2025-12-06

Horseshit

• Three-year-old chess prodigy becomes youngest player to earn official rating

• San Francisco sues food giants over ultra-processed products

• The female crash test dummy has been a long time coming – but she isn't here yet

• RoboCop Statue Rises in Detroit

• The Secret of Latino Teens' Better Mental Health

  • Not being told you are the cause of all the world's ills regularly might be a help?

Epstein

• Judge unseals all Epstein grand jury files in Florida

  A federal judge in Florida has ordered the release of grand jury investigations files into deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The files relate to the grand jury investigation into Epstein from 2005 and 2007 when Palm Beach police investigated the sexual abuse of teen girls at his Florida mansion. Epstein in 2008 agreed to a controversial non-prosecution agreement with federal authorities as part of a lenient state plea deal.

  The order contains no redaction requirements or specific timeline for release. Under Florida law, unsealing typically occurs within three to seven days once a judge signs the order, though it could happen as quickly as the next few hours or take up to two weeks depending on clerk processing and whether anyone files a motion to delay.The DOJ has requested the unsealed document from two other Epstein-related cases, including the pedophile's 2019 sex trafficking case in New York and Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking also in New York. Although the release of Florida Epstein documents was approved on Friday, the DOJ requests in New York are still pending.

Obit

• Frank O. Gehry, Titan of Architecture, Is Dead at 96

  • Frank Gehry, Architect Who Sparked 'Bilbao Effect,' Dies at 96

Musk

• US regulators open Tesla probe after reports of children trapped in cars

• Starlink Mobile? SpaceX Trademark Filing Hints at Cellular Carrier Ambitions

• Linus Torvalds thinks Elon Musk is 'too stupid' to be working at a tech company

• Elon Musk's X fined €120M by EU in first clash under new digital laws

  • Elon Musk's X fined €120M over 'deceptive' blue ticks

  • X hit with $140M EU fine for breaching content rules

  • Elon Musk's X fined €120M by EU for transparency violations

• Tesla Model Y named worst car for reliability in Germany's major TÜV report

• Elon Musk says Tesla drivers can text while driving, but they should not

• SpaceX in Talks for Share Sale That Would Boost Valuation to $800B

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Feds ask Waymo about robotaxis repeatedly passing school buses in Austin

• Driverless Waymo vehicle goes through tense police stop in L.A

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Robots that spare warehouse workers the heavy lifting

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The New York Times Attempts to Bully Elderly People Into the Disability-as-an-Identity Worldview

  the maddening thing about this piece: it quietly smuggles in a worldview that has metastasized across the discourse, a worldview in which the biggest problem facing disabled people is that they aren’t eager enough to call themselves disabled. Not, you know, being blind or paralyzed or suffering from dementia or constantly wracked with chronic pain, no, all of that is subservient to the only question anybody seems to care about anymore, the all-devouring question of identity. The whole thing hums along with the cheery institutional conviction that the answer to every human frailty is more identitarian self-labeling. If only the elderly would embrace the capital-D Disability identity, we’re told, everything would be better - their health care would run smoother, their interactions with institutions would be less demeaning, their sense of community would blossom. Maybe they’d even be happier! The Times treats this as self-corroborating common sense, like, well, everything else argued in the New York Times.

• (2017) The “Soft” Racism of the Well-Meaning White Liberal

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• We see something that works, and then we understand it

  the linear theory and the waterfall model are forms of thinkism, a term I learned from Kevin Kelly. Thinkism sets aside practice and experience. It is the belief that given a problem, you should just think long and hard about it, and if you spend enough time thinking, you will solve it. Thinkism works well in school. The teacher gives you all the concepts, then gives you a problem that, by a wonderful coincidence, can be solved just by thinking with the tools the same teacher just gave you. As a teacher, I can tell you that students get really angry if you put a question on an exam that requires a concept not explicitly covered in class. Of course, if you work as an engineer and you’re stuck on a problem and you tell your boss it cannot be solved with the ideas you learned in college… you’re going to look like a fool.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Netflix wins the bidding war for Warner Bros

  • Netflix becomes frontrunner in bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Warner Bros Begins Exclusive Deal Talks With Netflix

  • Netflix to buy Warner Bros film and streaming businesses for $72B

  • Netflix says it's struck a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. In an $82.7B Deal

  • Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. In $82.7B Deal

  • Netflix Is Trying to Buy Warner Bros Discovery. That Would Be a Disaster

  • Netflix agrees to buy Warner Bros Discovery studio in 83B deal

• Why Does Every Netflix Show Look the Same? An Investigation

• Samsung unveils first multi-folding phone as competition set to heat up

• Cloudflare suffers second outage in as many months during routine maintenance

• Memory Crunch Hits PCs: Dell Hikes Prices 15-20% Mid-Dec, Lenovo from Jan 2026

• Valve rejoins the VR hardware wars with standalone Steam Frame

• Judge Signals Win for Software Freedom Conservancy in Vizio GPL Case

• It appears Meta may be ready to put the metaverse out of its misery

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Disappearance of an Anti-AI Activist

• Why Does A.I. Write Like That?

• ChatGPT hyped up violent stalker who believed he was "God's assassin," DOJ says

• We would sell books by AI, says Waterstones boss

• Some AI Systems May Be Impossible to Compute

• VCs deploy 'kingmaking' strategy to crown AI winners in their infancy

• Chicago Tribune Sues Perplexity

• How AI is rewiring childhood: Dazzling opportunities and ominous risks

• OpenAI's Stargate project to consume up to 40% of global DRAM output

• The story of Mr DeepFakes – the world’s most notorious AI porn site

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admits he works 7 days a week, in a constant anxiety

• EU plans five AI gigafactories with 100k high-performance AI chips

• AI is helping patients fight insurance company denials

• The AI frenzy is causing a worldwide supply chain crisis, as prices soar

• Yann LeCun is proposing a different track for AI, through a venture in Paris

• The time has come to declare war on AI

• Why Everyone Is Having the Wrong Nightmares About AI

• Meta Strikes AI Licensing Deals with CNN, Fox News, and USA Today

• OpenAI's GPT-5.2 'code red' response to Google is coming next week

• Jony Ive's OpenAI Device Barred from Using 'Io' Name

• The AI Backlash Is Here: Why Public Patience with Tech Giants Is Running Out

• Wall Street Races to Cut Its Risk from AI's Borrowing Binge

• Radicalized Anti-AI Activist Should Be a Wake Up Call for Doomer Rhetoric

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Sunspot on par with one that birthed the Carrington Event appears on the sun

Economicon / Business / Finance

• And people are still raising money for "orbital datacenters": CME Outage Shows Challenge of Keeping Data Centers Cool

• Billionaire UBS Clients Plot Private Equity Funds' Retreat

• Kalshi CEO Wants to Monetize 'Any Difference in Opinion'

• Dollar stores may increase food deserts in under-resourced U.S. cities

• $60M Wyoming Rare Earth Plant to Challenge China Nears Full Operation

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• How Federal Law Made Us All Disabled

  As I was finishing up my book on civil rights law, I started to do some research on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I incorporated some of what I found into The Origins of Woke, but ended up kind of regretting not making it more of a focus since it was clear that this law had some very negative downstream effects. In fact, there’s an entire book that could be written on the harms of the ADA. Along with the Civil Rights Act itself, it provides a case study of how poorly thought out government policies can end up massively distorting institutions and even the wider culture.

• US Supreme Court agrees to hear case challenging birthright citizenship

Trump

• Trump: Japan's 'Cute' Kei Cars Are Coming to America

  • Fuel Efficiency Standards Had to Be Weakened to Let Americans Buy Smaller Cars

  To let Americans buy smaller cars, Trump had to weaken fuel-efficiency standards. Does that sound crazy? Small cars, of course, have much higher fuel efficiency. Yet this is exactly how the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards work.

• Trump security strategy criticizes European allies as weak | AP News

  President Donald Trump’s administration has set forth a new national security strategy that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The document released Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing U.S. allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

  • US sets 2027 deadline for Europe-led NATO defense

  • Trump reveals what he wants for the world

• FIFA gives its new peace prize to Trump

  President Donald Trump was awarded the new FIFA peace prize on Friday at the 2026 World Cup draw — giving the spectacle to set matchups for the quadrennial soccer tournament even more of a Trumpian flair. Trump, who had openly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, had been heavily expected to receive the newly created FIFA prize. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, a close ally of Trump, has said he thought Trump should have won the Nobel for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

Democrats

• Weingart’s $27 Million Dollar Homeless Heist: LA’s Pay to Play Pipeline Strikes Again

Left Angst

• Why Did Trump Pardon the Former Honduran President? Follow the Tech Bros

• Grand Jury declines to re-indict Letitia James

• U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Reached a Record 14M in 2023

• Pete Hegseth is unfit to lead The Pentagon

• State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'

  • Trump administration moves to deny visas to factcheckers and content moderators

• CDC vaccine panel realizes again it has no idea what it's doing, delays big vote

• H-1B Workers Now Required to Make Social Media Profiles Public

• FDA proposes impossible standards for vaccines that could curtail access

• Hepatitis B vaccine guidance set to be rolled back for US babies

• Donald Trump Jr-backed startup scores $600M US Federal government deal

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Accused DC pipe bomber told FBI he believed the 2020 election was stolen

  • Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he believed 2020 election conspiracy theories

  The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

  • CNN's Jake Tapper skewered for calling black DC pipe bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. a 'white man' on air | New York Post

  • Alleged Pipe Bomber’s Family Sued Trump DHS Over Illegal Immigration, Asked Biden DOJ To Address Racism

  Weeks before 30-year-old Cole Jr. allegedly planted pipe bombs at the headquarters of the Democrat and Republican parties on January 5, 2021, a court ruled against the company in its lawsuit attacking the Trump administration on immigration issues, The Daily Wire has learned. An FBI affidavit in the case notes that the suspect works for a bail bond company and lives with his mother. Later in 2021, the company held a press conference bemoaning anti-black racism with a left-wing attorney. Cole Sr. and Benjamin Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, attempted to sic the Biden Department of Justice on a local Tennessee prosecutor who had raised questions about the bail bond company.

  • Cold Case Heats Up

  Kamala Harris was in the DNC building when the pipe bomb was discovered there, around 1:07 p.m. The pipe bomb at the RNC had been discovered some 20 minutes prior, and it was the discovery of that bomb, at 12:44 p.m. that prompted the evacuation of the joint House / Senate session in Congress, not any breach of the Capitol building, which did not occur until 2:13, p.m., more than an hour later.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump Praises Congo, Rwanda as They Sign US-Mediated Peace Deal.

World

• UK pushes ahead with facial recognition expansion despite backlash

• Guam inspects Canadian quarry as military buildup sparks biosecurity worries

• South Korea developing app that shows real-time location of stalkers

• Thousands protest in Manila over missing flood funds

• India's Biggest Airline Falls into Chaos, Canceling More Than 1k Flights

• Canada's Brussels meetings signal a strategic pivot from US dependence

Israel

• 'This Is Illegal,' He Said, Spreading His Arms. 'This Is Illegal.'

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Zelensky's Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester

  • Wasn't the first Trump impeachment over his efforts to investigate that kind of thing?

• How Russia keeps raising an army to replace its dead

China

• Have Top Chinese AI Researchers Stayed in the United States?

• Taiwan to ban China's Xiaohongshu app, with 3M users, on fraud concerns

• Chinese-linked hackers use back door for potential 'sabotage,' US and Canada say

Health / Medicine

• A full-body MRI can reveal hidden killers. Do we want to know?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Deep-sea mining tests impact over a third of seabed animals

• Over a pint in Oxford, we may have stumbled upon the holy grail of agriculture

• The US polluters that are rewriting the EU's human rights and climate law

• High levels of 'forever chemical' found in cereal products across Europe – study

• Kenyan court declares law banning seed sharing unconstitutional

• The Push to Rebuild Society Around Ecosystems

• A Geothermal Company Wants to Use New Technology to Heat an Old German Town

• BBQ gas is helping to cool a warming planet

  Believe it or not, the fossil hydrocarbon — produced from oil and gas wells, and mostly used as a cooking and heating fuel for barbecues, boilers and domestic stoves — may help turn the tide on some of the most damaging greenhouse gases humans have ever produced. Isobutane, another popular BBQ fuel, has a similar role to play, as do ammonia and even carbon dioxide. That’s because these chemicals are rapidly displacing the hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, circulating through billions of refrigerators and air conditioners installed around the world.