2025-11-05

etc

• UPS Cargo Plane Crashes in Kentucky

  • UPS plane crashes near airport in Louisville, Kentucky, officials say

  • UPS MD-11 crashes departing Louisville

  • At least 3 dead after UPS plane crashes at Louisville airport; fire spreading

Horseshit

• Cyber experts warn of the 'catastrophic' threat quantum computing could pose

• Firefighters rushed off their feet – by Italians who've lost their keys

• Misread Arabic tale misled historians about the Black Death's rapid spread

• In Search of the Simpsonville Massacre

• Has extreme poverty plunged since the 1980s? New analysis suggests not

• Google Quantum AI revived a decades-old concept known as quantum money

• Dictionary.com's 2025 Word of the Year Is "6-7"

• Lamp Club, a Luddite Group, Has Come to Free the 'iPad Babies'

• Dare Market Hands Out Crypto If You Complete Potentially Humiliating Pranks

• Giant rotating hamster wheels aim to 'revolutionize' indoor skiing

• Why it's OK not to reply to your text messages right away

• The Microchip Era Is About to End

• Gun Blasts from Indoor Shooting May Cause Brain Injuries

• 'History won't forgive us' if UK falls behind in QC race, says Tony Blair

• Failure shaped our relationship with the North Pole

• The Lonely New Vices of American Life

• A Beloved Clothing Store Closed. A Customer Bought All 4,500 Items

• Whatnot Raises $225M as Investors Bet on Livestream Shopping

• My Brother Said My Dad Decided to Leave His Wealth to the "Male Bloodline."

• Munich's surfers left stunned after famed river wave vanishes

celebrity gossip

• The Burial of Black Genius (a.k.a. D'Angelo Lives)

Obit

• Otto Nemenz, Supplier and Designer of Cameras and Lenses for Hollywood, Dies

• Dick Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Dead at 84

  • Former US Vice-President Cheney Dies

  • Dick Cheney, vice-president and giant of Republican politics, dies aged 84

  • Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney dies aged 84

  • Dick Cheney, Powerful Vice President and Washington Insider, Dies at 84

  • Dick Cheney, One of the Most Influential Vice Presidents in U.S. History, Dies at 84

  • Dick Cheney Dead

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• It was never about the numbers: the dying American news industry

  Teen Vogue was swallowed whole by Vogue.com this week—and the entire Teen Vogue political desk was reportedly laid off near the end of the Monday workday, effectively immediately. Posts abound on social media about the groundbreaking impact that Teen Vogue had on its readership—and about the incredible numbers the political desk consistently brought to the publication. Simply put, their regular political coverage has been a bright spot in a churning sea of bullshit since at least 2017. Now, it appears, those days are over.

  you can win awards—Pulitzers, Murrow Awards, Emmys—champion new ways of Doing The News, including maybe even swallowing your pride and misgivings about giving up editorial control to a goddamn AI fact-checker, and on and on and on—and they will still nuke your job and your entire desk in the name of capital consolidation and kissing the fucking ring. At CBS News, Black and brown and women journalists who worked on groundbreaking investigations and hard-hitting news coverage were also laid off and their divisions shut down last week. At places like the Washington Post and other legacy outlets, they have dumped cumulative decades of diverse thought and experience in favor of transforming their editorial and opinion departments into one carbon cutout after another of the same fascist, uniformly-evil-from-tip-to-tail propaganda machine. They do so because it’s profitable to do so, and because they, like most tech oligarchs, believe in the project that the current regime is ramming down our throats.

  • as other have asked, "why does a teen fashion ad rag need a 'political department?'"

• Friction interventions to curb the spread of misinformation

Musk

• Norway's Wealth Fund Will Vote Against Musk's $1T Pay Deal at Tesla

• Tesla's ‘Robotaxis' Keep Crashing—Even With Human ‘Safety Monitors' Onboard

• Major Tesla Investor Rejects Elon Musk's $1T Pay Deal

• Elon Musk claims Tesla's new AI5 chip is 40x more performant than previous-gen

Electric / Self Driving cars

• A robotaxi killed a beloved SF cat; city supervisor wants driverless car reform

• EV Sales Plummet in October After Federal Tax Credit Ends

• 'Eyes-off driving' is coming, and we're so not ready

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• The race to train AI robots how to act human in the real world

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why Students Are Obsessed with 'Points Taken Off'

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Ultra-HD televisions not noticeably better for typical viewer, scientists say

• After a 13-year journey to the screen, there's an urgency to Nuremberg's release

• Where did all those annoying CAPTCHAs go?

• Rise of the 'porno-trolls':how one porn platform made millions suing its viewers

• The Shining returns to theaters in IMAX for its 45th anniversary

• U.S. Patent Office Boss Orders Reexamination of Nintendo's Controversial Patent

• Tech YouTuber irate as AI "wrongfully" terminates account with 350K+ subscribers

• US Traces Ransomware Attacks to 2 People Working for Cybersecurity Firms

• Our response to Disney's request to restore ABC

  • Disney loses $5M every day it's off YouTube TV

• Apple Readies a Low-Cost Laptop to Rival Chromebooks and Windows PCs

• 72% of game devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games

• GM Deprecating In-Car App Store for Models as Recent as 2020

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• RPi $5–$10 price increases for some 4GB and 8GB products

• This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Internet within 24 hours

• Receiving WWVB with HackRF Pro - Great Scott Gadgets

  I like the idea of having my own WWVB disciplined oscillator, partly because a GPS receiver needs an active antenna placed somewhere with a view of the sky whereas a WWVB receiver can be located indoors. I like that a WWVB receiver can have a relatively simple design and does not need to constantly track multiple moving satellites. I like that WWVB is stable and will not be adversely affected by Kessler syndrome. I like that a WWVB receiver implementation with HackRF Pro can be used to directly measure the frequency error of the HackRF Pro itself by simply measuring how far off from 60 kHz WWVB appears to be. I don’t even need to build a whole WWVB disciplined oscillator to do this. (In theory I could do the same thing with GPS, but it would require significantly more complex software.)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI debated merging with one of its biggest rivals after firing Sam Altman

• Meta Says Porn Stash Was for 'Personal Use,' Not Training AI Models

• Experts find flaws in tests that check AI safety and effectiveness

• Next-Gen Siri May Be Powered by a White-Label Gemini Running on Apple's Cloud

• What Happened When Small-Town America Became Data-Center, U.S.A.

• There is no such thing as conscious artificial intelligence

• Merriam-Webster banks on "actual intelligence" over artificial intelligence

• Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury - by Alex Danco

• The Nonprofit Feeding the Internet to AI Companies

• Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

• AI firm wins high court ruling after photo agency's copyright claim

• DeepSeek may have found a new way to improve AI's ability to remember

• Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

• The Man Who Invented AGI

• Amazon Demands Perplexity Stop AI Agent from Making Purchases

• How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time

• First AI-designed viruses a step towards AI-generated life

• Wall Street's AI Obsession Makes Perfect Sense

• Sam Altman apparently subpoenaed moments into SF talk with Steve Kerr

• How Much AI Spending Is Too Much? Investors Are Starting to Wonder

• Asian markets' reliance on AI boom raises 'bubble' fears

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• A commercial space station startup now has a foothold in space

• We're ill-prepared to combat the threat of space terrorism

Crypto con games

• Criminals getting violent more often to secure big crypto payouts in Europe

• Two tiny banks are helping Trump's sons build a crypto empire

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists

• A16Z pauses its famed TxO Fund for underserved founders, lays off staff

• When you shut the door on remote work, seasoned talent turns away

• Michael Burry a.k.a. "Big Short",discloses $1.1B bet against Nvidia&Palantir

  • 'Big Short' Michael Burry bets $1B on AI bubble bursting

• First Brands Found Some Fake Invoices - Bloomberg

  when First Brands borrowed against its actual invoices, it kind of needed that money to run its business. It didn’t have hundreds of millions of extra dollars lying around to fund James’s lifestyle. But if you throw in some fake invoices then that can generate extra money. “In a rinse and repeat cycle,” write the lawyers, “Mr. James caused First Brands to fraudulently incur debt financing only to then divert — routinely and regularly — funds from the Debtors for his and his family’s personal benefit.”

• IBM to Cut Roles in Focus on Software Growth

  • IBM cutting thousands of jobs in the fourth quarter

• $50 Oil Could Crush American Shale Growth

• CPUs and GPUs to Become More Expensive After TSMC Price Hike in 2026

• UBS chair warns of 'looming systemic risk' from private credit ratings

• Famous Method of Valuing Stocks Is Pointing Toward Some Rough Years Ahead

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states

Trump

• Trump says China, other countries can't have Nvidia's top AI chips chips

• White House deal to cut obesity drug prices, gain Medicare access

• Trump reverses course to renominate billionaire Musk ally to lead NASA

  • Trump Revives Billionaire Isaacman’s Nomination to Top NASA Job

• White House warns unemployment benefits at risk in shutdown

Left Angst

• A Confederacy of Toddlers

• Moon Duchin on the 'Mathematical Quagmire' of Gerrymandering

• The Atlantic: It's Trump Officials' Fault They Have To Flee Homes

• Inside the billionaire network shaping MAGA’s post-Trump future

• The Big Smirk

  There’s been plenty of scathing commentary about the lavish, Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party Donald Trump threw at Mar a Lago — a party complete with sequined, feathered dancers and, yes, a scantily-clad woman in a giant martini glass. The party, held just hours before 42 million Americans were about to lose federal food assistance, as 1.4 million federal workers are going without pay, was grotesque. It was also, like everything Trump, unspeakably vulgar.

• Why A16Z's new Ayn Rand-style brand sums up the firm perfectly

• Dilbert creator taps Trump to get cancer drug. Others wish they could, too

• My jury stood up to Trump's DOJ and acquitted me of assault on an FBI agent

  there I was in court last month being tried — and quickly acquitted by a jury of my peers — on the false charge that I’d “forcefully pushed” an FBI agent’s hand against a cement wall and “caused lacerations.” All I’d done that night in July was stand outside the D.C. jail so the families of the men being detained for possible deportation would know what had happened to them. I wanted those men and their families to be treated fairly in this unjust time we are living in.

• Woman pulled from car after colliding with ICE demands accountability

  As Figueroa tried to drive through the 1600 block of West Hubbard Street on Friday, Oct. 10, an unmarked vehicle driven by federal agents collided with Figueroa’s as it tried to speed away from a hostile crowd, multiple videos reviewed by the Tribune show. The Department of Homeland Security later released a statement claiming that Figueroa was at fault, saying “she crashed into an unmarked government vehicle and violently resisted arrest, injuring two officers.” Figueroa was released the same day a few hours later without charges. Figueroa’s arrest highlights growing concerns about the use of force against U.S. citizens and due process. Federal enforcement actions in Chicago have increasingly drawn scrutiny amid reports of aggressive tactics and blurred lines between immigration enforcement and public safety, including incidents involving deploying tear gas in residential areas and arrests of bystanders filming agents or for following the unmarked vehicles.

• Anti-science bills hit states, stripping away protections built over a century

• Abolish democracy to save democracy.

  "I believe the time has come for a responsible, courageous elite, those who care far more about addressing the genuine social problems than about election results. Only a political elite with vision, prudence and a focus on the general good—to whom the electorate… can cede part of their sovereignty in the elections—will be able to justify public trust and spearhead... our struggle to survive.""

• USDA Threatens Stores Giving Discounts to People on Food Stamps

• A leadership vacuum and staff cuts threaten NSA morale, operational strength

• US nuclear weapons testing can forever scar a nation.Just ask Marshall Island

• DHS proposes biometrics expansion for immigrants, dropping age restrictions

• FDA described as a "clown show" amid latest scandal; top drug regulator is out

• Ford Foundation's New Leader Vows to Protect Elections and the Rule of Law

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Transportation Companies Hacked to Steal Cargo

• US gives local police a face-scanning app similar to one used by ICE agents

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Drones seen near air base storing U.S. nuclear weapons resemble ‘spy operation,’ Belgium’s defense minister says.

• U.S. Military Task Force Provides Aid, Disaster Relief to Jamaica

World

• Australians to get 3 hours/day free solar power-even without solar panels

  • Australians to get three hours of free electricity every day under solar scheme

  • Some Australian states are set to get a free electricity period every day

  • Australia to offer three hours free solar per day to millions

• Nearly 400k people are starving in Sudan, a new report finds

• Online porn showing choking to be made illegal, UK government says

• Once Australia's second priciest city, Melbourne has become more affordable

• Fear of desynchronization: Why doesn't Europe abolish daylight saving time?

• Climate Activists Who Vandalized Stonehenge Acquitted And Set Free | ZeroHedge

  The judge emphasized that democratic protest rights can sometimes render otherwise unlawful actions lawful, even if disruptive. In other words, suspects who commit a clear crime (such as vandalizing an ancient heritage site) will not be punished as long as they support causes that the current government agrees with. UK patriots, on the other hand, will still get years in prison for posting memes on social media that are critical of mass immigration.

• Location data of high-ranking EU officials for sale online

• Shein says prepared to give names of clients who bought childlike sex dolls

• As UK Tries to Curb Immigration, Rural Scotland Looks to Attract Foreign Workers

• Truckmakers lobby European Commission to weaken their emissions targets

• The young lawyer taking Pakistan to court over its unfair 'period tax'

• Norway's Public Buses Have a Chinese Backdoor No One Knew About

• France opens criminal probe into TikTok over kids' mental health effects

• Ottawa seeking mass visa cancellation powers to deter fraud from India

• Fearing fraud, Canada rejects most Indian study permit applicants

• Taliban ban books written by women from Afghan universities

Iran / Houthi

• Iranian women keep hope alive with daily acts of resistance

Israel

• Why did Wikipedia cofounder block edits to the 'Gaza genocide' page?

• Paramount blacklists actors for pro-Palestinian activism

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• BBC correspondent-fixer shaping Ukraine war coverage is PR operative

China

• What Trade War? China's Export Juggernaut Marches On

• China sentences 5 to death for building, running criminal Myanmar fraud centers

Health / Medicine

• Why stigmatising ultra-processed food could be doing more harm than good

• The Truth About Salt

  many people (particularly the elderly) are frequently pushed to excessively low blood pressures which reduces critical blood perfusion for the organs . This then makes them significantly more likely to get a variety of significant issues (e.g., kidney injuries, cognitive impairment, macular degeneration), the most studied of which is lightheadedness or fainting leading to (often devastating) falls. Additionally, blood pressure medications also often greatly reduce one’s quality of life (e.g., by causing fatigue or erectile dysfunction). A corner stone of cementing the blood pressure market has been to make everyone terrified of salt (much in the same way making people terrified of the sun is a cornerstone of the lucrative skin cancer treatment market—despite the fact the deadly skin cancers are actually due to a lack of sunlight). Remarkably, much like the great dermatology scam (which has been able to make a massive amount of money from removing cancers that almost never become life threatening) the link between blood pressure and salt consumption is actual quite tenuous.

• 5k steps a day could slow cognitive decline in people with signs of Alzheimer's

• The Ozempic effect is finally showing up in obesity data.

  self-reported obesity has started to fall, declining by nearly 3 points to 37 percent in 2025

• Long-term use of melatonin supplements may have negative health effects

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A Storm Hit Alaska. Now, a Native Community Is Racing to Save Its History

• Record grounded glacier retreat caused by an ice plain calving process

• Antarctic glacier saw the fastest retreat in history; trouble for sea levels

• Ladwp Says It Will Shift Its Largest Gas Power Plant to Hydrogen

• Plastic bags sold in California stores aren't recyclable, Bonta says

• A humble weed became a superstar of biology

• Orcas seen hunting great white sharks to eat their livers in Mexico

• The greenlash is built on lazy thinking, writes a climate activist