2025-08-15

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• How Investigators Tracked Down the D.C. Plane Crash Video Leaker

  More than six months after the collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people, there are still plenty of questions about how a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger jet collided. Just last week, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general launched a fresh audit of how the Federal Aviation Administration manages the airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. But a different investigation into the catastrophe moved at a much quicker pace. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority scrambled to figure out who had leaked video of the incident to the news media, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request. The reports offer a panoramic view of how the leak investigation unfolded, the squishy statute the cops used to investigate and charge CNN’s source with a crime, and how the network’s failure to crop the leaked footage inadvertently aided the investigation.

  • Top priority: prosecution of anyone interfering with the coverup!

Horseshit

• You Can Buy One of the CIA's Greatest Mysteries at an Auction House

  • The Kryptos Key Is Going Up for Sale

  • Want to Crack the CIA's Infamous 'Kryptos' Puzzle? Its Secret Key Is Up for Sale

• Among the Blasphemers

  Lately, everybody has been looking for the decade that did this to us—put the country in the appalling state of full-spectrum hatitude that we now permanently inhabit (a condition so many seem to enjoy). The ’80s for many reasons give off the strongest scent as the culprit. Paul Elie’s The Last Supper, a sprawling and many-peopled time machine of a book, does the necessary forensics and locates the roots of our endless culture wars in that decade—but his ’80s may not be the ’80s you lived through and/or remember and/or have read about and/or watched on replay.

• The Secret Weapon of Dance? Hands

• Our Culture Is Addicted to Validation

• Quantum tool could lead to gamma-ray lasers and access the multiverse

• A single lock of hair could rewrite what we know about Inca record-keeping

• Adults Are Going to Sleep-Away Camp to Make Friends. It Seems to Work

• The Colorful History of Tarot Is as Mesmerizing as the Decks Themselves

• Oreos Combined with Reese's? Inside the Manhattan Project of Snacks

• How Millennials Killed Mayonnaise

• For Some Patients, the 'Inner Voice' May Soon Be Audible

• Ford's Robot Driver Puts Ranger Super Duty Through 10 Years of Abuse in 24 Hours

• What Musk, Altman and Others Say About AI-Funded 'Universal Basic Income'

• The reasons Americans aren't having babies, according to data

• Air is cheap and really good for the purpose: Why Cars Still Don't Have Airless Tires, Yet

• Why is LED light so bad?

celebrity gossip

• 70 Years Ago, Johnny Cash Recorded 'Folsom Prison Blues' and Became a Folk Hero

• Sam Altman stood up to Elon Musk after years of X trolling

Obit

• Richard Garwin, Designer of the First Hydrogen Bomb, Dies at 97

• Margaret Boden, Philosopher of Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The Awkward Adolescence of a Media Revolution

  There’s a quiet revolution in how millions of Americans decide what’s real. Trust is slipping away from traditional institutions—media, government, and higher education—and shifting to individual voices online, among them social-media creators. The Reuters Institute reports that this year, for the first time, more Americans will get their news from social and video platforms—including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X—than from traditional outlets. According to Pew Research, one in five adults now regularly turns to influencers for news. For anyone who cares about credible information, this is a potentially terrifying prospect. Social media rewards virality, not veracity. Spend five minutes scrolling TikTok or Instagram, and you might encounter influencers “educating” you about a global elite running the world from “hidden continents” behind an “ice wall” in Antarctica, or extolling the virtues of zeolite, “a volcanic binder for mold” that will “vacuum clean all kinds of toxins” to lift brain fog, prevent cancer, and remove microplastics from testicles. (Link to purchase in bio.) It’s an environment perfectly engineered to scale both misinformation and slick grifts.

  • but we're assured that Truth can only arise from consensus and institutions performing a slightly smaller version of the same rituals...

Musk

• Starlink Mini users just lost their beloved pause feature

• Starlink introduces new low bandwidth Standby Mode

• Tesla Eyes New York City for Robotaxis with Test-Driver Job Posting

• X Briefly Goes Down Again: Users Report Problems

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Genomics pioneer George Church retracts anti-aging gene therapy paper

• As degrees get branded worthless, LinkedIn reveals universities for Gen Z

• MIT president responds to Globe report on academic fraud case at Duke

• The Crisis of the University Started Long Before Trump

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Using PayPal for Steam purchases isn't currently an option in many countries

• Senior Microsoft official shares what next major Windows version will be like

• Impoverished streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

• Cyberpower begins selling desktop PCs with carbon nanotube CPU cooling

• Apple returns blood oxygen monitoring to the latest Apple Watches

  • Apple launching 'redesigned Blood Oxygen feature' on Apple Watch in the U.S.

• The Facial-Recognition Sham

• Call of Duty Admits the Install Size Is Too Damn High

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

• Bluesky rolls out revamp to policies and Community Guidelines

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The plan for Linux after Torvalds has a kernel of truth: there isn't one

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• DeepSeek failed to train a new model without using Nvidia hardware

  • DeepSeek's launch of new AI model delayed by Huawei chip issues

  • Dodgy Huawei chips nearly sunk DeepSeek's next-gen R2 model

• LLM Hallucination Seems Like a Big Problem, Not a Mere Speedbump

• Rising electric bills: How states are tackling Big Tech's energy demands

• Concerning the Responsible Use of AI in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

• YouTube will start using AI to guess your age If it's wrong you have to prove it

• Talking with ChatGPT, a sane man became convinced he was a superhero

• Is the AI Mania a Psych-Ops?

  Psych-Ops aimed at the general public often focus on generating support for a war of choice or support of economic policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many. Examples include the Spanish-American War, the Vietnam War, the Desert Wars and the bailout of the players who triggered the Global Financial Meltdown in 2008-09. ("We had to bail out the Too-Big-To-Fail Bad Guys because if we didn't, they were gonna shut down the ATMs.")

• Twitter's Ex-CEO Is Moving Past His Elon Musk Drama and Starting an AI Company

• AI is reordering the US power grid

• Is AI trying to escape human control and blackmail people?

• Meta's AI rules let bots hold sensual chats with kids, offer false medical info

• Anthropic offers Claude to 'all three branches of government' for $1

• Meta's flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York

• Meta appoints anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theorist Robby Starbuck as AI bias advisor

  • Meta appoints conspiracy theorist as AI bias advisor

• Companies Are Pouring Billions into A.I. It Has yet to Pay Off

• Sam Altman is in damage-control mode after latest ChatGPT release

• 'Absolutely immense': the companies on the hook for the $3T AI building boom

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• After first operational launch, here’s the next big test for ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

Crypto con games

• Behind Wall Street's Abrupt Flip on Crypto

• Bitcoin drops below $119K after US Treasury secretary rules out new BTC buys

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

  • Wholesale prices rose 0.9% in July, more than expected

  • U.S. producer prices surge in July as Trump tariffs push costs higher

  • Wholesale Inflation Surges to 3.3% in July.

• Do You Need to Own a House? Many Older Americans Decide They Don't

• Statement Regarding Misleading Media Reports

  Media reports that Kodak is ceasing operations, going out of business, or filing for bankruptcy are inaccurate and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of a recent technical disclosure the Company made to the SEC in its recently filed second quarter earnings report. These articles are misleading and missing critical context, and we'd like to set the record straight. Kodak has no plans to cease operations, go out of business, or file for bankruptcy protection.

• Corporations aren't the reason your rent is too high

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• "None of These Books Are Obscene": Judge Strikes Down Much of FL's Book Ban Bill

• Mississippi may require age verification, Supreme Court says

Trump

• Trump orders cull of regulations governing commercial rocket launches

  • Trump Signs Executive Order to Boost Commercial Space Industry.

  • Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry – The White House (Fact Sheet)

• Trump Reportedly Offering Putin Natural Resources Off Alaska

• The only thing that could possibly make Intel 8more* fvckled: US Administration is considering stake in Intel

  • US Government to potentially take stake in Intel

  • The U.S. Is Discussing Taking a Stake in Intel

Left Angst

• Trump's Military Crackdowns Are Only Going to Get Worse

• Prominent medical journal refuses RFK's call to retract a vaccine study

• New Zealand woman and six-year-old son detained for three weeks

• Order Promoting Competition in the US Economy Revoked

• Richest Americans Die Earlier Than the Poorest Europeans

• The Annals of Oligarchy, Defense Department Edition

• PBS Parent Company Sent Tax Dollars To Cushy Lobbying Firm

• Paid protester requests from crowd company surge 400% following federal takeover of DC police

  Adam Swart, CEO of Crowds on Demand, told Fox News that requests for services in DC from May to July 2024 jumped roughly 400 percent compared to the same period last year. The company, which supplies participants for political rallies, protests, and advocacy events, says such surges typically occur during “high-stakes political moments.”

• As Trump Pushes International Students Away, Asian Schools Scoop Them Up

• The First Federal Cybersecurity Disaster of Trump 2.0 Has Arrived

  The breach of the US Courts records system came to light more than a month after the attack was discovered. Details about what was exposed—and who’s responsible—remain unclear.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. Navy's first autonomous ship takes the Port of Everett waters

World

• The South Korean Collector Who Fell for Posters from Communist Poland

• UK Court Ruling Leaves Wikipedia Years of Uncertainty Under Online Safety Act

• Baby Shark did not plagiarise – South Korean top court

• African Union urges adoption of world map showing continent's true size

Israel

• IHRA definition of antisemitism has long been a target in anti-Zionist campaigns

• Hundreds of Former Israeli Spies Are Working in Big Tech, Database Shows

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia clamps down on WhatsApp and Telegram over data sharing

• Exposing the Cracks at the Heart of Putin's War Economy

• Dam sabotage blamed on pro-Russia hackers

  • Pro-Russian hackers blamed for water dam sabotage in Norway

  • Russian hackers seized control of Norwegian dam, spy chief says

  • Norway Spy Chief Blames Russian Hackers Dam Sabotage

• The Kremlin's attempt to construct a spy app to snoop on Russians

China

• China and India Rebuild Ties After Modi's Rupture with Trump

• Chinese firm to be banned for stealing Samsung's OLED tech

• China Went from Clean Energy Copycat to Global Innovator

• Anger grows in China over reports of groups sharing explicit photos of women

• China turns to gasoline hybrids to fuel its global EV push

• Beijing's first World Humanoid Robot Games open with hip-hop and martial arts

Health / Medicine

• ADHD drugs reduce risk of criminal behaviour, drug abuse and accidents

  • ADHD drugs have wider life benefits, study suggests

• Why hasn't medical science cured headaches?

• Coffee Is Mostly Safe, Study Finds, but Some Contaminants Remain

• Next target for arrogant, ignorant 'experts': organ donors

  Last month The New York Times reported that under existing guidelines, “a growing number of patients” — some of them “gasping, crying or showing other signs of life” — are facing “premature or bungled attempts to retrieve their organs.” This news was poorly received.

  Shortly after the initial Times report, a trio of New York cardiologists, Drs. Sandeep Jauhaur, Snehal Patel and Deane Smith, wrote in its pages their idea to promote more life-giving transplants. “We need to broaden the definition of death,” they explained. Right now, they lectured, organs can only be harvested once a person has been declared dead — either because the heart has stopped, or because the brain has ceased to function while the heart is still beating. “The solution, we believe, is to broaden the definition of brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support,” the three doctors wrote — suggesting procedures that would briefly stop a patient’s heart long enough to declare him or her dead, then re-start it to permit the removal of ready-for-transplant organs.

  In fact, even the discussion of redefining death to promote transplants has struck a brutal blow to transplant availability. In the wake of the doctors’ column, Newsweek last week reported a “mass exodus from donor registries.” According to figures from the trade group that represents transplant-procurement agencies, thousands of Americans removed their names from donor lists in response to the coverage. “I am no longer a donor because of sociopaths like this,” one X user posted, commenting on the three doctors’ proposal — one of thousands of similar social-media declarations.

• Experts say rural emergency rooms are increasingly run without doctors

  • That's OK, rural people can't afford doctors anyhow.

• Ultra-processed foods trigger addictive behaviors meeting clinical criteria

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Is Solving the Plastic Problem a Moral Issue?

• Scientists discover sex reversal in kookaburras and lorikeets with cause unknown

• Remote sensing reveals underestimated methane emissions from global landfills

• Will offshore wind energy affect ocean productivity?

• How One Activist Is Using a Decades-Old Policy to Stall Green Energy Projects

• 'Alarmingly high' levels of forever chemicals found at airports in England

• A furry antelope robot is keeping tabs on its organic cousins.

• Climate models reveal human activity may be locking SWest into permanent drought

• Rabbits with 'horns' in Colorado are being called 'Frankenstein bunnies.'