2025-08-13

etc

• Highlights From The Comments On Liberalism And Communities

• So you think you can heritable?

  Meanwhile, some people argue that heritability is meaningless for human traits like intelligence or income or personality. They claim that those traits are the product of complex interactions between genes and the environment and it’s impossible to disentangle the two. These arguments have always struck me as “suspiciously convenient”. I figured that the people making them couldn’t cope with the hard reality that genes are very important and have an enormous influence on what we are. But I increasingly feel that the skeptics have a point. While I think it’s a fact that most human traits are substantially heritable, it’s also true the technical definition of heritability is really weird, and simply does not mean what most people think it means.

Horseshit

• (Jul 2025) America's Whey Protein Obsession Is Transforming the Dairy Industry

• US influencer stranded in Antarctica after landing plane without permission

  American teen influencer Ethan Guo's ambitious cancer research fundraising flight has taken a disastrous turn, leaving him stranded in a remote location in Antarctica since June. Authorities say Guo landed his small plane illegally in Chilean territory after providing false flight plan information, prompting an official investigation. For the past six weeks, since being charged, he has stayed at a military base. He was not forced to stay there, only to remain in Chilean territory, but because of the severe winter in that part of the southern hemisphere, there haven't been any available flights he could take. And he has been unable to fly his Cessna.

• The Futility of Simulating Nature

• Ancient Europeans resisted inequality for 5000 years

  Between 6000 B.C.E. and 1000 B.C.E., the people living in the Carpathian Basin of central Eastern Europe experienced a whirlwind of social and technological change. The first farmers brought domesticated crops. Smaller communities grew into larger settlements, broke apart, and reformed. New technologies such as plows, draft animals, standard measurements, and metalworking transformed working life. Elsewhere in the ancient world, such changes often heralded increasingly unequal and socially stratified societies. But not in the Carpathian Basin, which covers all of Hungary and stretches to parts of countries including Austria, Serbia, and Ukraine (see map, below). There, house sizes and grave goods suggest societies remained remarkably egalitarian for 5000 years, hinting that people developed social and political strategies that helped them resist inequality, researchers report today in Science Advances.

  • Five thousand years of inequality in the Carpathian Basin | Science Advances

  We find that although farming did increase the potentials for both relational and material inequalities, the potential was rarely reached and then only for short durations. We identify a series of leveling mechanisms varying over time, including the removal of material wealth from circulation through the placement in graves, community fission, and investments of surplus labor in infrastructural investments.

  • Neither mentions slavery so I reckon it's just assumed and considered acceptably egalitarian.

• A once-tiny research lab helped Nvidia become a $4T-dollar company

• Google and IBM believe first workable quantum computer is in sight

• Pedestrians now walk 15% faster and linger less in city public spaces

• Jamie Wyeth's Lost Portraits of Andy Warhol See the Light After 50 Years

• Jane Austen was a satirist – why isn't she treated like one?

celebrity gossip

• Altman says in 10 years college grads will work well-paid job in space

• Lisa Su Runs AMD–and Is Out for Nvidia's Blood

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• (PDF) CCP Influence in U.S. Pro-Palestinian Activism

Musk

• Musk threatens legal action against Apple over alleged antitrust violations

  • Musk says xAI to take legal action against Apple over App Store rankings

  • Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Apple over App Store Rankings

  • Musk threatens to sue Apple so Grok can get top App Store ranking

  • Musk threatens Apple and calls OpenAI boss a liar as feud deepens

• Tesla Dojo Went from Essential to Shut Down in 12 Months

• That viral video of a 'deactivated' Tesla Cybertruck is a fake

• Musk's Grok calls Trump the 'most notorious' criminal in DC

• X (Twitter) bans its own AI chatbot (Grok) after calling out Israel's genocide

• Sam Altman challenges Elon Musk with plans for Neuralink rival

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Revel is shutting down its Model Y-powered ride-hailing Tesla Robotaxi

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• A Suicide Cult's Surviving Members Still Maintain Its 90s Website

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Renowned evolutionary biologist to lead Academy of Sciences beginning June 2026

• To Study Viking Seafarers, He Took 26 Voyages in Traditional Boats

• Teach the Holocaust -- without mentioning Jews -- says NEA

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• AOL announces September shutdown for dial-up Internet after 34 years

  • AOL pulls the plug on dial-up – 'dead' tech has a long expiration date

  • AOL ends dial-up service after more than 30 years

  • AOL to discontinue dial-up internet service.

• Live Translation Coming to AirPods

• Reddit blocks Internet Archive to end sneaky AI scraping

• Publishing Giants Escalate War on 'Shadow Libraries' with Cloudflare Subpoena

• High-severity WinRAR 0-day exploited for weeks by 2 groups

• ARM adds neural accelerators to GPUs

  • Arm juices mobile GPUs with neural tech for better graphics

• Older Apple TV+ Movies Available to Purchase Directly

• Manpower discloses data breach affecting nearly 145,000 people

• Free Wi-Fi Leaves Buses Vulnerable to Remote Hacking

• Three notorious cybercrime gangs appear to be collaborating

• Cervical cancer study data leak of 485,000 women also hit more people

• Former Googlers' AI startup OpenArt creates 'brain rot' videos in one click

• Perplexity makes bold $34.5B bid for Google's Chrome browser

  • Perplexity offers to buy Google's Chrome browser for $34.5B

  • Perplexity makes $34.5B bid to buy Google Chrome

  • Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome

  • Perplexity low-balls Google with $34.5B offer for Chrome

  • AI upstart Perplexity makes $34.5B offer for Google's Chrome

  • Perplexity makes a bid for Google Chrome

  • Perplexity offers to buy Chrome for billions more than it's raised

• Sling TV's $5 pass buys you one day of cable TV

• Threads has over 400M monthly active users

• Apple Plans New MacBook Pro, iPhone 17e and iPads by Early 2026

• No One Has Any Idea What Will Happen to TikTok

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• See-thru Game Boy is a work of art because she designed a transparent board

• No more 'Sanity Checks.' Inclusive language guide bans problematic tech terms

• NixOS Now Celebrates Pride Month… Year Round

  All of which culminated in the NixOS moderation team forcing the founder of NixOS to abdicate his role in the project. This crew of political extremists even went so far as to draft an abdication letter on behalf of the NixOS founder… and they, somehow, convinced him to sign it. One of the notes from the extremists — within the draft — noted that the NixOS founder must be forced to add himself as a signatory of the letter "for it to appear amicable".

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI Learned to Be Evil Without Anyone Telling It To, Which Bodes Well

• LLMs' "simulated reasoning" abilities are a brittle mirage

• GPT-5s Are Alive: Basic Facts, Benchmarks and the Model Card

• "It's the Wild West," says James Cameron of the use of generative AI in film

• For what, tho? Half of US adults now use AI

• Chatbots can go into a delusional spiral. Here’s how it happens.

• Training language models to be warm and empathetic makes them less reliable

• "Bullshit Index" Tracks AI Misinformation

• Sam Altman and the Whale

• Google Gemini struggles to write code, calls itself "a disgrace to my species"

• Behind the Curtain: Your smarter fake friends

• The Looming Social Crisis of AI Friends and Chatbot Therapists

• Is the A.I. Boom Turning Into an A.I. Bubble?

• Microsoft tries to poach Meta AI talent with multimillion-dollar pay packages

• GSA inks another $1 OneGov vendor deal, this time with Anthropic

• Zuckerberg will no longer release the most powerful systems to the public

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Race to build nuclear reactor on moon raises galaxy of legal questions

  • Establishing the Moon as a UN owned, not shared territory is a long term goal since at least the 1990s. It started as a hail mary play to get he UN any tax authority but then several players began to see profit potentials in it. Much "space law" planning has happened in quiet corners over the last decades, which will come as a nasty shock to those who get there and are told they shouldn't have.

• SpaceX launches Amazon Kuiper satellites in 100th 2025 mission.

Crypto con games

• The Celebrity Impersonation Bitcoin Scam

• Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack

  • Monero's 51% Attack Problem: Inside Qubic's Controversial Network Takeover

  • Monero network turmoil as Qubic claims hashrate dominance

• Do Kwon Pleads Guilty

  • Crypto Entrepreneur Do Kwon Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges

  • Do Kwon pleads guilty to US fraud charges in $40B crypto collapse

• The Crypto Maniacs and the Torture Townhouse

Economicon / Business / Finance

• AI, layoffs leave computer science graduates struggling to find work

• CPI for all items rises 0.2% in July, 2.7% YoY; shelter up

  • Mixed Numbers on Inflation: Core Up/Overall Flat

• Outside of the top stocks, S&P 500 forward profits haven't grown in 3 years

• 133-year old Kodak says it might have to cease operations

• CFPB moves to hold Synapse accountable for missing customer funds | Banking Dive

  The CFPB alleged the now-bankrupt Synapse failed to maintain adequate records of consumers’ funds and match them with its partner banks, leading to an unrecovered loss of $60 million to $90 million.

• We Need to Stop Subsidizing Venture Capitalists

• 2025 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies

• Bell Laboratories Acquired by Berkshire Hathaway

• "Good money after bad" was 20 years ago: Former Intel CEO lays out plan to rescue the company – asks for $4B investment

• Arizona Iced Tea may be forced to raise price of 99c cans

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Trump says Nvidia will hand the U.S. 15% of its H20 chip sales to China

• Two more states look to ban junk food from SNAP benefits.

• Pentagon plan would create military 'reaction force' for civil unrest

• The Housing Issue We Don't Talk About

  It’s a very real likelihood he will pull an El Salvador in DC by attempting to eradicate crime in DC completely. This administration operates differently than the first time he was president. Tariffs are here, so is the immigration policies. He is more aggressive. More direct. No hesitation. The El Salvador option is likely. Trump talks about street crime constantly, and it’s not new. This isn’t the first time he’s jumped into the middle of it. Back in the early ’90s, he stopped some guy mid–baseball bat attack on Fifth Avenue.

  Everyone has their theory as to why, they point to zoning laws, interest rates, not enough new homes being built, regulations, they even write entire books on all the reasons. But they're all missing the elephant in the room: Half of every major American city is essentially off-limits to a reasonable person. I lived in DC and Chicago. Rent consumed huge chunks of my paycheck in both places. However, in these cities sat massive areas with dirt-cheap housing that I would never consider living in. Not because the homes were bad (they were fine). Not because of commute times (they weren’t long). It’s because I preferred not getting shot. Simple calculation.

• FEMA's outdated flood maps incentivize property owners to take risks

• US Admin Forced to Resume $5B EV Charger Funding After Losing 14-State Lawsuit

• Bureau of Labor Standards nominee suggests suspending monthly jobs report

  • If the data has to be revised by some major fraction after release, repetitively, by no pattern that can be separated from political connivance... perhaps it is more of a propaganda than a data tool.

Trump

• Trump sparks concern after suggesting sales of Nvidia advanced AI chips in China

• Breaking Down the Debanking Executive Order

• EJ Antoni: Trump picks conservative economist to head Bureau of Labor Statistics

• H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House

• Democrat whistleblower told FBI that Schiff okayed leaking classified intel to hurt Trump

  A career intelligence officer who worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade repeatedly warned the FBI beginning in 2017 that then-Rep. Adam Schiff had approved leaking classified information to smear then-President Donald Trump over the now-debunked Russiagate scandal, according to bombshell FBI memos that Director Kash Patel has turned over to Congress. The FBI 302 interview reports obtained by Just the News state the intelligence staffer — a Democrat by party affiliation who described himself as a friend to both Schiff, now a California senator, and former Republican House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes — considered the classified leaking to be "unethical," "illegal," and “treasonous,” but was told not to worry about it because Schiff believed he would be spared prosecution under the Constitution's speech and debate clause.

• Trump Directs Military to Target Foreign Drug Cartels

Left Angst

• The Big Stupid America Era Is Here. Will It Destroy Us?

  these are times of austerity in the wealthiest country the world has ever known, and we’re cutting back. Not on defense contracts or presidential golf outings, of course; those are vital to national security. Instead, we’re canceling scientific studies, research grants, university financial-aid programs, health care for the neediest, foreign aid, and more. At the same time, we’re handing our institutions to people who have no idea what to do with them besides starve them to death. And we’re taking a defensive posture against the world’s smartest and most ambitious international students. The immediate result is that America’s greatness is missing in action.

• US lawmakers want to root out Chinese seafood from military over Uyghur labor

• US administration threatens to take Harvard's patents

• immigration: Spain Is an Example to the World

• Supreme Court formally asked to overturn same-sex marriage ruling

• RFK Jr. wants a wearable on Americans–that future's not as healthy as he thinks

• Trump Administration Begins to Strip Federal Workers of Union Protections

• Migration Is Remaking Our World, and We Don't Understand It at All

• It's been a busy month for Trump's retribution campaign

• A historic agreement between Mexico and US is ramping up border tension

  As climate change drives rising temperatures and changes in rainfall, Mexico and the US are in the middle of a conflict over water, putting an additional strain on their relationship. Partly due to constant droughts, Mexico has struggled to maintain its water deliveries for much of the last 25 years, in keeping with a water-sharing agreement between the two countries that has been in place since 1944 (agreements between the two regulating water sharing have existed since the 19th century). As part of this 1944 treaty, set up when water was not as scarce as it is now, the two nations divide and share the flows from three rivers (the Rio Grande, the Colorado and the Tijuana) that range along their 2,000-mile border.

• Integrity comes to those that wait? Nonprofit Refuses $1.5M Science Grant Due to New Federal DEI Rules

• White House to Vet Smithsonian Museums to Fit Trump's Historical Vision

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Everyone Thinks Youth Crime Is Increasing – D.C. Witness Data Shows Why

  New data from D.C. Witness validates the common public perception that violent crime among youth in the District is increasing. The percentage of homicides and non-fatal shootings perpetrated by youth aged 15-to-20 almost doubled in the three years from 2021 thru June 2024. In 2021-22 perpetrators ranging in ages from 15-to-20 committed about 11.38 percent of the crimes. In 2022-23 they were responsible for about 12.35 percent. In 2023-2024 that percentage jumped to 21.43 percent. In other words, nearly 100 percent.

• Scarsdale Ends Contract with License Plate Reader Company Amid Privacy Concerns

• "Officers previously fired from other departments" California police departments are turning to a controversial applicant pool

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The White House could end UK's decade-long fight to bust encryption

• US Navy is retiring the last of its cruisers, 'the pinnacle of naval power'

• Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing System

World

• Fish, teapots and a pineapple Ghana's most stylish coffins – in pictures

• North Korea's Tourism Push Comes at a Cost to Local Residents

• North Koreans tell BBC they are being sent to work 'like slaves' in Russia

• Oz: Federal court rules Apple and Google engaged in anti-competitive conduct

  • Australian court finds Apple, Google guilty of being anticompetitive

• Wikipedia challenged the new British law on online safety and lost

  • Wikipedia loses UK Safety Act challenge

• British man who perished in Antarctic glacier found 65 years later

• Staff fear UK's Turing AI Institute at risk of collapse

• A Haven for English in the Most French of North American Cities

• UK government advises deleting emails to save water

  • You've got drought: UK gov suggests you save water by – – – deleting old emails

  • UK government suggests deleting files to save water

  • UK government asks people to delete old emails to reduce data centres' water use

• No printers or PCs, Starbucks Korea tells customers

• Inside Australia's billion dollar bid to take on China's rare earth dominance

China

• Can 'China Studies' still be trusted?

• China Urges Firms Not to Use Nvidia H20 Chips in New Guidance

  • China cautions tech firms over Nvidia H20 AI chip purchases, sources say

  • Beijing doesn't want Nvidia's H20s anywhere near sensitive government workloads

• China's unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs

• China factories cut shifts and workers' pay as US tariffs bite

• Embodied Intelligence: The PRC's Whole-of-Nation Push into Robotics

• China's Automakers Are Taking a Shortcut to European Markets

• (2019) Why '1984' Isn't Banned in China

• Hong Kong's Economy Has Two Gravity-Defying Puzzles

• A bookshop built into a 100M-year-old cliff face in Hechi, China

• China Creates No. 1 Shipbuilder, Driven by Rivalry with U.S.

• Chinese Warship, Cutter Collide in South China Sea.

Health / Medicine

• Curbing sugar won't curb your sweet tooth, scientists say

• People Mostly Have Babies Via Sex

  IVF with screening will likely stay pretty rare

  • And no one will use birth control as after the fact contraception...

• Seed Oils Are Fine, Realy – The Trouble with French Fries Is Not the Oil

• Tick Bites on Martha's Vineyard Has Businesses Going Vegan

• Generic drugs, dirty plants, and FDA exemptions

• The Problem Is with Men's Sperm

• Marijuana Users Have Enhanced Cognitive Ability According Federally Funded Study

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• 'Petri dish for disease': attorney raises alarm of possible Covid outbreak

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Livestock played a role in prehistoric plague infections

• Climate scientists criticise Ireland over new 'temperature neutrality' proposal

• Sierra Club board fires leader Ben Jealous

• The biggest victory against animal cruelty of the 21st century, in one chart

• roaches: Chronic sleep deprivation harms development of growing babies

• Mesozoic atmospheric CO2 concentrations reconstructed from dinosaur tooth enamel

• Climate sensitivity is substantially higher than IPCC's best estimate

• Oregon's Wildfire Risk Map Became a Target for Misinformation

• Experiment will attempt to counter climate change by altering ocean

• E. coli genome remade with 101k changes to its DNA

• Vegetarian and vegan diets 'cut cancer risk by up to a quarter'