2025-10-03

etc

• Cyclist captures moment magpie plucks earphone from his ear

• Delta jets have 'low-speed collision' on the ground at New York's LaGuardia

  • Two Planes Collide on LaGuardia Airport Taxiway

• Yes: Does Your Backyard Need a Stegosaurus?

• 13-year-old boy survives 90 minute flight stowed away in airplane's landing gear

Horseshit

• End GDP mania: how the world should measure prosperity

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

  “The time of Michelangelo and Leonardo are gone,” Marina Abramović tells me. “With today’s tools — including AI — it’s no longer necessary for artists to learn a craft. What matters is the content, the idea. It doesn’t matter what tools you use if you achieve it.” But even Abramović has found fabricators indispensable.

  • "it’s no longer necessary for artists to learn a craft" ... that's the problem.

• Toyota Exec Thinks Hydrogen 'Will Take over Diesel'

• There's Never Been a Worse Time to Be Authentic at Work

• After decades of defiance, a California hippie commune is defeated

  After 25 years of warnings, fines and broken promises, Humboldt County supervisors finally voted last week to crack down on the infamous Yee Haw commune. Their unanimous decision set in motion plans to clear the 10-acre property of unpermitted structures and hazards, a move that would displace the approximate 10 residents who currently call it home and strip longtime owner Charles Garth of control.

• Ford CEO on his 'epiphany': his Gen Z factory workers 'had to have three jobs'

  Many of them said they could not support themselves by working at Ford alone. “When I met with my entry factory workers, they were saying [they] had to have three jobs.” He said they would also work at places like Walmart and an Amazon fulfillment center: “‘You know, I get six hours of sleep, and I got three jobs.’” In the short term, Farley said, Ford’s signature element in its new labor agreement was to get full wages to entry-level workers. But beyond that, he began looking at the labor shortage in trade work, starting with technicians. Farley described a revelation about the erosion of what blue-collar work used to represent—stability, pride, and a single income that could support a family. “Old-timers in our plants were saying, ‘It’s no longer a career, Mr. Farley. Working at Ford is no longer a career.’”

• Great Cons Are Part of the American Story. and That Might Not Be So Bad

• US women narrowed the pay gap with men by having fewer kids

• US soccer is in the midst of a stadium boom, each with realistic ambitions

• The other space race: why the world is obsessed with sending objects into orbit

• Performing Gender, Left and Right

  Conservatives are more likely to find subtle ways to brag about who they know, liberals about what they have accomplished.

  When I say conservative circles are less autistic and nerdy, I mean relative to liberals. If you compared them to a frat house at a state school, rightists would seem reserved and intellectual. Conservatism is a kind of hybrid culture with aspects of both elite and non-elite norms. Populism is less plausible when people like this are already in positions of power and influence, as is the case in many developing countries. Elite Human Capital has invented a new way of being human, and is always alienated from the masses, creating constant tension and difficulties when it composes the ruling class.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Dropping Trust in US Media

  Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago. Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%).

Musk

• Elon Musk becomes first person worth $500B

  • Musk becomes first half-trillionaire

  • Musk becomes first person to hit $500B net worth

  • Musk becomes first person to hit $500B net worth, Forbes list shows

• Elon Musk urges parents to cancel Netflix over 'transgender woke agenda'

  • After Elon Musk launched the 'Cancel Netflix' Campaign, Netflix shares down 2.2%

• So did the Bidens... SpaceX Took Money Directly from Chinese Investors

• Tesla reverses sales decline in Q3, sells 50k more cars than it built

• Elon Musk caught lying about Tesla Cybertruck beating Porsche 911 in a race

• Musk Loses Bid to Move SEC Suit over Twitter Stake to Texas

• Tesla Is Sued by Family Who Says Faulty Doors Led to Daughter's Death

Electric / Self Driving cars

• L.A. buyers scramble to snap up EVs as tax breaks end

• Self-driving trucks startup Einride raises $100M

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Why iRobot's founder won't go within 10 feet of today's walking robots

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• And less: The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

  • This kind of treatment can "prove" that Lincoln was not shot. Nor human.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Spending Soars, Rankings Fall at New College of Florida

  More than two years into a conservative takeover of New College of Florida, spending has soared and rankings have plummeted, raising questions about the efficacy of the overhaul. While state officials, including Republican governor Ron DeSantis, have celebrated the death of what they have described as “woke indoctrination” at the small liberal arts college, student outcomes are trending downward across the board: Both graduation and retention rates have fallen since the takeover in 2023.

• Want to do disruptive science? Include more rookie researchers

  • we need people who do not know what isn't safe to see, what cannot be talked about.

• Why America still needs public schools

  But the consequences of withdrawing from public education could be dire for the U.S. In our 2024 book, “How Government Built America,” we explore the history of public education, from Horace Mann’s “common school movement” in the early 19th century to the GI Bill in the 20th that helped millions of veterans go to college and become homeowners after World War II. We found that public education has been essential for not only creating an educated workforce but for inculcating the United States’ fundamental values of liberty, equality, fairness and the common good. Opponents of public education often refer to public schools as “government schools,” a pejorative that seems intended to associate public education with “big government” – seemingly at odds with the small government preference of many Americans.

• Critiquing and Reimagining Belonging in Public Spaces in Higher Education

  Students from lower socioeconomic status and historically racially minoritized groups are less likely to go to college; if they go, they are less likely to graduate. Part of the reason is due to money and access to educational opportunities. We contend that another reason is because these institutions, created by and for White elites, have left everyone else feeling like outsiders—socially, culturally, and spatially. In the current review, we focus on the spatial dimension. We draw from human geography, urban planning, architecture, and related fields, and propose that the university campus is a territorial, surveilled, and symbolic space, in ways that leave marginalized students feeling like trespassers on campus.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Yahoo nears deal to sell AOL to Bending Spoons for $1.4B

• WiFi Can See You

  The paradox of WiFi sensing is that it genuinely offers benefits—elderly fall detection saves lives, energy optimization reduces carbon footprints, touchless interfaces serve genuine accessibility needs. But benefits don't negate the need for consent, transparency, and control. The industry's framing of WiFi sensing as "privacy-preserving" because it doesn't capture faces conflates different surveillance with no surveillance. Movement patterns, presence detection, and activity monitoring reveal sensitive information even without facial recognition.

• From real sport to esports – why Saudi Arabia spent $55B on EA

• Xbox Game Pass page crashing as subscribers rush to cancel after 50% price hike

• Cuz they got rich. Don't you try posting an image of a nekkid baby: Nirvana again defeats alleged child sexual abuse image lawsuit over album cover

• Oura's Partnership with The Pentagon Is Ringing Alarm Bells for Customers

• Red Hat confirms major data breach after hackers claim mega haul

• AT&T Is Using an Advanced Video Game Feature to Improve Your Phone Coverage

• Strava Just Sued Garmin: Demands Garmin Stop Selling Devices

• Hackers Launch Extortion Campaign Targeting Oracle E-Business Suite Customers

• Ford locking basic navigation behind a subscription

• Windows 7 marketshare jumps to nearly 10% as Windows 10 support is about to end

• Apple reportedly scraps lighter Vision Pro in favor of smart glasses

• The Longer You Play Borderlands 4 on Console the Worse It Gets

• Steam on Linux Use Up 1% from Last September

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• F3 is the open virus solution for the future.

  Each self-describing F3 file includes both the data and meta-data, as well as WebAssembly (Wasm) binaries to decode the data.

  • Quoth Pixy: "weaponised idiocy"

• DHH Is Worse Than I Thought

• FSF confirms Ian Kelling as its new president

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI hits $500B valuation after share sale, source says

  • OpenAI Completes Share Sale at Record $500B Valuation

  • OpenAI Valuation Hits $500B

  • OpenAI Valuation Reaches $500B, Topping Musk's SpaceX

• Meta to Start Using Chatbot Conversations to Target Advertising

• He Grew Obsessed with an AI Chatbot. Then He Vanished in the Ozarks

• OpenAI's new social app, Sora, is filled with horrifying Sam Altman deepfakes.

• Sora 2 and the end of copyright as we know it

• Americans have mixed feelings about AI summaries in search results

• A Welsh Band Spent a Decade Building a Fanbase – An AI Imitator Outpaced Them

• Waymo's robotaxis are probably safer than ChatGPT

• Y'all are over-complicating these AI-risk arguments

  Now, some people suggest favoring certain arguments for the sake of optics: Even if you accept the complex argument, maybe you’d want to make the simple one because it’s more convincing or is better optics for the AI-risk community. (“We don’t want to look like crazy people.”) Personally, I am allergic to that whole category of argument. I have a strong presumption that you should argue the thing you actually believe, not some watered-down thing you invented because you think it will manipulate people into believing what you want them to believe. So even if my simpler argument is more convincing, so what?

• AI is not yet replacing workers in the US, researchers find

• Parents are letting little kids play with AI. Are they wrong?

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Have we reached a space-junk tipping point?

• The Arc spacecraft: designed to deliver cargo anywhere in an hour

• The Interstellar Path to Prosperity

• In their own words: The Artemis II crew on the frenetic first hours of flight

• Square Kilometre Array so sensitive, datacenter needs two Faraday cages

• What do distant observers see when they look at Earth?

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Lufthansa to cut 4000 jobs turning to AI for efficiency

• AI is not killing jobs, US study finds

• Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson

• Asia-West Coast container rates plummet; demand seen waning through year-end - FreightWaves

  The SONAR Inbound Ocean TEUs Volume Index for Oct. 1 was down less than 1% from the previous week, but off 14.58% year-on-year. Demand got a small bump from frontloading ahead of China’s Golden Week holiday, but nothing substantial enough to shore up falling rates.

  Further complicating matters, China this week said it could levy costly port fees and bar some ships from its ports, in retaliation for punitive U.S. charges on China-linked ships set to take effect Oct. 14. Asia-U.S. West Coast rates fell 15% to $1,853 per fort foot equivalent unit last week, according to the Freightos Baltic Index, while Asia-U.S. East Coast prices increased 16% to $3,967 per FEU. The last time West Coast prices were this low was around December 2023, when spot rates dipped to approximately $1,744 per FEU.

• Intel in early talks to add AMD as foundry customer

  • Even if you could trust intel to deliver their best effort; it seems to me this would still be a very longshot bet, much more likely to be a complete waste of money. And Intel has repeatedly shown an eagerness to damage on their competition with actions that impede themselves and the entire economy. This seems like handing them a knife and asking them to scratch your back.

• Japan's beer-making giant Asahi stops production after cyberattack

  • Japan is running out of its favorite beer after ransomware attack

• US hiring plans sink to lowest since September 2009

• Does Big Pharma gouge Americans?

  • I have seen people seriously defend the prices charged in the USA as "it is our privilege to support the costs of progress"... they work in the 'drug discovery' sector and profit directly.

• 'Crazy, Right?': More PE Funds Than McDonald's Signals Pressure

• Layoffs in U.S. are at their highest level since 2020

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Maine Woman Discovers Election Ballots in Amazon Package

  A Newburgh resident expecting an Amazon delivery of rice, paper plates and a toy lightsaber instead opened a box to find 250 state election ballots. The discovery raised alarms about election security, leading the Maine Republican Party Chairman to call for a federal criminal investigation as the state is mere weeks from deciding on whether it will join 36 other states in requiring some form of Vote ID. The package arrived Tuesday looking beat up and re-taped, as if tampered with. Inside, along with household items, were bundles of ballots packaged in tamper-evident packs of 50 — the same format used for official shipments to local clerks. Election officials who reviewed photographs confirmed the documents appear to be authentic 2025 ballots. The misdelivery comes just 35 days before Maine’s Nov. 4 election, which features a high-stakes referendum on requiring voter identification. Maine Democratic Party Chairman Charlie Dingman has frequently downplayed the need for election integrity measures and fretted that if the “Yes on One” effort succeeds, Democrats could lose as many as 13,000 votes in future statewide elections.

• Sec. Duffy’s initial audit findings revealed what I suspected to be true — IT’S ALL FRAUDULENT!

  In the transportation industry, we have more cargo theft and fraud than EVER before! The states issuing No Name Given CDLs are the SAME STATES where we have massive cargo theft rings, carrier identity fraud, and every other type of ‘freight fraud.’

• My Senate Testimony on Surveillance - by Matt Taibbi

  Similarly in the last decade current and former FBI agents – fellow witness Tristan Leavitt’s firm has represented a number of them – have talked about how since 9/11, the FBI spends less time building cases but does more generalized spying, much of it political. One agent I interviewed said “The distinction between people who believe bad thoughts and people who do bad things” has been “completely lost” on our government since 9/11. Once you start down the road of collecting information on innocent people, it creates the intellectual justification for doing it again and again. From a contracting perspective, this is the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone, a spiral of endless expense. Morally, all this information-gathering reverses the natural political order, giving elected officials undeserved and unearned power over their bosses – the voters. These programs all need to be reevaluated. A lot of them have to go. People who lie about them in this chamber need to be fired.

• 'No smoking gun': Why Eaton fire report didn't name names or assign blame

• Florida Court Rejects Free Speech Argument in Book Removal Case

• Only way to move Space Shuttle is to chop it into pieces, White House told

• US to open more public land for coal mining

Trump

• Trump Explores Bailout of at Least $10B for U.S. Farmers

• White House pulls nomination of E.J. Antoni to head Bureau of Labor Statistics

Democrats

• Celebrities relaunch a McCarthy-era committee to defend free speech

  • Let's make them watch the 2024 "Weaponization of Government" hearings where Democrats refused to allow discussion of examples of Government imposed, extra-legal censorship. If they can agree that "free speech" also applies to those who aren't saying what they want at the moment, I will be shocked.

• Mamdani Says He Would Phase Out NYC Gifted Program for Early Grades

Left Angst

• What Is NSPM-7? Over 3k Nonprofits Sound Alarm on New Trump Directive

  The White House last week issued NSPM-7, a missive titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which orders his administration to investigate groups it suspects promote political violence. Critics have raised concerns about whether the directive could be meant to chill the First Amendment’s guaranteed right to free speech as Trump has accused the left of provoking violence.

• Over 29 Americans have sought asylum in Australia since second Trump presidency

• Announcement | Michael E. Mann

  After a little less than a year in the position, I’ve decided to step down as Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action (“VPC”) at Penn. I have reluctantly come to the position that the science policy advocacy work I am doing, especially surrounding my new book “Science Under Siege” with vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, at times feels in conflict with the nonpartisan role demanded of me as an administrator at a university with an established institutional neutrality policy. Particularly at this moment in time, I don’t feel that I can forsake the public scholarship and advocacy that I am doing and have thus decided to step down from the VPC role.

  • Infamous Climate Scientist Michael Mann Resigns Penn Role After Charlie Kirk ‘Hitler’ Posts |

  Mann went on a social media spree in the wake of the murder, sarcastically describing the assassination as “white on white violence” and reposting multiple inflammatory remarks about the conservative leader, including one that referred to Kirk as the “head of Trump’s Hitler Youth.” Despite later attempting to backtrack, Mann has now resigned from his role as Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action.

• White House Asks Colleges to Sign Agreement to Get Funding Advantage

  • US memo to colleges proposes terms on ideology, foreign enrollment for fed funds

  • Trump offers top universities funds if they boost conservative ideas

  • Universities must Comply with federal rules for funding

• Trump administration freezes $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects, Vought says.

• EFF warns of 'social media censorship crisis' over abortion-related posts

  • "My body, my choice" didn't extend to asking if the COVID vaccines were a good idea: these people are not honest advocates of free speech; they are dishonest advocates of child murder and mutilation.

• How societies can recover from the brink of crisis | Vox

  Anti-establishment parties and politicians are surging in Western Europe and Japan. In the United States, the MAGA movement, led by President Donald Trump, has seized power. Political violence is rising and by several measures — violent riots, anti-government demonstrations — the US is now experiencing its highest level of social turbulence and political conflict in the last 100 years. What lies ahead? How do we navigate our societies through the turbulent waters without sliding into a bloody civil war?

  outbreaks of societal instability are driven by a mechanism that operates with surprising regularity across different historical eras and places: the wealth pump. The term describes a set of conditions — economic and political — that transfer wealth from the broad base of the population to the elite, a small proportion of people who concentrate power in their hands.

  • Individual wealth is the root of all evil, but Socialism will save us! Amazing how that works...

• Unconstitutionality of the Trump administration's student deportation efforts

• Elon Musk and the right's war on Wikipedia

• Startups could be affected by a prolonged government shutdown

• Russ Vought's plan to deconstruct the government was years in the making

• Ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired

• The Pentagon Press Gears Up for a Fight

• YouTube Bends the Knee – Welcome to the Era of Big-Tech Capitulation

• Shutdown Risks Leaving Millions with Costlier Health Insurance

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Drone No-Fly Zone Imposed over Greater Chicago Area

  With a large-scale ICE operation now underway in the Chicago area, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has enacted a uniquely massive 15-mile radius prohibition against drone flights. The FAA told us the temporary flight restriction (TFR) for drones in this area was requested by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The no-fly zone lasts through Oct. 12. Under this restriction, only drones operated in support of national defense, homeland security, law enforcement, search and rescue and other emergency response efforts, or commercially used drones with a valid statement of work are allowed to fly. In addition, media organizations can apply for an approved special governmental interest airspace waiver. Any drones violating this restriction can be seized or destroyed, the TFR explains. It also extends about 15 miles into Lake Michigan, without any explanation.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump's Drone Deal with Ukraine to Give U.S. Access to Battlefield Tech

• Trump's Collision Course with Brazil

World

• Signal threatens to leave Europe if Chat Control is accepted

• Israeli naval forces board pro-Palestinian flotilla 75 miles from Gaza

• BT promises 5G Standalone for 99% of the UK by 2030

• General strike against 13-hour work day brings Greece to a halt

• Security flaws left Ontario's 2022 municipal online elections exposed to attack

• Alberta tops in Canada for 'social mobility,' Quebec dead last, finds study

• 'Reverse Midas touch': Starmer plan prompts collapse in support for digital IDs

• Wealth tax would be deadly for French economy, says Europe's richest man

Israel

• How Israeli actions caused famine, visualized

  • Provoking Hamas to withhold food from their people...

• Dutch pension fund dumps Caterpillar over Gaza demolitions

  The Netherlands’ largest pension fund, ABP, announced on 1 October that it had divested from US manufacturer Caterpillar, citing concerns over the use of its equipment by Israeli forces in Gaza. ABP, which manages investments on behalf of three million government and education employees, confirmed it had sold its stake worth around $454 million as of late March.

  • Emphasis mine. Have they vetted the rest of their investments? Does this mean that everything else they invest in is something they find "socially responsible"?

• Israel intercepts Gaza flotilla and detains activists including Greta Thunberg

  • Israeli military arrests Greta Thunberg, flotilla activists after intercepting dozens of boats

• A New Gaza Rage Machine–With Polish Origins

• Hamas Indicates Open to Trump Peace Plan Under Pressure from Muslim Nations

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• US to give Ukraine intelligence on long-range energy targets in Russia

  • U.S. to Provide Ukraine with Intelligence for Missile Strikes Deep Inside Russia

China

• Nokia and Ericsson equipment now have to be "black box" tested in China

• China's jobless youth aren't happy with a plan to attract foreign professionals

• China turns the screws on Nvidia with antitrust probe

• China fields Golden Dome prototype before the US can come up with a plan

Health / Medicine

• Questions Raised Over NHS First Cousin Marriage Policy As Official Guidance Deleted.

• Why We Know So Little About Medicines During Pregnancy

• Autism should not be seen as single condition with one cause, say scientists

  • but whatever treatment they want to sell today is good for everybody... until the next one comes along

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Scientists Reveal Biological Basis of Long Covid Brain Fog

• Repeat Covid-19 Infections Could Double Your Risk of Long Covid

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• California installs artificial turf despite health and environmental concerns

• Warming climate is biggest threat to rangelands, study suggests

• AI reveals 'ghost forests' along U.S. coast

  • Half the forests have fragmented over the last 20 years

• Do stranded dolphins have Alzheimer's disease?

• Fossil fuel decline is already hitting countries like China and Norway

• Antarctic Sea ice emerges as key predictor of accelerated ocean warming

• Glaciers in California's Sierra Nevada disappearing for first time the Holocene

• Megafauna was the meat of choice for South American hunters

• Unprecedented water rationing to begin in WA's Yakima Basin