protest. It's unclear if Vice's upper management has any affiliation with Collective Shout or its allies.

• VShojo is gone.

• Women are anonymously spilling tea about men in their cities on viral app

  • Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs posted to 4chan

  • Tea App Users' Faces and IDs Reportedly Posted to 4chan in Security Breach

• Does the Mac even matter anymore?

• Internet Archive Designated as a Federal Depository Library

• Coming in September, it’s Aztec Batman

  According to the official synopsis, the film “unfolds within the vibrant and fierce culture of 16th century Mesoamerica. In the time of the Aztec empire, tragedy strikes Yohualli Coatl, a young Aztec boy, when his father is murdered by Spanish conquistadors. To warn King Moctezuma and his high priest, Yoka, of imminent danger, Yohualli escapes to Tenochtitlán. There, he trains in the temple of the bat god Tzinacan with his mentor, developing equipment and weaponry to confront the Spanish invasion and avenge his father’s death. Along the way, he encounters key figures like the fierce Jaguar Woman and the enchanting Forest Ivy.“

• Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update

• DJI couldn't confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban

  DJI barely sells drones in the United States anymore. The shelves are bare; resellers are jacking up prices. It appears an unofficial ban at US customs is to blame. But on Amazon, you can now buy a drone that’s a a dead ringer for the DJI Mini 4 Pro — the SkyRover X1 — for a reasonable $758. And that’s probably because DJI made it happen. There’s evidence suggesting so, and DJI was not able to deny the SkyRover X1 was a DJI product one day after we reached out. As reported by DroneXL, security researchers have discovered the SkyRover X1 not only has the same specs, features, and an incredibly similar app to the one DJI provides for its drones, it also uses DJI’s own online infrastructure.

• Anker is no longer selling 3D Printers

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• It's a DE9, Not a DB9. (But We Know What You Mean)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes

• NASA Is Testing AI to Make Earth-Observing Satellites Smarter

• Swiss startup says its AI weather forecaster beats Microsoft, Google

• ChatGPT Gave Instructions for Murder, Self-Mutilation, and Devil Worship

• LUNR Rockets 18% Higher. Is Space the Next AI Goldmine?

• Don't Blame AI for the Rise in Recent Graduate Unemployment

• Judge Scraps Opinion After Lawyer Flags Made-Up Quotes

• Kagan Says She Was Impressed by AI Bot Claude's Legal Analysis

• AI Slop Might Cure Our Internet Addiction

• Financial Services Firms Will Bank on Homegrown AI Training

• AI models 'woke'? The answer isn't so simple

• What if AI made the economic growth explode?

• Judge reprimands lawyers for using ChatGPT in Alabama prisons case

• Anthropic seeks to double valuation to over $150B in talks with Mideast funds

• Meta names Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist of AI superintelligence unit

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• What If the Government Believes in U.F.O.s More Than You Do?

• Earth weather satellites accidentally spy on Venus

• Blue Origin to fly first Blue Ring spacecraft in spring 2026

Crypto con games

• Scammers pounce as crypto markets touch new all-time highs

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Intel to Lay Off 15% of Workers, Cancel Billions in Projects in Bid for Rebound

  • Intel to cancel 14A and following nodes if it can't win major external customer

  • Intel gives up Magdeburg fab and announces end of foundry

  • 'No more blank checks': Intel to cut 25,000 jobs and enforce office return

• Spotify shares pop 13% after company reports first profitable year

• Uber is testing a women-only driver service

• American Airlines and United Charge Solo Travelers Higher Fares

• Microsoft's Satya Nadella says job cuts have been 'weighing heavily' on him

  • Satya Nadella seeks to reassure Microsoft employees in layoffs memo

  • Microsoft CEO's memo explaining why there are layoffs while making profits

• Quant hedge funds are getting slammed and scrambling for answers

  • Statistically, a river is level. You can plan on that and win until you hit the rapids.

• Why Stainless Steel Prices Are Rising Despite Low Consumption

• Porsche Warns Employees the Business Model 'No Longer Works'

• GM reports $1.1B tariff impact

• Union Pacific talks advance, regulator readies for $200B rail merger review

  • A Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern combination would redraw the railroad map

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• FCC approves Paramount-Skydance merger after Trump settlement, Colbert cancelled

  • FCC green-lights Skydance/Paramount deal after CBS concessions

  • FCC to Appoint a Babysitter to Make Sure CBS Isn't Anti-Trump

• You don't care about politics. You have a politics hobby.

  There are a lot of you reading this who probably spend a lot your time consuming political podcasts, reading political blog posts, and posting about politics online. None of that is bad in and of itself! But if you don’t ever do anything concrete - if you don’t show up at city council meetings, canvass for local politicians, join local political clubs, etc - then you don’t actually care about political power. You just enjoy politics as entertainment. I don’t know if it’s suicidal for a blog to deliberately call out its own readers, so I’ll use the royal ‘us’ instead: Far too many of us engage with politics in the same way we’d engage with the Real Housewives or the Los Angeles Dodgers. We cheer for the good guys, boo and hiss at the bad guys, we love following the day-by-day drama of who’s doing what, and we hope our favorites end up succeeding. I’m sure that there are some folks out there doing the real work, but I’m equally sure that most of us are fundamentally divorced from the actual practice of politics. Most of us are hobbyists.

  • The people who "do" politics, especially the grassroots citizen type we're so fond of, are hobbyists until they do things. That pool of hobbyists includes those "have done" things in the past and may do so again in the future. If you want to do something simple, call your Congress critter and tell it what's important to you, or at least that they need to appropriate more money for the defense of humanity against the Interstellar Squid.

• Why Does Renovating the Fed Cost $2.5B? Asbestos, Height Limits, Lead

Democrats

• ActBlue hit with House subpoena after halting cooperation with GOP investigators | Fox News

  "In light of allegations that online fundraising platforms that serve as conduits for political donations have accepted fraudulent donations from domestic and foreign sources, the Committees are conducting oversight to inform potential legislative reforms," House investigators' letter to ActBlue read. "To further our oversight and legislative reform efforts, on April 2, 2025, the Committees requested documents and communications related to internal misconduct and whistleblower retaliation at ActBlue. Although ActBlue initially provided documents voluntarily, it has since suspended its cooperation with the Committees. Therefore, the Committee on House Administration must resort to compulsory process to obtain the requested materials."

• Democrats Are Going to Run Hunter Biden, Aren’t They?

Left Angst

• Almost 30% of German companies postpone US investments

• Venezuelan returns home, describes torture during El Salvador detention

• Horseshoe Theory: Trump and the Progressive Left

  Trump’s political coalition isn’t policy-driven. It’s built on anger, grievance, and zero-sum thinking. With minor tweaks, there is no reason why such a coalition could not become even more leftist. Consider the grotesque canonization of Luigi Mangione, the (alleged) murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. We already have a proposed CA ballot initiative named the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act, a Luigi Mangione musical and comparisons of Mangione to Jesus. The anger is very Trumpian. A substantial share of voters on the left and the right increasingly believe that markets are rigged, globalism is suspect, and corporations are the real enemy. Trump adds nationalist flavor; progressives bring the regulatory hammer. The convergence of left and right in attacking classical liberalism– open markets, limited government, pluralism and the basic rules of democratic compromise–is what worries me the most about contemporary politics.

• Tariffs Are Being Picked Up by Corporate America

• Tomato Season Is Different This Year

• Opinion | I Hate, Therefore I Am - The New York Times

  I said a good word about Elon Musk not long ago. It was at a party. I’d had some punch. (Two cups. Maybe two and a half?) I think it was something about Starlink. I’m not sure. I’d just read Walter Isaacson’s affable Musk biography.My interlocutor, a genial fellow professor, looked at me as if I’d kicked his dog. Why? Because we (good people, Whole Foods shoppers, composting mavens, pronouns respecters) don’t like Elon. In fact, we hate him. Truly, we do. We once aspired to drive a Tesla, but no more. Everything about him is bad. I find hate to be virtually omnipresent in the current culture. Libs hate conservatives, and conservatives hate ’em right back. People hate politicians, the elite, MAGA hats (and their wearers), social media (though they cannot stay away from it). Some hate the rich. Some despise immigrants. People hate the media.

• Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people

• Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: 'You've got no rights.'

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• $17M Is Lost in ATM Scam That Spread on TikTok, Officials Say

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• GAO: Pentagon doesn't know where components of its critical systems come from

• Microsoft Tech Support Could Have Exposed DOJ, Treasury Data to Adversaries

• US Raid Takes Out Senior ISIS Leader In Northern Syria | ZeroHedge

• North Korean hackers ran US-based "laptop farm" from Arizona woman's home

World

• Is the Bread in Europe Better for You?

• Will UK porn age verification stop children seeing adult content?

  • Around 6k porn sites start checking ages in UK

• For One Man, It Didn't Take Much to Make an Embassy in India

• Google ordered to pay Argentine pictured naked in garden

  • Man awarded $12,500 after Google Street View captured him naked in his yard

• Spain bids €400M to host mega telescope at risk in US budget cuts

• Home building to halt in West London, due to data center power demands

• Operation Babylift, which brought Vietnamese orphans to Australia

• Meta to stop running political ads on Facebook and Instagram in the EU

  • Meta to halt political advertising in EU from October, blames EU rules

  • Meta joins Google in ragequitting EU political ads over onerous regulations

• Minority government the new normal in Tasmania as voters turn from major parties

• Eutelsat signs strategic partnership with UK government for its LEO network

• Britain's spies-for-hire are running wild

Israel

• Food Is Stockpiled in Gaza and the UN Is Refusing the Group Ready to Deliver It.

• Malnutrition in under-5s has tripled at Gaza City clinic, charity reports

• France Will Recognize Palestinian State - US-Israeli Backlash Ensues | ZeroHedge

  "Consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine," Macron said in an announcement posted to X that included a letter from Macron to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He also reiterated his support for the "demilitarization of Hamas," and said Palestine must accept "its demilitarization and fully recogniz[e] Israel." However, his statement didn't convey that his September recognition would hinge on those factors. Macron's surprise announcement prompted immediate condemnation from Israel and the United States.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia lifts lid on secretive drone factory

China

• Chinese cinema projector maker says electric vehicles have box office potential

• A vote targeting 'pro-China' lawmakers has split Taiwan

• China military uses AI to track rapidly increasing UFOs

• The World Has Too Much Steel

Health / Medicine

• Outbreak of Salmonella Infections Linked to Commercially Distributed Raw Milk

  During October 2023–March 2024, California public health officials investigated an outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium infections linked to raw milk from a California dairy farm. Among 171 cases identified in California and four other states, 70% were among children and adolescents aged <18 years.

• Plant virus from black-eyed peas trains immune system to fight cancer

• How smell guides our inner world

• Unique biological markers in patients with mild Crohn's disease uncovered

• Combating multidrug-resistant organisms with UV light

  Thanks to their compact design and high performance, such fiber-coupled light sources would be ideal for eradicating multi-resistant germs and for disinfection in body cavities. The vision of a light source for disinfecting the nasopharyngeal cavity is thus within reach.

  • Sinus sunburn aaaaaaaa

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Pakistan's Solar Revolution Is Bringing Power to the People

• Western lawmakers make moves to improve snow measurement in Colorado River Basin

• The First Planned Migration of an Entire Country Is Underway

• Meteor impact may have triggered Grand Canyon landslide 56,000 years ago

• Global study shows freshwater is disappearing at alarming rates

• Experiment finds yoghurt can lower house temperature

• For First Time, Fires Are Biggest Threat to Forests' Climate-Fighting Superpower