2025-08-07

etc

• Survivors of Texas floods grappling with trauma and waiting on financial help

• US research station staff evacuated from Antarctica

  The New Zealand air force has evacuated three people from a US research base in Antarctica in a high-risk operation that required navigating through extreme weather and round-the-clock darkness. The air force said on Wednesday the United National Science Foundation requested a medical evacuation for three of its staff members based at the McMurdo Station, one of whom needed urgent medical care. The crew of the C-130J Hercules flew on Tuesday afternoon, working through the night to complete the mission, the air force said.

  • New Zealand Air Force Mounts Dangerous Rescue in Antarctica

• First edition copy of the Hobbit found in England

• Body of man missing for 28 years found in melting glacier

• Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? - by Scott Alexander

  is it really working? Are we really a nation dotted with tight-knit communities of strong values? The average person has a church they don’t attend and a political philosophy that mainly cashes out in Twitter dunks. Otherwise they just consume whatever slop the current year’s version of capitalism chooses to throw at them.

  If you’re sufficiently committed, you don’t need money. You can go out in the forest with your like-minded friends and probably starve (or, like the libertarians, get eaten by bears). But if you’re insufficiently committed, money is pretty helpful! Or at least this is what I gather from my own experience. There are three reasons the rationalists have somewhat succeeded at the community-building project when so many other movements have failed. First, many of us worked in tech, and so ended out naturally gathering in the SF Bay Area without having to explicitly coordinate on it. We didn’t even have to take less-than-maximally lucrative jobs, because all the maximally-lucrative jobs for techies are in one place. Second, some of us had enough money to live where we wanted (which turned out to be next to each other) and to cooperate to fund community projects. Third, some of us made enough money to support other people who were working part-time or full-time on community building. Some of this looked like hiring them for community-building positions, but more often it was being able to afford family/housing structures where not everyone had to have an income-maximizing job at all times.

  If we had even more money, we could do even better. Occasionally we fantasize about going further in the Amish or Free State direction. There are lots of reasons it doesn’t happen, but the main ones are money (building towns is expensive) and jobs (not everyone can work remotely). There’s some sense in which we’re being weak here - the Amish are very poor, and just sort of take the plunge and do it anyway. But keeping our level of weakness fixed, more money would help.

  • "Eternal 1990s out in the woods, living poor" ... Describes my family quite well. We value the examples our Amish neighbors give us, too. There's lots of things more valuable than money.

Horseshit

• US Coast Guard Report on Titan Submersible Implosion Singles Out OceanGate CEO

• Electric bikes might just be the healthiest thing to ever happen to teenagers

• M&M's Maker Turns to Gene Editing in Bid to Secure Cocoa Supply

• The Electric Fence Stopped Working Years Ago - Soonly

  Electric fences train dogs through graduated discomfort, first a warning beep, then a shock. Eventually, the dog learns the boundaries so well that even when the fence stops working, the memory of pain keeps them trapped. Most dogs stay placidly within their invisible prison for life. But some dogs discover the secret: three seconds of discomfort leads to lasting freedom. Once they realize the fence is just an illusion maintained by memory, they never go back.

  Here's what I've realized: Some of our strongest electric fences aren't keeping us from freedom, they're keeping us from each other. That voice in your head saying "Don't text them, you'll seem needy." The one whispering "They haven't reached out, so they must not care." The fear that being the one who always initiates makes you weak.

  • ITYM "invisible fence"; but accuracy is optional when preaching. Who cares if your parables meant something other than what you thought.

• They Let Their Children Cross the Street and Now They're Felons

• Eaton fire could have been prevented, utils fought removal of old power lines

• A Ranch Four Times the Size of New York City for $79.5M

celebrity gossip

• Never-Before-Seen Photos Inside Jeffrey Epstein's Creepy Mansion | ZeroHedge

• Ghislaine Maxwell told DOJ Trump never did anything concerning around her: Sources - ABC News

  During her nine hours speaking with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month, Ghislaine Maxwell said nothing during the interview that would be harmful to President Donald Trump, telling Blanche that Trump had never done anything in her presence that would have caused concern, according to sources familiar with what Maxwell said. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is considering publicly releasing the transcripts from the interview, multiple sources familiar with the internal discussions told ABC News. Maxwell's meetings with Blanche took place for nine hours over two days.

Obit

• Sandra Grimes, Who Helped Unmask CIA Traitor Aldrich Ames, Dies at 79

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• University of Wisconsin-Madison Censored Animal-Rights Activist on Social Media

Musk

• SpaceX Tips 'Starlink Community' for Cheaper, Shared Satellite Internet Access

  SpaceX is working on a new way to make Starlink more affordable by letting multiple subscribers share access to a single satellite dish in exchange for a lower monthly fee.

• Elon Musk and X notch court win against California deepfake law

• Tesla training new FSD model with 10x params

• At the Tesla Diner, the Future Looks Mid

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Lyft Will Use Chinese Driverless Cars in Britain and Germany

• GM EVs Will Get Apple CarPlay After All–But Only Outside the US

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Teacher fights discrimination against the Roma people, one Elvis song at a time

• North America's tallest RAM idol rises in Mississauga

  In a historic moment for the Indian diaspora in Canada, the tallest statue of Lord Ram in North America was unveiled on Sunday at the Hindu Heritage Centre in Mississauga, Ontario. Towering at an impressive 51 feet (excluding the pedestal and umbrella), the fibreglass idol now stands as a spiritual and cultural landmark in the Greater Toronto Area.

• Chinese government has 'final say' in Dalai Lama reincarnation, official says

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Silicon Valley's anti-college movement

• Shocking, Record Explosion In Student Loan Delinquencies Marks The Start Of Next Debt Crisis | ZeroHedge

• The peer-review crisis: how to fix an overloaded system

• Stanford lays off hundreds, citing federal cuts

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Meta eavesdropped on period-tracker app's users, SF jury rules

  • Meta illegally collected data from Flo period and pregnancy app, jury finds

  • Meta violated privacy laws by collecting menstrual health data

• Roku launches ad-free streaming service, Howdy, for $2.99 a month

• WhatsApp deletes over 6.8M accounts linked to scams

• The Much-Hyped New Wizard of Oz for Sphere Is an Atrocity

• PCI-SIG announces PCIe 8.0 spec with twice the bandwidth

• TikTok Promotes Stickers for Stealthily Recording Meta Ray-Ban Video

• Vanishing Culture: Why Preserve Flash?

• Mobile industry charts course to smartphone satellite broadband

• Exposing Microsoft's flawed code that lets attackers access files on your server

• Why parts of Tom's Hardware now have a paywall

• Hulu Is Officially Ending as Disney Reveals New Streaming Plans

• The Internet Wants to Check Your ID

• Received a Mysterious Package with a QR Code? Don't Scan It

• Steam's fight against Visa, Mastercard, and censorship is only getting messier

• Rival Tea app for men is leaking its users' personal data and driver's licenses

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The arcane alphabets of Black Sabbath

  Despite the ubiquity of those albums and the many design imitations they’ve inspired, the sources of their letterforms have been largely undocumented and obscured by the passage of time. Some of the albums’ titling has often, mistakenly, been assumed to be totally hand-lettered. Even when a typeface was suspected as a starting point, exact sources have proven elusive. This situation is not surprising when you consider those first four Sabbath covers were all designed using uncommon sources from the era of phototype and dry transfer lettering – a relatively short period after the peak of letterpress printing but before the digital revolution.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• More scientific papers being written with ChatGPT–especially in computer science

• OpenAI eyes $500B valuation in potential employee share sale, source says

• Grok 4 Dominates AI Chess Tournament Day 1

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

• Grok's 'spicy' video setting instantly made me Taylor Swift nude deepfakes

  • Grok generates fake Taylor Swift nudes without being asked

• Perplexity accused of scraping websites that explicitly blocked AI scraping

• GitHub CEO delivers stark message to developers: Embrace AI or get out

• A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment

• Teacher AI Use Is Already Out of Control and It's Not Ok

• 'We didn't vote for ChatGPT': Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role

• We're Told Men Are in Crisis. A.I. Is Going to Make It Worse

• An AI Company Just Fired Someone for Endorsing Human Extinction

• Nuclear Experts Say Mixing AI and Nuclear Weapons Is Inevitable

  • "Dark Star" bomb psychologists trying to convince the machines to work.

• OpenAI returns to its open-source roots with new open-weight AI models

• OpenAI in talks for share sale valuing ChatGPT maker at $500B

  • OpenAI in talks with investors about share sale at $500B valuation

• OpenAI Employees Have Stock to Sell

• New study sheds light on ChatGPT's alarming interactions with teens

• States take the lead in AI regulation as federal government steers clear

• The 20-Somethings Are Swarming San Francisco's A.I. Boom

• This Conversation is being recorded and so is everything else you do in SF

• US executive branch agencies will use ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per agency

Crypto con games

• Why America's new crypto regime makes other countries nervous

• Lugano authorities recover Satoshi Nakamoto statue that was thrown in lake

• $9B Exit by Satoshi-Era BTC Whale Sparks Debate

• Tornado Cash Co-Founder Storm Guilty in Crypto Mixing Case

  • Developer of Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash Found Guilty on One Criminal Charge

  • Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Guilty on One Count in Federal Crypto Case

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Major hotel chain faces backlash for allegedly outsourcing check-ins – to India

• Intel struggles with key 18A manufacturing process for next PC chip

• Why there are so many more South Asian CEOs than East Asian CEOs in the US

• Uber's Festering Sexual Assault Problem

• How one company kept a US monopoly on fire retardant

• Top economist warns the U.S. is 'on the precipice of recession'

• Palantir Won over Washington–and Pushed Its Stock Up 600%

• Buy now, pay later is taking over the world. Good

• Novo Nordisk's Growth Sputters as US Competition Dents Obesity Sales

• 19% of California houses are owned by investors

• Dairy's Great Consolidation: What's Behind the Loss of 15,000 Farms

• United Airlines grounds flights over technology issue

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Tech does not deserve special legal treatment

Trump

• JPMorgan and Bank of America 'debanked' Trump under pressure from Biden admin: Sources

  JPMorgan and Bank of America “debanked” President Trump for his role in the January 6 Capitol Hill melee following pressure from the Biden administration’s banking regulators and the Federal Reserve, people with direct knowledge of the matter tell The Post. The exact reason for Trump and his tens of millions of dollars in holdings being kicked off the JPMorgan banking platform, and then denied access to Bank of America’s services has yet to be reported. But sources at the banks — the No. 1 and No. 2 largest in the US in terms of assets — confirmed the cause stemmed from the controversy surrounding Trump’s actions that day, and threats from Biden’s bank regulators that banking the former president’s money put them at in danger of falling afoul of rule that prohibit financial institution from doing business with individuals and companies that present a “reputational risk.”

  • White House to target banks as Trump claims discrimination | Reuters

  President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he believes that banks, including JPMorgan, and Bank of America, discriminate against him and his supporters, as he prepares to act against banks for allegedly dropping customers for political reasons. Trump also said the country's top two lenders had previously rejected his deposits, ramping up his attack on the industry.

  During Biden's administration, regulators were able to scrutinize banks' decisions on the basis of reputational risks, a second source familiar with the matter said. Lenders were under intense scrutiny and pressure to weigh reputational risks when dealing with Trump because of his legal woes, a third source said. JPMorgan continues to have a banking relationship with members of the Trump family that dates back years, and it also banks a number of campaign accounts linked to Trump, the third source said. After Trump took power, the Federal Reserve announced in June it was directing its supervisors to no longer consider reputational risk when examining banks, a metric that had been a focus of industry complaints.

  • Trump says JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America rejected him as a customer

• Trump threatens pharma tariffs of up to 250 percent

• Trump reignites threat to take over DC after former DOGE worker assaulted

  • Doge staffer known as 'Big Balls' attacked in DC

  • Cops Arrest Two 15-Year-Olds in Connection with Beating of D.O.G.E's 'Big Balls'

• Trump raises India tariffs to 50% over Russian oil purchases

  • US tariff on India zooms to 50% as Trump piles on 25% additional duty

• Tim Cook to Join Trump at White House for Apple Investment Announcement

  • Apple to invest $100B after pressure from Trump

  • Trump, Apple to Announce New $100B Commitment to Manufacturing in US

  • Trump to Announce Additional $100B Apple Investment in U.S.

  • Apple to pledge $100B for US manufacturing

  • Apple Announces American Manufacturing Program, Promises to Spend $600B

  • Apple increases US commitment to $600B, announces American Manufacturing Program

• Trump Announces 100% Tariff on Semiconductors, unless made in US

  • Trump plans 100% tariff on semiconductors, with big exemption

  • Trump eyes 100% tax on imports containing semiconductors

  • Trump Threatens 100% Tariff on Chips, with a Big Caveat

• Trump Says Japan to Import Ford’s Huge F-150 Pickup Trucks

Democrats

• ‘China is happy:’ New memos expose Homeland Security’s concerns about Tim Walz CCP connections.

Left Angst

• RFK Halts mRNA vaccine research

  • RFK Jr. cuts $500M in mRNA vaccine contracts, dealing major blow to research

  • Kennedy Cancels Nearly $500M in mRNA Vaccine Contracts

  • Health Secretary cancels $500M in mRNA vaccine research

  • Why it would be utter madness to stop funding mRNA vaccine technology

• Key sections of the US Constitution deleted from government's website

  • Govt. Website 'Glitch' Removes Trump's Least Favorite Part of Constitution

  • Congress Just Deleted Habeas Corpus from the Constitution on Its Website

• Trump admin warns states: Don't try to lower broadband prices

• NASA ordered to destroy two important satellites monitoring climate change

  • Whitehouse Moves to Destroy Satellite That Monitors Greenhouse Gases

  • NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose

• The Trump Administration Tried to Silence Mahmoud Khalil, So I Asked Him to Talk

• The Militarization of Silicon Valley

• The Semiconductor Industry and Regulatory Compliance

  As the world becomes increasingly dangerous and America’s adversaries become more emboldened, we need to maintain stronger control over our supply of critical semiconductors. If Russia and China are allowed unfettered access to advanced American chips for their AI efforts and military equipment, we risk losing the military advantage and our ability to deter conflicts worldwide. The geopolitical importance of semiconductors will only increase as the world becomes more dangerous and more reliant on advanced technologies—American security depends on limiting their flow.

• Houston, you've got a space shuttle only NASA won't say which one

• MAGA expectations soar after DOJ orders Russia grand jury probe

  The grand jury probe, focused on the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation, is the culmination of a yearslong campaign to criminalize the officials and agencies Trump claims undermined his first term.

  • Glenn Greenwald replies

  The people who spent 8 years trying to imprison Trump as their main political strategy -- first as part of Russiagate, then with 4 bullshit prosecutions in 2023 -- are now denouncing investigations of Obama officials as "MAGA retribution" and "arrests of political enemies."

• Did we just lose $7 billion for solar?

• Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent

• Trump's trade and environment policies are a disaster for carmakers

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Suspect Dies 2 Days Before Arrest for 1986 Kidnapping, Rape

  Two days before a 78-year-old Wisconsin man was going to be arrested for a kidnapping and sexual assault that occurred 39 years ago in Michigan, he was found deceased at his residence. Due to the suspect’s death occurring prior to arraignment, his name is being withheld, but the victim was told that her assailant was positively identified through DNA—forensic investigative genetic genealogy, specifically. In fact, this August 1986 case is believed to be the oldest sexual assault case in Michigan to be solved utilizing genetic genealogy.

  (in 2023) the Michigan State Police Forensic Science Division contracted with a private laboratory to review the evidence and complete the FIGG testing, which resulted in new investigative leads pointing to the 78-year-old man. The new suspect had been a resident of Harris, Mich., at the time of the incident, which was approximately a 45-minute drive from the crime scene. He moved to Wisconsin shortly after the assault. Investigators subsequently obtained a DNA sample from the suspect, and the MSP Forensic Science Division was able to match it to the sample obtained from the evidence collected in 1986.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook

• US charges 2 Chinese nationals with illegally shipping Nvidia AI chips to China

• Docs show one company in China has collected data on members of Congress with AI

• Speaker Mike Johnson visits occupied West Bank to support Israeli settlers

World

• Man who lit cigarette from French war memorial flame faces legal action

• How did British pub food get so grim?

• Thousands of Company directors leave UK after Labour's tax changes

• EU Revives Plan to Ban Private Messaging

• Indonesia may ban display of 'One Piece' anime flags on I-Day

• One in ten UK businesses see staff quit over office working demands

• UK Firms Hire Contractors Instead of Employees to Cut Tax Bills

• Hiroshima marks 80 years since atomic bombing

  • 'My teeth told me': What it was like aboard the Enola Gay

  • 80 Years Ago, Nuclear Annihilation Came to Japan

• Trans-Afghan Railway Project Gains Momentum After Eight Years

• 'Facial recognition tech mistook me for wanted man'

• The Canadian drone industry is spinning up – with lessons from Ukraine

• Young men in UK more likely than women to live with parents

• Italy Approves Project to Link Sicily to the Mainland by Bridge

• Horizon victim sues Post Office and Fujitsu for £4M

Israel

• Staged Suffering? German Investigation Exposes Hamas’s Photo Propaganda Machine

• Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

• Portraits of survivors of Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah last year.

China

• Protests in China over viral school bullying case

• 3 TSMC engineers detained in Taiwan for leaking 2nm process trade secrets

• AstraZeneca signs AI research deal with China's CSPC

• How China Is Girding for an AI Battle with the U.S.

Health / Medicine

• Insurance Companies' Medicare Pullback Is Here

• Noise sensitivity disrupts the mind, brain and body

• The Blood of Exceptionally Long-Lived People Suggests Key Differences

• Many high street health tests are unfit-for-purpose and need greater regulation

  Many self-tests available on the UK high street are unfit-for-purpose and need much greater regulation to ensure they are safe and reliable, conclude two studies published by The BMJ. The findings show that most self-tests lack essential information about who should use them, how to interpret the results, and what actions to take next. Some also contradict evidence-based guidance, "creating risks for misinterpretation and inappropriate health care decisions," say the authors.

  • Only the priests can properly interpret the auguries.

• Why Alcohol, Not Cannabis, Is Fueling Surprise Pregnancies in Young Women.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Fake records, mismanagement helped polio rebound in Afghanistan and Pakistan

  • we found bin Laden through a CIA 'polio vaccination' program, and bragged about it. I wouldn't trust us either.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Vibrio Pectenicida Identified as Cause of Sea Star Disease Affecting Billions

• Chemical pollution a threat comparable to climate change, scientists warn

• A Pair of Immense Icebergs Paying a Visit to a Small Greenland Village

• How global preparedness prevented a tsunami tragedy

• Blue whales are going eerily silent–and scientists say it's a warning sign

• Wild pigs' flesh turning neon blue in California: Authorities sounding the alarm

• Norway's Hedged Bet on Europe's Energy Future: A Garbage Disposal for Emissions

• Anthropogenic warming drives earlier wildfire season onset in California

  • Often in the form of individuals with matches and accelerants.

• New studies tie unrecognized deaths and health problems to Maui and LA wildfires

• Compensatory Puffing: Banning Cigarette Filters