2025-10-07

Horseshit

• The Real Reason Endurance Sank

  The ship wasn't designed to withstand the powerful ice compression forces—and Shackleton knew it

  • Real reasons Endurance sank–study finds Shackleton knew of ship's shortcomings

  • Wreck of Shackleton's Endurance Tied to Culprit Other Than Ice

• Generation X may be the first to need a universal basic income

• FIFA's Blockchain-Based Ticketing System Faces Preliminary Probe

celebrity gossip

• Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Will Tour as Rush in 2026

Musk

• Elon Musk Gambles Billions in Memphis to Catch Up on AI

• Musk tries to make Apple and mobile carriers regret choosing Starlink rivals

• One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

• Elon Musk faces mass Exodus as top aides flee all 5 companies in major shakeup

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 awarded to immune system researchers

• The 'Best' Colleges Aren't the Best Forever

• Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Seeing Through the Reality of Meta's Smart Glasses

• Microsoft is about to launch free Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads

• Major Apple Leadership Shakeup Impending with John Ternus as Next CEO

  • Apple Puts Hardware Chief John Ternus in the CEO Succession Spotlight

• Instagram will award top creators with a gold ring. But no cash

• The Future of The Free Press - by Bari Weiss

  We’re a news organization, so I’ll get right to it: This morning, The Free Press is joining Paramount. This move is a testament to many things: The Free Press team; the vision of Paramount’s new leaders; the luck of starting an independent media company at the right moment; and the courage of my colleagues to leave behind old worlds to build a new one. But, above all, it’s a testament to you, our subscribers. From day one, the promise—and the business proposition—of this publication was simple: We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices. So many people told us this was no longer possible. That the premise of a media company built on trust rather than partisanship was, at best, a relic from the past—and, at worst, a fantasy that never was. That the internet killed journalism. That there simply weren’t enough Americans out there in search of media driven by honesty, independence, and integrity. You proved them wrong. You demonstrated that there’s a market for honest journalism. And you’ve given us a mandate to pursue that mission from an even bigger platform.

  • Bari Weiss named editor in chief of CBS News

  • Paramount Bets Digital Provocateur Bari Weiss Can Re-Energize CBS News

• Young People Are Falling in Love with Old Technology

• Rivian CEO Doubles Down on Decision to Not Offer Apple CarPlay

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Python is adding Zstandard to the standard library in 3.14

• FSF turns forty with a groundbreaking new project and a new president

• Kicked from RubyGems, maintainers forge new home at Gem Cooperative

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI Sora 2 generates videos of popular copyrighted characters

• Sora Is an Unholy Abomination

• Why the clock is ticking on the Fed-fuelled AI bubble

• 'Human intelligence problem': Labor senator slams Deloitte's AI bungle

• Nvidia Partner Hon Hai's Sales Rise 11% in Boost for AI Outlook

• AI Investors Are Chasing a Big Prize. Here's What Can Go Wrong

• U.S. tech giants hit pause on India datacenter deals under weight of uncertainty

• AI agents will change research: a scientist's guide

• AMD and OpenAI announce strategic partnership to deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs

  • OpenAI, AMD Announce Computing Deal, Marking New Phase of AI Boom

  • AMD signs AI chip-supply deal with OpenAI, gives it option to take a 10% stake

  • That is OpenAI buying 160mil shares of AMD at $0.01/share. AFAIK only one dude is working on making AMD chips useful for existing machine learning code; and he is persona non listen to in many circles.

  • OpenAI, AMD Announce Computing Deal, Marking New Phase of AI Boom

• AI chip deal: Reason to buy or is this just more 'money going in a circle'?

• Will AI ever win its own Nobel? Some predict prize-worthy science discovery soon

• OpenAI, Jony Ive struggle with technical details on secretive new AI gadget

• Bloomberg: 'Why Fears of a Trillion-Dollar AI Bubble Are Growing'

• AI in the 2026 Midterm Elections

• Major challenge to Nvidia: OpenAI's new computing push will run on AMD chips

• The AI bubble is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy and four times subprime

• America is now one big bet on AI

• OpenAI Is Good at Deals

• 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

• Sam Altman says ChatGPT has hit 800M weekly active users

• Peter Lynch on why he isn't in the AI trade

• Is Silicon Valley repeating dot-com bubble mistakes with AI frenzy?

• Gravity defying, single-day AI stock rallies are the latest bubble signal

• xAI is set to spend $18B+ to acquire 300K Nvidia chips for Colossus 2 project

• OpenAI wants to make ChatGPT into a universal app front end

• Altman says no current plans for ads in ChatGPT Pulse – but not ruling it out

• Sam Altman is spreading OpenAI's money far and wide to keep the AI race alive

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Rocket test proves bacteria survive space launch and re-entry unharmed

• Sneaky asteroid zooms past Antarctica closer than a satellite

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Cerebras Withdraws IPO Filing

  • Cerebras CEO explains IPO withdrawal, says AI chipmaker will still go public

• Palantir Rebuts Report on Security Flaws After Stock Falls

• Blackstone weighs options for Ancestry.com, including sale or IPO

• There Are 72% More Condo Sellers Than Buyers in the U.S.

• The worrying kink in this job openings, unemployment curve

• U.S. Banks Missed Warning Signs on Tricolor. Now, Their Losses Are Adding Up

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Leak suggests US Government is fibbing over FEMA security failings

  According to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, an audit found serious security problems at FEMA and revealed that "entrenched bureaucrats" had lied about the agency's security preparedness.

• Kristi Noem Says ICE Will Be 'All over' the Super Bowl

• House of South Carolina Judge Criticized by Trump Administration Burns Down

  Police are investigating the cause of a fire that burned down the home of South Carolina Circuit Court judge Diane Goodstein, who had reportedly received death threats for weeks related to her work. State law enforcement is investigating the house fire on Edisto Beach, which began at around 11:30 a.m. E.T. on Saturday, sources told local news outlet FITSNews. Goodstein was reportedly not at home at the time of the fire, but at least three members of her family, including her husband, former Democratic state senator Arnold Goodstein, and their son, have been hospitalized with serious injuries.

  The 69-year-old judge had received death threats in the weeks leading up to the fire, multiple sources told FITSNews. Last month, Goodstein had temporarily blocked the state’s election commission from releasing its voter files to the Department of Justice, a decision that was openly criticized by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and later reversed by the state Supreme Court. The DOJ had sought the information, including names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers, of over three million registered voters as part of President Donald Trump’s March executive order restricting non-citizens from registering to vote. (Non-citizens are already not allowed to vote in federal and state elections.)

• SCOTUS Rejects Ghislaine Maxwell Appeal

• Court Strikes Down Federal Ban on Guns in Post Offices

• US Supreme Court allows order forcing Google to make app store reforms

• US president urged to 'resist pressures' to go soft on Google, Ticketmaster

Trump

• The Fuel Behind Trump's $100k Visa Fee: Lost U.S. Tech Jobs

• Trump sends Navy officers wild with powerful message to liberals claiming he's 'unwell'

Democrats

• Virginia Democrat gubernatorial nominee worked at Saudi school known for Hamas links, jihadi grads

  Abigail Spanberger, a former Democratic congresswoman from Virginia, is currently the favorite to be the state’s next governor, according to polling averages. When it was revealed during her first congressional run in 2018 that she had worked for the Islamic Saudi Academy in northern Virginia during the 2002-2003 school year, Spanberger said that she was “proud” and “not ashamed” of her work history, despite the fact that, when she chose to work at the school, it was also already well known for its links to the terrorist group Hamas and for its recent graduates who had seemingly considered carrying out a jihad-inspired suicide attack in Israel.

• Illinois Sues Trump Admin to Halt National Guard Deployment; FBI Arrests Border Patrol Ramming Suspects | ZeroHedge

  The state is arguing in the new legal complaint filed in federal district court in Illinois that the federal government has no legal authority to intervene in the state’s law enforcement efforts. “The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor. To guard against this, foundational principles of American law limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs. Those bedrock principles are in peril,” the lawsuit states.

  While Patel did not name the suspects who were arrested, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said in court documents that Marimar Martinez, 30, and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, 21, were “charged in federal court with using their vehicles to assault, impede, and interfere with the work of federal agents in Chicago.” “After striking the agents’ vehicle, the defendants’ vehicles boxed in the agents’ vehicle,” the office said in its documents, adding that the “agent was unable to move his vehicle and exited the car, at which point he fired approximately five shots from his service weapon at Martinez.” Martinez, who was allegedly armed with a semiautomatic weapon, drove off, but paramedics found her at a repair shop about a mile away from the scene, according to the office. An ambulance took her to a hospital, where her gunshot wounds were treated.

Left Angst

• American democracy might not survive another year – is Europe ready for that?

• Chicago Police Told Officers "No Units Will Respond" As Protesters "Surrounded" Federal Agents: Report | ZeroHedge

  "Details are still emerging, but it appears that officers from the Chicago Police Department were ordered not to assist a group of ICE agents while they were physically threatened by what appeared to be an angry mob," Patrick Yoes, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, wrote in a statement, adding, "Let me be clear, both the National FOP and the Illinois FOP believe that when an officer calls for assistance, you answer, no matter what."

• State Terror, American Style – Paul Krugman

• ICE Targets Children with Payment in Exchange for Deportation

• ICE plans to scour Facebook, TikTok, X, and even defunct Google+

• Bari Weiss runs a Trump-friendly site – now she'll be in charge of CBS News

• Jane Goodall said she would launch Trump and Musk on one-way trip into space

• Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here’s how

  Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body – an embryonic constitutional convention – that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control. These selected states are meeting to propose an interstate compact by and between themselves, in the spirit if not the letter of the compacts that the constitution’s article I, section 10, clause 3 describes, and for them to submit formally to Congress to adopt as federal law. Of course this will never happen in this case, as Congress, in its current broken form, is incapable of anything like a new constitution, embryonic or not. But the point is to put forward a prototype for a new type of American government, for a post-Trump country, that carries forward part of the existing institutional framework that is worth preserving, alongside radical change in response to Trump.

• Larry Ellison Is a 'Shadow President' in Donald Trump's America

• The A.I. Boom Is Masking Trump's Policy Blunders

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Suspect arrested after threats against TikTok's Culver City headquarters

World

• New Zealand's Institute of IT Professionals Collapses

• Qualcomm in the dock over 'patent tax' on smartphones

  • Qualcomm in the dock over 'patent tax' on smartphones

• Zürich voters ban noisy leaf blowers

• British men are driving less, and a culture is vanishing

• Medieval church tower suspended 45ft above ground in 'never seen before' feat

• In Denmark, a Run on Canned Mackerel and Emergency Radios. The Reason? Drones

• Mount Everest: 100s stranded as rescuers battle heavy snow after blizzard

• Apple Faces French Investigation over Siri Voice Recordings

• Rocks on train tracks strand 900 Machu Picchu tourists amid protest

• France’s Le Maire Says New Cabinet Can Be Formed After His Exit - Bloomberg

  France’s Bruno Le Maire said he has stepped down from the government in order to facilitate the formation of a new cabinet after the resignation of Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu. President Emmanuel Macron’s decision late Sunday to return Le Maire to a ministerial post, in charge of defense, sparked a political backlash, including from within the administration.

• 'I won't fight': Venezuela's call to arms falls flat

Israel

• A selfie with Netanyahu turns into an employee and customer exodus

• 'Sickening' protests planned for October 7 anniversary at UK universities

• Israel accused of detaining Greta Thunberg in infested cell

• Hamas reportedly demanded release of militants involved in the Oct 7 massacre

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's New Strategy for Keeping the Lights on Through a Winter of War

• British parts found in Russian drones, Zelensky says

China

• An idea that won't sink: China planning underwater datacenter deployment

• Chile's plunging birth rate may foreshadow future in U.S.

• Xi Jinping's Successor and the Future of China

• China electrotech exports are surging. Here's what's at stake for the U.S.

Health / Medicine

• It's Just a Virus, the E.R. Told Him. Days Later, He Was Dead

• Turkey has become a top destination for hair transplants

• A Study of 500k Medical Records Linked Viruses with Alzheimer's Again and Again

• CDC approves updated Covid-19, chickenpox vaccine recommendations

  • CDC Approves Physician-Referral Recommendations for Covid Shot

• Nearly half of drivers killed in crashes had THC in their blood

  New study findings show that over 40% of drivers who died in motor vehicle collisions tested positive for active delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in their system, with average blood levels far exceeding those considered to cause impairment. The research highlights a significant and persistent public health risk that is unchanged by the legalization of recreational cannabis, the authors said. Researchers analyzed coroner records from Montgomery County in Ohio from January 2019 to September 2024, focusing on 246 deceased drivers who were tested for THC following a fatal crash. When autopsies are performed, drug screening is typically part of the process. The study period included the state's legalization of recreational cannabis in 2023.

  • no mention of ethanol or other drugs. Xanax used to be big around there, but of course "prescription drugs" won't be counted either.

• Most aspirin use in middle-aged adults may be unnecessary under new assessment.

• The Overdiagnosis and Mistreatment of Autism

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Drug-resistant bacteria spread and strengthen amid the chaos of Ukraine's war

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Recent destabilization of the subpolar North Atlantic recorded in bivalves

• The negligible role of carbon offsetting in corporate climate strategies

• What Is McDonald's US$200M Regenerative Ranching Push?

• Millions rely on dwindling Colorado River–but are kept 'in the dark' about fixes

• CT scanners waste more energy than used by a typical household but there's a fix