2025-10-12

Horseshit

• Science fiction's warp drive is speeding closer to reality

• Ancient Roman Gravestone Found in New Orleans Backyard Touches Off a Mystery

• America still has a heartland, it's just an artificial one

• All fluffed up: why modern balls spark injury worries and frustration in tennis

• Naked mole rats reveal genetic secret to long life

• 'Car Brain' Is Making the US Unhealthy and Dangerous. EVs Won't Fix It

• FIFA's 2026 ticket scheme is a late-capitalist hellscape

• The New Longest Nonstop Flight Is a 19-Hour Ordeal from JFK to China

celebrity gossip

• They doth protest too much: Peter Thiel's antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon

  • Thiel and the Antichrist

  Thiel's lectures represent the catechism of a class that has lost the habit of accountability. Thiel speaks as if democratic guardrails are satanic because they limit what the very rich may do, and he treats global standards on finance, the rule of law, and basic environmental responsibility as existential threats not just to humanity, but to the unconstrained reach of private capital. In his lectures, Thiel offers a choice between the Antichrist and Armageddon. I offer a better one, between oligarchy and democracy. If you want to see the real end of days, just look for the moment we decide that the richest man in the room gets to define what is good and evil, and you will know it has arrived.

  • So who does get to define "good and evil"? can there be any discussion of the definition your Authority hands down?

• Neil Young to pull music from Amazon, encourages fans to buy local

Obit

• Diane Keaton dead at 79

  • Diane Keaton, a Star of 'Annie Hall' and 'First Wives Club,' Dies at 79

  • Diane Keaton, 'Annie Hall' star and ROM-com legend, dies at 79

  • Diane Keaton, Oscar-Winning 'Annie Hall' Star, Dies at 79

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Telegram's Durov Warns of Digital Freedom Collapse

• The curious, intertwined history of climate and digital rights activism

  Over the decades, there've been many moments where I've been struck by the parallels between climate activism and tech activism. In both cases, the foundational challenge is getting people to care about the looming catastrophic effects of bad policies. In both cases, those policies and their effects are highly abstract and technical, and are downstream of a huge, weird, cross-cutting set of contingencies and circumstances, which makes it hard for anyone to truly take their measure.

  • Both have been extensively promoted on the Internet to his generation and on, by the Tides foundation, as a performative virtue signal and route to the "in group". Few people sporting "Free Kevin!" merch knew what Kevin had done; few sporting "Save the Whales!" merch knew that it was already illegal to hunt them. They knew the cool people liked those slogans, tho.

• People on the far-right and far-left exhibit strikingly similar brain responses

Musk

• Elon Musk's Boring Co. accused of nearly 800 enviro violations in Las Vegas

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Ferrari Elettrica will get a sound 'inspired by the electric guitar'

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Autonomous Robot Glider to Circle the Globe in Historic Ocean Mission

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• What happens to college towns after peak 18-year-old?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Vision Pro Future Uncertain as All Headset Development Is Seemingly Paused

• Apple Reorganization Moves Health and Fitness to Services

• Battlefield 6 players hit server queues as over 500k concurrents after launch

• Bose SoundTouch home theater systems regress into dumb speakers on Feb 18

  • At least they left some function

• AMD and Sony's PS6 chipset aims to rethink the current graphics pipeline

• Apple and Google reluctantly comply with Texas age verification law

• FBI takes down BreachForums portal used for Salesforce extortion

• Firefox always use DoH even when you disable it | Hacker News

• Amazon's Echo Show has abruptly turned into a billboard they expect you to pay for.

  • People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads

• Hackers leak Qantas data on 5 million customers after ransom deadline passes

• Hacking Group Claims to Have Breached Nintendo

• Northern Virginia is The World's Data Center Capital

• Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• "Neat" barely begins to describe it: Synthetic aperture radar autofocus and calibration

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Bubble trouble: could the AI boom go pop?

• 1 in 5 high schoolers had a romantic AI relationship, or knows someone who has

• OpenAI allegedly sent police to an AI regulation advocate's door

• They shoot cats, don't they? Why AI could arm fight against ferals

• AI data centers have an impossibly short runway to achieve profitability

• A Debate About A.I. Plays Out on the Subway Walls

• Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley

• Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt shares dire warning of homicidal AI models

• Reflection AI raises $2B to be America's open frontier AI lab

• Will AI Usher in an Economic Boom, or Just a Lot of Mediocre Automation?

• Fed President says AI investment may push up interest rates

• OpenAI is trying to clamp down on 'bias' in ChatGPT

• AI drones are America's newest cops

• OpenAI's dominance is unlike anything Silicon Valley has ever seen

• AI videos of dead celebrities are horrifying many of their families

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA's plan for living on the Moon? A space base made of glass

• Water Production Rates of the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS

  This places 3I/ATLAS among the few comets with confirmed OH emission beyond 2.5 au, where water ice sublimation from the nucleus is typically inefficient. The inferred production rate at 2.9 au implies an active area of at least 7.8 km2, assuming equilibrium sublimation. This requires that over 8% of the surface is active, which is larger than activity levels observed in most solar system comets.

Crypto con games

• Crazy Crypto Heist Is the Story of Our Time

• Major banks explore issuing stablecoin pegged to G7 currencies

• Crypto Carnage: Trump Tariff Tape-Bomb Triggers Largest Liquidation Event In History | ZeroHedge

  Over the past 24 hours, bets worth more than $19 billion have been wiped out, and more than 1.6 million traders liquidated, according to Coinglass data. More than $7 billion of those positions were sold in less than one hour of trading on Friday.

• Bitcoin Whale Shorted $1.1B Right Before Tariffs

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The Columbus Day Financial Massacre

• Rapid Rare Earth Reshoring

  Much of the problem around rare earth processing is entirely fictional, China’s dominance in RE is not technological, it is merely environmental legislation arbitrage. With coordinated effort the West could get to 30% replacement of China’s Rare Earth industry within 3-4 months and 70% replacement in 6-9 months.

• Why I have to buy doughnuts with cash

  The Fed has been reluctant to force all banks to adopt the same standards, or to share a standard with non-bank payments platforms such as PayPal or Stripe. In a new book, Beyond Banks, Awrey argues that this muddling through has left the US with “good money, bad payments” — the banks are safe, but the payments systems are garbage. Other countries have been more willing to force banks to co-operate. Brazil’s central bank forced its commercial banks to adopt a common payments architecture, shared by non-bank payments service providers. Its system, Pix, settles even small payments immediately, using the central bank’s own ledger, at a cost to the merchant of 0.33 per cent.

  • The "social credit" aspect of card payments has been a great help to the political Left; while there was no legal basis for blocking "wrong" ideas and organizations from the financial system there has been room for "reputation concerns" and so forth to ensure that only the proper peoples are allowed to participate in the secondary currency systems.

• Tech megacaps lose $770B in value as Nasdaq suffers steepest drop since April

• The Big Crash: Are we really heading for another 1929?

• The Case Against 30-Year Mortgages

• Record-Low Canadian Natural Gas Prices Prompt Production Curbs

• California's Wine Industry Is in Crisis

• Kalshi hits $5B valuation

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Salesforce CEO Says National Guard Should Patrol San Francisco

• Congress thinks hiding fund fees is good for you

• California Wants to Make It Easier to Build Housing. Los Angeles Objects

• 22% Jump in Electricity Rates Dominates New Jersey Governor's Race

Trump

• Vought sounds layoff siren: ‘The RIFs have begun’ - POLITICO

• $1 Trump coin draft is 'real,' US Treasurer says

Democrats

• Zohran Mamdani joins NYC Dems in left-wing love fest as they fiercely defend indicted AG Letitia James.

• CCP Member One of Largest Donors to Mikie Sherill's New Jersey Gubernatorial Campaign

  A Chinese auto executive and an active member of the Chinese Communist Party donated over $65,000 to New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill's campaign, according to state campaign finance disclosures. Those donations may very well be illegal: The law bans foreign nationals from donating to U.S. political campaigns. The executive, Pin Ni, leads the U.S. subsidiary of the Hangzhou, China-based automotive and industrial powerhouse Wanxiang Group. He wrote two checks in the amount of $30,000 in February and July, respectively, to the super PAC supporting Sherrill's campaign. In June, Ni made a maximum contribution of $5,800 directly to Sherrill's campaign.

Left Angst

• US citizen detained and held at ICE building in Portland hrs before release

• Academia Is Broken. Trump's University 'Compact' Can Help Fix It

• Sure, Ultra-Processed Foods Are Bad. But How Does That Help Anyone?

• NEA Axes Grant

  The National Endowment for the Arts has canceled all the creative writing fellowships awarded for 2026. Grant winners were notified by email that the writing category had been “withdrawn by the Agency.” The recipients, all published prose writers and poets, were to receive up to $50,000 each.

  • Grants for self-publishing I might could see; but why pay extra to writers who are "commercially successful" (within the definitions of the industry)?

• I Want a New Drug. A Vaccine Even. and a Functioning FDA, CDC, NIH, etc.

  The cuts in funding closing labs may be closing down the very science that was going to save the person you know and love. The hysteria maligning vaccines moreover threatens to close down some of the most promising avenues for delivering real cures. Meanwhile a politicized FDA stands to slow approvals for new trials and treatments. And a CDC that no longer can be trusted to control disease only gives aid and comfort to the pathogens that would seek to ultimately kill us all. And for women’s cancers in particular, a politicized public health system that deems the specific science of our bodies to be icky and criminal deprives us of all sorts of avenues for treatment and cures. There is evidence, for instance, that abortifacients like mifepristone can defeat the mechanism that makes our ovarian cancers so resistant to treatment, because it may be the same mechanism that protects pregnancies that is now misfiring to protect our tumor cells. And yet, there is currently little science exploring this vector of opportunity because how can there be? That science is all but illegal. As nearly all science is now becoming.

• Biden Spared 37 Killers from Execution. Trump Ordered Up a Lifetime of Torment

• Tennessee man arrested, gets $2 million bond for posting Facebook meme

  After the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, many on the political right set out to punish anyone making light of the tragedy, or even simply being insufficiently upset. In one of the more brazen examples, a Tennessee man was arrested, accused of threatening a school shooting, and held on a $2 million bond, for posting a somewhat uncivil meme on Facebook. "Received a visit from Lexington PD regarding my posted memes," Bushart wrote in a September 21 Facebook status. According to Sheriff Nick Weems of nearby Perry County, "numerous…teachers, parents and students" somehow interpreted Bushart's meme—with its citation in fine print about a previous school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa—as a threat to carry out a similar shooting at nearby Perry County High School.

  According to the Perry County Sheriff's Office website, Bushart was arrested the following morning on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities—a class E felony punishable by between one and six years in prison and up to a $3,000 fine. Worse, Bushart's bail is set at an astonishing $2 million.

  • Trump's "get over it" must be taken as far out of context as necessary to give maximum offense; but this guy's threatening speech didn't mean what he said at all; really. All these people who know him and all are just wrong.

• The shutdown worsens air traffic controller shortages, leading to flight delays

• Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Women arrested for home burglaries created fake profiles on cleaning service app

World

• Canada's Startup Visa Applicants Now Face 10-Year Wait Times

• More than half of entrepreneurs are considering moving to a new country: HSBC

  Singapore was the most popular destination, while the U.S. came in fifth. When asked about their reasons for moving to a new country, only a third of all respondents cited tax efficiency as a motivator. Tax savings ranked eighth overall behind other factors such as improved security and safety (47%) and better education opportunities (52%). Respondents to the survey could select multiple options. The most popular motives at 67% each were to expand their business to new markets or to gain access to new investment opportunities. The desire for a better quality of life came in a close third at 63%.

• Family of ducks crossing Perth's Kwinana Freeway cause six-car peak-hour pile up

• Google Labeled U.K. Tech Gatekeeper Under New Competition Law

• MTV to axe its music TV channels in the UK

• Hackers forced brewing giant Asahi back to pen and paper

• Canadian Army launches bold modernization and restructuring initiative

• Bashar al-Assad is gaming in Moscow, according to a new report

• Geert Wilders Suspends Campaign Due To 'Jihadi-Inspired Terrorist' Plot, Assassination Threats | ZeroHedge

  he was informed by authorities that he was a potential target of a suspected plot in Belgium to kill conservative politicians using a drone carrying explosives. Three men were arrested in Antwerp in the foiled attack believed to primarily be aimed at Belgium's Prime Minister Bert De Wever. "The NCTV does not foresee any 'residual threat' but I have a bad feeling and I am therefore suspending all my campaign activities for the time being," Wilders said after a briefing he received.

• India Opens Up Its Stock Market to Millions for $3/Month

• European Commission reviews child safety on Snapchat, YouTube, app stores

• Gang suspected of sending up to 40K stolen UK iPhones to China

• German gov't stops fast-track naturalization: 3 takeaways

• Germany, where beer is sacred, now leads world in nonalcoholic brews

Israel

• International journalists urge Israel to allow reporters in Gaza after ceasefire

  • "Let us ship in a new International Brigade to continue the fight!"

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Putin is losing the war, so prepare for escalation

• Russia targets UK military satellites on weekly basis

China

• How China Powers Its Electric Cars and High-Speed Trains

• China opens antitrust investigation into Qualcomm

• China expands export controls of rare earths

  • China has blocked exports of rare-earth elements to the rest of the planet.

  • Rare earth gambit reveals next phase of economic warfare

• China banned the research company that discovered Huawei was violating US bans on using Taiwanese technology to make its chips.

• Chinese phishing kit helps scammers send fake texts impersonate TikTok, others

• The 'profound' global impact of China's rise as an electrostate

Health / Medicine

• This Virus Doesn't Make You Sick. It Makes You Stronger

  Researchers from the University of California San Diego, led by a team of chemical and nano engineers, recently published a study in Cell Biomaterials that dives into how the cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) stimulates the human immune system in a way that other plant viruses do not. Unlike its viral relatives, CPMV appears to uniquely trigger immune cells to recognize and fight cancer.

• What is going on with all this radioactive shrimp?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Annual Covid Vaccines Protect People Against Disease

• Blood-Sharing Drug Trend Fuels Global HIV Surge

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• 'Not up for discussion': Brussels rejects Washington's pressure on climate rules

• Agricultural practices can harm soil resilience through changing feedback loops

• First evidence in the UK of breeding aegypti mosquito – main spreader of dengue

• Vulture nests reveal a centuries-old sandal and other cultural artifacts

• Scientists Completed a Damning Toxicity Report on This Forever Chemical

• Japan's summers have lengthened by 3 weeks over 42 years, say resaerchers