2025-11-15

Horseshit

• Online discrimination fuels drinking by Hispanic college students

• Mexico's Female Rodeo Culture

• Bigger cruise ships coming to Manhattan under new piers plan

• Scapegoating as hobby: Reddit’s snark communities

  Even though I know it’s not good for me, I literally can’t stop reading them. Reading those vitriol-laden posts evokes a range of emotions in me. I often feel outraged and slightly pearl-clutchy, as one would feel to witness a degree of brazen bullying. But also, I feel attracted to them like a fly to a lamp. These insular places might be hyper-focused on throwing a deluge of insults onto one celeb, and rarely is such hatred swiftly justified—but it’s also cathartic for the writer (and for the equally passionate reader) to be accepted and upvoted.

• Spiraling Housing Costs Behind Plummeting Birth Rate: Study

celebrity gossip

• Jesse Jackson hospitalized with neurodegenerative condition

  Jackson, 84, was admitted to a local hospital, where he is under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition he has faced for over a decade, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition announced Wednesday evening.

• NHRA legend John Force retires from driving after record 157 wins - ESPN

Musk

• US spy satellites built by SpaceX send signals in the "wrong direction"

  Experts told Ars that the NRO likely coordinated with the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to ensure that signals wouldn’t interfere with other spectrum users. A decision to allow the emissions wouldn’t necessarily be made public, they said. But conflicts with other governments are still possible, especially if the signals are found to interfere with users of the frequencies in other countries.

  • we dunno what it is, so it must be wrong, and no Musk mistake can pass without celebration.

• Grokipedia cites a Nazi forum and fringe conspiracy websites

• Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to 'delete all IP law'

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Pope Leo calls for academic excellence in the church

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• All Praise to the Lunch Ladies

  Dillard is clear about the challenges. “Number one, we need more funding, so we can increase scratch cooking and more farm-to-school programs,” she says. “With the MAHA movement, they’re pushing, obviously, more scratch cooking, and that’s great and grand. I have no problem with less processed foods in schools, but we need the funding to be able to support it.”

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Project Kuiper: Amazon renames satellite venture 'Leo' on path to debut

• YouTube TV Blackout Is Costing Disney an Estimated $4.3M per Day in Revenue

• WSJ Report on the iPhone Air Pegs It as a 'Flop'

• DoorDash hit by new data breach in October exposing user information

• Memory makers have no plans to increase RAM production despite crushing memory shortages — 'modest' 2026 increase predicted as DRAM makers hedge their AI bets | Tom's Hardware

  The three biggest memory chip makers — Micron, SK hynix, and Samsung — are anticipated to spend $54 billion on capital expenditure, but this is focused on improving the performance of HBM modules for AI chips. So, despite the 14% year-on-year growth in investments in the DRAM sector, they will not increase the available bit output of memory chips. Because of this, we can assume the ongoing shortage will continue into next year and well into 2027. In fact, experts say that the massive appetite for AI chips, driven by the infrastructure build-out, will cause a pricing apocalypse that will last a decade.

  • Pixy: "Despite the supply crunch they are loath to commit more funds right now, because there used to be a lot more memory producers and the reason there are only three survivors is because of the bust that came after the last bubble burst."

  • Samsung hikes memory chip prices by up to 60% as shortage worsens, sources say

• Netflix is now streaming casual party games.

• Gnome 50 Ends the X11 Era After Decades

  • Great! May we never have to hear from the "Gnome people" ever again. They can continue their efforts to realize non-deterministic computing without infecting the rest of the world with it.

• Two Visions for the Future of AR Smart Glasses

• Nvidia is gearing up to sell servers instead of just GPUs and components

• Microsoft executive closes replies after Windows 11 "Agentic OS" backlash

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• There has to be a better way to make titanium

  At this intermediate stage in our brainstorm on the topic, what looks best to us is a single-step metallothermic reduction of titanium chloride that produces molten titanium directly.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• LLMs, like most people, have no inner monologue

• OpenAI's new LLM exposes the secrets of how AI works

• Sam Altman and husband fund startup to edit babies' genes

• Anthropic Says Chinese Hackers Used Its A.I. In Online Attack

  • Chinese hackers use Anthropic's Claude

• How long before a GPU depreciates?

• Judge Denies Apple, OpenAI Bid to Dismiss Elon Musk’s Antitrust Lawsuit - Decrypt

• If the AI bubble does burst, taxpayers could end up with the bill

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Blue Origin sticks first New Glenn rocket landing and launches NASA spacecraft | TechCrunch

• Demand for JWST's Observational Time Hits a New Peak

• Chinese astronauts are back on Earth after suspected 'space junk' strike

  Three Chinese astronauts have returned to Earth after a suspected piece of space junk left them stranded on China's Tiangong space station, officials have announced. Chen Dong, Wang Jie and Chen Zhongrui — the crew of China’s Shenzhou-20 mission — left the space station in a return capsule and landed in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Friday (Nov. 14), Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported. The crew spent 204 days in orbit, a new record for a taikonaut (Chinese astronaut) crew.

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin Falls Below $95000. 2 Major Factors Are Driving It Lower

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Sonder co-founder left shocked

• Ubisoft Delays Earnings and Requests Share Trading Halt

• How markets could topple the global economy

  IF AMERICA’S stockmarket crashes, it will be one of the most predicted financial implosions in history. Everyone from bank bosses to the IMF has warned about the stratospheric valuations of America’s tech companies. Central bankers are bracing for financial trouble; investors who made their names betting against subprime mortgage bonds in 2007-09 have resurfaced for another “big short”. At any sign of a wobble, such as a recent slight weekly fall in the NASDAQ index of tech stocks, speculation mounts that the market is on the precipice.

• Intel lays off 669 more Oregon workers as local headcount dwindles

• Why home insurance is unaffordable, even in places without wildfires, hurricanes

• Capital One Debit-Card Users Aren't All Happy After the Switch to Discover

• America's Baristas Are Brewing Up a Labor Movement

• Private Equity Killed the Media Industry

• JPMorgan secures deals with fintech aggregators over fees to access data

• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reveals new position in Alphabet

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Goodbye, Penny: What the End of the Coin's Production Means for Businesses

• After road deaths, Trump administration moves to stop California from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

  Newsom denied any problems with California’s system but has gone along with the revocation of the 17,000 licenses. The governor’s spokesman mocked the secretary as Sean “Road Rules” Duffy, a reference to his appearances on an MTV reality show 27 years ago. Newsom’s spokesman also accused Duffy of lying “in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader,” using a favorite Resistance phrase for President Donald Trump.

• The Multimillion-Dollar Plan to Make Mobile Voting Happen

• LA reforms rent control first time in 40-yr lowering rent hikes for most tenants

• USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

• At 16, I was experimented on by the CIA and now I'm suing

Trump

• Epstein Returns at the Worst Time for Trump

  • The Epstein Scandal Is Now a Chronic Disease of the Trump Presidency

  • We created a searchable database with all 20k files from Epstein's Estate

  • The Epstein Scandal Is Snowballing

  • Michael Wolff encouraged Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail Donald Trump, emails reveal

  • Dems Post 'Proof' of Trump-Epstein Connection, Have to Quickly Delete After Realizing They Fell for Their Own Lies

  In case you haven’t been keeping up with the drama: On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three of Epstein’s emails which mentioned President Donald Trump in some vague way. They redacted the name of one of his victims, who is said to be Virginia Giuffre; now deceased, the woman at the center of the scandal involving the former Prince Andrew was formerly employed at Mar-a-Lago but had repeatedly avouched, during her life, that she never witnessed Trump at any events where misbehavior was going on. Later on Wednesday, the GOP members of the Oversight Committee decided to call foul on the cherry-picking and released over 20,000 pages of documents that paint a fuller picture of what’s long been known: Trump and Epstein knew each other and broke in the early 2000s. The unredacted documents also seem to confirm the redacted victim was Giuffre.

  Democrats, of course, were not happy. But the party had a new theory: OK, maybe the person in the email consistently stated that Trump didn’t do anything wrong, but what about the fact that Epstein said he spent Thanksgiving of 2017 with Trump?

  In a post on X, they said that’s exactly what the “[d]ocuments show,” noting that, “At the time, Trump was already president, and Epstein was already a convicted sex offender.” As the internet likes to say, big if true! Therein lies the problem, however: Given that Trump was president at the time, this could easily be verified if true!

  • Trump Orders DOJ to Investigate Bill Clinton, Other Prominent Dems Linked to Jeffrey Epstein | National Review

  “I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”

  Trump and Epstein were friends for the better part of 15 years, from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Epstein died in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide, although many are skeptical of the official assessment. Trump’s relationship with Epstein has garnered renewed public scrutiny because of the administration’s decision not to release the federal government’s files on Epstein. When the administration released its assessment of the files, it explicitly noted that authorities “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” The administration’s lack of transparency led to the House Oversight Committee’s investigation and a separate congressional push to compel the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein files.

• These are the 37 donors helping pay for Trump's $300M White House ballroom

• Republicans should admit it: Home 'affordability' is not fake news

  Will a 50-year mortgage make a red voter out of you? That’s what President Donald Trump hoped Saturday, when he posted the idea of stretching out the customary 30-year repayment terms for home mortgages to 50 years. Turns out, that idea is smoke and mirrors, prohibited by the Dodd-Frank law, among other things. But at least Trump recognizes that home affordability is a real crisis. Not fake news.

  In 1991, the median age of someone buying their first home was 28, but in the last few years, it’s become the impossible dream for people even in their 30s. The implications are huge, not only for starting a family but also for voting. Renters favor Democrats by almost two to one, according to data from the American National Election Studies. Homeowners are twice as likely as renters to identify as “strongly Republican,” reports Aziz Sunderji, an economist at Wired who analyzed several decades of this data. Starting in the 1970s, renters were slightly more inclined to vote Democratic than Republican, but over the last 20 years, they swung sharply leftward. Making homeownership possible is not only good policy. For Republicans, it’s smart politics.

• Tucker Exposes Trump Would-Be Assassin Thomas Crooks' Social Media History, The FBI Coverup, And More Strangeness | ZeroHedge

  The comments by Crooks were posted between 2019 and 2020, when he was between 15 and 17-years-old. "They show two things," Carlson explains. "First, that Thomas Crooks was not some secretive lone wolf who never warned anyone that he was planning on violence. Just the opposite. Years before he showed up in Butler, Crooks was leaving a detailed digital trail of violent threats - including calls for assassinations and political violence. Second - they show a man who started out as a radical Trump supporter, whose views on the President transformed - changed completely, during Covid. The FBI lied about that fact, and that Crooks was a right-winger."

  "So here you have a volatile, troubled, possibly mentally ill young man with a long record of espousing violence in public," Carlson continues. "The FBI clearly knew he existed. And then you have at the very end of his years commenting in public, espousing violence, an exchange with a mysterious figure affiliated with a group that we know is being monitored by the US State Department." Turns out that around the same time as Thomas Crooks was making assertions and posting overt threats of violent against public figures on YouTube, the FBI was issuing contracts to private sector tech surveillance firms to harness the power of mass data collection tools to monitor social media for people just like Thomas Crooks," Tucker continues. "It's hard to imagine that Thomas Crooks is making these posts publicly and in his own name, and had not been identified and looked at closely by federal law enforcement. In fact, it's impossible to imagine."

Democrats

• Eric Swalwell eyes his next campaign — a run for California governor

Left Angst

• Indiana Professor Removed from Class over White Supremacy Lesson

  A professor who showed a graphic labeling the “Make America Great Again” slogan as covert white supremacy has been removed from teaching a class under a new Indiana law meant to foster “intellectual diversity.” Ms. Adams, a full-time social work lecturer, is currently teaching three other classes while awaiting the outcome of an investigation that will determine whether further disciplinary action is taken against her or whether her position teaching the class would be reinstated. In an interview, Ms. Adams said that she worried her job might be in jeopardy. But she said she was speaking publicly nonetheless because “I feel this is an important issue to talk about — censorship, stifling of academic freedom and this real overreach through this legislation.”

• Fannie Mae officials ousted after sounding alarm on sharing confidential data

• The Decline and Fall of the Heritage Foundation

• U.S. Congress considers ban on Chinese collaborations

• Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Kills by Claiming Targeting Drugs, Not People

• Why we're going to keep talking about the Trump phone

• Apple Watch under consideration for import ban

• UFC fighter Brandon Royval blasts planned White House fight event

  “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ about any of our political figures right now, and it’s like to fight in front of them seems like some f‑‑‑ing ‘Hunger Games’ type of f‑‑‑ing s‑‑‑. I don’t give a f‑‑‑ to fight in front of some f‑‑‑ing billionaires and rich people that could give a s‑‑‑ less about me. Probably throwing parlays. F‑‑‑ you guys,” he added. Royval, who’s nicknamed “Raw Dawg,” said he’d rather fight in front of fans “who can relate to me.” “Also, I’m too Mexican-looking. ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is suspiciously arresting motherf‑‑‑ers, and I don’t know. Who knows, bro? Next thing you know, I’m in Mexico and I don’t speak Spanish,” he added.

• Big Tech Wants Direct Access to Our Brains

• Remember "mask shaming?" Student brags on social media about calling ICE on car wash workers

• The first of 30 Bob Ross works were auctioned for public TV: They broke records

  • Perhaps they didn't need 8all* that tax money after all?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Prosecutors turn over 130,000 pages of evidence in the killing of a Minnesota lawmaker.

  Prosecutors provided 130,000 pages of evidence, 800+ hours of recordings and 2,000 photos, slowing the defense’s review. Boelter claims his plan to make citizen‘s arrests over alleged COVID-19 vaccine deaths “went horribly wrong,” but prosecutors dismiss his account as lacking credibility.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US announces 'Southern Spear' mission as forces deploy to South America

  Hegseth’s announcement late on Thursday followed a report that the US military had carried out its 20th attack on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing four people earlier this week.

World

• WhatsApp enables third-party chats for users in Europe

• The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting law will entrench their power

• It was so good for the US economy: EU Finance Ministers agree to end duty-free entry for small parcels

• India state offers menstrual leave to all working women

• The phone notes that reveal an alleged plan to bait Kim Jong Un with drones | CNN

  Memos found on a senior defense official’s phone purportedly reveal plans by former president Yoon Suk Yeol and two other senior defense officials to aggravate Kim Jong Un enough to justify a shocking late-night military control order issued last December.

• Italy investigates claims of tourists paying to shoot civilians

• Mexico, a country caught between mafias

• UK tribunal says reselling Microsoft licenses is A-OK

• Indonesia aims to commercialize jet fuels from palm oil in 2-3 years

• Europe's IT spend to surge 11% as cloud sovereignty fever takes hold

• Virgin to launch a rival train service through the Channel Tunnel

• Report blasts UK Ministry of Defence over Afghan data-handling failures

• Denmark faces £400M legal bill after failed pursuit of hedge fund trader

• German court rules Google must pay €572M for violating antitrust rules

• Seven killed, 27 injured in explosion at police station in India's Kashmir

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia Creates New Military Branch Dedicated to Drone Warfare

• Putin Is Turning Eighth-Grade Classrooms into Army Training Grounds

• Ukrainian attack halts oil exports from Russia's Novo, affecting global supply

• Oil climbs as Russian port suspends oil exports after Ukrainian attack.

• Russia Produces More Artillery Than All of NATO Combined

China

• China's Baidu unveils new AI processors, supercomputing products

• China's new aircraft supercarrier challenges U.S. dominance in Pacific

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Carbon Offsets Are Failing. Can a New Plan Save the Rainforests?

• Why Are Seattle Drivers Paying More for Gas?

  The primary reasons for Seattle's high gas prices include Washington's substantial fuel taxes and climate-related fees

• Solar and wind are covering all worlds new power demand in 2025

• An Escape from India's Air Pollution for Those Who Can Afford It

• Columbia, an oil-producing country, is moving away from oil

• Raccoons Are Showing Early Signs of Domestication

• Plant-based diets could reshape farming jobs and reduce labor costs worldwide

• The Push for Better Evidence on Microplastics and Health

  • Asking about evidence makes one a "denier", usually...

• Fears for elephant seals as bird flu kills half of population in South Atlantic

• All operational US LNG terminals have violated pollution limits

• Multi-day storm is threatening flooding and mudslides in Southern California