2025-12-10

Horseshit

• 'creepy' digital billboards that can track viewers' responses

• Composite metal foam could lead to safer hazmat transportation

• Art reveals the values that sustain lasting peace

• Crown Vics With 10-Speed Swaps? This Shop Says It's the Future

  They just don’t make ’em like the Ford Crown Victoria anymore. The Blue Oval, as well as its Mercury and Lincoln counterparts, made hay with the Panther platform back in the day—and even though they might be done with it, enthusiasts aren’t. Such a claim is evidenced by the team at US Shift in South Carolina, which is using a Grand Marquis with a two-valve 4.6-liter V8 to show off its 10R80 transmission controllers. Whereas hot-rodders have clung to three- and four-speed automatics for years, these guys believe the 10-speed is the future. Call me crazy, but I think they might be right.

• What If Our Ancestors Didn't Feel Anything Like We Do?

• Mazda suitcase car, a portable three-wheeled vehicle that fits in the luggage

• A 101-year-old runs the largest nutcracker museum in the U.S.

• The Powerful Positive Impact of the "Goodnight, Bro" Trend

  The "Goodnight bro" viral trend involves men calling their male friends unexpectedly just to say goodnight.

• Oliver Sacks Put Himself into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?

• Startup announces 'Galactic Brain' project to put AI data centers in orbit

• It's not you–Betty Crocker's directions are wrong

• Pompeii construction site confirms recipe for Roman concrete

• Firewood Banks Aren't Inspiring. They're a Sign of Collapse

• Cockpit audio of Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to crash plane mid-flight

  Chilling cockpit audio and dashcam footage sheds new light on the moments former Alaska Airlines pilot Joseph Emerson attempted to bring down a commercial flight with 84 people on board by shutting down its engines in October, 2023.

celebrity gossip

• Did Hitler really Have a 'Micropenis'?

Obit

• Raul Malo, the soulful tenor and frontman of The Mavericks, has died | AP News

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• News gets reshaped to match the way your brain works

• It's not censorship. It's democratic self-defense

  Since the European Commission fined X €120 million on December 5, Musk, Vance, and their orbit of Russian oligarchs have been crying “censorship.” The reality is the opposite. The EU didn’t target opinions or content. It went after three practices that erode transparency on digital platforms—practices that now stand at the center of the MAGA–Russia project to weaken Europe from within. Europe isn’t censoring anyone. It is trying to stop digital manipulation from poisoning democratic debate.

• Bots, bias, and bunk: How can you tell what's real on the net?

• Is Nick Fuentes A Foreign Op? New Evidence Suggests Maybe.

Musk

• US startup seeks to reclaim Twitter trademarks 'abandoned' by Musk's X

  • Operation Bluebird Inc files petition to cancel the Twitter trademarks

• EU says it will 'make sure' Elon Musk's X pays €120M fine

• Tesla Barely Beats Jeep for Least Reliable Used Car, Owner Survey Says

• SpaceX to Pursue 2026 IPO Raising Far Above $30B

• Elon Musk Has Made X a Threat to Democracy and His War on the EU Proves It

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Investor letter reveals skyrocketing growth of Waymo's robotaxi rides

• Waymo self-driving cars in 'standoff' cause traffic jam in San Francisco

• Stellantis partners with Bolt for 2026 Europe driverless trials

• Ford teams up with Renault to make EVs that can rival Chinese brands

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Humanoid Robots at Iranian Tech Expo Turn Out to Be Humans in Disguise

• As humanoid robots enter mainstream security pros flag risk of botnets on legs

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai delivers rare lecture in Stockholm

• Why are leftists so pessimistic about school reform?

  • It has been one of their major issues forever; and everything they do makes outcomes worse. Almost as if that was the goal in the first place.

• LA Parents say school-issued iPads and Chromebooks cause chaos

• Is a Master's in Education Worthwhile? No

• Why a College Fighting for Survival Is Slashing Econ and Physics Majors

• Berkeley professor's camera caught student allegedly sabotaging another student

• "The Matilda Effect": Pioneering Women Scientists Written Out of Science History

• Progressives used to view schools as engines of social mobility

• A welcome pit stop: the US college using parking lots to help unhoused students

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• 'Alan's Universe' Shows What It Might Look Like to Win at YouTube

• Key handover in the dark: Syncthing fork community raises alarm

• Behind Paramount's Campaign to Woo Warner Discovery and President Trump

  • Hollywood-hungry Gulf states bankroll Paramount's Warner Bros bid

  • Netflix and Paramount are battling for more than just Warner Bros

• Netflix faces consumer class-action lawsuit over $72B Warner Bros deal

• If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?

  • The option of "do not consume commercial media at all" exists too

• RAM Is Ruining Everything

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• DHH & Open Source | Matt Mullenweg

  Thanks to Freedom of Speech, DHH is free to describe his proprietary software as Open Source, a form of greenwashing, and even though he wants to “Well akshually” denigrate those saying why this is BS, we as free citizens are free to explain why, despite how fast he talks and confident he sounds, he’s not always right.

• The stack circuitry of the Intel 8087 floating point chip, reverse-engineered

  The 8087 ended up being a large success, said to have been Intel's most profitable product line at times. The success of the 8087 (along with the 8088) cemented the reputation of Intel Israel, which eventually became Israel's largest tech employer. The benefits of floating-point hardware proved to be so great that Intel integrated the floating-point unit into later processors starting with the 80486 (1989). Nowadays, most modern computers, from cellphones to mainframes, provide floating point based on the 8087, so I consider the 8087 one of the most influential chips ever created.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The AI bust scenario that no one is talking about

  Almost everyone I read is basically talking about two scenarios for an AI bust. I call these the Virtual Reality Scenario and the Railroad Scenario. But there’s also a third scenario, which relatively few people seem to be paying attention to. Even if AI works and manages to create value very quickly, that value may not be captured by the AI companies themselves. AI itself may turn out to be a commoditized, low-margin business, more like solar power…or airlines.

• Nvidia isn't enron so what is it

  Nevertheless, people have somewhat run away with the idea that NVIDIA is Enron, in part because of the weird, circular deals it’s built with Neoclouds — dedicated AI-focused cloud companies — like CoreWeave, Lambda and Nebius, who run data centers full of GPUs sold by NVIDIA, which they then use as collateral for loans to buy more GPUs from NVIDIA. Yet as dodgy and weird and unsustainable as this is, it isn’t illegal, and it certainly isn’t Enron, because, as NVIDIA has been trying to tell you, it is nothing like Enron! Look, NVIDIA’s own memo said that “NVIDIA does not resemble historical accounting frauds because NVIDIA's underlying business is economically sound, [its] reporting is complete and transparent, and [it] cares about [its] reputation for integrity.”

• AI Browsers Aren't Smart Enough yet to Take over the Internet

• AI Assist is now available on Stack Overflow

• OpenAI paused a focus on AGI for 8 weeks to quickly improve ChatGPT

• EU launches antitrust probe into Google's use of online content for AI purposes

  • Google hit with EU antitrust investigation over use of online content for AI

  • EU investigates Google over AI-generated summaries in search results

• America's war on data centers is coming

• Socialism AI goes live on December 12, 2025

• Contestants fight polar bears and snakes in new AI reality show

• A.I. Videos Have Flooded Social Media. No One Was Ready

• 'Circularity' is a flashing warning for the AI boom

• Linux Foundation Leader: We're Not in an AI Bubble

• Major N.L. healthcare report contains errors likely generated by AI

• Bringing More Real-Time News and Content to Meta AI

• Just how big is the AI investment wave?

• Evidence That Humans Now Speak in a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Getting Stronger

• Theory and AI Alignment

• EU opens investigation into Google's use of online content for AI model

• Apple's Slow AI Pace Becomes a Strength as Market Grows Weary of Spending

• 'We're creatives – this is what AI has done to our jobs'

• Trust issues: OpenAI Co-Founds the Agentic AI Foundation Under the Linux Foundation

• 'Big Short' Investor Michael Burry Says OpenAI Is Headed for 'Netscape Fate'

• Is OpenAI Today's Netscape? Or Is It AOL?

• Why the A.I. Boom Is Unlike the Dot-Com Boom

• OpenAI economist quits, alleging that they are verging into AI Advocacy

• Howard Marks Says AI Is 'Terrifying' for Jobs, Queries Debt Cost

• Google is powering a new US Military AI platform

• OpenAI Is in Trouble

• McDonald's Pulls Down AI-Generated Holiday Ad After Deluge of Mockery

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Satellite boom is a 'growing threat' to space telescopes

Crypto con games

• Spain's Civil Guard Arrests Alleged Leader of 260M Euro Crypto Ponzi Scheme

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Cost of insuring Oracle's debt surges amid financed AI buildout

  • Oracle is the canary in the coal mine for Big Tech's debt-fueled AI spending

• IBM to Buy Confluent for $11B to Expand AI Services

• 7-Eleven to Pay Record $4.5M Penalty for FTC Antitrust Order Violation Case

• Cocoa Piles Up At Ivory Coast Ports As Buyers Face Cash Shortage

  Ivory Coast is facing a temporary glut of cocoa at its ports as farmers rush to find buyers due to falling international prices and a cash crunch affecting local exporters. The backlog is partly caused by a cash crunch among licensed exporters. Falling global prices have eaten into their income, making it harder to pay for forward contracts agreed at higher levels with the regulator, the people said. The drop in prices has also squeezed their profit margins, making banks less willing to lend to them, said the people. That’s pushed middlemen and some cooperatives to haul beans to the ports, compelling the industry regulator’s trading arm, Transcao Cote d’Ivoire, to step in to purchase them. Anxiety among farmers that the government may lower pay following the slump in global prices is also fueling the rush to offload beans, according to Andrew Moriarty, a cocoa expert at market intelligence firm Expana.

• Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ

  • Instacart's AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill

• Shopify president says work-life balance is a 'misnomer'

• US Job Openings Climbed in October to a Five-Month High

• Boom announces Superpower, a 42MW natgas turbine

  • Boom Supersonic to Power AI Data Centers with Superpower Natural Gas Turbines

• Business is booming for defense contractors

• More people crowdfunded basic needs in 2025, GoFundMe report shows

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The Warner Brothers lobbying bonanza

• Rahm Emanuel says U.S. should follow Australia's youth social media ban

Trump

• Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

  • Rubio Deletes Calibri as the State Department's Official Typeface

• The Silicon Valley Campaign to Win Trump over on AI Regulation

Left Angst

• Trump ban on wind power projects overturned by federal judge

• ICEBlock App Dev Sues Trump Officials, Claims Apple Was Pressured to Remove App

  • ICEBlock Was Purged from the App Store. Now Its Creator Is Suing Trump

• AI Dominance Plans Threatened by Administration Own Attacks on Solar, Wind Power

• Transgender health leader’s name changed on her official HHS portrait

  Only one of those portraits is of a transgender person: Adm. Rachel Levine, who served for four years as President Biden's assistant secretary for health. She was the first transgender person to win Senate confirmation, and her portrait has been displayed in the hallway since soon after she was confirmed in 2021. The role is a four-star admiral position in charge of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. Levine's official portrait was recently altered, a spokesperson for HHS confirmed to NPR. A digital photograph of the portrait in the hallway obtained by NPR shows that Levine's previous name is now typed below the portrait, under the glass of the frame. Levine told NPR that it was an honor to serve the American people as the assistant secretary for health "and I'm not going to comment on this type of petty action."

• America Has Become a Digital Narco-State

  A secondary source of anti-Europe sentiment, however, is the tech broligarchy’s fury at the European Union’s Digital Services Act. The Act obliges large platforms to self-police a variety of potential injurious effects ranging from “dissemination of illegal content” to “negative consequences” for “physical and mental well-being.”

• Trump EPA Nearly Doubles Amount of Formaldehyde Considered Safe to Inhale

• Canada's US Travel Boycott Is Backfiring in the Most Unexpected Way at US Border

  Canadians crossing into the U.S. are now facing more detailed controls, which are, in part, a consequence of their travel boycott. As fewer Canadians are crossing the border each day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities have more time to examine each individual in more detail, which is leading to longer wait times and greater scrutiny of Canadians trying to enter the U.S.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• 5 plead guilty to laptop farm and ID theft scheme to land North Koreans US IT jobs - Ars Technica

• The Top 30 U.S. Cities by Homicide Rate

  New Orleans tops the list with 46 homicides per 100,000 people, followed closely by Memphis at 41.

• Authorities intercept drone carrying crab legs, Old Bay, weed for prison inmates

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Nvidia can sell H200s to China – if Washington gets a 25 percent cut

  • Trump greenlights Nvidia H200 AI chip sales to China if U.S. gets 25% cut

  • China set to limit access to Nvidia's H200 chips despite Trump export approval

  • Selling H200s to China Is Unwise and Unpopular

  The only ways I can think of for this to be a non-terrible idea are either if the Chinese somehow refuse the chips in which case it will do little harm but also little good, or (and to be fully clear on this possibility: I have zero reason to believe this to be the case) that H200s have some sort of secret remote control or backdoor. I presume this decision comes from a failure by Trump to appreciate the strategic importance, power and cost efficiency of the H200 chips, combined with aggressive pushing of this from those including David Sacks who have repeatedly put private industry interests, especially those of Nvidia, above the interests of America.

  • Trump's Nvidia Chip Deal Reverses Decades of Technology Restrictions

• U.S. Authorities Shut Down Major China-Linked AI Tech Smuggling Network

• Houston man pleads guilty to smuggling high-end chips

• U.S. F-18 fighter jets enter Venezuelan airspace for 40 minutes

World

• Australia's social media ban for children has left big tech scrambling

  • Australia's peak mental health groups didn't want the teen social media ban

  • New law to ban social media apps for under-16s in Australia

  • Australia's teen social media ban has unofficially begun

  • Millions of children and teens lose access to social media accounts in Australia

  • Australian children just lost access to social media

  • Australia's Social Media Ban for People Under 16 Takes Effect

• UK considering wider roll out of naval laser weapons

• A wage for housework? India's experiment in paying women

• Canadian traditional owners fear Australian-style LNG development

• Microsoft to invest $17.5B in India, CEO Nadella says

• Human Capital, Not "Industrial Policy," Explains East Asian Success

• Japan warns of possible megaquake after powerful earthquake, 98-foot tsunami

• Mega-structures beneath Egypt's Giza pyramids are confirmed by scientists

Iran / Houthi

• Iran cyber intelligence officer promised to reveal country's secrets disappeared

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• From the cold war to the gig economy: the changing face of Russian spycraft

China

• The Chinese finance whizz whose DeepSeek AI model stunned the world

• Western carmakers 'in fight for lives' against Chinese rivals, says Ford boss

• The rise of the electrostate: China is leading on climate action

Health / Medicine

• Insufficient sleep associated with decreased life expectancy

• Early morning practices affect college athletes' sleep, data suggest

• Man dies of rabies after kidney transplant from donor who saved cat from skunk

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• FDA to probe whether adult deaths linked to coronavirus vaccine

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Death Valley plant yields blueprint for building heat-resilient crops

• UN environment report 'hijacked' by US and others over fossil fuels

• EU to weaken more environment reporting rules, draft document shows

• Days after COP30, Brazil weakened Amazon safeguards

• Warm, humid 'atmospheric rivers' threaten Antarctica

• The American West's most iconic tree (Ponderosa pine) is disappearing

• 'Food and fossil fuel production causing $5B of environmental damage an hour'

• A massive, Chinese-backed port could push the Amazon Rainforest over the edge.

• German hairy snails are disappearing from London’s River Thames.