2025-11-16

etc

• Dog shoots owner in the back after jumping on shotgun left on bed: Police

  • No one teaches their dogs gun safety. Every year this happens to a few people. Seriously, its not hard to teach a dog that "this is people toy, not dog toy".

Horseshit

• The Machine Wants to Kill Us - The New York Times

  A lot of people, myself included, are worried about where technology is taking the human race, and especially how we can stay human in an age of artificial intelligence. But my guest this week thinks we’re not worried enough. That some kind of apocalypse is all but inevitable — if it isn’t already upon us. That what’s needed now are strategies of resistance, endurance and escape. And he practices what he preaches, having retreated to the west of Ireland with his family — the better to keep them out of the clutches of what he calls the machine. But he’s come back to us, for a time, bearing a prophetic message. Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and a critic, an environmental activist and a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy.

• Should Hitler's DNA have been studied – or just left alone?

• New Chinese optical quantum chip allegedly 1,000x faster than Nvidia GPUs

• Grifters Say They've Made a Pill That Could Let You Live to 150

• Heady odors and sensory overload; 5,200 cheeses compete for World Cheese Awards

• Boomers Are Passing Down Fortunes – and Way, Way Too Much Stuff

• IBM Patented Euler's 200 year old Math Technique

  IBM owns the patent to the use of derivatives to find the convergents of a generalized continued fraction. Here’s the bizarre thing: all they did was implement a number theory technique by Gauss, Euler and Ramanujan in PyTorch and call backward() on the computation graph.

• Scientists now know that bees can process time, a first in insects

• My six stages of learning to be a socially normal person

  In essence, I became an example of obnoxious precocity, a heartfelt young wordcel. This earned me a bit of approval. But the approval was polarized. My act only worked on those who valued a particular kind of cultural intelligence — everyone else just found it tiring. And even when it worked, which it did chiefly on campus, it was distancing. There was a presentational quality to my interactions, which limited the possibility of real dialogue. At the time, I could see that I wasn’t yet one of the gang, but couldn’t see why. I was demonstrating my erudition: surely that was enough to be inducted into the ranks of the socially accepted?

  I found myself working as a busboy at a high-end pizza restaurant, where I was being considered for promotion to the rank of bartender. I’d become capable at making coffee and cocktails, but my social skills were considered unacceptably poor. I overheard one of the bartenders, who felt I shouldn’t be promoted, discussing me with the manager: “He talks in paragraphs,” was the complaint.

• Oh LinkedIn, Why

  Linkedin users will spend 4-8 paragraphs to tell you how there arduino robot light switching project will help solve the gender equlity problems and boost their country's economy. It rubs me wrong. I want you to show me a project you are working on and tell me the goals you were trying to meet not blow it out of proportion. Maybe it is my ignorance or lack of awareness of how this boost your social rankings but trying to deceive people when they know you are lying is just weak.

• We're Thinking About Young Adulthood All Wrong

• Here i thought it was time... Could gravity be the reason we age?

celebrity gossip

• Amelia Earhart Records Released by U.S. Spy Agency

Obit

• Alice Wong, Writer and Relentless Advocate for Disability Rights, Dies at 51

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

  A few weeks ago, we were contacted by a representative of an organization called the Web Abuse Association Defense, a French group claiming to fight against child pornography. They demanded that we block the domain archive.today (and its mirrors) in AdGuard DNS, alleging that the site’s admin had refused to remove illegal content since 2023. This struck us as strange — we’re not a hosting provider, and it seemed unusual for an infrastructure-level service like ours to be asked to take action like this. Soon after, the situation escalated into what we could only describe as direct threats. We sought legal advice, and unfortunately discovered that French law, specifically Article 6-I-7 of the Loi pour la Confiance dans l'Économie Numérique (LCEN), might actually require us to respond and apply blocking measures, at least for French users.

  We sent an email to Archive.today’s contact address and asked two simple questions:

  • Can they remove the illegal content from the URLs we were informed about?
  • Is it true that they refused to remove such content in the past, and had they been notified about it before?

  They replied within a few hours. The response was straightforward: the illegal content would be removed (and we verified that it was), and they had never received any previous notifications about those URLs. Moreover, they hinted that Archive.today had been targeted by a campaign of “serial” complaints, supposedly from French organizations, sent to various companies and institutions that could potentially harm the site. They even shared a link demonstrating a complaint similar to the one we had received.

  All this is unfolding amid reports of an FBI investigation into the owner of Archive.today. It seems that this investigation may be related to CSAM hosting. While we can’t confirm any connection between that case and ours, the timing is certainly suspicious.

• (Apr 2025) Giuliano da Empoli: 'The engineers of chaos multiply anger and frustration using algorithms'

  The Swiss-Italian author of 'The Wizard of the Kremlin' discusses, in an interview with Le Monde, the responsibility that progressives have in the rise of authoritarian leaders backed by tech magnates.

Musk

• Using an old Starlink for internet? Update it this week

Electric / Self Driving cars

• I rode in one of the UK's first self-driving cars

• Waymo Was on a Roll in San Francisco. Then One of Its Cars Killed a Cat

• DFW deploys SIX new Striker Volterra Electric ARFF 6×6 fire trucks

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science

• Marin's Anti-Racist Library

  To be clear, I applaud exposing kids to difficult questions about society. And there are some valid points encouraging curiosity in these books. But the punch line of "white people don't want to share" seems counterproductive (and in fact, racist). The books themselves point out how nuanced the topic is, "so you have to look really hard to spot it." I'd hesitate to encourage kids to play a political blame game without first, or in parallel, understanding a lot of other aspects of existence and society.

  "Centering anti-racism" is a fascinating mission to spend a $25M/yr budget of taxpayer money on. And the growth up from $18M/yr in 2021 is astounding, good for them. Ultimately, it's a sad day in Fairfax. By focusing so heavily on all this propaganda, I suspect the librarians have forgotten about helping kids love to read.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google and Disney Reach Deal to Restore ESPN, ABC to YouTube TV

• Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'

  • Apple intensifies succession planning for CEO Tim Cook

  • Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO next year

  • Apple’s board is preparing for Tim Cook to step down as early as next year

• Valve just built the Xbox that Microsoft is dreaming of

• MLS drops 'Season Pass' paywall, with all games available on Apple TV

• Apple's $230 Cloth iPhone Pouch Is Already Sold Out

  • iPhone Pocket sock is sold out across US and most countries

• Valve is making microSD cards the next game cartridges

• Maximizing Bugs Bunny

  There are dozens of Looney Tunes DVDs and Blu-Rays for sale. What's the best way to acquire all of the Looney Tunes episodes available today? There are 719 unique shorts available on DVD or Blu-Ray (and a little over 300 that are not). The Golden Collection and 7 of the 8 DVDs from the Super Stars Collection have a combined 479 unique episodes, or 66% coverage. Adding the Collector's Choice results in 570 uniques for 79% coverage.

• MSNBC Changes to MS NOW Today: What’s behind the network’s branding makeover?

• Redesigned Apple Watch Blood Oxygen feature faces new ITC scrutiny

• Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on videos

• Masimo wins $634M verdict against Apple in patent fight over Apple Watch

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

  I try not to write anything even vaguely political on this blog because we have a variety of views on a variety of subjects and no one is here for that. We can all enjoy our geriatric little silicon artifacts together regardless of your electoral persuasion. But I was hopping mad this week, and the reason is actually on-topic, because I got hit with US Customs tariffs close to double the cost of the vintage items I was ordering and more than the items were worth. This eventually got straightened out, but it wouldn't have happened without my complaint and some time on the phone.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI note-taking startup Fireflies was really two guys typing notes by hand

• Leaked documents shed light into how much OpenAI pays Microsoft

• Who Pays When A.I. Is Wrong?

• Why OpenAI went into crisis PR mode Thursday

• He's Been Right About AI for 40 Years. Now He Thinks Everyone Is Wrong

• 'Vibe revenue': AI companies admit they're worried about a bubble

• Mira Murati's Thinking Machines seeks $50B valuation in funding talks

• Maryland taps AI for housing and government benefits

• You're a computer science major, don't panic

• The Data Center Resistance Has Arrived

• Small-Business Owners Are Putting AI to Good Use

• Anthropic Says Claude AI Powered 90% of Chinese Espionage Campaign

• JP Morgan calls out AI spend, $650B annual revenue needed for 10% return

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board

• Imperiled Astronauts Illustrate the Dangers of Space Debris

Crypto con games

• Emails Reveal Jeffrey Epstein Money Financed Bitcoin Core Development

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon lays off almost 700 NYC-based corporate employees

• New York Fed met with banks over key lending facility

  The SRF allows eligible financial firms to turn bonds into cash quickly and acts as a shock absorber for market liquidity needs. Adopted in 2021, the tool had until late mostly gone unused. While its use in late October was notable, it was less than some had expected, and some Fed officials have said they were perplexed that more firms did not tap the SRF but instead borrowed from markets at higher rates than those offered by the Fed.

• Using Your Credit Card at the Checkout Is Set to Get More Complicated

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• DOJ lawsuit accuses California of racial gerrymandering in its redistricting plan.

• US Postal Service seeks reforms as it reports $9B yearly loss

  The U.S. Postal Service said on Friday it was seeking new administrative and legislative reforms as it reported a $9 billion yearly loss, down slightly from the prior fiscal year results. New Postmaster General David Steiner said USPS must be more efficient and that it still has a "significant systemic annual revenue and cost imbalance." He added: "To correct our financial imbalances, we must explore new revenue opportunities and public policy changes to improve our business model."

  Under White House pressure, the previous USPS chief, Louis DeJoy, resigned in March. He was one of many officials forced out under Trump. DeJoy led efforts to drastically restructure the money-losing USPS for nearly five years, including cutting forecast cumulative losses over a decade to $80 billion from $160 billion. Mail volumes fell 5% in the 12 months ending September 30 to the lowest level since 1967. The USPS, an agency with 635,000 employees, reduced its workforce by 10,000 workers this year through a voluntary retirement program.

  • How did the "new postal trucks" thing work? How much money got flushed down that hole?

Trump

• Friday Night Meltdown: Trump Yanks MTG Endorsement, Mocks Massie's Remarriage After Wife's Death | ZeroHedge

  Capping a week in which he faced a coordinated blitz by Democrats and allied journalists working to implicate him in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump had a social media meltdown Friday night, lashing out at two GOP representatives who both enjoy deep national support among conservatives. Trump withdrew his endorsement of one and stooped to ridiculing the other for re-marrying 15 months after the death of his wife. It's likely no coincidence that both reps -- Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie -- were among four Republicans who signed a discharge petition to force a floor vote on a bill that would compel the DOJ to release all its Epstein files. Trump and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have opposed that effort. Massie isn't just a signatory of that petition, but its principal champion, having introduced it this summer along with Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna. When Speaker Mike Johnson finally brought the House back into session this week after nearly two months of idleness, Massie secured the required 218th signature on the Epstein-file discharge petition, a parliamentary avenue that overrides Johnson's ability to determine which bills are voted upon. When the vote on Massie's bill takes place on Tuesday, a far larger number of Republicans are expected to vote for it, rather than face subsequent attacks for voting to keep the Epstein files under wraps.

Democrats

• Seattle new Mayor: Government-owned grocery stores, Rent control across the city

• Some compare Democratic socialism to communism, Here's how the movements differ

• Dem Received Texts from Epstein During 2019 Congressional Hearing

  The Washington Post dropped a bombshell that Epstein appeared to have been communicating with Democrat Del. Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting delegate from the Virgin Islands, during a congressional hearing in February 2019. So this would have been well after the allegations about Epstein were all over the news, and he was a known convicted sex offender. The Virgin Islands is where Epstein's infamous island is Little St. James. The name was redacted in the documents. I wonder why? But the WaPo was able to figure out who it was by comparing the texts to the action at the hearing. The hearing involved Democrats trying to go after Trump for the umpteenth time by questioning Michael Cohen, his former attorney. Epstein appeared to be feeding her information to influence her questioning. They matched up the time stamps on the texts that were released and the video of the hearing, so you can read what he was communicating while the hearing was in progress.

Left Angst

• Nutritionist Marion Nestle weighs in on 'What to Eat Now' : NPR

  Nestle says the Trump administration's efforts to withhold SNAP benefits from millions of Americans has made clear how fragile our economy is: "We have 42 million people in this country — 16 million of them children — who can't rely on a consistent source of food from day to day and have to depend on a government program that provides them with benefits that really don't cover their food needs, only cover part of their food needs."

• U.S. Congress considers ban on Chinese collaborations

• Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Got Money from $220M DHS Ad Contracts

  • Is this improper? Can it be investigated? Don't we need to work on some of the documented corruption from the previous administration first, or is it OK when Dems do it?

• ICE looks to WA tribes to house detained immigrants

• Justice Department replaced 'identical' Trump signatures on recent pardons

• State Department erases 15 pages of nuclear history – with no warning

• The Death of Government Tax Filing

• Did prison just replace mental hospitals?

  That Economist chart, which is now over a decade old and whose data series stops nearly a quarter of a century ago, recently went viral on Bluesky, where it was given a sort of progressive spin — the moral of the story there was that America’s prisons are full of mentally ill people in need of treatment, not punishment.

• FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

• US Govt Shutdown stopped my Desktop Wallpaper from updating

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• A South Carolina man is executed by firing squad for 2004 killings

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• White House memo claims Alibaba is helping Chinese military target US

World

• End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia's Neom dream unravelled

• Poland signs largest ever rail deal to buy 42 double-decker trains

• Google must pay German price comparison platform 465M euros in damages

  • Google Ordered to Pay €573M in German Shopping Suits

• Colombia signs agreement to acquire 17 Saab Gripen E fighters

• UK France eye co-development for India's 65000 ton Carrier

• Mumbai's Textile Mills Are Now a Playground for the Wealthy

• South Korea bans flights as 500k take crucial university admission test

• Icelandic in danger of dying out due to AI and English-language media –former PM

Iran / Houthi

• Iran judiciary calls for tougher stance on 'social anomalies'

Israel

• If Gaza’s famine was real, how come it went away so fast?

  Famine has been described as a tree swaying in the wind — at some point it cannot recover and cannot be returned upright. But Gaza’s ‘famine tree’ never appeared to fully sway. If aid efforts or local resilience truly prevented catastrophe, where is the evidence? On August 22, 2025, famine was declared, and the global press carried that narrative. Then came a shift to the word ‘starvation.’ Now, even that language has faded. The distinction matters. Famine is a technical classification grounded in data — household food security surveys, acute malnutrition rates and mortality. Starvation, by contrast, is a moral and legal term implying intent; under international law, using starvation as a weapon constitutes a war crime. In Gaza, this rhetorical shift occurred before comprehensive data was gathered — an escalation of accusation without empirical foundation.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• NATO Ended Russia's Estonian Air Incursions

• From florist to drone maker: How the weapon became so mainstream

China

• A New York film festival canceled due to Chinese authorities pressure

• China’s Shenzhou 20 astronauts return to Earth after space debris scare: The trio returned to Earth more than a week late — and aboard a different spacecraft than the one that carried them up to orbit.

  • Three astronauts are stuck on China’s space station without a safe ride home - Ars Technica

• Beijing commissions third aircraft carrier, first one made in China

Health / Medicine

• Certain Bulk Drug Substances Use in Compounding Present Significant Safety Risks

  • Chloral hydrate and others things you only see on ingredient lists

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• 86% of PCR-Positive “COVID Cases” Were Not Real Infections

  New study finds that during the early pandemic period, only 14% of PCR “COVID cases” were real — proving that lockdowns and vaccine mandates were built on a fraudulent testing illusion.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage

  An epistemic crisis is a crisis in the production and delivery of knowledge. It’s about what we know and how we know it, what we agree to be true and what we identify as false. We face, alongside a global threat to our life-support systems, a global threat to our knowledge-support systems. Let’s start by recognising that they were never robust. There was no golden age of public knowledge, no moment at which the information most people received was largely unbiased and accurate.

  • less "crisis" and more "business as usual" then.

• Hochul Urged to Ban Horseshoe Crab Fishing

• Fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber all Cop30 delegations except Brazil

• World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds

• When Bill Gates Yelled at Me About Climate Change

  Bill Gates was yelling and screaming at me. Turning beet red. Waving his arms. Bullying, condescending, mocking. In public, no less. It was August, 2010 at the Techonomy Conference at Lake Tahoe. The month before, I watched Gates acknowledge the problem of climate change for the first time at the Aspen Ideas Festival. This was most welcome, yet, curiously, Gates claimed that climate change was mostly a problem for poor people in the tropics. It would not affect North America and Europe very much. New York and Miami under water—not a problem. Heat wave deaths, fires, wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest, stronger hurricanes, ocean acidification—not to worry.