2025-10-17

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• Rice weevil on a grain of rice wins 2025 Nikon Small World contest

• More on US Pedestrian Deaths

  Since 2009, pedestrian deaths have increased by almost 80%, following multiple decades of falling rates. readers had many theories about the drivers of the increase. In this follow-up post, I wanted to further investigate some of the most compelling theories and angles on the question. Unfortunately, this exercise left me more confused than before. What previously seemed like the most promising explanation (the rise of large SUVs) now looks less compelling. But no other explanation has emerged to take its place.

  Deaths in daylight are only up 28% since 2009; deaths in darkness or lit darkness (streetlights, etc.) are up 103% and 87%, respectively. On its own, this data doesn’t tell us what’s causing the increase in deaths (indeed, the NYT quotes a researcher at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety saying, “I don’t have any definitive answers for this”), but it’s a useful correction.

  Some readers wondered if a similar uptick in fatalities has been seen for bicyclists. It has: bicyclist deaths are up 86% since 2009. So whatever is causing the increase also seems to be affecting cyclists.

  • That tracks with the adoption of LED lighting: perhaps people aren't seeing as well at night now? It also tracks with the adoption of screens in cars.

• A Tale Of Two Car Design Philosophies | Hackaday

  Air-cooled Volkswagens are my favorites, and in fact I wrote about these, and my own ’72 Super Beetle, almost a decade ago. The platform is incredibly versatile and hackable, not to mention inexpensive and repairable thanks to its design as a practical, affordable car originally meant for German families in the post-war era and which eventually spread worldwide. My other soft-spot is a car that might seem almost diametrically opposed to early VWs in its design philosophy: the Mercedes 300D. While it was a luxury vehicle, expensive and overbuilt in comparison to classic Volkswagens, the engineers’ design choices ultimately earned it a reputation as one of the most reliable cars ever made.

  As much as I appreciate these classics, though, there’s almost nothing that could compel me to purchase a modern vehicle from either of these brands. The core reason is that both have essentially abandoned the design philosophies that made them famous in the first place. And while it’s no longer possible to buy anything stamped Made in West Germany for obvious reasons, even a modern car with a VIN starting with a W doesn’t carry that same weight anymore. It more likely marks a vehicle destined for a lease term rather than one meant to be repaired and driven for decades, like my Beetle or my 300D.

Horseshit

• The Unvaccinated Calf

  That I’ve spent my own life trying to be exceptional — it’s what this country teaches, more than any others. That we should be special, extraordinary, and if we strive hard enough, we’ll be famous and known and different from everyone else. Terminal Uniqueness is America’s one and only consensus religion.

  But the older I get, the more I realize it’s absolute horseshit. That the desire to be exceptional, to be the calf jumping the gate from the herd, is what’s led us to a world where everyone has to record their every thought and feeling and impulse and shirtless selfie in an attempt to be deemed special for the simple act of being human. It’s how we’ve come to a world where your worth is based on your social media count and how many people are tagging your name and following you over the gate, even if you’re damaging the herd, because this is what we believe is the new God — exceptionalism, uniqueness, separation from the whole instead of the whole itself. It’s not just a foolish aim, but increasingly a deadly one. Where anyone without purpose in their lives might pick up a gun, point it at someone they deem exceptional, for the purposes of becoming exceptional too.

  Maybe it’s why I feel so alive and healthy when I visit India. Because no one can be exceptional, honestly. Things are moving way, way too fast. There’s a reason why TikTok was banned there without the slightest peep of outcry. People are too busy living, being part of something bigger than themselves. To step onto the street of India is to be swept away in a flow.

  • Its a nice metaphor: but people ain't cows. Even the ones that think they want to be.

• Billions in private cash is flooding into fusion power. Will it pay off?

• They done fucked up when they put it in the water: Hull Failure and Implosion of Submersible Titan

  • Titan submersible imploded due to poor engineering, say US officials

• CIA Secret Kept for 35 Years Is Found in the Smithsonian's Vault

• Where Are the Aliens? New Study Suggests They're Stuck Like Us

• How America got hooked on ultraprocessed foods

• 'Surveillance pricing': Why you might be paying more than your neighbour

• Superwood Is as Strong as Steel and 6 Times Lighter

• This Shop Made the Hellcat Plymouth Prowler a Turnkey Reality

• Did lead poisoning doom Neanderthals?

• When Face Recognition Doesn't Know Your Face Is a Face

• Norwegian Officials Probe Major Polymarket Bets on Nobel Peace Winner

• From Sports to AI, America Is Awash in Speculative Fever

• Pop star laments missed SF tech investment that would've made him $5B

• Picasso painting vanishes en route to Spanish exhibition

• Renting a San Francisco Apartment in the A.I. Boom? Good Luck

celebrity gossip

• Sadiq Khan holds birthday bash on £268M superyacht

Obit

• Ace Frehley Dies at 74

  • Ace Frehley, KISS founding member and rock music pioneer, dead at 74

Musk

• SpaceX has plans to launch Falcon Heavy from California—if anyone wants it to

• OpenAI thinks Elon Musk funded its biggest critics—who also hate Musk

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo plans to bring its taxis to London in 2026

• The Rest of the World Is Following America's Retreat on EVs

• Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol cars

• Tesla is finally running TV ads, but they are not for its electric cars

• DoorDash and Waymo launch autonomous delivery service in Phoenix

• Norway declares victory in move away from gas cars

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Colleges could lose federal student loans due to default rates

• Harvard endowment swells to nearly $57B, donations reach a record

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Eddy Cue Explains Why Apple TV+ Is Now Apple TV

• Video game union workers rally against $55B private acquisition of EA

• Instagram says it's making the app more 'PG-13' for teens

• Locked out of your Gmail account? Google says phone a friend

• Customers imperiled after nation-state ransacks F5's network

• Chinese Criminals Made More Than $1B from Those Annoying Texts

• Mysterious Intrigue Around an x86 "Corporate Entity Other Than Intel/AMD"

• How I Bypassed Amazon's Kindle Web DRM Because Their App Sucked

  Amazon put real effort into their web DRM.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Sovereign Tech Fund invests $450k in R Foundation to Enhance R

• When you opened a screen shot of a video in Paint, the video was playing in it

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• ChatGPT erotica coming soon with age verification, CEO says

  • OpenAI's ChatGPT will soon allow 'erotica' for adults in major policy shift

• Free Graphic Cards for Everyone

  If the wheel of history repeats itself, we can expect decades of hardware advancement to land directly in the hands of the public. The infrastructure built for a bubble becomes the foundation for what comes next. I, for one, am waiting for my free GPU. Or at least my heavily discounted one. The crash won't be the end of AI. It will be the moment AI becomes truly democratized.

  • Which is great, if anyone builds the GPUs, but they've gone straight to shuffling digital money and need not build anything. Also, the GPUs they're gonna have to sell are old Nvidia "no video output" shit that hasn't changed in years; hope you like CUDA and sipping shared data through a long straw.

• It's Giving Enron - by Dave Karpf

  he AI bubble isn’t predominantly giving off Pets.com or Global Crossing vibes anymore. It’s giving Enron vibes. When the dust settles, we’ll probably see a whole lot of books written about the fancy math games that convinced investors that two companies passing $100 billion back and forth were creating $200 billion in value instead of having a net financial impact of $0.

  it’s only fraud if it violates a law that the government still enforces. Even in normal times, that’s a complicated question when you’re dealing with sophisticated and well-lawyered actors. And we aren’t in normal times.

• Major network vendors team to advance Ethernet for scale-up AI networking

• AI agents are on the verge of being recognized as full-fledged workers

• Eliezer Yudkowsky argues we should be afraid of A.I.'s existential risk

• Meta partners up with Arm to scale AI efforts

• AI Data Centers, Desperate for Electricity, Are Building Their Own Power Plants

• Why AI is being trained in rural India

• AI might be creating underclass, but makers of tech bubble are replaceable

• Ollama Rolls Out Experimental Vulkan Support for AMD and Intel

• Even top generals are looking to AI chatbots for answers

• Chatbots Are a Waste of A.I.'S Real Potential

• Microsoft: RU, China increasingly using AI to escalate cyberattacks on the US

• Even the Inventor of 'Vibe Coding' Says Vibe Coding Can't Cut It

• OpenAI hires black hole physicist in broader science push

• The Frothiest AI Bubble Is in Energy Stocks

• Job Interviews Are Broken

• Alibaba says its AI spending in e-commerce is already breaking even

• The AI Industry's Scaling Obsession Is Headed for a Cliff

• 'Of course it's a bubble': AI startup valuations soar in investor frenzy

• OpenAI's ChatGPT is so popular that almost no one will pay for it

• Oracle goes all-in on AI, customers still figuring out how they'll use it

• Internal Amazon Documents Warned AI Startups Are Delaying AWS Spending

• What GPU pricing can tell us about how the AI bubble will pop

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Once unthinkable, NASA, Lockheed now consider launching Orion on other rockets

Crypto con games

• PayPal's crypto partner mints $300T of stablecoins in 'technical error'

• FTX Was Never Insolvent: A Prison Interview with Sam Bankman-Fried

  According to the numbers Sam shared with me [Where Did the Money Go 9/11/25], FTX was never insolvent. Not in November 2022 when he handed over control under pressure from lawyers and regulators, and not even at the bottom of the market crash. By his accounting, FTX held $15 billion in assets against $8.4 billion in liabilities at the moment of bankruptcy. That gap, he argued, should have been the margin that protected customers and creditors alike. Instead, bankruptcy lawyers declared the company “hopelessly insolvent” and liquidated assets at fire-sale prices. Today, every creditor is being repaid in full, with profits, but billions that could have been recovered remain lost, consumed by professional fees, legal wrangling, and decisions made by those who, in Sam’s words, “had no idea what they were doing.”

Economicon / Business / Finance

• They Signed Up for Citi's New Premium Card. It Turned into a Nightmare

• Jefferies Found Itself at the Center of First Brands' Collapse

• Why Jamie Dimon is warning of 'cockroaches' in the US economy

• PayPal and Venmo are down – live updates on the ongoing outage

• Zions, Western Alliance Banks Disclose Bad Loans Tied to Alleged Fraud

• Private Credit on the Defensive Again over 'Mark-to-Myth' Study

• Deel raises $300M Series E at $17.3B valuation

• Top Walmart exec says American manufacturing comeback is real and good for business.

• New Credit Fraud Fears Raise More Worries About Regional Banks

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Steve Jobs to Be Featured on U.S. Commemorative $1 Coin in 2026

  • Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

• Nearly 100 stolen election ballots found in Sacramento County homeless camp

• Sixth Circuit Rules In Favor of School Ban on “Let’s Go Brandon” Sweatshirts

  We previously discussed the case of B.A. v. Tri County Area Schools, where two middle schoolers in Michigan were prevented from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts. However, a divided panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that the school district was within its authority to ban the sweatshirts. The decision, in my view, is wrong, and this could prove a viable case for Supreme Court review, assuming that the plaintiffs will not seek an en banc review. “Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a similarly unintended political battle cry not just against Biden but also against the bias of the media. It derives from an Oct. 2 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud and clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’” “Let’s Go Brandon!” instantly became a type of “Yankee Doodling” of the political and media establishment.

  In this case, an assistant principal (Andrew Buikema) and a teacher (Wendy Bradford) “ordered the boys to remove the sweatshirts” for allegedly breaking the school dress code. However, other students were allowed to don political apparel with other political causes, including “gay-pride-themed hoodies.”

• Video Shows Mitch McConnell, 83, Collapse in Senate Office Building

  The exchange ended with McConnell, 83, waving to the cameras and appearing uninjured. Upon contacting McConnell's office, a representative told Newsweek that he is "all good" and continued with his Senate duties, including casting votes on the shutdown at 1:30 p.m.

Trump

• Xi's Rare Earth Shock Gives Trump a Chance to Win over US Allies

• DOGE says that it has created $210 billion in taxpayer savings

• Trump Says $16B Gateway Hudson Tunnel Project 'Terminated'

• Former Trump adviser John Bolton criminally indicted

  According to a 26-page indictment filed at a court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Thursday, Bolton is charged with eight counts of transmission of national defence information (NDI) and 10 counts of unlawful retention of NDI. Prosecutors accuse him of illegally transmitting top secret information about US national defence using his personal email and other messaging apps. "These documents revealed intelligence about future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations," the document states. It adds: "These documents included intelligence on an adversary's leaders as well as information revealing sources and collections used to obtain statements on a foreign adversary."

• U.S. Chamber of Commerce sues over Trump's $100k H-1B visa fee

Democrats

• Child abuser sentencing further reveals disturbing sanctuary state pattern: whistleblower | Fox News

  "Call it what you will, but this is total government failure," he said. "You have documented cases now of these girls being assaulted in shelters run with taxpayer dollars. No one at the top, including Governor Maura Healey, is taking any of the responsibility." Fetherston has previously blown the whistle on "rampant" sexual abuse of children taking place in the Massachusetts-run shelter system. Speaking with Fox News Digital in February, he detailed the case of another Haitian illegal alien, Ronald Joseph, who raped and impregnated his own 14-year-old daughter at the Marlborough shelter. Fetherston said that when he and the authorities confronted Joseph about the rape, he became agitated and threatened him. Despite the gravity of the crime, Fetherston said he was instructed to order Joseph a ride to another state-run shelter. Joseph was not arrested until months later. He has since been sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison for aggravated rape of a child.

• Dems plot Fetterman ouster

Left Angst

• Trump Team Plans IRS Overhaul to Enable Pursuit of Left-Leaning Groups

  • Trump Hatches New Plot to Attack His Political Enemies - NewsBreak

  • The Trump Administration Might Shake Up the IRS and the Left Is Freaking

  The WSJ seems to have forgotten that President Barack Obama’s IRS went after Tea Party groups, and while there were investigations and apologies much later, the damage to the Tea Party movement had already been done. What’s that they say about it being better to beg forgiveness than ask permission? Obama knows. While federal law makes it a felony for the administration and anyone outside of the Attorney General's office to request an investigation of an individual taxpayer, that doesn’t mean Trump or anyone else must turn a blind eye to the corruption all around them and be quiet about it. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who oversees the IRS, went on record in an interview on "The Charlie Kirk Show" with current host Andrew Kolvet that indeed, Treasury is making lists of potential culprits behind the left-wing violence that is increasingly plaguing the nation. His thinking is that they can weaken the organizations behind the violence through better scrutiny of their money flows.

• US Dept of Interior denies canceling largest solar project after axing review

• San Francisco opposes 'authoritarian crackdown'

• What Does George Orwell's '1984' Mean in 2024?

• Inside the Trump Administration's Assault on Higher Education

• Palantir: Understand the Moat to Understand the Valuation

• U.S. falls out of top 10 on list of the world's most powerful passports

• How Charlie Chaplin used his uncanny resemblance to Hitler to fight fascism

• Employee uploads 187,000 explicit images to US Department of Energy network intending to create 'robot porn', gets caught and loses his security clearance, complains he's facing 'the Spanish Inquisition' | PC Gamer

  There are all sorts of bizarre nuggets in the appeal report. The man claimed the images had originally been moved to his government computer because he'd been viewing them on his phone, but the screen was too small. He also clarified that he'd been maintaining this giant porn stash since the 1990s, and "the sexually explicit images were an accumulation of '25–30 years worth of pornographic material' he had collected on his personal computer." The man admitted breaching DOE rules but simply "did not think it was 'very wrong' to have adult images on an unclassified computer" and the DOE "was spying on him 'a little too much' given that the systems were unclassified." He also described the DOE software used to investigate the upload as "spyware" before going on to the Spanish Inquisition line.

• CDC tormented: HR workers summoned from furlough to lay off themselves, others

• Faculty at Pa. university urges leaders to reject Trump compact

• Swiss Army Knife maker tries new tools to blunt Trump tariff blow

• One Republican Now Controls a Chunk of US Election Infrastructure

  • The Leftist angst over the sale of Dominion is the last nail in the coffin for any defense of the company: it's fine to have a voting system designed for fraud as long as the Democrats control it but panic and horror if they don't...

• Meta Removes Facebook Group That Shared Information on ICE Agents

• Hey Zuck, Remember When You Said You'd Never Again Cave to Government Pressure?

• We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents

• Trump Family Has Made over $1B in Profit on Crypto

  • Without even having to instruct various agencies not to investigate their deals.

• oh damn the totalitarian panopticon might've been a bad idea after all? ICE, Secret Service, Navy All Had Access to Flock's Nationwide Camera Network

• 4000 gone: Inside NASA's brain drain

  • Imagine what these noble geniuses might accomplish now that they are free to turn their skills to productive private pursuits... Surely the world can only benefit from unleashing such potential from the boulders of burrocracy.

• NBC News’ 150 Layoffs Gut Black, Latino, Asian American and LGBTQ+ Diversity Teams

• Silicon Valley's capture of our political institutions is all but complete

• RFK Jr.'s MAHA wants to make chemtrail conspiracy theories great again

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• CISA exec blames foreign hackers, Dems for putting US's critical systems at risk

• Sneaker reseller's arrest highlights surge in US cargo thefts

  Authorities in Los Angeles arrested Adeel Shams, founder of popular sneaker resale platform CoolKicks, after discovering more than $500,000 in stolen Nike goods during a raid at the company’s Santa Monica warehouse. Police said the merchandise — including 2,100 pairs of shoes and 150 cartons of apparel, some unreleased — had been stolen from a cargo train in Southern California. CoolKicks, known for selling limited-edition sneakers to collectors and celebrities such as Travis Kelce and Chris Brown, said in a statement that the company “entered into this purchase in good faith.”

  • We can't arrest a company for illegal acts; and rarely care to try enforcing any laws against corporations.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules

  • How The Pentagon Is Blocking Out News Organizations

World

• Hybrid War Threat Looms over Sweden's Cashless Society

• EU gets what it asked for, there is no charger in the MacBook Pro box

• Big tech refuses to speak to Dutch parliament about election influencing

• India's unplanned hydropower dams and tunnels disrupt Himalayan landscapes

• EU plans functional 'drone wall' against Russia by end of 2027

• European automakers expect chip shortages after Dutch intervene at Nexperia

• Merz Calls for European Stock Exchange to Challenge US, Asia

Israel

• Palestinian bodies returned by Israel show signs of torture and execution

• Hamas executes suspected collaborators in Gaza following Israeli military withdrawal

• In Gaza, 95 Percent of Farmland Is in Ruins

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Inside Ukraine's drone campaign to blitz Russia's energy industry

China

• China's Rare Earth Restrictions Aim to Beat U.S. at Its Own Game

• Potentially 'Catastrophic' Breach of Cyber Firm Blamed on China

• Beijing's anger at 'malicious' US move on Chinese tech firms

• China 'stole vast amounts' of classified UK documents

• China Issues Export Restriction Documents in Domestic File Format

• China tightens export rules for rare earth minerals

Health / Medicine

• New Alzheimer's Treatment Clears Plaques from Brains of Mice Within Hours

• Twenty Years Ago Today

  That doctor never told us that my chances of having my baby die at 20 weeks or later were nearly as high as the chances of his having Downs. It was a stark and ugly lesson for me in where the priorities of the OB/Gyn profession lay. Having spoken with more OB/Gyn doctors, and heard about others’ experiences, I now believe that the profession is dominated by eugenicists. My advice to new mothers: Find an OB/Gyn who is openly Christian. Even if you are not Christian yourself. You won’t regret it.

• California to begin selling affordable state-branded insulin beginning next year

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• We're losing the war against drug-resistant infections faster than we thought

  • Just like "snow will be gone by 2000" they've been doing "antibiotics won't work in 10 years" for the last 40 years.

• 'Death fold' proteins can make cells self-destruct

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Bird migration is changing. What does this reveal about our planet? – visualised

• Netherlands' renewables drive putting pressure on its power grid

• EU to bypass Washington and woo US states on green agenda

• Australian wet rainforests may be switching from absorbing carbon to emitting it

• Total solar eclipse triggers dawn behavior in birds

• Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere up by record amount in 2024: UN

• Could this year's drought dull fall foliage viewing?

• is called "spring": Antarctica is starting to look a lot like Greenland–and that isn't good