2025-08-23

Horseshit

• DNA from ancient bones reveals how Indigenous Americans got their mucus

• Cracker Barrel unveils a new logo as part of wider rebrand efforts, sparking ire

• When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident

  the main presenter of the annual Hugo awards butchers almost every foreign name on the list. When trying to pronounce an unusual African name, the presenter giggles.

• Can toe spacers help your feet?

• The trouble with trigger warnings: True drama is an emotional ambush

• What cash can, and can’t, do | Vox

  Three studies that gave out unrestricted cash to Americans during the pandemic found nulls on all the outcomes they tested: the cash didn’t improve health or self-reported well-being or even, in one study, how well people say they’re doing financially.

• Ancient bones suggest humans interbred with Neanderthals 100k years earlier

• Heroic dog crosses busy street to get owners emergency help in Pittsburgh

• Our primate ancestors evolved in the cold – not the tropics

• Electrification push is yet another source of SF housing tension

• Reading for pleasure has fallen drastically over the past 20 years

• 1848 painting has uncanny insight into American conspiracy thinking

celebrity gossip

• Mel Brooks: 'Hitler was bad to every Jew in the world, but he was good to me'

• Uh Oh, It's an 'Unflinching' Documentary About Kanye West

• Justice Department releases transcripts with Ghislaine Maxwell

  "I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects," Maxwell said. Asked about Trump's relationship with Epstein, Maxwell said she did not think they were "close friends." "I don't recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance," she told prosecutors.

  • Department of Justice | Maxwell Interview

  Redactions of victim names and other identifying information have been applied.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Hear Me Out: the Anti-Smartphone Thing Is a Grift

  the latest suite of “think of the children” policies create the infrastructure for much broader censorship. The problem isn’t the phone bans themselves—it’s how they’re being used as part of a larger authoritarian project that most people can’t see coming, in large part because of the media conversation. The media environment around “it’s the phones” has created a false dichotomy: either you support phone bans, age verification, and authoritarian content restrictions, or you’re complicit in hardcore pornography being firehosed straight into toddlers’ eyes.

Musk

• Grok chats exposed in Google results

• Tesla bid to become a UK electricity supplier gets politically 'charged'

• Elon Musk to Take on Microsoft with 'Macrohard'

• US probes delays in Tesla crash reports involving driver-assistance systems

  • Tesla Hasn't Filed Crash Reports on Time. Federal Investigators Want to Know Why

• Elon Musk's X Agrees to Settlements with Former Employees

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Americans' junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says

• Waymo Approved to Start Autonomous Testing in NYC

  • Waymo granted first permit to begin testing autonomous vehicles in New York City

  • NYC to Test Autonomous Vehicles with Trained Safety Specialist Behind Wheel

• BMW's next EV is its most sustainable car yet–here's why

• EV drivers set to pay road user charges as record numbers sell in Australia

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The number of Shakers in the U.S. rises to 3

• Men's feminist theatrics in attempt to impress progressive women skewered online

  Maybe he makes a point of carrying tampons around with him for women in need. He’s called a “performative male” and is a relatively new archetype gaining traction – and inspiring mockery and critique – online. Labubus are a key component, he will probably have one dangling off a bag or belt loop. Point-and-shoot cameras are optional. He’d like you to think he has read Sally Rooney’s entire back catalogue and that Joni Mitchell is his favourite musician, but he doesn’t know a single lyric. There is a menswear element, too. He’s likely to wear baggy trousers, perhaps made from Japanese selvedge denim, Vivienne Westwood chrome hearts necklaces and a tote bag, ideally emblazoned with feminist slogans. All of this posturing has one end goal: to look good in the eyes of (progressive) women. According to J’Nae Phillips, a trend forecaster and the creator of the Fashion Tingz newsletter: “A performative male is less about who someone is than about how they curate and project masculinity in public – usually online. He is someone acutely aware that manhood is being watched, assessed, and consumed, and so he stages it.”

• Rainbow crosswalk outside Pulse nightclub in Orlando painted over by state, mayor says: “A cruel political act.”

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Math Breakthroughs from Behind Bars

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google scores six-year Meta cloud deal worth over $10B

• Y Combinator backs Epic in Apple appeal calls App Store fee 'tax on innovation'

  • Y Combinator says Apple's App Store has hindered startup growth

• Germany's Ecosia proposes stewardship to run Google Chrome

• Why 'Silksong' Took Seven Years to Make

• DMCA Used to Take Down GamersNexus Nvidia Smuggling Expose

• No, Google Did Not Unilaterally Decide to Kill XSLT – Eric’s Archived Thoughts

  There is one thing that we should all keep in mind, which is that “remove from the web platform” really means “remove from browsers”. Even if this proposal goes through, XSLT could still be used server-side. You could use libraries that support XSLT versions more recent than 1.0, even! Thus, XML could still be turned into HTML, just not in the client via native support, though JS or WASM polyfills, or even add-on extensions, would still be an option.

• Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband

• Bluesky blocks Mississippi under new age verification law

  • Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law

• Hollywood's Newest Formula for Success: Rereleasing Old Movies

• Computer Fraud Laws Used to Prosecute Leaking Air Crash Footage to CNN

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Is the AI bubble about to pop? Sam Altman is prepared either way

• AI Cannibalism Can Be Good

• An AI Divide Is Growing in Schools

• Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading | The Verge

  • Our approach to energy innovation and AI's environmental footprint

• OpenAI lawyers question Meta's role in Elon Musk's $97B takeover bid

• The Hobbyist Restorer Who Rocked the Art World with an A.I. Innovation

• My responses to The Register - Xe Iaso

  People are using these tools to replace knowledge and gaining skills. There's no reason to assume that this attack against our cultural sense of thrift will not continue. This is the perfect attack against middle-management: unsleeping automatons that never get sick, go on vacation, or need to be paid health insurance that can produce output that superficially resembles the output of human employees. I see no reason that this will continue to grow until and unless the bubble pops. Even then, a lot of those scrapers will probably stick around until their venture capital runs out.

  • Fastly warns AI bots can hit sites 39K times per minute • The Register

• They Are Sacrificing the Economy on the Altar of a Machine God

  At first glance, that ugly divergence in the first chart and the uglier downward slope in the second suggest deBoer is correct—something’s off with the US’s economy. Economist Michael A. Arouet, who shared the first chart on Twitter, says this: “S&P 490 has had basically no earnings growth since 2022, despite rampant inflation. It’s just 10 companies doing really well, while the broader economy is in contraction in real terms.” Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, says that “The difference between the IT bubble in the 1990s and the AI bubble today is that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 today are more overvalued than they were in the 1990s.”

• Australia's Biggest Bank Reverses Plan to Replace Jobs with AI

  • Bank reverses decision to replace 45 customer service staff with AI chatbot

• The future is bot versus bot

• OpenAI and Anthropic clamp down on investment vehicles

• What if A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This? | The New Yorker

  In a recent article, Zitron pointed out that about thirty-five per cent of U.S. stock-market value—and therefore a large share of many retirement portfolios—is currently tied up in the so-called Magnificent Seven technology companies. According to Zitron’s analysis, these firms spent five hundred and sixty billion dollars on A.I.-related capital expenditures in the past eighteen months, while their A.I. revenues were only about thirty-five billion. “When you look at these numbers, you feel insane,” Zitron told me.

• The warning signs the AI bubble is about to burst

• Coinbase CEO says he 'went rogue' and fired some employees who didn't adopt AI

• TikTok to layoff hundreds of UK content reviewers for AI

• Building a16z’s Personal AI Workstation with four NVIDIA RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell Max-Q GPUs

  • 1,650 watt PSU, no mention of price, but something over $30k and prolly closer to $50k

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Canadian companies race to launch rockets into orbit from home soil – a first

• SpaceX launches Space Force's X-37B spaceplane to demo laser communications

Crypto con games

• The Whale of Mass Destruction: How Bitcoin FOMO Might Become TBTF

• EU speeds up plans for digital euro after US passes stablecoin law

• Australia Orders Binance Audit After Flagging 'Serious Concerns'

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Cisco announces mass layoffs just after soaring revenue report

• Apple Fitness Chief Accused of Toxic Workplace Culture and Harassment

• Biotech CEO sues Uber after illegal immigrant driver assault caught on camera

• NIMBYs threaten to sink Project Sail, a $17B datacenter development in Georgia

• Powell Highlights Job Market Worries, Opening Path to Rate Cut

• The Tale of the Rent-Seeking Saw - WSJ

  The group noted the rule would leave SawStop the only manufacturer on the market with saws meeting the safety requirements for years (while rivals produced their own products), creating a “government mandated monopoly.” Lawyers separately note that a CPSC grant of a monopoly would likely have protected SawStop from antitrust litigation. Talk about a sweet deal. The CPSC has now put an end to this nonsense by withdrawing the rule. Acting Chairman Peter Feldman says in an interview that “this rulemaking was never about protecting consumers,” but instead was a “bald-faced market grab” to “secure a government-sanctioned monopoly. Their repeated refusal to license safety technology on fair terms makes the point plain: Instead of competing in the marketplace, they chose rent-seeking through the regulatory process.”

• Texas Instruments' $60B U.S. project, the next iPhone chips fabric

• US banks lobby regulators for national standards to curb state influence

• Inflation is down, prices remain high: when will the cost-of-living crisis end?

• Southwest Is Changing Its Rules for Plus-Size Passengers

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

• FTC Warns Against Weakening the Data Security of Americans for Foreign Powers

Trump

• FBI searches home of former Trump adviser John Bolton

  • FBI searches home and office of ex-Trump national security adviser John Bolton

  The FBI is searching the Maryland home and Washington office of John Bolton, who served in President Donald Trump’s first administration as national security adviser but later became critical of the president, as part of an investigation into the handling of classified information, a person familiar with the matter said Friday. The searches appear to be the most significant public step the Justice Department has taken against a perceived enemy of the president, and they’re likely to elicit fresh criticism that the Trump administration is using its law enforcement powers to go after the Republican’s foes. The searches of Bolton’s home and office come as the Trump administration has taken steps to examine the activities of other critics, including by authorizing a grand jury investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

  • John Bolton's Maryland home raided by the FBI

  The probe — which is said to involve classified documents — was first launched years ago, but the Biden administration shut it down “for political reasons,” according to a senior US official.

• Intel and Trump Reach Historic Agreement to Accelerate American Technology

  • Trump Says Intel Has Agreed to Give the US a 10% Equity Stake

  • Trump says US will take 10% stake in Intel

  • Trump says Intel CEO agreed to give U.S. government $10B

  • Trump Says Intel Has Agreed to Give U.S. a 10% Stake in Its Business

  • US Government to purchase 10% stake in Intel, according to report

  • Trump Says U.S. Will Take Nearly 10% Equity Stake in Intel

  • US president says Intel CEO agreed to give the US a 10% stake

  • Intel sells US Government 10% stake

  • Trump says Intel agreed to give US a stake in its company

  • Meh. Intel has been past "walking dead" for a decade, and the government cannot get ny more fucked up by Intel than it already is, right?

Left Angst

• Doge Targeted Him on Social Media. Then the Taliban Took His Family

• Federal data website outage raises concerns among advocates

• 'Flying Blind': Trump Strips Government of Expertise at a High-Stakes Moment

• Trump administration to vet all 55M foreigners with U.S. visas

  • US to review all 55M visas to check if holders broke rules

• The umpire who picked a side: John Roberts the death of rule of law in America

• Trump to tap Airbnb co-founder Gebbia to improve government websites

  • Musk helping Trump made Tesla and EV's lose their shine; will this take the glitter off Airbnb?

• Kilowatt Madness - Paul Krugman

  In the America I grew up in, people who made big boasts about what they would achieve then completely failed to deliver were considered unserious blowhards. What happened to that country?

• How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies

• The US Department of Agriculture Bans Support for Renewables

• Trump admin strips pollution monitoring from new weather satellites

• Donald Trump's cuts to renewables risk US energy crisis, warn executives

• President Trump's War on "Woke AI" Is a Civil Liberties Nightmare

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI warns of Russian hacks targeting US critical infrastructure

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US to Take Part in Russia's Eurovision, Joining Belarus, Cuba and Venezuela

• DHL: German postal service to suspend transport of business parcels to US

  "The reason for these likely temporary restrictions is new processes required by U.S. authorities for postal shipping, which differ from the previously applicable regulations," it said in a statement on Friday.

  • Germany's DHL joins peers in restricting US-bound parcel services

  • Mail Carriers Pause US Deliveries as Tariff Shift Sows Confusion

  • NZ Post suspends deliveries to the US as Trump's tariffs loom

  On its website, NZ Post said there were some restrictions on what could be sent to the US and US territories. This included suspending a number of services temporarily "until further notice", while formal processes around the new US tariffs were being finalised. The suspended services included sending with economy, economy tracked, economy plus, courier and express. Letters sent via economy letters and documents sent via express were the only services still available.

• US Navy sailor convicted of spying for China (PRC)

World

• 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

  • UK Warns It Could Block 4Chan After Refusal to Pay Daily Online Safety Fines

  • Why is 4Chan so controversial? The online message board clashing with Ofcom

• Baby food firms given 18 months to cut sugar and salt in products

  High sugar intake in children's diets is a significant factor contributing to high rates of childhood obesity in the UK, which is among the highest in western Europe.

• US and China Are Thwarting India's Shot at $7T Solar Prize

• Think Doing Business in India Is Hard? Try Getting a Drink After Work

Israel

• UN officially declares famine in Gaza

• Microsoft calls protest a 'destructive' act by outsiders

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The Crowdfunded War Map That Ukrainians Check Every Morning

• Max, the 'chilling' new development in Putin's 'digital iron curtain'

China

• Nvidia Orders Halt to H20 Production After China Directive Against Purchases

• Nvidia Urges Taiwan to Embrace Nuclear Power Ahead of Referendum

• China's Decarbonization Is So Fast Even New Coal Plants Aren't Stopping It

• Chinese semiconductor shares surge after DeepSeek gives boost to homegrown chips

Health / Medicine

• California Resident Tests Positive for Plague. What to Know About the Disease

• Is moderate drinking healthy? Scientists say the idea is outdated

• How to avoid diseases in public bathrooms

• Death toll from Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in New York City rises to 6 and infections hit 111.

• Fewer Americans are drinking alcohol as health concerns rise

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• How to Vaccinate the World

• Covid-19 sent the world mad

  After the Black Death wiped out a third of the people in Europe, fake news proliferated: rumours that the plague was caused by Jews poisoning the wells led to pogroms. Wages soared (because there were too few labourers) and rents collapsed (because so many homes were empty). Rulers tried brute force to block change, banning farmworkers from leaving their lord’s land to go and work for another who paid better. But this provoked uprisings, such as the Peasants’ Revolt in England in 1381, an impulse that ultimately led to the end of serfdom in most of Europe. Covid-19 was less deadly. But two recent books argue that it, too, had far-reaching and unexpected consequences. It fed a global surge in inflation, a breakdown of trust in experts and an aggravation of political polarisation.

  Before covid, few scientists believed that ordering people to wear masks or stay at home could stop the spread of a virus that passed easily from human to human, assert Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee of Princeton University in “In Covid’s Wake”. Lockdowns are hard to sustain and immensely costly. Yet when the novel coronavirus emerged in China, the Chinese government imposed draconian lockdowns, which it claimed were highly successful. The World Health Organisation accepted this. Lockdowns swiftly became conventional wisdom around the world.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Solar panels in space 'could provide 80% of Europe's renewable energy by 2050'

• Urban Heat Is Delaying Spring in NYC's Parks

• Microplastics accumulate in organs faster than scientists can measure the risks

• Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes

• Artificial light has essentially lengthened birds' day

• Obviously not the ones that aid Florida would be underwater 20 years ago... Sea-level projections from the 1990s were spot on

• From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes

• Well-known orca dies in Johnstone Strait surrounded by family and dolphins