2025-09-21

etc

• Flights Disrupted at Dallas Airports Due to Equipment Outage

• Crater under North Sea was created by asteroid impact, scientists say

Horseshit

• Oklahoma's "TV nudes" scandal was Jackie Chan movie on Samsung streaming service

• A 70 year old museum heist is still causing a flutter in butterfly science today

• Sunken port may provide clue to Cleopatra and Mark Antony's lost tomb

• America Loves Cocaine Again – Mexico's New Drug King Cashes In

• Zohran Mamdani: FIFA putting profit before fans with World Cup dynamic pricing

Musk

• Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest ones

• X algo: AI by November, open sourced every 2 weeks, by Dec user-tunable via Grok

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Solar-Powered Cars and Trucks Are Almost Here

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Cardinal Müller on Charlie Kirk, the “LGBT Jubilee,” and the Rising Threat of Islam

  Wokeism is part of an ideological wave that opposes personal identity, the body—male and female—, stable family relationships, distinct cultures and languages, history, and the normal stable relationships that are part of being human. It is, in essence, a continuation of the old Marxism. While it does not operate as an official political party, it has well-organized pressure groups everywhere—in the European Union, in the United States through the Deep State, in mass media, social media, and universities. These groups are highly oppressive, militant, and aggressive toward anyone who does not conform to their thought. In England, for example, wokeism in its initial phase uses Islamism as a tool to weaken Christian culture and tradition. Currently, in tragic cases—such as when a girl is violated by several Muslim men—the girl is more likely to go to jail than the perpetrators.

• Sex tests brought in after data showed 50-60 DSD athletes in finals, WA says

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Man spent $2M to find new largest prime number

• The dawn of the post-literate society - by James Marriott

  More than three hundred years after the reading revolution ushered in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying. Numerous studies show that reading is in free-fall. Even the most pessimistic twentieth-century critics of the screen-age would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis.

  Modern students who are unable to read are once more reliant on the authority of their teachers and are less capable of racing ahead, innovating and questioning orthodoxies. These students are just one symptom of the stagnant culture of the screen age which is characterised by simplicity, repetitiveness and shallowness. Its symptoms are observable all around us.

  Postman cites the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 in which both presidential candidates spoke at incredible length and in remarkable detail as one of the summits of print culture. When Postman was writing in the late 1980s, such debates were already impossible to imagine. Ironically the televised debates that he criticised as degraded, uninformative and over-emotional strike twenty-first century viewers as almost comically civilised and high minded.

  Without the knowledge and without the critical thinking skills instilled by print, many of the citizens of modern democracies find themselves as helpless and as credulous as medieval peasants — moved by irrational appeals and prone to mob thinking. The world after print increasingly resembles the world before print. Superstitions and anti-democratic thinking flourish. Scholarship in our universities is shaped by rigid partisanship not by tolerance and curiosity. Our art and literature is cruder and more simplistic. Many people are now as suspicious of vaccines as the uneducated yokels of the eighteenth century satirised by the cartoonist James Gillray more than two hundred years ago.

• Education Department partners with TPUSA, other groups to launch American civics education coalition.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed at Meta Connect

  • Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed at Meta Connect

• I ran with Oakley Meta Vanguard AI sports glasses

• Meta's Smart Glasses Might Make You Smarter

• The Jaguar Land Rover Hack

• Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man

  The recipient told the Guardian the posts felt “deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved”. The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings. Meta, the $2tn (£1.5tn) company based in Menlo Park, California, said the images did not violate its policies. It said it recommended people to visit Threads by showing them publicly shared photos that comply with its community standards and recommendation guidelines. Its systems do not recommend Threads shared by teenagers, but these were posts made from adults’ accounts that were set to allow public viewing.

  • ... People are upset that photos they published public were shared public?

• Google isn't kidding around about cost cutting

• Netflix Considering Bid to Acquire Warner Bros

• Water treatment facility adds cyberattacks to worry list

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Why California's SB 53 might provide a meaningful check on big AI companies

• British AI startup beats humans in international forecasting competition

• Made in Wisconsin: the world's most powerful AI datacenter

• AI is helping to decode animals' speech. Will it also let us talk with them?

• Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers

• Google stuffs Chrome full of AI features whether you like it or not

• ChatGPT teen-safety measures will include age prediction and verification

• Gartner Says Worldwide AI Spending Will Total $1.5T in 2025

• AI ushering in a golden age of hacking, experts say

• SpamGPT makes cybercriminals' wildest dreams come true

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Northrop Grumman successfully resupplies ISS after overcoming software glitch

• U.S. Is Losing Race to Return to Moon

• Destroying Asteroid 2024 YR4 Is the Best Option to Stop It from Hitting the Moon

• After a slow start, Europe's reusable rocket program shows signs of life

Economicon / Business / Finance

• What Wall Street Sees in the Data Center Boom

• Oracle eyes $20B AI cloud computing deal with Meta, source says

• Bank of America's $25/hour minimum wage jump flexes on everyone else

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Judge tells Meta not to share Instagram users' information with Trump admin

  A U.S. district court judge ordered Meta on Friday not to provide the Department of Homeland Security with the personal information of Instagram users accused of releasing personal details about a border patrol agent. DHS sent subpoenas to Meta earlier this month, seeking the names, email addresses and phone numbers associated with Instagram accounts that posted the name of the agent, saying the requests were related to “Officer Safety / Doxing.”

• U.S. Government Expected to Get Multibillion-Dollar Fee in TikTok Deal

  • White House Outlines a TikTok Deal with a U.S. Board

  • TikTok deal ensures US control of board and crucial algorithm, White House says

  • As Ellison Buys Out TikTok, US Moves Toward One-Party Media

• US Labor Department Brings Back Staff Who Took 'Fork in the Road' Offer

• Northeastern States Announce the Northeast Public Health Collaborative

• Tom Homan was investigated for accepting $50k from undercover FBI agents

  In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC. The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.

  • Justice Dept. Closed Investigation into Tom Homan for Accepting Bag of Cash

Trump

• Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Suspends the Entry of Certain Alien Nonimmigrant Workers – The White House

  Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Proclamation to restrict the entry into the United States of certain H-1B aliens as nonimmigrant workers, requiring a $100,000 payment to accompany or supplement H-1B petitions for new applications to curb abuses that displace U.S. workers and undermine national security.

  • Trump admin imposes $100k fee for H1B Visas

  • Trump to Introduce $100k Fee for H-1B Visas

  • Trump adds $100k fee for skilled worker visa applicants

  • Trump signs proclamation adding $100K annual fee for H-1B visa applications

  • New H-1B visa fee will not apply to existing holders, official says

  • 4chan is reserving India to the US flights so no H1B can use them

  • White House tries to tamp down corporate panic for high-skill visa holders

  • Trump's $100k H-1B Visa Fee Sets Off Scramble Across Corporate America

• Visa holders on vacation have 15 hours to return to US or pay $100k fee

  • Big Tech and finance companies are telling H-1B employees to get to the US

  • Microsoft asks all foreign staff to return to US after Trump's H1B bombshell

• Judge tosses Trump's $15B defamation suit against NYT, Penguin Random House

  • Judge Dismisses Trump's Lawsuit Against the New York Times

• The forgotten Trump assassination attempt.

Left Angst

• The Times's Reporting and Judgment Calls on Charlie Kirk's Assassination

• For comedians around the world, the laughs often end as democracy fades

  • when there's people that cannot be the subject of jokes, it doesn't take long before nothing is funny.

• Disney's Abrupt Decision to Suspend Jimmy Kimmel's Show

• Trump: 'It's no longer free speech.'

  “When 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, complaining about an apparent asymmetry between his victory in the 2024 election and his treatment by media organizations. It was not immediately clear what statistics or laws he was referencing.

  • I'd like to see what sentences, not even stories, this outlet miight offer as "positive coverage of Trump" to show their balance...

• ESR imagines some futures

  I'm a student of history. Here are three possible futures following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They're based on historical examples of what happens when a Communist subversion campaign or insurgency overplays its hand and triggers broad popular resistance.

  1. The long period of fever, madness, and Left ascendancy that began with the assassination of JFK by a Soviet agent in 1963 ends not with a bang but with a whimper. This is the best case scenario for everybody, including the Communists who don't get thrown out of helicopters or shot down in the streets.

• Tariffs make it harder to justify US investments, automakers and suppliers warn

• Trump Administration Cancels Annual Hunger Survey

• California bans face masks for ICE agents

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Scattered Spider teen cuffed after buying games and meals with extortion Bitcoin

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US has carried out another fatal strike targeting alleged drug-smuggling boat

• The narco-subs that cross oceans carrying pounds of cocaine

• Pentagon demands journalists pledge to not obtain unauthorized material

• Pentagon Expands Its Restrictions on Reporter Access

World

• Heathrow warns of delays as suspected cyber-attack hits European airports

  • Suspected cyber attack at Heathrow Airport

  • Cyberattack disrupts operations at European airports incl. Heathrow, Brussels

  • Airports across Europe face disruptions due to cyberattack

• Czech founding father Masaryk's message revealed in long-sealed envelope

• Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact

Israel

• IDF warns aid workers only hospitals are protected sites in northern Gaza

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian jets enter Estonia's airspace in latest test for NATO

• Ukraine reveals jammer-resistant Kamikaze strike drones

China

• Beyond the Marshall Plan: China's solar boom as world-changing industrial policy

• China cracks down on use of live-streaming and AI to sell religion

• China's 200M gig workers are a warning for the world

• China's young consumers set the global trend. What they’re buying now

• China's youth unemployment soars to 2-year high as job crunch deepens

Health / Medicine

• Why the NIH Should Spend Billions to Give Me Futuristic Real Fake Tits

• Study finds 10% of pediatric blood cancers stem from medical imaging radiation

• Vitamin D3 concentrations are lowered by vitamin D2 supplement

• Microbes in mouth linked to pancreatic cancer.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The Deep Ocean Is a Global Public Good

• Hybrid Between Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion

  • New endangered invasive species! Why there's years of taxpayer funded careers here, if we play it right.

• Why your urban neighbourhood might be missing trees that keep you healthy

• Lessons from a house that generates more energy than it uses