2025-09-25

etc

• Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

  • Alexis de Tocqueville wrote with passion of the small clubs that used to make American society strong.

Horseshit

• Japanese city passes two-hours-a-day smartphone usage ordinance

• Skeletons from 'green Sahara' offer genetic peek at a lost human population

• Scientists discover new dinosaur in Argentina with crocodile bone in mouth

  • Scientists discover a new dinosaur with a crocodile bone in its mouth

• New study shows plants and animals emit a visible light that expires at death

• What Happens to Artists' Studios After They Die?

• How to Spot a Genius

• What if every artwork you've ever seen is a fake?

• Abandoning daylight saving time could prevent over 300k stroke in the US

• Dan Brown book: The Secret of Secrets is no da Vinci Code. Too much has changed

• National Stadium fulfills destiny years after hosting Olympics without fans

• Gen Z are eating dinner at 6pm – and it's because they're losers

• Is Gen Z Unemployable?

• Viral parking ticket app lasts just 4 hours as city kills project

• B.C. rescuers use helicopter-mounted cell tower to find missing man

• Is Whole-Body Cryotherapy the New Ice Bath?

• The mystery of the dog in Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' is solved

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Managing the Global Discourse - by ghostofchristo1

  The habit of asserting that one’s political opponents are (depending on one’s position on the political spectrum) “fascists” or “communists” is nothing new. What does seem to have changed in more recent years is that, with the addition of historical distance, any sense of meaning has long since leached out of these historical descriptors. They have been reduced to labels, badges, pure capsules of negative affect. Their real use is to mark one’s enemies as existential threats and imply that they are thus worthy in themselves of annihilation. As the more idealistic models for “managing the global conversation” become a thing of the past, our label-based modes of communication and sense-making (both online and increasingly offline) are beginning to resemble the war of all against all.

• How You Search the Internet Can Reinforce Your Beliefs–Without You Realizing It

• The Village and the Sewer – Behind the "Blueskyism" Debate

  More specifically: much of the variation among centrist and left pundits can be predicted by the answer to a simple question. Does this or that pundit defer more to the intellectual authority of traditional expertise or the intellectual authority of the Silicon Valley model? This disagreement is increasingly being wrapped around a narrower dispute over whether pundits should be punditizing at Bluesky or at X. The political economies of both sites - the differences between the implicit incentives of the two sites’ algorithms - exacerbate this dispute and make it nastier.

  • As long as neither recognizes the role of Facts then its still acceptable entertainment.

Musk

• Elon Musk's Father Accused of Child Sexual Abuse

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Mercedes-AMG Boss: Axial Flux Motors Will Come to More Cars

• Charging the grid with your EV: First US residential pilot is now underway

• Where Are Driverless Cars Going in New York City?

• Suggestions for Increasing Trust in Automated Driving

• Waymo is getting into the corporate travel business

• Porsche Cayenne EV Will Have Wireless Charging

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Peter Thiel Wants Everyone to Think More About the Antichrist

• Pope Leo refuses to authorise an AI Pope

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The great university shake-up: how global higher education is changing

• Pay for your children's art, Australian kindergarten tells stunned parents

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The Science Behind Scratchgate and What It Means for Repairing the iPhone 17 Pro

• Live Nation CEO Says Concerts Are 'Underpriced.' Are They?

• Kansas sues social media app Snapchat

• Logitech Launches Solar-Powered Signature Slim K980 Keyboard

  • Logitech's new K980 wireless, light-powered keyboard is now available

• Disney is raising the price of Disney+ and Hulu

• Why Meta's Ray-Ban Display May Never Replace Your iPhone

• Google's Android for PC: 'I've seen it, it is incredible'

• A Judge's Decision Could Disrupt Google's $3.1T Business

• Subscription Prices Gone Wild

• Supermicro server motherboards can be infected with unremovable malware

• Tinder, Hinge, and their corporate owner keep rape under wraps

• Instagram hits 3B monthly users; testing defaulting to Reels in India

• Apple Postpones Jessica Chastain Thriller 'The Savant' Amid Current Events

• Linux Laptop Vendor Malibal Attempting to Pursue Made-in-USA Laptops

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Cloudflare bankrolls fascists

  Anyway, Omarchy and Ladybird are both run by fascists. Omarchy makes this pretty obvious from the outset – on the home page the big YouTube poster image prominently features SuperGrok, which is a pathetically transparent dog-whistle to signal alliance with Elon Musk’s fascist politics. Omarchy is the pet project of David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, who is well known as a rich fascist weirdo.

  • He wasn't getting much traction with RMS hate, so he's focusing on more mainstream accusations to throw at geeks who are trying to improve the world.

• Sam shit different tool: An open letter calling for a hard fork of Rails to remove DHH's influence

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Nvidia's OpenAI Deal Fuels 'Circular' Financing Concerns

• SAP and OpenAI partner to launch sovereign 'OpenAI for Germany'

• An $800B Revenue Shortfall Threatens AI Future, Bain Says

• OpenAI teams up with Oracle and SoftBank to build 5 new Stargate data centers

  • OpenAI Expands Stargate with Five New Data Center Sites Across US

• Will We Know Artificial General Intelligence When We See It?

• Greatest irony of the AI age: Humans hired to clean AI slop

• France's Mistral AI plans expansion into Canada

• America's top companies keep talking about AI – but can't explain the upsides

• Dedicated mobile apps for vibe coding have so far failed to gain traction

• Nvidia’s $100bn deal with OpenAI: an Alphaville FAQ

• 'Tentacles squelching wetly': the human subtitle writers under threat from AI

• OpenAI Shows Us the Money

• How Nvidia Is Backstopping America's AI Boom

• I Let Ralph Lauren's New AI Dress Me

• People cheat more if they use AI

• Social app Neon pays users to record their phone calls, sells data to AI firms

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA plans first crewed Moon mission in 50 years for February 2026

• Crypto billionaire is launching first private space station

• Astronomers want nuclear explosives to blow up asteroid before it strikes Moon

Crypto con games

• Tether CEO confirms major capital raise at a reported $500B valuation

• Would Anyone Use a Chinese Stablecoin?

• Crypto ETFs set to flood US market as regulator streamlines approvals

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The Job Market Is Hell

• Jaguar Land Rover hack 'has cost 30k cars and threatens supply chain'

  • MPs: 'strong case for government intervention' on Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack

• The Fed's Rate Path Is Too Cautious to Fix Housing

• The surprisingly lucrative business of making a list of 500 stocks

• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Exits China's BYD, Filing Shows

• Coffee-badging and other quiet revolts: How workers defy in-office mandates

• Welcome to the much bigger, messier era of 'too big to fail'

• US debt investors raise alarm over lending standards

• Bay Area biotech Arsenal Bio lays off half its workers a yr after raising $325M

• Uber Launched a Women-Only Service. Will It Work?

• There Was a RadioShack Ponzi

• Day trading is about to get easier for smaller retail investors

• Intel Is Seeking an Investment from Apple as Part of Its Comeback Bid

Trump

• Ryan Routh tries to stab himself with pen after being convicted of Trump assassination attempt

  Ryan Routh, the madman who holed up in a sniper’s nest with an assault rifle at one of President Trump’s golf courses, tried to stab himself with a pen in a Florida courtroom Tuesday after he was convicted of attempting to assassinate the then-GOP nominee. A dramatic scene unfolded as jurors were leaving the courtroom when Routh took a pen and started trying to jab himself in the neck. Courtroom marshals sprang into action and dragged him out of the room as his daughter, Sara Routh, screamed at her father. “Dad, I love you. Don’t do anything. I’ll get you out. He didn’t hurt anybody,” the daughter yelled.

• Trump says NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft that violate their airspace.

• Turns Out Trump's Own Team Messed Up U.N. Escalator and Teleprompter

• Trump plans to sign the TikTok deal on Thursday

Democrats

• Harris on Trump: ‘We’re dealing with a communist dictator’

  Harris wrote in her memoir “107 Days,” which was released Tuesday, that she predicted how Trump would act in a second term, but she didn’t expect the level of capitulation from the private sector toward him. She was pressed on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” about why she didn’t anticipate such action and responded that she believed “titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy.” “And one by one by one, they have been silent, they have been … feckless,” Harris said. “It’s not like they’re going to lose their yacht or their house in the Hamptons.”

• SPLC Has Long Carried Water for Antifa

• Peter Strzok Loses Court Case Over His Firing From the FBI.

• YouTube will begin reinstating banned creators

Left Angst

• Dallas ICE shooting live updates: 2 killed at Texas facility, suspected shooter dead

  The motive behind the shooting, or what the shooter was targeting, is not immediately clear. An ICE spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that all three people shot at the ICE facility in Dallas were ICE detainees and that no ICE officers were hurt. Two of the victims have died. The suspected shooter is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. The shooter fired multiple rounds from a roof or an elevated position down into the field office’s sally port, an ICE spokesperson confirmed.

  • At Least Three Shot in Attack on Texas ICE Facility | National Review

  Rounds found near the body of the suspected shooter in the attack on a Dallas ICE facility Wednesday morning carried anti-ICE messages,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Joe Rothrock revealed during a press conference. FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo of five unspent shell casings found near the suspect’s body. One of the casings has the message “ANTI ICE” written on it in large blue letters.

  • Literal "ANTI-ICE" scrawled on an unused round in a (full) stripper clip

  • Dallas ICE shooter named as Joshua Jahn who murdered two migrants then killed himself | Daily Mail Online

  A sniper who killed two migrants and wounded several others in a shooting at a Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility has been identified as Joshua Jahn, 29, the Daily Mail can reveal. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that the death toll stood at two as of Wednesday afternoon. A third victim was in serious condition. The victims were ICE detainees, and no law enforcement were injured in the shooting. Officials said at a press conference on Wednesday morning that bullets found by the shooter's body were engraved with 'anti-ICE messages', and FBI Director Kash Patel shared an image of the bullets reading: 'Anti-ICE.' The gunman opened fire 'from an elevated position' as migrants were inside the transport van. He is believed to have been found on the roof of a nearby immigration attorney's office, WFAA reported. Patel said in an X post: 'While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an ideological motive behind this attack. 'These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off.' Although the sniper appeared to target migrants in ICE custody, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on X that the shooting represented an attack on ICE and law enforcement.

  • FBI Confirms "Targeted Attack" At Dallas ICE Facility, Finds Bullet With "Anti-ICE" Message

  • Its hard to write on shell brass: it tends to be oiled

  • Dallas ICE facility gunman identified as Joshua Jahn

  A gunman identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn opened fire on an ICE van at a detention center in Dallas, Texas, in the early hours of Sept. 24. Jahn began shooting while detainees were being transferred and the portcullis to the facility was open, reports claim. One person died and two were wounded, according to reports. Jahn was found dead on a nearby rooftop from a self-inflicted gunshot wound There was writing on the bullets, with one reading “ANTI-ICE,” according to the FBI. The shooting is being investigated “as an act of targeted violence,” the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas Field Office, Joe Rothrock, said in a press conference.

• Scientist behind Trump's Tylenol claims was paid $150K to give evidence

  • Harvard’s Public Health Dean Was Paid $150,000 to Testify Tylenol Causes Autism

  Harvard School of Public Health Dean Andrea A. Baccarelli received at least $150,000 to testify against Tylenol’s manufacturer in 2023 — two years before he published research used by the Trump administration to link the drug to autism, a connection experts say is tenuous at best. Baccarelli served as an expert witness on behalf of parents and guardians of children suing Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol at the time. U.S. District Court Judge Denise L. Cote dismissed the case last year due to a lack of scientific evidence, throwing out Baccarelli’s testimony in the process. The plaintiffs paid Baccareli $700 an hour for his expert testimony, according to a 2023 deposition. “I work for more than 200 hours, so it’s about $150,000,” Baccarelli said in the deposition.

  • Autism Has Always Existed. We Haven't Always Called It Autism

• Use of paracetamol during pregnancy unchanged in the EU

• Some of the Liberal Media Reactions to the Charlie Kirk Memorial Service Were Insane.

• Bank of Canada's Macklem Warns U.S. Dollar Losing Appeal as Hedge

• AI and the Rise of Techno-Fascism in the United States (Garry Kasparov)

• Threats of violence against company executives on the rise, survey shows

• ICE in Chicago Are Wearing Meta AI Ray-Ban Glasses

• Trump's H-1B visa caper will backfire

• 'Patients Will Wait Longer:' $100k Visa Fee Risks Worsening Doctor Shortage

• Trump's tariffs could make the apps on your phone worse

• The DHS has been harvesting DNA from Americans for years

• The Poison Pill to End the MMR is Tylenol

  I didn’t think President Donald Trump could possibly beat the infamous “inject bleach” press conference from 2020 for unhinged insanity, but I should have known that announcing the cause of autism was not going to be a serious affair. Even for a man known for having a very poor grasp of medical science as Trump, he managed to give the wildest lecture on pharmacology and vaccine safety I’ve ever witnessed. It’s the first time I’ve heard a US president state that vaccines cause babies to “get fried” or scream “BREAK IT UP!” about the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.

  When Kennedy and Trump announced that, as promised, they discovered the cause of autism and it’s Tylenol, I was immediately suspicious as to why there was no mention of vaccines. Kennedy’s zeal for banning vaccines is legendary. He has made millions of dollars from his anti-vax law firm and the anti-vax organization he founded, Children’s Health Defense, by saying without evidence that vaccines cause autism. So why would this scheduled breakthrough discovery barely mention vaccines?

  • Even Snopes ain't pushing "inject bleach" anymore: Trump Didn't Tell People to 'Inject Bleach' for COVID-19

• The time to ask was in the 1990's; when China bought the Clintons. And the answer was "no." Can Liberalism Be Saved?

• Kimmel says attempt to "cancel" him "backfired"

• The FBI's Tyler Robinson story has fallen apart

  Patel insisted that we know Tyler Robinson “subscribed to left-wing ideology” because his family said so. Also, he said, “Friends have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet, the Reddit culture, and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep.” We do not have a shred of evidence to back up this claim. We were told that Robinson had planned the killing on Discord, talking with his roommate about the gun, location, and changing clothes. Why would he not talk to his roommate in person instead of leaving evidence like that? If the roommate was involved in the planning, why weren’t they arrested? Oh and why have we not been told what happened to the note? How was it destroyed? Who destroyed it?

• New US curb on high-skill immigrant workers ignores evidence of its likely harms

• SEC forgives three scammers who bilked Americans out of millions

• Trump administration rehires federal employees laid off by DOGE

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Secret Service dismantles telecom threat capable of crippling cell service in NY

  • Feds say 100k-card farms could have killed cell towers in NYC near the UN

  • That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

  What they discovered was just normal criminal enterprise, banks of thousands of cell “phones” (sic) used to send spam or forward international calls using local phone numbers. Technically, it may even be legitimate enterprise, being simply a gateway between a legitimate VoIP provider and the mobile phone network. The backstory is a Secret Service investigation into threats sent to politicians via SMS messages. The miscreant used one of this spam farms to mask their origin. When the Secret Service traced back the messages, using radio “triangulation” (sic) to find the mobile phones, they found these SIM farms instead. One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable.

World

• Man arrested in connection with European airport cyber-attacks

• 'Our worst day': The untold story of the Electoral Commission cyber attack

  t unknown to Simpson or anybody else, threat actors – possibly Chinese state cyber spooks, or a ransomware gang, or both – were already lurking within the Electoral Commission’s systems. Ultimately, it emerged that they exploited the ProxyShell vulnerability chain on an unpatched server to gain access. The investigation later found the series of breaches started in August 2021, but it wasn’t until one of Simpson’s cloud transition projects was in progress that it came to light.

• Campaigners urge UK PM Starmer to dump digital ID wheeze before it's announced

  • Rights groups urge UK PM Starmer to abandon plans for mandatory digital ID

• EU age verification app not planning desktop support

• Guyana's ruling party takes early lead as upstart opposition party surges

• Milei, Argentina, and Trouble in Libertarian Paradise

  • US Negotiating $20B Swap Line with Argentina

• Heatstroke patient numbers jumped in cooler Hokkaido and Tohoku this summer

• The Indonesian Protests Are a Revolt Against Oligarchy

• Taiwan Curbs Chip Exports to South Africa in Rare Power Move

• Deadly Nepal protests reflect a wider pattern of Gen Z activism across Asia

• Trump shock spurs Japan to think about the unthinkable: nuclear arms

Israel

• Explosions and drones targeting Gaza aid flotilla boats, activists say

China

• A Made-in-China plan for world domination

• China to launch K-Visa for global talent

• Google warns China-linked spies lurking in 'numerous' enterprises since March

• China gives up WTO developing-country status

Health / Medicine

• Drinking any amount of alcohol increases your risk of dementia later in life

  • Even light alcohol drinking raises dementia risk

• Study finds caffeine increases task persistence under pressure

• Huntington's disease treated for first time

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The Enshittification of Solar

• Heatwaves in US rivers increasing up to four times faster than air heatwaves

• NSF-funded project explores how nanoplastics are transmitted to offspring

• Cardboard-confined rammed earth towards sustainable construction

• Global investment in renewable energy up 10% on 2024 despite Trump rollback

• How Norway Adopted New Tech in Its Hunt for 'Missing' Oil

• UK study finds microplastics in all beverages tested

• How to track the super polluters next door

• Scientists catch a shark threesome on camera: “It was over quickly for both males, one after the other. The first took 63 seconds, the other 47.”

• $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Facility in California turned off after years of wasted money

• Yale Scientists Crack the Code on Turning Plastic Waste into Fuel