2025-12-11

Horseshit

• Children left in tears and 'thousands' of revellers turned away after tech giant 'hijacked' festive event for private party | Daily Mail Online

  Children were left in tears when they were turned away from a Christmas fair because a technology company had booked it out for their annual office party. Arm Holdings, a software design company worth more than £100billion, reportedly paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to hire out Cambridge Christmas market for its staff and their families on Saturday. The event, which features a large Ferris wheel, an open air rink and a selection of festive stalls, is usually open to the public and free to enter. However, when hundreds of locals turned up at the venue for what is normally one of the busiest days of the year, they were turned away at the gate. Instead, Arm staff were given full access to the fair and even provided with carol singers and wreath-making classes, among other festive activities.

• Sperm from donor with cancer-causing gene was used to conceive 200 children

• Humans rank between meerkats and beavers in monogamy 'league table'

• Why Young People Are Struggling to Communicate

• Christmas code-crackers: GCHQ reveals annual festive card for puzzle fans

• Turner prize 2025: Nnena Kalu is first winner with learning disability

  A “new front” has been opened in abstract art, the Turner prize jurors have declared after presenting the award to a neurodiverse artist whose work they said was “erasing” the border with neurotypical contemporaries. Nnena Kalu, a 59-year-old Scot who has learning disabilities and autism, was the surprise winner of this year’s prize. The jury praised her hanging sculptures and drawings made with “vigorous, rhythmic lines”.

  • The first learning-disabled artist to win the UK's most prestigious art award

• The San José–The 'Holy Grail' of Shipwrecks–Just Yielded Its First Treasure

• Italy's longest-serving barista reflects on six decades behind the counter

• Want People to Bike? Easy, Just Build More Bike Lanes

  • The best bike lines in our area start 2 miles outside of town, run 15 miles into the middle of the swamp.

• Calif. tech world’s saddest invention has been bleeding cash

  Once a symbol of hustle culture, Soylent is scrambling to adapt

• At this ultramarathon, runners tackle 31 miles and eat at nine Taco Bells

• The oldest evidence of people starting fires

  • Oldest evidence of deliberate fire use found in England

• The ultra-rich are claiming an increasing share of global wealth

celebrity gossip

• MacKenzie Scott Announces $7B of Charitable Giving This Year

Obit

• John Noble Wilford, Times Reporter Who Covered the Moon Landing, Dies at 92

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The war on disinformation is a losing battle | The Verge

  What started with a row over fact-checking and moderation of particular stories on social media — the Hunter Biden laptop, the Wuhan lab leak theory of covid, the QAnon conspiracy theory — has turned into a worldwide battle on the nature and limits of free speech online, covering anywhere and everywhere the government interacts with social media companies, or where it funds anything relating to media. Even the future of the transatlantic alliance is at stake after JD Vance accused Europe of becoming an enemy to free speech. But at its core, this is still a bloody fight over what is and isn’t true — with claims and counter-claims thrown in every direction. At various points, people involved have accused one another of being former CIA spies or PR flacks for Hugo Chávez, of having flung a custard pie laden with horse semen into the face of a rival, and more. (Almost all of the above turned out to be — more or less — true.)

Musk

• SpaceX reportedly planning 2026 IPO with $1.5T valuation target

  • SpaceX to pursue 2026 IPO raising above $25B, source says

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

  • After years of resisting it, SpaceX now plans to go public. Why?

• Musk's Fortune Would More Than Double on $1.5T SpaceX Valuation to $1T

• Elon: Satellites best way to scale AI within 4 years

• Operation Bluebird to relaunch "Twitter," says Musk abandoned the name and logo

• Tesla is the most unreliable used car brand in America, behind Jeep and Chrysler

• SpaceX Installs Starlink Vending Machine in Iowa

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Combustion engine cars regain popularity worldwide

• The accelerator is on the floor for autonomous vehicles

• San Francisco woman gives birth in a Waymo self-driving taxi

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Local news organizations discover the value of their own archives

• Truecaller Empowers "The CTO of the Family"

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

• Researcher finds Chinese KVM has undocumented microphone and sends data home

• Nvidia builds location verification tech that could help fight chip smuggling

• Uncommon Thinkers: Bluesky CEO Jay Graber seeding a decentralized digital world

• Apple Faces Scrutiny as Sanctioned Entities Slip Through App Store Controls

• Google Maps on iOS now remembers where you parked

• Why Your TV Will Probably Never Be Better Than It Is Now

• The Warner Deal Will Take a While

• Sonic's Latest Outing Is a Grim Fall Guys Knock-Off with $60 Skins

• Cable channel subscribers grew for the first time in 8 years last quarter

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Microsoft to invest over $5.4B in Canada to expand AI infrastructure

• OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block donate agent tools to new 'Agentic AI Foundation'

• $475M seed round for Unconventional AI

• Linux Foundation Announces the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)

• Linus Torvalds is 'a believer' in using AI to maintain code

• War Department Unleashes AI on New GenAI.mil Platform

• AI slop ad backfires for McDonald's

• Google to launch first of its AI glasses in 2026

• Meta's Pivot from Open Source to Money-Making AI Model

• The Politics of SuperIntelligence

• ChatGPT Can Now Use Photoshop and Other Adobe Apps for Editing

• Nvidia-backed Starcloud trains first AI model in space, orbital data centers

• DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

• CEOs Are All-In on AI

• India proposes charging OpenAI, Google for AI training; lobbying group protests

• Ow brane ow: Bezos and Musk Race to Bring Data Centers to Space

• Something Ominous Is Happening in the AI Economy

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA loses contact with MAVEN Mars orbiter

  • NASA loses contact with Maven – spacecraft orbiting Mars for more than a decade

• Scientists sent a menstrual cup to space. This is how it went.

• Can NASA Bring Mars Rocks Back to Earth?

• In a major new report, scientists build rationale for sending astronauts to Mars

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Debt-Fueled Deals Are Back on Wall Street

• Millions of Americans to Buy Into Carvana Fraud | TickerFeed

• How Much Wealth an AI Stock Market Crash Could Destroy

• Intel CEO's faces questions of conflicts of interest between Intel and startups

• US Fed will start buying Treasury bills to manage market liquidity

• 'Most Divided' Fed In 37 Years Cuts Rates; Restarts Balance Sheet Growth | ZeroHedge

  The FOMC cut rates by 25bps to 3.50-3.75% as expected, with a 9-3 vote split; Miran sought a 50bps cut, while Goolsbee and Schmid preferred no change.

• Oracle's stock slides 11% on revenue miss

• As the Price of Beef Soars, Restaurants Are in 'Code Red' Mode

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• WTF? Embracing profanity is one thing both political parties seem to agree on

  • See also the unexpurgated Change the Sacred Name of Arkansas

Trump

• Font of 'wasteful' diversity: State Department orders return to Times New Roman

• Trump's Interest in Warner Bros. Deal Weighs on Justice Department

• Elon Musk says Doge was 'somewhat successful' but he would not do it again

Left Angst

• Do not publish what you don't want public: How ICE's Plan to Monitor Social Media Threatens Privacy and Civic Participation

  • U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history

  • Trump to make all foreign tourists provide five years of social media history

  • US could ask foreign tourists for five-year social media history before entry

  • US may require foreign tourists to disclose 5 years of social media history

  • Tourists to US would have to reveal 5 years of social media activity: new plan

• American Science, Shattered: Special report on research funding cuts

• Paramount Pictures X Account Hacked to Read 'Proud Arm of the Fascist Regime'

• Big Tech are the new Soviets

• US plans to scrutinize foreign tourists' social media history

• Visual Investigation: Trump's immigration data dragnet

• ABC makes Jimmy Kimmel contract decision

  ABC has extended Jimmy Kimmel’s show for at least one year after the late-night comedian was suspended in September for his controversial comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassin, The Post has learned. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will continue to air on the Disney-owned network until at least May 2027 under the new deal, a source told The Post.

• On the cesspool of elite journalism

  Last week, a 32-year-old magazine writer named Olivia Nuzzi released a memoir about her decade covering Donald Trump - and year sexting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The memoir, American Canto, isn’t good, to say the least. It’s draggy, circuitious, hard to read. It’s received scathing reviews complaining Nuzzi is a bad writer. But Nuzzi isn’t a bad writer. The reason American Canto isn’t good is simpler and sadder: because Nuzzi is a bad person.

• Military's new AI: 'Hypothetical' boat strike scenario 'unambiguously illegal'

• EPA website removes fossil fuels as cause of global warming

• Trump's SAVE tool looks for noncitizen voters. It's flagging U.S. citizens too

• ICE is using smartwatches to track pregnant women, even during labor

• Gregg Phillips, a Proponent of Election Conspiracy Theories, to Join FEMA

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• A Holiday Warning

  J. Michael Waller, who I’ve known for two decades last week told me that, the risk of terror attacks in the United States “is by far the most grave in our history.” His grave assessment is shared by John Guandolo, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, who recently reached out to me. He’s also a Marine Corps combat veteran from the first Gulf War and most importantly, was a counter terrorism expert as an FBI Special Agent beginning right after the 9/11 attacks. He told me, “Al Qaeda cells have embedded themselves across major urban centers in the US. This has been confirmed by intercepted communications, financial tracking, and human intelligence. The attack strategy by Al Qaeda is designed to sow confusion and cripple emergency response.” Sara Adams concurs. She’s a former CIA targeting officer and analyst with extensive experience in the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. She warns that “A war is coming to the U.S. homeland—whether you like it or not.”

• Mystery deepens as to why it took FBI over 5 years to finally bust the suspected J6 pipe bomber

  This, after all, was the FBI that managed to round up and charge 1,500 supporters of President Trump who set foot anywhere vaguely near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, tracking them down through cellphone pings and video footage. Yet with all its technical ability, Wray’s FBI somehow missed the phone used by the suspect in the vicinity of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on the evening of Jan. 5 when the pipe bombs were planted. Surveillance footage shows the suspect, wearing a gray hoodie and COVID-style white mask, seemingly talking on the phone while walking around that night less than half a mile from the Capitol. According to an FBI document presented to the DC District Court during his arraignment Friday, Cole’s cellphone “engaged in approximately seven data session transactions with [his cellphone provider’s] towers between 7:39 p.m. and 8:24 p.m. … in the area of the RNC and DNC on January 5, 2021,” locating him in the right place at the right time. That information was obtained by the FBI within weeks of the discovery of the pipe bombs the next day. Investigators found 186 cellphone numbers “of interest” and 130 “devices of interest,” according to the congressional report released this January by the chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary subcommittees, Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Letting Nvidia sell H200s to China is closing the door after horse has bolted

  • Nvidia allowed to sell its H200 chips to China, the gov takes a 25% cut

  • US taking 25% cut of Nvidia chip sales "makes no sense," experts say

• Canadian accused in plot to export Nvidia's AI chips from US to China

• Navy pilot who took out 4 Soviet jets may get the Medal of Honor

  Nestled into the large defense appropriations bill is Sec. 591, which would upgrade Williams’ Navy Cross to the Medal of Honor for “acts of valor during the Korean War.” Those acts involve taking on seven Soviet MiG-15s in a 35-minute dogfight almost singlehandedly, in a battle that was kept under wraps for years despite Williams’ achievements.

• US seizes oil tanker off coast of Venezuela

  • US seizes tanker near Venezuela, Trump says

  • USA seizes oil tanker off Venezuelan coast

  • US Seizes Oil Tanker Off the Coast of Venezuela

  • U.S. Seizes Oil Tanker Off Venezuelan Coast, Escalating Pressure on Maduro

World

• Meta promises to reduce data sharing for EU users by 2026 to avoid EU GDPR fines

• A European plan to escape American technology

• UK unveils new undersea warfare technology to counter threat from Russia

• UK porn traffic down since beginning of age checks but VPN use up, says Ofcom

• There's one big problem with Australia's social media ban

• Microsoft investing $17.5B in India for AI and cloud, CEO Satya Nadella says

  • Microsoft to invest $17.5B in India by 2029 as AI race accelerates

• UK agrees higher drug prices to secure zero-tariff deal with US

• EU welcomes seamless data transfer between iPhone and Android

• German unions call for French Dassault's expulsion from EU fighter jet program

• Every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren

• Japan's first hotel with a human washing machine is now ready for you

• Half of people arrested in London may have undiagnosed ADHD, study finds

• Canada DND scrambles to figure out how to mobilize and equip a citizens' army

• Disguised and in Danger: How a Nobel Peace Prize Winner Escaped Venezuela

Israel

• Israel Used Palantir Technologies in Pager Terrorist Attack in Lebanon

• IDF Soldiers Fire on UN Peacekeepers

  One ten-round burst of machine-gun fire was fired above the convoy, and four further ten-round bursts were fired nearby. Peacekeepers asked the IDF to stop firing through UNIFIL’s liaison channels. Both the peacekeepers and the IDF tank were in Lebanese territory at the time. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's Daring Operation Spiderweb' Attack on Russia

• Is Europe ready to pull the trigger if Trump cuts Ukraine deal?

• Member of UK armed forces killed in ‘tragic accident’ in Ukraine, says MoD | Ukraine | The Guardian

China

• China adds domestic AI chips to official procurement list for first time

• One gadget could give China a back door into the U.S. power grid

• China launches satellite 'super factory' in bid to rival Elon Musk's Starlink

• Chinese government circulated sexually explicit deepfakes of dissident Yao Zhang

Health / Medicine

• Scientists Thought Parkinson's Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water

• Health premiums rose nearly 3x rate of worker earnings over the past 25 years

• Nanoparticles that enhance mRNA delivery could reduce vaccine dosage and costs

• Michigan man dies of rabies after receiving kidney from infected donor

  • Human-to-Human Rabies via Solid Organ Transplantation from a Donor

• Sperm donor with cancer-causing gene fathered nearly 200 children across Europe

• Parkinson's Might Be in the Water

• A Fentanyl Vaccine Is About to Get Its First Major Test

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• South Carolina sees 'alarming' increase in measles cases, with 280 in quarantine

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Wyoming Cowboys Are Breaking Down Barriers

• Utah Tries Relocating Beavers to Save Them, and Remake the Landscape

• Synthetic chemicals in food system creating health burden of $2.2T a year

• The undersea mountains where sharks rule

• A Climate Study Retraction for the Ages

• A 'green gold rush' in the Amazon led to dubious carbon deals

• NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months

• How Can I Stop My Wife from Badgering Our Friends About Climate Change?

• New research suggests warming winters could cause DNA damage in lizards

• Coldest air barrels into US as polar vortex threatens 17 states deadly freeze