2025-10-25

etc

• Gambling is Bad

  What motivates people to work is simple.

  Will my life improve if I put in effort.

  As long as you have a society where that’s not true, you will have a very demotivated workforce. This is why things like UBI are a terrible idea. If you are at the baseline and don’t see a walkable path to rise above it, you won’t. The more the government or corporations randomly change policies day in and out, the more you feel like that your actions won’t improve your life, and if things do get better (or worse) it’s at the whim of a system much larger than you. Gambling is the ultimate expression of this acceptance. Whether it’s casinos or crypto or lotteries or investments, you relinquish yourself to being an observer, knowing that it’s not effort that gets you ahead, but instead, impersonal luck. The fundamental problem with gambling is that it creates no value. It’s completely zero sum, and that means in the long run in a society of gamblers everyone loses.

Horseshit

• The Hidden Risks of Bubble Tea Are More Serious Than You Think.

• A New Paradigm for Protecting Homes from Disastrous Fires

• Gen Z's latest wellness hack is a "stop-scrolling" analog bag

• A Skills Gap Is Turning Cleaning for the Rich into a $100k Job

• Nothing beats a clipboard and hard hat: For Robbers Like the Louvre Thieves, Bright Vests Help Them Hide

• Prankster Oobah Butler Convinced Venture Capitalists to Give Him over $1M

• The Costs and Choices of Kiki’s Delivery Service

  The logic of cost is deceptively unintuitive and often difficult for students and laymen alike, mainly because common usage defines it as losing money. Typical notions of cost also often refer to inherent qualities of objects, e.g., a loaf of bread costs $5, and as an inevitable, negative outcome. The economic way of thinking clarifies a deeper meaning of cost, and Kiki shows this in one standout scene.

  Kiki realizes that her time has become relatively scarce; she has more wants and uses of her time than there is time available. She must choose how to use her time, e.g., figuring out what to wear, making urgent deliveries or the scheduled one, and going to the party or making her deliveries. Even though she is a witch, she cannot be in two places at once, and her broom only goes so fast. Scarcity entails choice, which entails sacrifice. That’s where cost comes in. If Kiki chooses to go to the dance, she cannot also make her deliveries and vice versa. When she chooses to make a delivery, her opportunity cost is the forgone value of another delivery and, perhaps, going to a party.

• Cherish This World Series. It's the Last One in Human Hands

• Why 'India's Picasso' is breaking auction records – and enraging the Hindu right

celebrity gossip

• How Ace Frehey, lead guitarist of Kiss, made himself a superhero

• Francis Coppola selling his antique watch after $100M loss on "Megalopolis"

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Information from social ties predicts conspiracy beliefs

• Gen Z anger at ruling elites is erupting across the world

Musk

• Tesla profits drop more than a quarter despite record car sales

• Tesla at the Crossroads: Why Musk Chose Robotaxi over Model 2

• He co-founded Wikipedia. Now he's inspiring Elon Musk to build a rival

• X's advertising boss leaves in latest departure from Elon Musk's businesses

• US agency asks Tesla about 'Mad Max' driver assistance mode

Electric / Self Driving cars

• How Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely leader in the electric vehicle revolution

• Jeep Issues Emergency Recall for OTA-Bricked Wrangler 4xes

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs with Robots

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• A Backlash Is Growing Against 'Legacy' Admissions

• 200 teacher sexual misconduct, grooming cases shielded from public.

  Best estimates show one in 10 students experiences sexual misconduct from educators during their K-12 schooling, according to that federal report. In Wisconsin, that rate would amount to more than 93,000 school children.

• Colleges Face a Reckoning: Is a Degree Really Necessary?

  • It is a ticket that certifies you will swallow bullshit and smile; which is great as a filter for the bullshit jobs. You want shit done; go find a dropout. The great tragedy of the age is there's so few people want shit actually done.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Counter-Strike's player economy is in a multi-billion dollar freefall

  • Market for 'Counter-Strike' Items Falls $1.75B Overnight

• Apple iPhone Air Gets Production Cut as 'Nobody Wants It'

• Amazon reveals cause of AWS outage

• NextSilicon reveals new processor chip in challenge to Intel, AMD

• Microsoft disables File Explorer preview for downloads to block attacks

• Intel Nova Lake May Abandon AVX-512 and These Other CPU Instruction Sets

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Detection firm finds 82% of herbal remedy books on Amazon 'likely written' by AI

• Investors use dotcom era playbook to dodge AI bubble risks

• Clippy rises from the dead in major update to Copilot and its voice interface

• Google porting all internal workloads to Arm, with help from GenAI

• Will AI lengthen lifespans or shorten them?

• Google AI falsely named an innocent journalist as a notorious child murderer

• In memo, Alexandr Wang explains 600-worker layoff at Meta

• 'Attention is all you need' coauthor says he's 'absolutely sick' of transformers

• Microsoft AI chief says company won't build chatbots for erotica

• With new acquisition, OpenAI signals plans to integrate deeper into the OS

• OpenAI and Anthropic vs. app developers: tech's Cronos syndrome

• Apple Starts Shipping Made-in-America AI Servers Early

  • Apple's Houston AI server plant is shipping hardware to data centers early

• OpenAI Should Make a Phone

• Teen Swarmed by Cops After AI Metal Detector Flags His Doritos Bag as a Gun

• AI Destroys the Old Learning Curve. Wright's Law Is Being Rewritten

• A Teen in Love with a Chatbot Killed Himself. Can It Be Held Responsible?

• AI is keeping the US economy out of a recession

• AI use in American newspapers is widespread, uneven, and rarely disclosed

• Google Earth's expanded AI features make it easier to ask it questions

• Reddit's 'AI Scraping' Lawsuit Is an Attack on the Open Internet

• Once AI bubble pops we'll all suffer – better than letting it grow unabated?

Crypto con games

• Trump Pardons Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao

  • Chen Zhi: The 'scam empire' owner accused of stealing $14B in crypto

• Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Wallet Awakens, Moves $16.5M in BTC After 14 Years

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Rimac Founder Says He Is in Talks with Porsche on Bugatti Buyout

• Supermicro warns it will miss revenue forecast by a lazy billion bucks or more

• Alaska Airlines' statement on IT outage

  • Alaska Airlines flights grounded across US due to IT outage

  • All Alaska Airlines flights grounded due to IT issue

• How nervous are investors about the stock market?

• Nike's plans to put the swoosh back into its sales

• Intel hamstrung by supply shortages across its business

• Intel's tick-tock isn't coming back

• Why New Jersey's cold storage surge matters for logistics

• PrimaLend's Unpaid Lenders Blast Bankruptcy for Missing Key Unit

• Fed proposes publishing detailed models for stress tests of largest banks

• October Price Data Unlikely to Be Released, White House Says

• US Auto Plants Weeks Away from Chip Shutdowns

• Grindr shareholders offer to take dating app private for $3.46B

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Justice Department to Monitor Polling Sites in California, New Jersey

  Today, the Department of Justice announced that it will monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions ahead of the upcoming November 4, 2025, general election to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law. At this time, the Department will monitor the following jurisdictions:

  • Passaic County, New Jersey
  • Kern County, California
  • Riverside County, California
  • Fresno County, California
  • Orange County, California
  • Los Angeles County, California

  This initiative is aimed at promoting transparency and an open flow of communication between poll observers and election monitors to ensure that elections proceed with a high degree of security. From now and up to Election Day, Civil Rights Division personnel will be available to receive questions and complaints from the public related to possible violations of federal voting rights laws.

Trump

• East Wing White House Satellite Photos

• Trump admin favors Paramount Skydance in race to buy Warner Bros. Discovery

• Trump cancels trade negotiations with Canada over an ad

  • US tariff negotiations with Canada terminated over advertisement

  • Trump says he's ending trade talks with Canada over TV ads

  • Trump calls off Canada trade talks after Ontario's Reagan-based antitariff ad

• Trump says an anonymous donor has pledged $130 million to cover military pay amid shutdown.

  • Pentagon to use $130M donation from anonymous Trump 'friend' to pay military

  The Trump administration plans to funnel a $130 million donation from an anonymous ally of President Donald Trump toward paying military service members during the government shutdown, the Defense Department confirmed on Friday. Congressional appropriators on both sides of the aisle said Friday that they were seeking more information from the administration about the specifics of the donation, but have yet to receive any explanation. Some Democrats have also raised concerns about its legality. “The Antideficiency Act is explicit that private donations cannot be used to offset a lapse in appropriations,” said Bill Hoagland, a former Senate GOP budget aide who is currently a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I think they could accept it but they could not use it for that purpose because the law is very clear,” Hoagland told CNN.

  Trump on Thursday had touted the $130 million donation, which he said came from “a friend of mine” with the aim of covering military shortfalls. He declined to identify the donor, saying “he doesn’t really want the recognition.”

  • Compare the choice of language, the tone of coverage, with the stories about Hunter's authenticated emails discussing prices for access to the Biden brand and complaining how much the Big Guy took... the scare quotes on 'friend' in the headline is a lovely touch.

Democrats

• How ‘Big Tent’ Are Democrats Willing to Go? - The Atlantic

  Many in the party say it needs a wider range of candidates to run. Does that include people with Nazi tattoos?

  After announcing his candidacy in August, Platner was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and received praise (and at least one donation) from other senators. He won the backing of three labor unions, filled town halls, and raised millions of dollars from small donors in his effort to defeat Republican incumbent Susan Collins. Last week, though, CNN released a report revealing Platner’s Reddit history under the username “P-Hustle.” In 2021, he referred to himself as “a communist,” and said that all cops are bastards. Other news outlets soon found additional posts: Platner suggested in 2018 that semiautomatic rifles are necessary to “fight fascism,” and in various posts from 2013, made insensitive remarks about sexual assault and asked, “Why don’t black people tip?” Then, on Monday, to get ahead of opposition research, Platner’s campaign released a video showing that he had a tattoo on his chest resembling the “Totenkopf” skull associated with the Nazis—a connection that Platner said he wasn’t aware of when he got the tattoo in 2007, and that he only recently learned about. “I am not,” he said, “a secret Nazi.” By Wednesday morning, he’d gotten the tattoo covered up by a Celtic knot with a dog motif.

  for now, at least, the Democratic party is not calling on Platner to step down. Ken Martin, the head of the DNC, said that Platner’s online comments were “hurtful” but not “disqualifying,” and that the choice is up to primary voters. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who is neutral in the race, said, “Everyone has a right to grow and grow out of their stupidity.”

  • "Everyone the Democrats currently like", anyway.

Left Angst

• Is Your Medication Made in a Contaminated Factory? The FDA Won't Tell You

• US reopens Alaska wildlife refuge to oil and gas development

• MAGA Site Took Money to Unmask Charlie Kirk Critics–Then Vanished

• Trump's Gilded Ballroom and the Fall of the American Republic

• US expands facial recognition at borders to track non-citizens

• How the Fed's ZIRP, Silicon Valley and Libertarians Paved the Way for Autocracy

• The Tech CEO Campaign to Stop Trump from Sending Troops to San Francisco

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam

  • Mind-boggling' poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump Imposes Sanctions on Russian Oil Companies

World

• UK Car production slumps to a 73-year low after JLR cyber-attack

• Britain's most tattooed man says UK's age check told him to "remove his face"

• Penguin and Club bars can no longer be described as chocolate

• India's Most Valuable Export: Workers

• Albania Is Showing the Perils of Outsourcing Democracy to Algorithms

• Apple faces £1.5B payout after losing UK App Store case

• Tech bosses could stop mobile phone theft, say MPs

• Apple says it may be forced to turn off App Tracking Transparency in Europe

• Silicon island: How Ireland became a semiconductor powerhouse

• Louvre heist lift-maker capitalizes on product's notoriety with cheeky ad

• You Can Kill a Democracy Without a Dictator

Israel

• As Israel Bombed Gaza, Amazon Did Business with Its Bomb-Makers

  • As Hamas kidnapped and raped little girls to death, the UN and much of the media paid participants in the atrocities... But as usual its different when "they" do it.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Trenchant Boss Charged with Seeking to Sell Secrets in Russia

• Putin Calls Up Reserves to Protect Russia from Ukraine's Drones

China

• Overseas renminbi lending surges as China steps up campaign to de-dollarise

• Taiwan in the Shadow of War

• How China Raced Ahead of the U.S. on Nuclear Power

  • American Leftist anti-nuclear propaganda had so much to do with it that one must wonder when China began funding those activists. 1990s at the latest.

• China's New Strategy for Trump: Punch Hard, Concede Little

Health / Medicine

• Gut Bacteria Make Serotonin, Paving Way for New IBS Treatments

• Drugs That Lower Cholesterol May Also Reduce Dementia Risk, Says New Study

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• mRNA Vaccines and Immuno-Oncology: Good News

  It wasn’t the spike-protein mRNA that did this specifically - the authors replaced that with mRNA against a cytomegalovirus antigen and this vaccination had the same effect. So it’s the immune-potentiating effect of the mRNA dose itself that’s helping, not anything to do with the specific antigen that’s it’s aimed at. The authors went to some trouble to try to figure out the mechanism behind this. They rigorously purified out any remaining double-stranded RNA that might have been in the vaccine doses, but that had no effect. On the other hand, changing the lipid nanoparticle formulation did wipe out the benefits - coupling that with other literature reports, they hypothesize that the LNPs form higher-molecular-weight secondary RNA structures that activate some of the innate immune receptors (like MDA5) that are watching for double-stranded RNA as a sign of viral infection.

  if you are spreading doubts and fears about vaccines and about mRNA research, you are killing people who could benefit. Killing them by not protecting them from the diseases being vaccinated against. Killing them by making them suspicious of advances in medical science in general. Killing them by driving them away from things like this new work that could fight completely unrelated diseases like cancer. That’s you, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. That’s you, Jay Bhattacharya. That’s you, Marty Makary. And all the rest of your minions and gofers and toadies. You have chosen the side of death and human suffering, and in a better world than this one you would be disgraced and shunned for it.

  • Ritual Abjurations of Evil are back. Feels like middle ages theology.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• South Korea's fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?

• Climate Obstruction: Sabotaging Climate Action Around the World

• Mapping the carbon footprint of digital content

• Alternatives to animal testing are the future

• Google's first carbon capture and storage project

• Can we dim the sun to fight climate change? Not without risking weather patterns, scientists suggest.

• 'London Underground mosquito' is much older than previously thought

• Marine heatwave over Pacific Ocean could lead to flooding in north-west

• New UN Global Forest Assessment – understanding long-term trends in forests

• Hunger influences the behaviour of female mice towards pups

• The probiotic home: Where microbes are welcome guests

• US sinks international deal on decarbonizing ships