2025-10-31

Horseshit

• X-59 Supersonic Test Jet Takes to the Air

• Carlo Rovelli’s radical perspective on reality

  he proposed a new “relational” interpretation of quantum mechanics, which goes so far as to suggest that there is no objective reality whatsoever, only perspectives on reality — be they a physicist’s or a pigeon’s.

• Why Are So Many New Cars' Gear Selectors So Stupid?

• Why do cats love tuna so much? Scientists may finally know

• An in-space construction firm says it can help build data centers in orbit

• The Bay Area's Hottest Club Is a Filipino Supermarket

• Mathematical proof debunks idea the universe is a computer simulation

celebrity gossip

• Prince Andrew to Be Stripped of His Royal Title

  • Prince Andrew stripped of title and evicted from royal lodge

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• How Metal Is the Past? - by Margaret Killjoy

  My suspicion is that the imperial propaganda (and/or misogynistic propaganda, in the case of the astrologers) was, as often as not, rooted in reality. It was just very selective about where it looked, because the colonizing cultures were practicing just as horrific things at home. My suspicion is that all people do all sorts of wild shit, and propaganda comes from knowing how to crop the photo. Like how modern Islamophobes talk about how “Muslims throw gay people off of rooftops” (flattening the diverse positions on homosexuality in the Muslim world and conflating an entire religion to the rare actions of a few people) while those same Islamophobes are working actively to strip us of our rights and plenty of them are killing us. My suspicion is that the past was metal as fuck, and our awareness of the lies of the satanic panic and our awareness of the lies of imperial propaganda is leading us to assume that people weren’t getting up to wild—and often evil—shit when in fact they often were. This is just my suspicion, though, and one of the driving forces of my research, because I can’t get the curiosity out of my head.

• The New Conspiracy Age

  Everything is a conspiracy theory now. Conspiracists are all over the White House, turning fringe ideas into dangerous policy. America’s institutions are crumbling under the weight of deep suspicion and the lasting effects of covid isolation. Online echo chambers are getting harder to escape, and generative AI is altering the fabric of truth.

• An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime

  A coordinated network of more than 50 inauthentic X profiles is conducting an AI-enabled influence operation. The network, which we refer to as “PRISONBREAK,” is spreading narratives inciting Iranian audiences to revolt against the Islamic Republic of Iran. While the network was created in 2023, almost all of its activity was conducted starting in January 2025, and continues to the present day. After systematically reviewing alternative explanations, we assess that the hypothesis most consistent with the available evidence is that an unidentified agency of the Israeli government, or a sub-contractor working under its close supervision, is directly conducting the operation.

Musk

• Virgin Media O2 seals deal with Elon Musk firm to boost UK rural mobile coverage

• Elon Musk launches Grokipedia to compete with online encyclopedia Wikipedia

• It's better to be rich than right

Electric / Self Driving cars

• SF neighborhood mourns loss of bodega cat allegedly killed by Waymo

• Rivian's onboard cameras save owner from a false accusation by police

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• 'Soul-Crushing': Students Slam Harvard's Grade Inflation Report

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• YouTube TV Flexes Muscles Again in Showdown with Disney

• TV-focused YouTube update brings AI upscaling, shopping QR codes

• Nvidia Reveals Vera Rubin Superchip

• Apple's Family Sharing Helps Keep Children Safe. Until It Doesn't

  • Mother describes the dark side of Apple's Family Sharing feature

• U.S. agencies back banning top-selling TP-Link home routers on security grounds

• US court orders spyware company NSO to stop targeting WhatsApp, reduces damages

• Luanti does everything better; including "not talking to MS": Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition

• Industrial Giants Schneider Electric and Emerson Named as Victims of Oracle Hack

• Japan's Anime Industry Grows 15% to a Record 25B Driven by Overseas Sales

• 'Most of it is good': Tim Berners-Lee on the state of the web now

• Linux GPU fan control for AMD and Nvidia

• Amazon have reportedly cancelled their Lord of the Rings MMO, again

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Careful Consumption of Open Source Software

  To consume open source software securely, we need to carefully evaluate the potential dependencies we include in our own projects, and then take responsibility for monitoring those projects, with awareness of both direct and indirect or transitive dependencies.

  • "own your deps" seems like basic sense to me. If you sell code built on gcc / libc / whatever; those tools are part of your codebase. You cannot pretend that your duty to your customers is transitive to the suppliers of your tools. FOSS or not. Microsoft will not fix a compiler bug for you. when your customers need a workaround: its on you to provide it. The GCC folks have at least provided you the chance of fixing any problems. See also the "Fortran 77" quote under the Trump section.

• (Sep 2024) The ear does not do a Fourier transform - by galen

  What the cochlea is actually doing is somewhere between a wavelet and Gabor. At high frequencies, frequency resolution is sacrificed for temporal resolution, and vice versa at low frequencies.

  It appears that human speech occupies a distinct time-frequency space. Some speculate that speech evolved to fill a time-frequency space that wasn’t yet occupied by other existing sounds.

  • Neat stuffs. In the real world no two ears are exactly the same; but the statistics can guide to compromises where that matters.

• Build Your Own Force-Feedback Joystick

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI layoffs to backfire: Half rehired at lower pay

• Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter

• Google gives all uni students Pro for 1 year

• Universal Music settles copyright dispute with AI firm Udio

  • Universal Music Settles with AI Firm Udio

• Jet engine shortages threaten AI data center expansion, wait times into 2030

• AI Agents Are Terrible Freelance Workers

• EA's Attempt to Use AI for Game Development Backfiring Horribly

• OpenAI prepares for IPO at $1T valuation

  • OpenAI thought to be preparing for $1T stock market float

• How the AI Crash Happens

• AI startup Mercor now valued at $10B with new $350M funding round

Crypto con games

• Binance Boosted Trump Family's Crypto Company Ahead of Pardon for Its Founder

• JPMorgan Tokenizes Private-Equity Fund on Its Own Blockchain

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Kraft Heinz CEO Warns of Worst Consumer Sentiment in Decades

• Alphabet tops $100B in quarterly revenue amid cloud, YouTube growth

  • Alphabet tops $100B quarterly revenue for first time, cloud grows 34%

• Meta reports mixed financial results amid spree of AI hiring and spending

• Meta down 12% – Looks to Raise $25B from bond sale

• GM lays off 1,700 workers making EVs and batteries in Michigan, Tennessee

• Why car insurance costs have soared (and what drivers are doing about it)

• BlackRock Stung by Loans to Business Accused of 'Breathtaking' Fraud

• Chipotle stock craters: young people without jobs cannot afford their food

• Volkswagen, Hit by Tariffs, Reports $1.5B Loss and Warns of Chip Shortage

• Paul Tudor Jones likens current market to 1999-2000

• Shift in Drinking Habits Wipes $830B Off Alcohol Stocks

• Amazon cuts more than 2,300 jobs in Washington state as part of broader layoffs

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Ohio uncovers over 1,000 noncitizens 'appearing' registered to vote, sends cases to DOJ for prosecution | Fox News

• US Treasury chief says China has approved TikTok transfer deal

• Banks and retailers run short on pennies as the US Mint stops making them

Trump

• Trump directs nuclear weapons testing to resume for first time in over 30 years

  • Trump asks Pentagon to resume testing US nuclear weapons

  • Trump orders immediate resumption of US nuclear weapons testing

  • "I did not have Trump killing the Fortran 77 compiler industry on my bingo card"

  The F77 compiler industry is entirely subsidised by the DOE, because they have a codebase written in F77 that, by law, cannot be modified unless its revalidated. It can be revalidated only by modelling a nuclear bomb exploding then actually exploding one and seeing whether they are the same. They would love to move it to F90 or newer but can't as long as the test-ban treaty is in effect

  Citation: I used to work on a F77 compiler, these people were our customer. They gave the worst bug reports:

  • Them: The code does not work!
  • Us: Can you provide a reduced test case?
  • Then: We will produce one and get it declassified.

  Six months pass

  • Them: Here is the test case!
  • Us: The test case does not trigger the bug.
  • Them: Oh. Right. We had to remove that bit when we declassified it.

Democrats

• How One Secret Service Officer Vented Following the Cocainegate Fiasco at the Biden White House

  ne officer made a "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" commemorative challenge coin about the ordeal to lighten the mood and improve morale within the ranks, according to the photos below and several Secret Service sources.

• Biden FBI Sought Records Of Conservatives In Get-Trump Probe

  • Grassley unveils 197 subpoenas from Biden-era Arctic Frost operation | Fox News

  Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released on Wednesday 197 subpoenas that the Biden administration's FBI used to seek testimony and documents related to hundreds of Republicans and GOP entities as part of the bureau's Arctic Frost probe, the precursor to former special counsel Jack Smith's election investigation.

  • Jack Smith's Arctic Frost probe targeted 'entire Republican political apparatus': Sen. Chuck Grassley

  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the nine Republicans whose phone metadata was sought, said “Arctic Frost is Joe Biden’s Watergate.” “Merrick Garland was a fundamentally corrupt attorney general. Jack Smith was a fundamentally corrupt prosecutor. This was a political enemies list from the beginning,” he told reporters, brandishing the court order that demanded AT&T hand over his cell records to the feds. The order was signed by US District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg and barred the cell carrier from letting Cruz know about the request “for at least one year,” he said. The FBI disclosures prompted outrage from the other senators in the room, most of whom had their so-called “toll analysis,” or phone metadata, requested by the Biden Department of Justice.

Left Angst

• Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts

• The Scandal Isn’t The Food Stamp Shutdown, It’s The Dependency Society

  Now, to leftists, the idea that more than 1.9 million Keystone Staters would suddenly lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, née food stamps) is a scandal. But to channel the uber-cerebral Kinsley, the scandal isn’t the temporary unavailability of benefits. The scandal is that nearly 2 million of a population of some 13 million Pennsylvanians are so dependent on a welfare program for daily sustenance. Nationwide, around 41.7 million people, representing a little over 12% of U.S. residents, are signed up for the program at any given time. Numerically, that’s an astonishing 142% vault over the year 2000 average, driven largely by the opening of the food assistance floodgates by Barack Obama (participation actually peaked on his watch in 2013).

• Food Stamp Shutdown Reveals the Fragility of Federal Welfare

  Federal dominance over SNAP funding has made the program hostage to Washington’s shutdown fight. Now, the fate of millions of families’ SNAP benefits depends on the whims of an overly partisan budgeting process. However, by phasing out federal SNAP funding and transferring program authority and financing to the states, Congress would allow them to scale and redesign their programs to provide more stable and accountable support closer to home, or cut them entirely, while insulating them from political dysfunction in Washington.

• Trump's Demolition Derby

• ICE and the Smartphone Panopticon

• How Trump and Biden Dismantled the Justice Dept. - The New York Times

  a mixture of fear and stubborn bravery, gutter politics and noble intentions ultimately paved the way for the unraveling of the Justice Department we are now witnessing. This decline started in Mr. Trump’s first term but gained momentum in the Biden presidency. It’s true Mr. Trump started it all when, in his first presidency, he tried to bend this venerable law enforcement agency for his own personal and political gain. Mr. Trump frequently failed in that effort, but, as we learned after two years of reporting, all the while he was quietly succeeding in destabilizing the institution’s foundations — and weakening its resolve with his brand of bare-knuckle attacks. That imperiled the rule of law that has long assured all Americans impartial and fair justice. Later, the desperate desire of Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden to avoid any appearance of partisanship led the department to put off looking into evidence of a potential crime and gave Mr. Trump an advantage that few appreciated at the time. Mr. Garland’s delays softened the ground and would eventually help Mr. Trump remake the Justice Department into his own cudgel.

  • "desperate desire of Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden to avoid any appearance of partisanship" ... I dunno what world these people have been living in, but it apparently ain't the one I've been watching. This is a fantasy framework for blaming Trump for the Arctic Frost abuses that are being shown now.

• Moderna, the company that helped save the world, has unraveled

• TikTok may become more right-wing as China signals approval for US sale

• Some White House ballroom contractors go underground

  Some of these firms appear to be trying to lower their profiles (in some cases, literally, on social media) amid the sometimes vitriolic online reaction to the East Wing demolition and construction of the 90,000-square-foot, privately financed ballroom. None of the firms have been accused of any legal wrongdoing.

• CBS News staffers lose jobs in 'bloodbath' as part of cuts

• CDC’s ability to prevent injuries like drowning, traumatic brain injury and falls is severely compromised by Trump cuts.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FCC Republicans force prisoners and families to pay more for phone calls

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump says South Korea will build a nuclear submarine in the U.S.

• FCC clears path to retroactively ban DJI drones in the US

• US declines to join more than 70 countries in signing UN cybercrime treaty

World

• Power walking will be illegal in Slovakia

• Why the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website redesign so poorly received

  I am convinced at no stage was a user ever asked about the design, and at no stage was the question “who is using our website and why” ever asked at all through the process.

• Germany examines nationalising Rosneft arm after US sanctions

• London's phones thieves are burying stolen devices in flowerbeds

• Germany bets billions on nuclear fusion for energy future

• The International Criminal Court wants to become independent of USA technology

• Ford to Invest $370M in India Defying Trump's Local Push

Israel

• Video Analysis Shows Staged Recovery of Israeli Hostage Remains

• WHO discussed use of term 'famine' to pressure Israel in December 2023

• Ex-Mossad chief says pager operations extend to 'every country you can imagine'

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• 3 Years Ago It Was a Casting Agency. Now It Has $1B in Drone Contracts

• Putin Announces Test of Tsunami-Making Nuclear Weapon

• Ukraine vows harder, better, faster, stronger strikes on Russian oil facilities

• 'Strange and disingenuous' Putin statement an effort to fool Trump, analysts say

China

• China's New Influencer Law: Only Degree-Holders Can Discuss Professional Topics

• China is using America's own trade weapons to beat it

• China Is Building the Future

Health / Medicine

• Canada is likely to lose its measles elimination status. The U.S. could be next.

  • Perhaps "eliminated" wasn't the word to use?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Bill Gates Says Climate Change 'Will Not Lead to Humanity's Demise'

  • Bill Gates Says We'll Survive Climate Change, World Furious

  On the eve of the the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, Gates’s downshift from “We’re gonna die!” to “A serious but survivable problem” was ripped as a grievous affront. The climate story has been reported as an extinction panic for decades, in the process becoming one of the most influential news stories ever. Its impact reached far beyond energy policy to realms like mental health, family planning, even journalism and academic freedom. Ostensible uniformity of climate consensus was used as an argument against both “viewpoint diversity” on campuses and objective “both sides” reporting. Global warming and the certainty of a “sixth mass extinction” became this century’s End-Times religion, replete with the Millerite pattern of repeat “final” warnings and failed predictions or “tipping points” (we reportedly just passed one two weeks ago, missing a chance to prevent “widespread dieback”). Even when warnings were scientifically accurate, the concept of unsurvivable catastrophe was still treated as an article of faith, and refusal to panic could be a cancelable offense. Denial of climate emergency was even listed in Twitter’s Files as the company’s “canonical” (!) example of “unhealthy content,” i.e. speech that should be shadow-banned even if it doesn’t violate rules.

• Why Delhi's experiment to fix toxic smog with artificial rain failed

• Tomatoes in the Galápagos appear to be evolving backward

• Trapped yoga influencers document Hurricane Melissa from their Jamaica villa

• Toxin levels in fish lead to calls for UK-wide ban on mercury dental fillings

  Britain is facing mounting pressure to ban mercury dental fillings, one of the few countries yet to prevent the practice, as new data reveals alarming contamination levels in the nation’s fish and shellfish. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can harm the nervous, digestive and immune systems, as well as the lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes, even at low levels of exposure. Its organic form, methylmercury, is particularly dangerous to unborn babies and can move through the food chain building up in insects, fish and birds. Mercury from dental fillings enters the environment mainly through crematorium emissions, which release vaporised metal into the air when people with amalgam fillings are cremated. The mercury then settles on land and washes into rivers and seas.

  • The notion that mercury in the body isn't dangerous until its cycled through the environment again has always struck me as goofy.

• Mysterious ocean heat bubble grows, marine life vanishes, satellites fail

• Why Spiders Are the Ultimate Interior Decorators

• Stop the constant inflow from fresh deposits inland? What will it take to stop Antarctic ice shelves from collapsing?

• Falling panel prices lead to global solar boom, except for the US

• Scientists identify potential climate solutions in 'grassy trees'

• Trees are emitting a ‘vomit’-like stench across California.