2025-09-30

etc

• Co-Ops Electrified America

Horseshit

• Eric Schmidt: Competing with China means sacrificing work-life balance

• Polish Skier Climbs Everest and Skis Down Without Extra Oxygen

• Delta Air Lines' credit card policy nearly stranded me in London

• The secret to great art? Finding someone else to make it

• The mind of a white-collar criminal

celebrity gossip

• jony Ive's latest lightbulb moment? A sailing lantern

  • Jony Ive designs a $4,800 lamp

• I tracked down Tupac's godmother Assata Shakur, the FBI's most wanted in Cuba

Obit

• John Searle Has Died

  John Searle wrote extensively consciousness and the mind, intentionality, and speech act theory. He is especially well known for his Chinese Room Argument on artificial intelligence. He has also made contributions to philosophical work on social ontology, rationality, and perception.

Musk

• UK minister suggests government could ditch 'dangerous' Elon Musk's X

• Elon Musk could turn national governments into Potemkin powers

Electric / Self Driving cars

• What's the 'natural demand' for EVs in the U.S.? We're about to find out

• The Whole World Is Switching to EVs Faster Than You

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Leading computer science professor says 'everybody' is struggling to get jobs

• There Are No Miracles in Education

  At the new wonky liberal site The Argument, Kelsey Piper has an exceptionally credulous piece about the supposed “Mississippi miracle,” which is the claim that Mississippi public schools have seen a sudden and dramatic increase in their quantitative educational metrics through the application of a little want to, a little know-how, and an extra dash of love. Supposedly, in defiance of a hundred years of experience in large-scale education policy in the developed world, some pedagogical tweaks have enabled educators in Mississippi and a couple other union-hating red states to ignore the conditions that have caused these interventions to fail again and again and again. And Piper is big mad that we haven’t just waved the magic wand and saved the kids, which she insists (again and again) is something we could just do, if only we had the will. This is all very old hat, although I do think this new bit where people gin up extra argumentative oomph by implying that schools aren’t teaching because they’re too woke is a nice touch. Unfortunately for Ms. Piper, none of this optimism ever lasts. The odds are very, very strong that eventually it’ll turn out that students in Mississippi and other “miraculous” systems are being improperly offloaded from the books or out of the system altogether and this will prove to be the source of this supposed turnaround. That’s how educational miracles are manufactured: through artificially creating selection bias, which is the most powerful force in education.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• 3 Years Later, Playdate Is Still Gaming's Best-Kept Secret

• F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree

• Microsoft forced to make Windows 10 extended security updates free in Europe

• Would you trust Google to remain committed to Android on laptops and desktops?

• I spent three months with Telly, the free TV that's always showing ads

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Original Startup Garage: Hobbyists, Hackers, and Home PCs

  The modern garage is digital. GitHub repos, Discord servers, and no-code platforms are where scrappy builders experiment today. A small team with cloud credits has more leverage than Jobs and Wozniak ever dreamed of. The garage endures because it captures something essential: world-changing ideas often start in unglamorous spaces. Hobbyists and hackers working on home PCs created a culture that prized curiosity, resourcefulness, and community. That culture, more than any suburban garage, is what made Silicon Valley. It is why every founder staring at a half-baked prototype still feels the thrill of possibility, “This could be something.”

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Parental Controls

• 'Large Language Muddle: it's okay to be a Luddite '

• Finding God in the App Store–millions turn to chatbots for guidance from on high

• In an era of AI slop, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback?

• Tilly Norwood, AI actress, raises ethical concerns in film

• Is violent AI-human conflict inevitable?

• Lufthansa to cut 4k jobs as airline turns to AI to boost efficiency

• Microsoft launches 'vibe working' in Excel and Word

• Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup

  • Marissa Mayer Is Dissolving Her Sunshine Startup Lab

• Debt Is Fueling the Next Wave of the AI Boom

• Oracle will have to borrow at least $25B a year to fund AI fantasy, says analyst

• Big AI firms pump money into world models as LLM advances slow

• US to See $350B Nuclear Boom to Power AI

• OpenAI's New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out

• Gavin Newsom signs first-in-nation AI safety law

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• ESA will pay an Italian company nearly $50M to design a mini-Starship

• Engineers reboost ISS after early Dragon abort

Crypto con games

• Woman admits UK Bitcoin fraud charges after ' largest' crypto seizure

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The Jaguar Land Rover hack: stalled factories, outsourced cybersecurity

• "Battlefield" maker EA inks $55B go-private deal with PIF, Silver Lake

  • Electronic Arts Announces Agreement to Be Acquired for $55B

  • EA Announces Agreement to Be Acquired

  • $55B EA buyout hands Madden over to investors

  • Electronic Arts Goes Private for $52.5B in Largest LBO

  • Electronic Arts to be acquired for $52.5B by a private equity

  • Electronic Arts to be taken private in historic $55B buyout deal

  • EA acquired by Saudi Arabian investment fund for $55B

  • EA Sold to Saudi Arabia and Trump's Son-in-Law for $55B

  • Electronic Arts to be acquired – $52.5B in largest ever private equity buyout

• Millions of Workers Are Left Out of the 'Low-Hire, Low-Fire' US Job Market

• Apple's Stock Climbed on App Store Sales, Google Payments. A Storm Is Brewing

• S&P affirms 'AA+' credit rating for US, cites impact of tariff revenue

• Intel Soars After Nvidia Makes $5B Investment

• Why the Hertz-Amazon deal poses threats to auto dealers

• Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Alaska Seized a $95,000 Plane over Illicit Cargo: A Six-Pack of Beer

• Secret Service vehicle erupts outside White House ahead of Netanyahu visit

  • Secret Service vehicle catches fire outside White House ahead of Netanyahu meeting | Just The News

  The SUV caught fire in its back seat and there did not appear to be any immediate casualties. Just the News White House Correspondent Amanda Head confirmed the events as an eyewitness.

• Taiwan pressured to move 50% of chip production to US or lose protection

• Labor Dept. won't release Friday's jobs report if government shuts down

• First the U.K., next the U.S.? Britain's digital ID plan should scare Americans

Trump

• Can we get the Left to hate weed? Trump Posts Video on Medical Benefits of Cannabis for Seniors

• Trump invests $625M in coal to "win AI race"

• President Trump Renews Threat of 100% Tariffs on Films Made Outside the U.S.

  • Trump imposes 100% tariffs on all movies made outside the United States

  • Trump says US to impose 100% tariff on movies made outside the country

• Trump demands Microsoft fire its head of global affairs

• YouTube to pay Trump $22M following January 6 Capitol riots ban

Left Angst

• Digital Threat Modeling Under Authoritarianism

  Previously, most concern centered on corporate surveillance; companies like Google and Facebook engaging in digital surveillance to maximize their profit. Increasingly, however, many people are worried about government surveillance and how the government could weaponize personal data. Since the beginning of this year, the Trump administration’s actions in this area have raised alarm bells: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took data from federal agencies, Palantir combined disparate streams of government data into a single system, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used social media posts as a reason to deny someone entry into the U.S. These threats, and others posed by a techno-authoritarian regime, are vastly different from those presented by a corporate monopolistic regime—and different yet again in a society where both are working together. Contending with these new threats requires a different approach to personal digital devices, cloud services, social media, and data in general.

• Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century

• US mulls tariffing devices based on the number of chips used, estimated value

• The Curious Conservative War on Beer

• Tech Billionaires Captured the White House. They Still Want to Be Kings

• 79-year-old US citizen injured in immigration raid files $50M claim

• Trump's Tariff Carveouts Are Growing Alongside His Tariff Wall

• Energy Dept. adds 'climate change' and 'emissions' to banned words list

  • Without Congressional action, all these executive action advances can be reversed just as quickly.

• Trump Derangement Syndrome comes for heralded off-label autism treatment after president endorses.

  The medical establishment and mainstream media are uniting against the Trump administration's re-purposing of an inexpensive drug to treat an epidemic, calling it "unproven," not "backed by science," "not a cure" and "shocking" to endorse, with The New York Times emphasizing no profit-driven drug company suggested it. Long used to treat chemotherapy side effects, leucovorin calcium tablets got approved last week by the Food and Drug Administration to treat "cerebral folate deficiency" (CFD), whose clinical symptoms include "global developmental delays with autistic features," following its own "systematic analysis of literature" from 2009 through last year.

• Brazil's Homegrown Payment System Is Target of Trump Administration

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Off-duty DC firefighter was shot and dialed 911, but no one picked up

• Chinese Nationals Plead Guilty to Fake Apple Device Return Fraud, More Than $16M

• Charlie Javice sentenced to over seven years for defrauding JPMorgan

  • Startup Founder Charlie Javice Sentenced to over 7 Years for Defrauding JPMorgan

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon Pushes to Double Missile Production for Potential China Conflict.

World

• Passport kiosk outage impacting some Canadian airports

• How England misplaced its first king

• Germany: Ministry of Economic Affairs effectively abolishes supply chain law

• Google just erased 7 years of our political history

  Google appears to have deleted its political ad archive for the EU; so the last 7 years of ads, of political spending, of messaging, of targeting - on YouTube, on Search and for display ads - for countless elections across 27 countries - is all gone. We had been told that Google would try to stop people placing political ads, a "ban" that was to come into effect this week. I did not read anywhere that this would mean the erasure of this archive of our political history.

• Criminals offer reporter money to hack BBC

• Spain has become Europe's standout economy

• Denmark bans civilian drones as it ramps up security ahead of EU summit

• Every staff member jailed at Blackpool's 'hospital of horrors' as police continue to probe allegations of neglect

• UK may already be at war with Russia, ex-MI5 head suggests

• Afghanistan hit by communications blackout after Taliban shuts internet

  • Afghanistan: Taliban shuts down internet indefinitely

  • Afghanistan telecom blackout as Taliban shuts off internet

Israel

• UK Labour Party members vote to recognise Gaza genocide at conference

• What's in Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza?

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian submarine reportedly near the Strait of Gibraltar at risk of explosion

• Russia's Ambitious Plans in Africa Are Unraveling

• Russia is violating Europe's skies with impunity

China

• Xi Is Chasing a Concession from Trump: Opposing Taiwan Independence

• Classified US intelligence warns of China's preparations for Taiwan invasion

• China's new K visa beckons foreign tech talent as US hikes H-1B fee

• Highest Bridge Opens in China

  • Highest bridge unveiled at more than 2,000ft above ground

Health / Medicine

• First-cousin marriages has benefits, says NHS guidance

• Is Nitrous Oxide Food?

• An insurance company is introducing a new threat to American medicine

• A growing number of U.S. adults report cognitive disability

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Inactive H5N1 influenza virus in pasteurized milk poses minimal health risks.

  • Could it have some effect as a vaccine? as in "prime the immune system to react to things" meaning, not "shit that profits pfizer" sense.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Why Don't Data Centers Use More Green Energy?

• California's Failed $2.2B Ivanpah Solar Power Facility Is Shutting Down

• Indonesia flooding traced to corporate canals that drain peatlands: Report

• A CSU researcher bred a disease out of iconic Yellowstone bison

• Lead batteries are poisoning children. Here are 3 proven ways to stop it

• Are Rooftop Solar Panels the Solution to America's Growing Energy Crisis?

• Microplastics Could Be Weakening Your Bones, Research Suggests

• The Cephalopod uprising has begun! Terra Delenda Est! Octopuses Invade the English Coast, 'Eating Anything in Their Path'

• A blue jay and a green jay mated. Their offspring is a scientific marvel

• Giant trees of the Amazon get taller as forests fatten up on carbon dioxide