2025-09-15

etc

• US power use to reach record highs in 2025 and 2026, EIA says

• Three Kinds of Contrarians

  The above framing allows me to explain and argue for the virtue of two key ways that I am contrarian. First, I prefer to accept the results of the usual specific expert data and theory when that conflicts with vibes, even when most adjacent experts go with vibes. For example, most folks with adjacent expertise estimate the health value of medicine to be high, agreeing with the usual vibes, while it seems to me that our best specific theory and evidence says otherwise. A similar case happens re the value of democracy. Second, I usually presume that most areas of expertise have substantial insight into topics when thousands have studied an area for decades. So I try to accept as many as possible of the usual specific data and theory driven conclusions of all areas of expertise. When they conflict, I try to use discipline-neutral principles of evaluation to decide which area’s data and theory speak most strongly on the topic. For example, though I’m an econ professor, I don’t just assume that economists are always right. This is “contrarian” in the sense that few experts are polymaths, and most of those stay loyal to a single home area of expertize. The third way to be a contrarian is to just embrace contrary vibes. “That’s just your opinion, man. You guys are so full of yourselves. You can’t tell me what to think.” Sometimes that leads to wisdom, but more often to error.

Horseshit

• Toxic Fumes Are Leaking into Airplanes, Sickening Crews and Passengers

• Repetitive negative thinking is associated with cognitive function decline

• Commercial quantum computing at scale remains a distant promise, report claims

• Graphene just broke a fundamental law of physics

• American Museum of Natural History Announces "A Night at the Museum" Sleepover

• When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children's Book Writer

• How older parents divorce affects their adult children

• Would you swap your $2M house for a $2M motorhome?

• A Strange Gas-Pumping Defect Is Making $100k Corvettes Go Up in Flames

celebrity gossip

• Desi Arnaz's Revolution Was Televised

  Desi Arnaz—the man who played Lucille Ball's husband on the show, and was married to her in real life too—was not just spectacularly successful; he was a revolutionary who changed TV in ways we feel to this day. But his fame has faded: I Love Lucy reruns used to be omnipresent, but if you see one now, it's likely to be on a channel with lots of ads for catheters. Todd S. Purdum's biography—Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television—gives us a chance to revive the man's memory.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• You don't have to say something about every terrible thing

  So let me say something that will undoubtedly feel hypocritical given that we’re now several paragraphs into this: you don’t have to say something about every damned terrible thing that happened. By “you”, I’m referring to the community of people who comment on political events, rather than reporters who cover hard news. If you work for The New York Times or the Salt Lake Tribune, you’re in a different position. As part of that community, I believe it would be helpful to establish a permission structure to clarify that not commenting on an event does not imply a lack of concern.

  • "Silence is Violence" and "if you ain't for us, you're against us!" attitudes have come to be so popular because they've served the ends of the "Unity is Strength" Left.

Musk

• Elon Musk's xAI lays off workers tasked with training Grok

  • XAI reportedly lays off 500 workers from data annotation team

• Elon Musk eyes next target after cars, rockets and robots

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Tesla and Stellantis learn Americans like their trucks the old-fashioned way

• Amazon's Zoox jumps into U.S. robotaxi race with Las Vegas launch

• Volkswagen's EV Battery Dreams Are Coming Together

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• After 10 years of black hole science, Stephen Hawking is proven right

• Their Schools Banned Phones. Out Came the iPods and Cassette Players

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple has no one left who can say no

• Mozilla Firefox Is Officially Getting MKV Video Support

• A Man Who Makes Jane Austen Come Alive on Screen

• CVC Strikes $1.5B Deal for GoDaddy Rival Namecheap

• Harvard Students prove Meta glasses could find anyone in seconds

• Nvidia Discrete GPU Market Share Dominance Expands to 94%

• Is This the End of the Dictionary?

• Phone batteries are getting more compact, but the US is missing out

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The PC was never a true 'IBMer' - by Babbage

• Refurb Weekend: Silicon Graphics Indigo² Impact 10000

• Get Out of Technology

  You heard there was money in tech. You heard there was status in tech. You showed up.

  You never cared about technology. You cared about enriching yourself.

  You are an entryist piece of shit. And it’s time for you to leave.

  But you won’t leave willingly. We need to take action.

  Give it all away to everyone for free. Then you’ll have no reason to be here.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Rolling Stone Publisher Sues Google over AI Summaries

  • You don't need AI to summarize "Rolling Stone": "Overwrought Consensus Leftist Tripe written by someone who whishes they was Hunter Thompson" would cover everything they publish.

  • Rolling Stone, Billboard Owner Penske Sues Google over AI Overviews

• OpenAI's spending spree is powering tech industry. Oracle is the latest winner

• ChatGPT Sent Me to the ER

  ChatGPT's response was unequivocal: "Go to the emergency department. Now. Tell them you want to rule out Horner's syndrome due to possible carotid dissection."

• A.I.'S Prophet of Doom Wants to Shut It All Down

• AI chatbots are already biasing research

• The AI-Scraping Free-for-All Is Coming to an End

• We're Walling Off the Open Internet to Stop AI

• New AI hype "Our language models are so 'conscious' we need to give them rights"

• The AI Doomers Are Losing the Argument

• AI Use Is Being Driven by People Who Understand It the Least

• Vibe coding has turned senior devs into 'AI babysitters'

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• How to get samples back from Mars

• Airbus, Thales, Leonardo could sign first deal this year on satellite tie-up

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Polarization, purpose and profit

  We present a model in which firms compete for workers who value nonpecuniary job attributes, such as purpose, sustainability, political stances, or working conditions. Firms adopt production technologies that enable them to offer jobs with varying levels of these desirable attributes. Firms’ profits are higher when they cater to workers with extreme preferences. In a competitive assignment equilibrium, firms become polarized and not only reflect but also amplify the polarized preferences of the general population. More polarized sectors exhibit higher profits, lower average wages, and a reduced labor share of value added. Sustainable investing amplifies firm polarization.

• Oregon mass layoffs approach Great Recession levels

• Locked-up merchandise is driving customers away

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The West is buried under red tape

• Search for organizations and people that have paid Supreme Court justices

• California age verification bill backed by Google, Meta, OpenAI heads to Newsom

Trump

• Trump administration launches trial program to fast-track electric air taxis

Democrats

• What Caused Democrats' No-Show Problem in 2024?

Left Angst

• Tyler Robinson joked that his 'Doppelganger' did it on Discord

• Charlie Kirk shooting suspect not cooperating authorities Utah governor says

  • Utah governor says motive not certain but the suspect was on the left

• NYT Publishes What Streamer Who Was to Debate Charlie Kirk 'Would Have Said' – Twitchy

  Someone else who was supposed to debate Kirk was streamer Hasan Piker, but since Kirk can no longer debate because he was assassinated, the New York Times has decided to publish what Piker "would have said" to Kirk. Maybe they can pull a Jim Acosta and have Piker debate an AI Charlie Kirk.

• ‘Prove me wrong’ — Charlie Kirk and the age of rage

  It is precisely the lack of debate and dialogue that has triggered this type of violence. For those dwelling deep in the hardened silos of our news and social media, dissenting voices become increasingly intolerable. Charlie is still exposing that hypocrisy. As I prepared to address Charlie’s murder in Prague, anti-free speech groups were already using his murder to justify even greater limits on free speech to combat hate and disinformation. This is the ultimate dishonoring of his life and his legacy. Charlie died in the fight for free speech, challenging speech codes and censorship.

• Unmasking 'Luna': Charlie Kirk Assassin Suspect's Alleged Lover Is Confirmed to Be Trans

• Here are the Facts, and what they mean for Democrats

  You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements. Here’s what it means for you, the Democrats reading this: These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don’t particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their families—the bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—depend on political activation, whether they desire it or not. These people are now sprinting—not jogging, not walking, but racing—to the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened. . Because, even if you’re just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.

• Charlie Kirk Assassination Suspect Lived With Transgender Partner, Discord Denies Use | ZeroHedge

  While investigators say that Robinson was communicating on Discord, Discord says that never happened, and that there's "no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord." "The messages referenced in recent reporting about planning details do not appear to be Discord messages," the company said, adding "These were communications between the suspect’s roommate and a friend after the shooting, where the roommate was recounting the contents of a note the suspect had left elsewhere. "We have removed the suspect’s account for violating our off-platform behavior policy.”

• Tyler Robinson may have revealed details about Charlie Kirk murder to roomie on Discord: court papers

  Tyler Robinson may have revealed details about his evil slaying of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk to his roommate — sending app messages including about the “need to retrieve a rifle from a drop point,” according to court papers. Officials said the roommate showed them the messages from a contact he had named “Tyler” — and that some of them also described engravings on bullet casings.

  The messages from “Tyler” stated a “need to retrieve a rifle from a drop point, leaving the rifle in a bush, messages related to visually watching the area where a rifle was left and a message referring to having left the rifle wrapped in a towel,” the affidavit shows. Other messages “also refer to engraving bullets” and how the rifle was “unique,” according to law enforcement. “Messages from contact Tyler also mention that he had changed outfits,” the affidavit states.

• Why the Left Wants the Right to ‘Lower the Temperature’ › American Greatness

  It has long been obvious that Left has a black belt in what psychologists call “projection.” They are masters of the art of accusing their ideological opponents of vile things of which they themselves are guilty. Their demand that we all must work to “lower the temperature” and “come together” in unity after the murder of Charlie Kirk is a subset of projection. They call their opponents “fascists” and an “extreme threat to the very foundation of the republic,” but when someone from their flock responds with violence, they blame “intemperate,” “right-wing,” MAGA rhetoric.

  One key lesson that emerged from the horror of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was summed up neatly by a post on X: “They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi; they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.” More and more people are coming to understand this.

• A Plea for President Trump With a Fragile Country on Edge - The New York Times

  Make peace at home. Make peace between Americans. That is the peace prize that you don’t have to wait for anyone to confer on you. It is there for your making and the taking. This American peace prize will not be awarded by Scandinavians. It will be awarded by history. It will say that when Americans came closer to civil war than perhaps any other time since the Civil War, President Donald Trump surprised everyone on the upside: He called Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate and House and all nine Supreme Court Justices and said: Come to the White House and let the country see us standing together against political violence and vowing that we will model civil discourse and disagreement — in our speeches and online — and we will call out the opposite when we see it among our supporters as well our rivals.

• Pete Hegseth tells Pentagon staff to hunt for negative Charlie Kirk posts

• New Bill Would Allow Rubio to Strip US Citizens' Passports over Political Speech

• War on Cancer: Camcelled

• Navy doctor fired after right-wing activists find pronouns on social media

• New Bill Would Give Marco Rubio "Thought Police" Power to Revoke U.S. Passports

  • New Bill Would Allow Rubio to Strip US Citizens' Passports over Political Speech

• Trump's Hyundai Raid Drains U.S. Battery Brains

• Administration to award a no-bid contract on research into vaccines and autism

• These nations are wooing PhD students amid US funding uncertainties

• EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

• Christian nationalists set sights on tiny Jackson County, Tennessee

  They want to go back to an America before the civil rights movement "ruined everything." They want to kick out legal immigrants even if they became U.S. citizens decades ago. And they want to put women back where they think they belong. If necessary to achieve their goals, they are prepared to accept a Protestant dictator who will rule according to their own interpretation of what it means to be a Christian. Now, an exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation has discovered that those Christian nationalists have set their sights on a remote Middle Tennessee county, hoping to attract hundreds, even thousands, of like-minded people from across the country as part of efforts, in the words of one activist, to “radicalize Main Street.” That effort — with Christian nationalist podcasters Andrew Isker and C. Jay Engel leading the way — is targeting tiny Jackson County and the county seat of Gainesboro, located about 90 minutes northeast of Nashville in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Census data shows Jackson County is home to an estimated 12,711 people.

• An Eruption of Assassinations

  According to my US Political Violence Database (USPVDB), the five years from 2020 to 2024 saw seven assassinations. This is higher than the previous peak during the 1960s, although only half as large as that of the late 1860s. This count includes an assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Luigi Mangione killing Brian Thompson, and a few lesser-known others, but not the assassination of Charlie Kirk (which will be part of the count during the next 5 year period). At the same time, we are experiencing a huge outbreak of terrorism, most of which takes the form of indiscriminate mass shootings. The Database classifies a political violence event as terrorism when the intent is to attack a social group or the society as a whole, while assassination is an attack against a particular representative of such a group, often its leader or another prominent member.

  The significance in the rising frequency of such instability “micro-events” is that they signal that something is deeply broken within the social system in which they happen. I tried to draw attention to the rising frequency of shooting rampages back in 2008 (you can read about it in my 2012 blog post, Canaries in a Coal Mine). A canary dropping dead in a miner’s cage is not the cause of the explosion to come, but rather an advance warning. Similarly, the increasing incidence of assassinations and terrorism tells us that we aren’t out of the woods yet, by a long stretch.

• House Just Passed a Bill Punishing "Politically Motivated" Boycotts of Israel

• Taxpayers Will Pay Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies for Big Beautiful Bill

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Inside the battle to protect time

  Countries are looking at how to strengthen timekeeping systems vital for communications, financial transactions and operating power plants, after wartime tampering and unexpected outages have revealed weaknesses. The focus on time is a result of growing anxiety about disruption to signals from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).

World

• Cuba entirely without power following electric grid collapse

• A third of UK firms using 'bossware' to monitor workers' activity

• French platform combines carpooling with cross-border price arbitrage in the EU

• Equatorial Guinea enforces yearlong internet outage for island that protested

• Denmark picks French-Italian SAMP/T air defense system over Patriot

• Bank of Thailand Freezes 3M Accounts, Sets Daily Transfer Limits

• Young activists who toppled Nepal's government now picking new leaders

  • Hardship, hashtags combined to fuel Nepal's violent response to social media ban

• What Happened to Mexico City's Food Scene? Americans

• Merck scraps £1B expansion in the UK over lack of state investment

Israel

• Anti-Israel protests force early end to Vuelta a España cycle race

• Medics in southern Gaza sound alarm over wave of newly displaced Palestinians

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Romania Says Russian Drone Entered Its Airspace

• Ukraine's General Staff Plans to Restrict Mobile Internet During Russian Attacks

China

• China is ditching the dollar, fast: Officials believe the yuan has come of age

• Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great Firewall to the World

  • China's Great Firewall has its biggest leak ever – source code and docs spill

• Think tank warns China’s polysilicon subsidies are frying Western fabs.

• Geedge and MESA leak: Analyzing the great firewall’s largest document leak

• As they race to go global, many Chinese companies are choosing new names

• China to open world's tallest bridge, Huajiang Grand Canyon: infrastructure push

• China running out of rubbish to burn as waste power goes into overdrive

Health / Medicine

• Acupuncture might be effective treatment for chronic low back pain older adults

• Myocardial infarction may be an infectious disease

• Why are so many young, fit, non-smoking women getting lung cancer?

• 3 Fatal overdoses in L.A. County linked to synthetic supplement

• Cannabis use associated with quadrupled risk of developing type 2 diabetes

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Child's Death Shows How Measles in the Brain Can Kill Years After an Infection

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Fukushima Insects Tested for Cognition

  In the contaminated area around Fukushima, Japan, scientists are studying the impact of radioactivity on the cognitive abilities of pollinating insects such as honeybees and giant hornets.

• World emissions hit record high, but the EU leads trend reversal

• Study finds alarming levels of PFAS in blood of those living near USAF base

• Red things is sexy: Female jumping spiders drive hybridization by favoring red males across species

• California Wants to Ban 'Forever Chemicals' in Pans. These Chefs Say Don't Do It

• A South Dakota county drove away millions in solar energy