2025-08-26

Horseshit

• The rise and fall of socioeconomic status gradients in height around the world

• If You Must Play One Sport, Make It Tennis

• The last mid-1700s building in central Boston is for sale

• How Zoomers Ruined Old Internet Nostalgiak

  A group of students were panicking because their school was monitoring their Discord server and Reddit community for cheating. They were genuinely afraid of administrative oversight on these corporate platforms. So I offered them a solution: move to XMPP and self-hosted alternatives. Actual privacy. Actual decentralization. The real tools that made the old internet independent and free. The response? I was muted for an hour. Two users were "bawling their eyes out at the keyboard" claiming it was a scam and something malicious. Think about that. They want the aesthetic of old internet freedom while rejecting the actual tools that provide it. They'll paste ASCII art and use retro fonts while remaining completely dependent on the same corporate surveillance apparatus they claim to want to escape.

  • Also this person missed the memo on "cargo cult" is now a hate speech.

• 92-year-old sprinter has the muscle cells of someone in their 20s

  • "Stay out of my freezer!"

• The "Garlic Nerds" Building a Better Allium

• When the Listing Appointment Ends with a Tour of an Underground Y2K Bunker

• Burning Man festival hit by fierce dust storm

• Scientists turn spin loss into energy, unlocking ultra-low-power AI chips

• First computer combining human brain with silicon now available

• Cat food made by Michelin star chef is on sale and people think it's delicious

• Is Today's Self-Help Teaching Everyone to Be a Jerk?

• The Family Fallout of DNA Surprises

• People are having fewer babies: Is it the end of the world?

• How life-size cows made of butter became an iconic symbol of the Midwest

• Why L.A. can't back out of hosting 2028 Olympics

celebrity gossip

• 'Positive Obsession' Is a Fresh Look at Octavia E. Butler

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The History of The New Yorker's Vaunted Fact-Checking Department

• China Influences Elections in America's Biggest City

Musk

• SpaceX postpones Starship test flight over ground system issue | Reuters

  • SpaceX calls off critical Starship Flight 10 test launch due to ‘issue with ground systems.

• Musk companies sue Apple, OpenAI alleging anticompetitive scheme

  • Elon Musk's xAI Sues Apple and OpenAI over Siri Partnership, App Store Charts

  • Elon Musk's xAI Sues Apple and OpenAI over AI Competition, App Store Rankings

  • Elon Musk's XAI Sues Apple over Claims It Favors OpenAI

  • Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI over Alleged App Store Conspiracy

• xAI dropped its benefit corp status while Musk was fighting OpenAI

• Elon Musk Has His Vision. Waymo Chief T. Mawakana Says She's Got a Better One

• Awkward Tesla Robotaxi incident proves they are putting optics over safety

Electric / Self Driving cars

• EVs reduce climate pollution, but by how much? New research has the answer

  • Across the US, EVs beat hybrids and gas in life cycle emissions study

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Nvidia's new 'robot brain' goes on sale for $3,499

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The Revolution Will Not Be Star Wars: What Andor Depicts

• Richard Dawkins explains why men are different from women

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Scientists Are Caught in a Political Trap

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple to Kick Off Three-Year Plan to Reinvent Its Iconic iPhone

• DocumentDB Joins the Linux Foundation

• Viewcounts of top Twitch streamers drop after platform cracks down on view bots

• Where are you being recorded? Almost everywhere

• Bluesky blocks service in Mississippi over age assurance law | TechCrunch

• First Netflix House opens its doors on November 12th

• Meta Has Already Won the Smart Glasses Race

• Video Exposes How Old Racing Games Cheated

  these CPU cars start the race with 2x horsepower, which they retain for about half a lap. Then, the multiplier drops to a 1.3-1.8x range for the rest of the race, where cars closer to the lead have a lesser advantage, and cars bringing up the rear have comparatively more boost to keep the action tight. Making matters worse, the game also gives AI vehicles weight reductions at a certain point, too, leading to cars like the Caterham Super Seven R500R effectively having 500 horsepower and weighing well under 500 pounds.

• The dark web's main browser helps pedophile networks flourish, experts say

• FCC Bars over 1,200 Providers for Non-Compliance with Robocall Protections

• Google to require developer verification to install and sideload Android apps

• Woman Ignored Scam Texts About Overdue Bills. Turns Out They Were Real

• Like Intel before it, AMD blames motherboard makers for burnt-out CPUs

• You Don’t Actually Own That Movie You Just “Bought.” A New Class Action Lawsuit

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• (2019) Randomly sampling points in n-dimensional spheres

• (2023) The Physics of Parabolic Microphones: Frequency Dependence of Gain

• teletext in north america

  this seems to be one of the main reasons for the huge difference in teletext adoption between Europe and North America: throughout Europe, broadcasting tended to be quite centralized, which made it difficult to get your foot in the door but very easy to reach a large customer base once you had. In the US, it was easier to get started, but you had to fight for each market area. "Critical mass" was very hard to achieve

• Building the Mouse Logitech Won't Make · Sam Wilkinson

  After 8 years waiting for an updated model from Logitech, I decided to stop waiting and see if I could tackle these issues myself. After first publishing this article a helpful commenter let me know Logitech released the MX Ergo S in late 2024, with quieter switches, USB-C, and a $20 price increase. Let's just pretend I wrote this article a year ago! Still, at least this project let me avoid some e-waste.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI Companion Conditions

• A24 will explore AI for movies

• Are AI sermons ethical? Clergy consider where to draw the line

• A Better Way to Think About AI

• 99,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded every day - including fake ones by established artists.

• Inside DHL's AI upgrade: 'Love it or hate it, you have to work with it'

• The Ingredients Behind AI's Creativity

• AI Is Booming. So Are Household Electricity Bills

• The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

• The All-Female Hacker House Trying to Break AI's Glass Ceiling

• The A.I.-Profits Drought and the Lessons of History

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again carrying a quantum GPS alternative

• The Vera Rubin Observatory is ready to revolutionize astronomy

Crypto con games

• Tether hires Trump's top crypto official to help lead U.S. stablecoin expansion

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Private equity fundraising slides as sector's downturn deepens

• Why Boomers Have More Money Than Everyone Else

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Silicon Valley Launches Pro-AI PACs to Defend Industry in Midterm Elections

  • Silicon Valley is pouring millions into pro-AI PACs to sway midterms

• A16Z spends $1.49M in Washington lobbying, while rivals mostly sit out

• Scott Bessent bets on stablecoins to bolster demand for Treasuries

• How the Richest People in America Avoid Paying Taxes

• Director of Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit Resigns

• Treasury Announces Federal Govt Will Phase Out Paper Checks on September 30th

Trump

• Hegseth Sacks General for Leaking Controversial Intel Report on Iran Strikes.

• Trump says government will make deals like Intel stake 'all day long'

• Trump signs order aimed at ending cashless bail, flag burning

  • Trump signs order to criminally charge those who burn US flag in protest

• Trump Fires Fed Governor Lisa Cook

Democrats

• Can Dems talk their way out of the wilderness? - POLITICO

  • Was It Something I Said? – Third Way

  we are putting a spotlight on the language we use that puts a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities. These are words that people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats. Over the years we’ve conducted, read, and analyzed hours upon hours of focus groups, and we’ve yet to hear a voter volunteer any of the phrases below except as a form of derision or parody of Democrats. We’re not talking about techno-speak, like net-zero and climate resiliency. Those words put up their own Ivy League walls between policymakers and voters. Here we are focusing on the eggshell dance of political correctness which leaves the people we aim to reach cold or fearful of admonishment.

Left Angst

• Is aircon right wing? How cooling systems got caught in a culture war

  People broadly on the right are prepared to put comfort ahead of environmental concerns. People broadly on the left tend to say that aircon is distinctly uncool, almost as if sweating through the summer is our moral comeuppance for humanity’s longstanding profligacy.

• The Unusual Nonprofit That Helps ICE Spy on Wire Transfers

• How many grammes of protein do you need anyway? (Archive)

  I assume this incessant focus on muscle building is a direct response to pandemic diktats that left us feeling emasculated and vulnerable. I wonder also if the “strong” aesthetic is a corollary of a new world order in which the politics of power and domination have supplanted the tender shoots of gentler (read vegan) diplomatic skills. The incredible bulk is a subconscious response to feeling threatened. A shift into a battle mode. Needless to say, it’s also an expression of elitism: protein powders are expensive, and there’s an underlying Patrick Bateman narcissism in this pursuit of the perfect bod. Bateman was himself a parody of the 1980s obsession with self-care, grooming and personal wealth. That wellness era was slightly different — rowing machines and sit-ups instead of Hyrox fitness competitions and proffee — but it was epitomised by the same macho zeal. Forty years later, we’re back in that cycle: thinner, leaner and more aggressive. Meanwhile, Bateman has become a style icon, and we have missed the point.

• We need a new theory of democracy – because this version has failed

  According to polling data, 62 percent of Americans favor the government being responsible for the health coverage of all people in the country. Sixty-five percent of Americans polled favored the infrastructure bill passed during Joe Biden’s presidency. In a poll taken just last year, 63 percent of Americans wanted to increase trade with other countries, and 75 percent worried that tariffs would raise consumer prices. Another poll found 83 percent of likely voters, including 80 percent of Republicans, supported providing federal housing assistance after a natural disaster. Yet in 2024, a near-majority of voters chose a president who would not only not improve medical access, but would adopt a policy to drop coverage for at least 10 million Americans who are currently insured. His other policies include neglecting infrastructure (with the exception of ICE detention facilities), and rescinding unspent funds from the Biden infrastructure bill. FEMA has been cut, and the president has imposed the highest tariffs since the Smoot-Hawley Act almost a century ago.

  • When you rig an opinion poll to get the answers you want, you should not expect those answers to reflect the world as it is.

• Why wind farms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory

• Sunday at the garden party for Curtis Yarvin and the new, new right

• US immigrant population down by more than a million people amid Trump crackdown

• Trump halts construction on nearly complete wind farm off Rhode Island

• Burner phones, wiped socials: precautions for visitors to Trump's America

• Google President Praised MAGA Speech Slamming 'Climate Extremist Agenda'

• Trump blames renewable energy for electricity prices. Experts point elsewhere

• Would this Supreme Court ever overturn same-sex marriage?

• The Media Can't Handle the Absence of Truth

  it’s even worse when a president mines our harbors based on the false claim that other nations have rocky coasts — and the media declare that he’s winning. I’ve talked about the media’s problem with calling a lie a lie for many years — in fact, since my first year writing for the Times. Back then, faced with George W. Bush’s lies about taxes and Social Security, I suggested that if a candidate said the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views differ on shape of planet.” Yet media organizations still haven’t figured out how to deal with it.

• Trump and RFK Jr. To Ban Covid-19 Vaccine 'Within Months'

• NASA Cut 4k Staff. Where Will They Go?

• US gov websites are getting "America by Design" redesign headed by DOGE insider

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia fights imminent deportation to Uganda

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Florida man of cybercrime group "Scattered Spider" sentenced to 10 years

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US customs regulations hamper the shipping of goods to the USA

  • End of tariffs exemption erodes overseas mail to U.S.

  • Australia Post halts most parcels to US as tariff chaos hits global carriers

• Venezuela Sends 15,000 Troops to Border as US Warships Approach

World

• Australian university used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors

• Metropolitan Police contract with Fujitsu is 'potential conflict of interest'

• Owner of 'US 8964' licence plate faced police scrutiny and a year of harassment

• Ban passengers playing loud music on public transport, say Tories

• Japan has opened its first osmotic power plant –what is it and how does it work?

• Delhi High Court Orders Sci-Hub, Libgen to Be Blocked in India

• Censorship in the EU: Hate Speech Laws Are Suffocating Free Speech

• Albania Seizes Its Moment in the Sun

• Why the UK is falling back in love with retro 90s tech • The Register

• EU cave in on vehicle trade rules will cost European lives

• Suspects blame technical faults for Baltic Sea cable breaches

• The choices facing Britain's next MI6 chief

Israel

• No place is safe: families flee Gaza City Israel vows to press on with offensive

• Denmark Made a Special Exception To Let In Hundreds of Palestinian Refugees. Here’s What Happened.

  In 1992, the Danish Parliament passed a special law granting asylum to 321 Palestinian refugees from Lebanon who were living in the country illegally. Twenty-five years later, a Danish minister, Martin Henriksen, asked a parliamentary committee to examine how they had fared in their new home. 67 of the 321 had received prison sentences of some kind, while 137 were subject to legal fines larger than $200. That is, more than 60 percent carried criminal records. Welfare dependency was also widespread. A majority of the refugees received welfare benefits, according to the report, which tracked those benefits from 2007 to 2016. No fewer than 180 of the refugees, or 56 percent, received welfare benefits during the 10-year span. That figure peaked at 189 in 2016.

• Four journalists among 20 dead in Israeli strike on hospital

  • Journalists killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza hospital, health officials say

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Hunting Russian Drones in a Prop Plane with Shotguns and Rifles

China

• China mandates domestic firms source 50% of chips from Chinese producers

• Chinese property giant Evergrande delisted after fall

• Apple Helped China Become a Tech Superpower

• Painting the Sky with Drones Is Now an Official Job in China

Health / Medicine

• Common food thickeners–thought to pass right through us–are digested

• High Levels of Toxic Metals Found in Popular Chocolate Brands

• Mediterranean diet may offset genetic risk of Alzheimer's

• Eating meat may protect against cancer, landmark research shows

  • Animal protein not adversely associated with CVD/cancer-related mortality risk

• Smoking eases inflamed bowels via bacteria migration

• Nearly 12% of Americans have used GLP-1 weight loss drugs

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• As Measles Exploded Officials in Texas Looked to CDC Scientists. No One Answered

• U.S. confirms nation's first travel-associated human screwworm case

  • First human case of flesh-eating screwworm parasite confirmed in US

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Burkina Faso Halts Gates Foundation-Backed Anti-Malaria Project

• Experiment will attempt to counter climate change by altering ocean

• Norway's Northern Lights CCS project starts operations with first CO2 injected

• River Don salmon return for 'first time in 200 years'

• Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county with no notice

• IBM and NASA Develop a Digital Twin of the Sun to Predict Future Solar Storms

• Polluted towns make sparrows frail, anxious and old before their time

• Climbing catfish filmed scaling waterfalls

  In November 2024, environmental police in Rochedo, Brazil, stumbled on an unexpected sight: thousands of orange-and-black bumblebee catfish scaling the slippery rocks behind waterfalls on the Aquidauana River.