2025-10-09

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• Aesthetics matter – Daniel Lemire's blog

  The form of a medium embeds itself in any message it transmits, creating a symbiotic relationship whereby the medium influences and transforms the perception of the content. In the case of code, it’s not just its execution that counts, but its presentation that invites collaboration and clarity. Likewise, your tie or jacket are no mere ornaments: they are the medium through which you assert a professional presence, an attention to detail that elevates the exchange. And for Montreal, this persistent ugliness is no trivial matter; it is the medium of collective neglect that erodes everyday well-being, turning a simple drive into a diffuse experience of gloom. Aesthetics is no superfluous luxury: it is the invisible vector that amplifies or diminishes everything we build.

  • The social signal that your notion of beauty does not vary from that of your audience is still the dominant factor in human relations; to the geeks a tie is a signal that you value appearance over function and will lie if you think that will please the audience.

Horseshit

• Cybersecurity Wakeup: Gen Z Tops the List for Falling for Phishing Attacks

• Economics for the Future – Beyond the Superorganism

• The Bay Area is cursed - by Sasha Chapin

  The Bay Area has a curse. It is the curse of Aboutness. Social life here is not regarded as something people do naturally, an organic element of being. It has to be About something. In New York, it’s an important component of the human repertoire to dress up nicely, gather, drink and eat, be part of the throng. In the Bay, most gatherings have the sweaty air of Purpose. Discussions are held to uncover new information, not because it is good to be around each other. Conversations feel like podcasts and the hosts are not funny. Someone recently said to me: “I’m tired of drinking in living rooms with overly smart people.” Sure, you could characterize the New York social life as purpose-driven: social positioning, conspicuous consumption. But motivated beauty is still beauty. I don’t care what motives make people strut alluringly towards delicious meals, or acquire interpersonal grace. I care about the actual richness this creates. It’s what we do instead of birdsong. In New York, the attractive people are attractive, but so are the ugly people — from the West Village girls to the octogenarians, costume and posture convey points of view. In the Bay, beauty (personal and otherwise) is looked down on and the famous gender imbalance has chilling effects. Is there a less sexual city than this? Perhaps Salt Lake, but I’d imagine it’s close.

• The Death Spiral of San Francisco's Most Storied Mall

• Mount Everest hikers describe 'extreme' conditions, rescue effort continues

• Why Americans don't want to move for jobs anymore

• Forget youthful brilliance – the human mind peaks at 60

Obit

• Ashleigh Brilliant, Prolific 'Pot-Shots' Phrasemaker, Dies at 91

• Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith

• Joan Kennedy, Who Married into a Dynasty, Dies at 89

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Bluesky civil war shows free speech is harder than it looks

Musk

• X settles ex-Twitter executives' $128M severance pay lawsuit

  • Elon Musk will settle $128M lawsuit with former Twitter execs

Electric / Self Driving cars

• How Much It Costs to Drive an E.V. and a Gas Car in Every State

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Spanish priest facing 3 years in prison over concerns about Jihadism

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Faced with soaring Ds and Fs, schools are ditching the old way of grading

• Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of metal-organic frameworks

• Stanford dropout Sam Altman says he envies college kids who quit school now

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Social media platforms are 'true monsters' and 'torment our children'

• Confluent Explores Sale

• Nintendo sues Reddit mod for $4.5M

• TiVo exiting legacy DVR business

• Verizon Chooses AST SpaceMobile to Support Space-Based Cellular Broadband

• Wi-Fi Signals Can Be Used to Detect Your Heartbeat

• Pico Park developer accidentally makes the game free forever on Steam

• Microsoft is moving GitHub over to Azure servers

• Logitech offers customers a coupon for bricking their Pop smart home buttons

• Hulu is officially shutting down after 20 years

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• LOPSA board votes to unanimously dissolve

  • Who? Prolly a good decision, then.

• New Big Project: The Hydro Dam. Part 1

  Anyways, fast forward to July 2024, and my longtime friend Aaron Sliski found a hydroelectric dam for sale, of all places, on Facebook marketplace. The dam was a roughly 80kW site located in Ashland, NH. Aaron’s father, Alan, also had a longtime interest in hydro power as well, so the three of us stretched our finances to form an LLC and purchase the dam. This project is mostly for fun, but I am betting it will work out financially as well. I think electricity prices will likely double in the next 10 years

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Billionaire tech investor says 'valuations in AI are at a bubble'

• AI companion bots use emotional manipulation to boost usage

• AI Apocalypse? No Problem

• Do OpenAI's multibillion-dollar deals mean exuberance has got out of hand?

• Why Diamonds Are Computer Chips' New Best Friend

• Nvidia to Finance Musk's xAI Chips as Part of $20B Deal

• Insurers balk at multibillion-dollar claims faced by OpenAI and Anthropic

• JPMorgan's Dimon Says AI Cost Savings Now Matching Money Spent

• 'Circular' mega-deals by Bay Area tech giants are raising eyebrows

• You can't libel the dead. But that doesn't mean you should deepfake them

• German AI startup in funding talks at $4B valuation

• OpenAI has signed $1 trillion worth of deals for computing hardware and services so far this year.

• Bank of England warns of growing risk that AI bubble could burst

• The AI Genetics Revolution Is Coming

• Walmart Wants More Developers, and More AI Agents to Automate Their Work

• OpenAI wasn't expecting Sora's copyright Drama

• AI Keeps Shifting Right: Coping with the Limitations of Large Language Models

  Large language models are increasingly being applied not to well-defined, measurable problems—but to fuzzier, harder-to-quantify domains where success is ambiguous and failure is slow to surface. In other words: instead of shifting left, AI is shifting right.

• Shale, Not Dotcom - Henry Gladwyn

  AI is not dotcom. It is shale. The shale revolution did not fail. It succeeded so completely that it reshaped the global energy order. New drilling and fracking techniques turned the United States into the world’s top producer of oil and gas, reduced dependence on the Middle East, and re-anchored American power. Yet most investors in shale were ruined. Productivity gains drew in too much capital. Debt-fuelled independents flooded the market. OPEC’s attempt to crush shale only accelerated the cycle. The paradox was that shale’s abundance triumphed geopolitically but starved capital of returns. AI is tracing the same arc of abundance. Every new GPU cluster, every megawatt energised, every advance in quantisation or inference efficiency makes the system more productive. But productivity invites more capital, which risks overshooting demand. The lesson from shale is not that success evaporates. It is that success does not guarantee profits for all. There will be returns in AI; but only for those who sit inside the envelope now being constructed around it.

• AI-Driven Demand for Gas Turbines Risks a New Energy Crunch

• Is there an AI bubble? Financial institutions sound a warning

• Bank of England flags risk of 'sudden correction' in tech stocks inflated by AI

  • Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak

• Anthropic's 'anti-China' stance triggers exit of star AI researcher

• The $40k a year school where AI shapes every lesson, without teachers

• How the Fed would respond to AI-pocalypse

• AI gets more 'meh' as you get to know it better

• OpenAI's AMD deal: Welcome to AI's mega-blob era

• Will A.I. Trap You in the "Permanent Underclass"?

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Actually, we are going to tell you the odds of recovering New Glenn’s second launch.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• SoftBank to buy ABB's robotics business in $5.4B deal

  • SoftBank Expands AI Footprint Acquiring ABB Robotics Unit

  • SoftBank to buy ABB robotics unit for $5.4B as it boosts its AI play

• Oracle Stocks Fall After Report Raises Concerns About AI Profitability

  • Nvidia CEO: Oracle will be 'wonderfully profitable' despite reported thin margin

• Something Weird Is Happening with Halloween Chocolate

• Lehman's London Arm Can Close After 17 Years and £28B

• The Unofficial Jobs Numbers Are in and It's Rough Out There

• U.S. Banks Face New Scrutiny over Opaque Loans Worth $1.7T

• First Brands Bankruptcy Damage Spreads to Jefferies, UBS

  • BlackRock Seeks Cash from Jefferies Fund Exposed to First Brands

• Debt collectors are spinning riches from "zombie" home loans

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Delays spread to major airports across the country – government shutdown

• ISPs created so many fees that FCC will kill requirement to list them all

• EPA Moves to Roll Back Drinking Water Standards

Trump

• MxM News: Shutdown be damned — Senate confirms over 100 Trump nominees in one fell swoop

  The Senate on Tuesday confirmed 107 of President Donald Trump’s nominees — including ambassadors Herschel Walker and Sergio Gor — as the government shutdown entered its seventh day. The move, approved 51-47, came after Republicans changed Senate rules to bypass what they called a Democrat “confirmation blockade.” In a 51-47 vote, Senate Republicans approved 107 Trump nominees in one sweeping package after implementing a procedural rules change allowing for “en bloc” votes. The change, used when the majority party controls the chamber, lets the Senate confirm groups of nominees simultaneously instead of one at a time.

• Trump calls for jailing Democratic leaders as troops prepare for Chicago

• Trump says he 'took the freedom of speech away' on flag burning

Democrats

• Joe Biden’s team blocked CIA from distributing report on son Hunter’s Ukraine business dealings | Just The News

Left Angst

• Ted Cruz doesn't seem to understand Wikipedia, lawyer for Wikimedia says

• The Civil-Military Crisis Is Here

• Trump Wants to Overhaul Drug Sales. A Company Tied to His Son Stands to Benefit

• Peter Thiel, Would-Be Philosopher King, Takes on Democracy

• Study finds one in four professors consider leaving US south

  Many professors in the US south, particularly in Florida, South Carolina and Texas, are considering leaving their state because of the impact the political climate is having on education, according to a new survey by the American Association of Professors.

• Universities should reject the administration's proposed 'compact'

  • And all Federal funding, so they can be independent of politics.

• Bob Ross paintings to be auctioned to fund US public broadcasting

  • Over 30 Bob Ross paintings to be auctioned off due to PBS federal funding cut

• Trump's State Department Wants to Use Tech Policy to Remake Europe in Its Image

• Are soaring gold prices telling us something important?

• Trump's Wind Energy Assault Stings Red States

• Senate Confirms Neil Jacobs, ‘Sharpiegate’ Meteorologist, to Lead NOAA - The New York Times

  Dr. Jacobs was found to have violated NOAA’s code of ethics in 2020 after an investigation into an incident that centered on an altered hurricane forecast map President Trump presented in the Oval Office in 2019. The investigation found he had bowed to political pressure in releasing a statement critical of National Weather Service forecasters in Alabama, who had stressed on social media that Hurricane Dorian was not expected to affect that state, despite warnings to the contrary from Mr. Trump.

• America Is Drowning in Scam Calls and Texts and Donald Trump Is Making It Worse

  • Trump is also the sole cause of Climate Change, Halitosis, and unattractive children!

• Trump's Crusaders: Christian Nationalists Are Gaining a Solid Foothold in D.C

• Fortunate Sons: How Trump Admin Children Are Earning Billions

• Why Trump hasn’t invoked the Insurrection Act yet - POLITICO

• IRS furloughs nearly half of its workforce due to government shutdown

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• 13 arrested, four police officers injured in violent Boston Common protest: ‘Completely despicable.’

  Thirteen people were arrested Tuesday night in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest that turned violent on the Boston Common and left four police officers injured, including some with broken bones, according to officials. Protesters “turned on police” at approximately 6:50 p.m. when they began to move from the Common to the area of Tremont and Winter streets, Boston Police said.

• Man accused of intentionally starting fire that destroyed Pacific Palisades

  The most destructive inferno in Los Angeles history, which charred a devastating path through Pacific Palisades and Malibu in early January, was a rekindling fire that an Uber driver intentionally set days earlier near a popular hiking area, federal investigators alleged. Authorities on Wednesday also announced the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht, who is suspected of setting the initial fire on New Year’s Eve. Rinderknecht, of Florida, was charged with starting what eventually became the Palisades fire. Among the evidence that was collected from his digital devices was an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city, said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.

  • Man Charged with 'Maliciously' Starting January LA Palisades Fire

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• A $6B Nuclear U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier 'Sunk' by $100M Diesel 'AIP' Sub

World

• Thames Water removes 100-tonne fatberg from west London sewer

• One-man spam campaign ravages EU 'Chat Control' bill

  • Germany slams brakes on EU's Chat Control device-scanning snoopfest

• EU must seize 'unique opportunity' to supplant US dollar – ECB president

• Japanese GenZ attempting a two-hour limit on smartphone use

• Myanmar activists to sue Norway's Telenor for handing data to military

• Europe's new biometric border checks: what do non-EU travellers need to know?

• The Sudanese women left alone to live hand to mouth in Chad's desert camps

  • Why is Sudan in the news suddenly? Did someone arm the Christians and the Left is pleading for help to continue their slaughter?

• Desperate search for fuel in Mali as al-Qaida-linked group enforces blockade

• 858TB of government data may be lost for good after South Korea data center fire

• Populist billionaire and Trump supporter Babis cruises to Czech election win | CNN

Israel

• Facing drought, Israel to direct desalinated water to Sea of Galilee, in first

• Israel, Hamas agree on first phase of ceasefire, hostage release

  • Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Peace Deal

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Europe makes anti-drone rocket for Ukraine that blasts cloud of steel balls

China

• The Chinese migrant workers powering the deadly EV nickel boom

• China builds thriving semi industry off US leftovers, export controls be damned

• How China Threatens to Force Taiwan into a Total Blackout

Health / Medicine

• Ultrasound is ushering a new era of surgery-free cancer treatment

• Wholefood is a budget alternative to Ozempic for weight loss, social media finds

• Babies' Brains Recognize Foreign Languages They Heard Before Birth

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Thomas Keller is urging California to block nonstick cookware ban

• Orange-bellied parrot's last chance for survival may be cross species breeding

• IKEA now sells solar panels – and you don't have to assemble them yourself

• Renewables Supplying More Power Globally Than Coal

• Why this one area of cities is usually the poorest

• The unexpected upside of Canada's wildfires

• One-time nitrogen application boosts ammonia emissions in maize fields

• Plant-based 'burger' label grilled in EU parliament

  • MEPs vote to ban plant-based food terms

• Best of times, worst of times: record fossil-fuel profits inflation & inequality

• Carbon cycle could push Earth into an Ice Age as planet overcorrects for warming

• The cost of ultra-processed foods on the environment

• A Chart Climate Denialists Can't Ignore

• Scientists catch a shark threesome on camera