2025-08-19

Horseshit

• Chili's was a 90s relic, now it's America's hottest restaurant

• 'Tradwife', 'delulu' and 'skibidi' among new words added to Cambridge Dictionary

• Boomer knows best? Not so fast, say millennial parents

• The circular economy could make demolition a thing of the past

• Always Inadequate

  The force of low self-esteem can feel so enormous, so unexplainable, it seems almost mythic.

• Social Media Algorithms Are Changing the Way People Talk

• Corporate Money Has Ruined Youth Sports

• Pickleball Explains American Culture

  While I like pickleball, I think any honest assessment of racket-sport history tells us that no one racket sport seems to dominate American culture for more than five years. Perhaps the pickleball haters out there can comfort themselves with this notion: If history is our guide, today’s pock-pock-pock sounds may be the next decade’s distant echo.

celebrity gossip

• Devo's misunderstood art-rock legacy explored in new documentary

Obit

• Ronnie Rondell, Stuntman Set on Fire for Pink Floyd Cover, Dies at 88

  • Ronnie Rondell Jr: Veteran stuntman set on fire for Pink Floyd album cover dies

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Alex Jones’ Infowars will go up for sale yet again, judge rules | CNN Business

• Discussing politics at work: Don't, just don't

  • "silence is violence!" and only some political opinions are "not safe for work;" others are required observances.

Musk

• SpaceX reveals why the last two Starships failed as another launch draws near

• Elon Musk and Sam Altman's AI Feud Gets Nasty

• Tesla is reportedly behind on its pledge to build 5k Optimus bots this year

• Tesla insiders have sold more than 50% of their shares in the last year

• Elon Musk's "thermonuclear" Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out

• Tesla almost halves monthly payments as UK sales slump

Electric / Self Driving cars

• 24,000-Watt Scooter Is Going for a 100 MPH Speed Record at Bonneville

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Grindset is the new Protestant ethic

  Earlier this year, a trend arose on social media making fun of the “sigma male,” the archetypal ambitious young professional man who must “grind” to get ahead in a cutthroat world. He is defined by his routine, the “grindset,” which sees him wake up early, take cold showers, work out religiously, eat austerely, and dedicate the rest of his energies to a monotonous but lucrative job, usually in finance or tech. The sigma male may or may not apply an elaborate skincare routine to his face a la American Pyscho’s Patrick Bateman, who may or may not be viewed unironically as a role model by these young men.

  • Quit it. "Fetch" isn't happening.

• Female genital mutilation kills – and health workers are part of the problem

  • Wait what? I thought "trans toddlers" was the thing and we was supposed to be having the public pay for their bottom surgeries...

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Alan Turing Institute accused of 'toxic' culture

• 'Tin Man Syndrome' case plagiarized from hoax, sleuths say

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Philips Hue's new bridge could turn your lights into motion sensors

• MSNBC to Rebrand to MS Now

  • MSNBC Rebrand

• Apple Finally Destroyed Steve Jobs’ Vision of the iPad. Good

• Counter-Strike: The Billion-Dollar Game Built in a Dorm Room

• He Sold His Likeness. Now His Avatar Is Shilling Supplements on TikTok

• Raspberry Pi intros new 5-inch $40 touchscreen

  • A new 5″ variant of Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2

• An update from the team - Anna’s Blog

  Since we started in 2022, we have liberated tens of millions of books, scientific articles, magazines, newspapers, and more. These are now forever protected from destruction by natural disasters, wars, budget cuts, and other catastrophes, thanks to everyone who helps with torrenting.

  • HN comments

• Texas AG accuses Meta, Character.AI of misleading kids with mental health claims

• HR Giant Workday Got Hacked

• Comcast Gets Serious About Subscriber Losses – A Long Fight Looms

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• History of IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

• Phrack 72

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• MIT Backs Away from Paper Claiming Scientists Make More Discoveries with AI

• Sam Altman sees AI bubble forming

  • Sam Altman says 'yes,' AI is in a bubble

• I talked to Sam Altman about the GPT-5 launch fiasco

• Claude models can now end conversations with abusive users

• AI models can send subliminal messages that teach other AIs to be 'evil'

• If AI takes most of our jobs, money as we know it will be over. What then?

• When you're asking AI chatbots for answers, they're data-mining you

• What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life

• What If AI Doesn't Get Better Than This?

• GenAI isn't just a matter of life and death. It's more important than that

• Meta investigated over AI having 'sensual' chats with children

• James Cameron on AI futures: Where can the Terminator franchise go from here?

• AI will soon radically alter military command structures dating back to Napoleon

• GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40B on fire

• Making cash off 'AI slop': The surreal business of AI video

• AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event

• AI Drives Rise in CEO Impersonator Scams

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Satellite Collisions Could Be Prevented with a New AI System

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

• Intel Foundry Demonstrates First Arm-Based Chip on 18A Node – HotHardware

• Investors lose billions on US penny stocks as 'pump and dump' scams multiply

• What It's Really Like to Support a Big Family on a Modest Income in America

• Our first advanced nuclear reactor project with Kairos Power and Tennessee Valley Authority

  Today we announced the first deployment of Kairos Power’s advanced nuclear reactor — the Hermes 2 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — through a new power purchase agreement (PPA) between Kairos Power and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Marking the first purchase of electricity from an advanced GEN IV reactor by a U.S. utility, this agreement will enable 50 megawatts (MW) of nuclear energy on TVA’s grid that powers our data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee and Jackson County, Alabama.

  • Google, Kairos Power plan advanced nuclear plant for Tennessee grid by 2030

• How Ozempic's maker lost its shine after creating a wonder drug

• Apple Card Offers 5% Cash Back at Select Gas and ChargePoint Stations

• U.S. Foreclosure Activity Jumps 13% Year over Year in July, Highest of 2025

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Merit-based hiring can make America's civil service great

• Texas law gives grid operator power to disconnect data centers during crisis

• California invested millions pushing careers for women results are disappointing

• What would happen if USA started faking its economic data? Lessons from others

  • Ask Obama and on...

• Federal court decision finds cellphone tower-dumping searches unconstitutional

Trump

• Trump vows to target mail-in ballots ahead of midterm election

• US negotiating a %10 stake in Intel

  • White House in Talks with Intel for 10% U.S. Government Stake

  • Trump Administration Discusses Taking 10% Stake in Intel

• Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims

Left Angst

• The tech company stocking up on Democrats as Silicon Valley turns right

• Back to the '80s? Trump's tariff obsession, then and now

• DOJ drops cases against LA protesters after officers caught making false claims

• The administration's assault on science feels eerily Soviet

• Promises of a US manufacturing Renaissance leave experts scratching their heads

• I'm an award winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding

• Kakistocracy

  This was the act of a deranged man, someone who was clearly experiencing terrible things. But it was not the vaccination that caused or amplified his derangement. There is no biological mechanism known for it to have done so, and there are no other such reports from the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who received these vaccines. Unfortunately, people become depressed, deranged, and suicidal all the time for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with being vaccinated. But what did amplify Patrick White’s delusions was the constant anti-vaccination rhetoric that you can find anywhere you care to look for it. If you seize on the coronavirus vaccine as the source of your problems, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of videos, web sites, books, and social media posts that will validate that idea for you, for any symptom or illness you might want to connect. From a stomachache up to terminal cancer, the anti-vaccine community is ready to encourage you to Blame the Vaccine. Apparently no one ever gets sick, from anything, without it being traceable to vaccination. No sparrow shall fall without someone posting its picture with the caption “Vaxxed?” And this rhetoric comes directly from the man who (as head of HHS) oversees the CDC itself: the man who is doing the most to destroy public health in this country today, the lying incompetent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

  I fear that Officer David Rose may not be the last person killed by an anti-vaccine lunatic with a gun. But I am certain that our current leadership, with smiles on their faces, will kill many, many more - disproportionately children, mind you - from the comfort of their own offices.

  • Hm. "Heated rhetoric caused this violence and those uttering it bear responsibility, and are also killing children!"

• RFK Jr.'s Wi-Fi and 5G conspiracies appear to make it into MAHA report draft

• They Came for Climate Science. Then the Storms Came.

• MSNBC Compares Trump to ‘Soviet Crackdown’ On Free Speech

World

• Ofcom £20k fine of Delaware-incorporated 4chan is illegal says US law firm

• Google admits anti-competitive conduct involving Google Search in Australia

• The new geography of stolen goods

• UK drafts AI to help Joe Public decipher its own baffling bureaucracy

• Should Europe wean itself off US tech?

• Wooden church sets off on slow Swedish road trip to escape mining subsidence

• The billionaire developer closing London's pubs

• Child safety campaigner hails early impact of Online Safety Act

• The Open Internet Is Closed for Business

• The bottled water scandal gripping France

• Miles from the ocean, there's diving beneath the streets of Budapest

• 1 in 5 Bolivians spoiled their ballots – a sign of voter dissatisfaction

Israel

• Gazan woman flown to Italy dies of malnutrition

• What America Can Learn from the Hamas Propaganda War.

• Nationwide strike erupts across Israel demanding hostage deal, end to Gaza war.

• Trump Admin Halts Gaza Visitor Visas Amid National Security Concerns.

• follow the funding and find...

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine won’t give up land that Russia doesn’t already occupy, Zelensky says after Putin’s demand.

• Ukraine gives award to foreign vigilantes for hacks on Russia

• Russians are using American flags while storming Ukraine

• Drones turn Ukraine's front line into a kill zone, complicating evacuations

China

• Chinese state media calls U.S. a 'surveillance empire'

• Chinese families are still stuck in 'broken houses' after 4 years

• China calls US 'accomplice to Gaza genocide' in rights report

• Taiwan's "silicon shield" could be weakening

• China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon

Health / Medicine

• A fraudulent cancer breakthrough investigated

• An alternative to LASIK eye surgery – electromechanical remodelling

• Wearable blood pressure monitor attaches like bandage for continuous measurement

• FDA approves first new fibromyalgia drug in over 15 years

• Highly sensitive people more likely to experience mental health problems

• First antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning "cleans" blood in minutes

• Treating Chronic Pain Is Hard. An Experimental Approach Shows Promise.

• Lab-Grown Salmon Hits the Menu at an Oregon Restaurant as the FDA Greenlights

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Drug for celiac shows promise in treating post-Covid syndrome in children

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Evidence for common fungal networks among plants

• Wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

• The Plan to Turn the Caribbean's Glut of Sargassum into Biofuel

• Climate change makes South Asia's monsoon season more dangerous

• Is Wi-Fi bad for the environment? Eye-catching London ad suggests Wi-Fi is ‘damaging the climate’ | Tom's Hardware

  A PhD student shared a photograph of an ad for the University of East London, implying that Wi-Fi is detrimental to the environment (h/t vx-underground). The poster says, “WiFi doesn’t grow on trees. Your screen time is damaging the climate.” Although it’s easy to assume that it’s telling us that wireless networking is bad for the environment, a second look at the message focuses more on the time we spend in front of our phones, tablets, smart TVs, and computers, rather than on the Wi-Fi transmission itself.

• As the Great Salt Lake dries up, clouds of dangerous dust blow into boomtowns

• Hundreds may have been exposed to rabies at bat-infested cabins at Grand Teton National Park.

• Scientists Pitch Bold Plan to Turn Nuclear Waste into Nuclear Fuel

• Whistleblower Reveals Colombia's Oil Spill Coverups

• Which are the deadliest European cities in a heatwave?

• America's CO2 Emissions in Charts