2025-12-15

etc

• Energy Predictions 2025 – Casey Handmer's blog

  Democratized battery ownership is good for freedom

  Will batteries be deployed behind the meter, at the point of generation, or within the grid? Yes.

  Batteries at solar arrays allow higher utilization of offtake grid connections, matching evening power consumption. Batteries behind the meter allow granular, independent assurance of power continuation. Batteries in devices and vehicles. Batteries in houses. Batteries on power poles. Batteries at substations. Batteries in schools. Batteries in appliances. More!

  Already we are seeing adoption of behind the meter batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall for individual consumers who can justify the expense relative to the hassle of utility power cuts. In a world where every consumer can choose the size of their battery, it doesn’t make sense to spend 10x the money trying to keep the distribution grid at 99.9% production. Less developed markets are pointing the way – Pakistan has cut most domestic power consumption over to solar and batteries in about two years. This is analogous to the growth of cell phones in developing countries that never ran copper phone lines to every house. This trend puts more value and market power in the hands of individual consumers. In the limit, market power will shift from the monopoly electricity utility to amorphous confederations of illegible behind-the-meter demand in the form of networked batteries.

Horseshit

• The Five Forces That Broke Capitalism – and One Possible Fix

• Positive Imagining Changes the Brain in Seconds

• Neutrino Alchemy: Sun's Ghost Particles Caught Transforming Atoms

• Maths can help you wrap your presents better

• Reading Lolita in the Barracks

• Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation

• Quantum Computing Could Put IBM Back on Top Again

• Designing the Limitless Pill: A Specification for the Ideal Daily Nootropic

• America’s post-apocalyptic maps reveal eerily familiar fault lines

  Depending on the prevailing panic, the nature of the Fall typically varies between half a dozen usual suspects: nuclear war, alien invasion, a deadly pandemic, technological breakdown, climate collapse, civil war — each often infused with a generous helping of moral turpitude to lubricate the disaster.

• A Governance Innovation Crisis - by Robin Hanson

  I asked a poll, and 8 LLMs, to rank how promising are these options. They all agreed that Aligned Goal seems most promising. (~1/2 of poll respondents picked it.) And the poll agreed with median of LLMs choices that the next most promising is Adaption Direct, then Rationalize, then Tradition.

  • "Total Chaos" has brought Humanity this far; i firmly believe that it will continue to carry us to success as a species.

• Pop Music Is Getting Darker

• What a top food safety expert won't order for dinner

• Warp Drive: Scientists Say a Physical Warp Drive Is Now Possible

Epstein

• Cover-Up or Frame-Up? How the Democratic Epstein Releases are a Classic Example of False Light

  The White House accused Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of spreading a “false narrative” with photos. It is more of an effort to create “false light,” a term from tort law where true photos are presented in a misleading and harmful way. The photos of Trump show women with their faces obscured as “possible” victims of human trafficking with underaged girls. Even a photo with a single woman on what appears to be a plane is blacked out. There is no context offered, but the blacked-out faces suggest that these women have to be protected as possible victims. However, the real question of false light is the inclusion with the other photos selected for release. The Democrats included pictures of sex toys, novelty condom boxes with Trump’s face (saying “I’m Huuuge”) and even Epstein in a bathtub. The combination is meant to make the other photos seem more sinister, even though we have no information on where they were taken or who the women are in the images. Just Xs.

celebrity gossip

• Oliver Sacks fabricated key details in his books

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Price of a bot army revealed across online platforms

• Misinformation is an inevitable biological reality across nature, researchers argue

  Social communication is a key part of social evolution and collective behavior. It is how an organism learns about its immediate environment without having to rely on risky, trial-and-error or how a bacterium coordinates its behavior with its neighbors to launch a collective defense. However, these social connections can also act as channels for misinformation. While there are many studies on the spread of misinformation in human societies, our understanding of its biological origins is limited. So the team reviewed decades of empirical and theoretical studies of misinformation in biological systems to see where and how it happens in nature. They found plenty of examples, such as a bird giving a false alarm call, causing the entire flock to flee, an animal population copying outdated migratory paths and even deceptive signaling in bacteria.

Musk

• Tesla made a $350 pickleball paddle

• Elon Musk just hit Sam Altman with an $800B counterpunch

• Grok Is Glitching and Spewing Misinformation About the Bondi Beach Shooting

  • Grok is spreading misinformation about the Bondi Beach shooting

• SpaceX Starts a Wall Street Bake-Off to Hire Banks for Possible IPO

• Musk's Last Grift

  Having failed with the Cybertruck and robotaxis, Tesla’s value depends almost entirely on the projected success of the Optimus humanoid robot. There’s a strong case that Optimus will be outperformed by rivals like Unitree But the bigger question is: why build a humanoid robot at all? The choice of a humanoid form factor reveals more about the sloppy thinking of our tech elite than about engineering logic. The design represents a triumph of anthropomorphic fantasy over functional optimization, producing machines that excel primarily at generating media buzz rather than performing useful work.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How redefining disability/special needs has changed education

• Adventure can be disastrous: digital nomad families 'worldschooling' their kids

• It’s official: Ditching the SATs was a big mistake

• Home-Schooled Kids Are Not All Right

  She had me crawl whenever I was at home, which was most of the time. Mom home schooled me between fourth and eighth grades, and even today, as a parent who has come to see plainly how damaging those years were, I know that she believed that her choice was in my best interest. It was the lack of state oversight or standards that allowed our situation. It was the laws that failed me. Today, as home-schooling numbers continue to surge, similar laws fail to protect millions of kids.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14B years

• Samsung to halt SATA SSD production

• 'A nightmare' – The battle over Warner Bros is turning Hollywood upside down

  • The battle for Warner Bros is a prelude to the real streaming war

• Apple loses contempt appeal in Epic case

• Online Piracy Can Boost Box Office Revenue, Study Suggests

• Google Translate expands live translation to all earbuds on Android

• Sharing Your Location with Friends Is the Best Form of Social Media

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• UK judge judge accused of packing verdict with dodgy AI quotes

• 'Godmother of AI' says degrees are less important in hiring

• Altman: Super intelligence in 10 years, more extraordinary things in 2026

• Ai2's Tim Dettmers: AGI is a fantasy • The Register

• Why AI makes bad systems more convincing.

• Gnome's new rules forbid AI-written extensions.

• AI agent hacks university network, outperforms human experts in 16 hours

• AI is creating new occupations

• You're Thinking About AI and Water All Wrong

• So, about this AI thing

• Is A.I. Actually a Bubble?

• Job security in the age of AI? Get a state license – any state license

• The Eerie Parallels Between AI Mania and the Dot-Com Bubble

• BA fears a future where AI agents pick flights and brands get ghosted

• Sam Altman's Sprint to Correct OpenAI's Direction and Fend Off Google

• If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

• Most people aren't fretting about an AI bubble. What they fear is mass layoffs

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Investors commit quarter-billion dollars to startup designing "Giga" satellites

Crypto con games

• Inside The Dark and Predatory World of Crypto Casinos

• UK Treasury drawing up new rules to police cryptocurrency markets

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Intel Nears $1.6B Deal for AI Chip Startup SambaNova

• Nvidia executive Debora Shoquist sells $14.7M worth of NVDA stock

• Why more than a quarter of Americans admit to stealing from self-checkout

• Cisco Finally Did It

• Investors seek protection from risk of AI debt bust

• Mesa shuts down credit card that rewarded cardholders for paying their mortgages

• Robot Vacuum Roomba Maker Files for Bankruptcy After 35 Years

  • iRobot Stock Is Surging. Retail Traders Think It's a New Short-Squeeze

Trump

• Trump's $1M 'Gold Card' immigration application plan launches

Left Angst

• ICE Holding Chinese Man Who Documented Uyghur Camps

• Is Times New Roman Better Than Calibri for the State Department?

• How a US Citizen Was Scanned With ICE's Facial Recognition Tech

• States lodge lawsuit against Trump's $100k H-1B visa fee

• Trump's new visa fee inhibits hiring teachers in California – CalMatters

  • As JD Vance said, "You could try hiring Americans"

• Is it time to redraw our maps?

  In May, as part of his campaign to annex Canada, President Donald Trump called the border with his neighbour an artificial line that had been drawn with a ruler “right across the top of the country”. He suggested that the map of North America would look more beautiful without it. Historians pointed out that the border reflected a complex history and an everyday reality for millions, but they also admitted that Trump wasn’t entirely wrong. Much of the border does follow a straight line – the 49th parallel – and the Americans and Britons who drew it up knew almost nothing about local geography.

• Liberal-coded economic policies lose support in polls when proposed by Trump

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• ‘The unthinkable has happened.’ 2 killed, nine injured in mass shooting on Brown University campus

  The two people killed and eight others wounded in a mass shooting in a Brown University engineering and physics building late Saturday afternoon were all students, authorities said at a second press conference Saturday night. The number of victims also increased to nine with the news that another person received non-threatening injuries from shrapnel, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley confirmed at the media briefing that began after 9:30 p.m. at the Brook Street fire station. That victim could not be confirmed as a student at the time.

  The shooting suspect remained at large, and the Brown campus remained in lockdown. Authorities announced they would release a video of the suspect, a man wearing a black hat and black jacket and pants who walked out of the Hope Street side of the Barus and Holley engineering building and took a right onto Waterman Street, Providence Police Cmdr. Tim O’Hara said.

  At 11:06 p.m., Brown announced that everyone still inside 15 administrative buildings on campus should continue to shelter in place until law enforcement officers arrive to escort them to a shelter outside a perimeter established around a portion of the campus. Those already in residential buildings should continue to shelter in place there. Brown sent out its first emergency alert at 4:22 p.m., noting “an active shooter near Barus & Holley Engineering.” The alert cautioned the campus community to lock doors, silence phones and “stay hidden until further notice.” The alert also advised the options of run, hide, or, “FIGHT, as a last resort.” An update at 4:51 p.m. noted a suspect was in custody, only to be redacted in a 5:11 p.m. update that read, “Police do not have a suspect in custody and continue to search for suspect(s).” The post also advised students to continue to shelter in place.

  • At Least Two Dead, 9 Injured After Brown University Shooting In Rhode Island | ZeroHedge

  • Brown University shooting person of interest is arrested

  A person of interest is in custody after two people were killed and multiple were injured in a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island Saturday evening. Police confirmed an unidentified male in his 30s was taken into custody at the Hampton Inn in Coventry early Sunday morning. Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez did not specify if the man is connected to Ivy League and did not state he was a suspect.

• Georgia Woman Attacked With 'Corrosive' Chemical After Christmas Event, Suffers Third-Degree Burns | ZeroHedge

  Ashley Wasielewski, 46, was walking in Forsyth Park in Savannah after attending a Christmas program at a nearby church when she was approached from behind by a stranger who poured a 'corrosive liquid' over her head, according to friends and family. Wasielewski reportedly let out a 'blood-curdling scream' as the chemical burned her skin, ate through her clothing, and melted her car's key fob that was in her pocket, the NY Post reports. No arrests have been made in the case, however local police are working with the FBI to locate the individual below, wearing blue jeans and a dark hooded Bugs Bunny hoodie.

World

• Gunmen kill 9 people at Sydney's Bondi Beach

  Two gunmen shot dead at least 11 people on Sunday at a Jewish event being held at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Australian authorities said, declaring it a terrorist attack. One gunman was fatally shot by police and the second arrested. The suspect was in critical condition, authorities said. A massive emergency response was underway, with injured people loaded into ambulances. At least 29 people were confirmed wounded, said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located. Two of those hurt were police officers. “This attack was designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community,” the state’s Premier Chris Minns said. The massacre was declared a terrorist attack due to the event targeted and weapons used, Lanyon said. Hundreds had gathered for an event at Bondi Beach called Chanukah by the Sea, which was celebrating the start of the Hanukkah Jewish festival.

  • 10 People killed in Bondi Beach shooting

  • "Evil Act Of Anti-Semitism, Terrorism" : 12 Dead After Shooting At Australian Jewish Event | ZeroHedge

  At approximately 6:47 p.m. local time, two individuals opened fire on Bondi Beach crowds at Archer Park in Sydney, Australia where over 1,000 people had gathered for a Jewish celebration of the first day of Hanukkash. At least 12 people were killed by the two gunmen, and 29 others have been transported to various hospitals - including two police officers who are in serious condition - in what the authorities called an anti-semitic terrorist attack.

  • At least 11 killed as terrorist attack targets Jews at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

  • Hero who disarmed one of the Bondi Beach attackers by grabbing his gun

  • Bystander tackled and disarmed one of the Sydney gunmen, video shows

  • 15 Killed in Sydney attack at Jewish event

• Germany: 5 arrested for suspected Christmas market plot

  German authorities have arrested five men suspected of planning an attack on a Christmas market, the Munich public prosecutor's office said Saturday. The foiled plot was targeting a Christmas market in the area of Dingolfing in the southern German state of Bavaria, German authorities said. The exact name of the market that was the target of the foiled plot has not yet been specified by authorities. German authorities are suspecting that the attack plans were based on an Islamist motive and that it would be carried out by car. The suspects include a 56-year-old Egyptian, a 37-year-old Syrian and three Moroccans aged 22, 28 and 30.

• Europeans' health data sold to US firm run by ex-Israeli spies

• Denmark sees US as potential security concern

• EU Ombudswoman on von der Leyen's disappearing texts

• Scam Compounds Become Targets in Thai-Cambodian Border War

• Kast Wins: Migration and Crime Fears Prod Chile to the Right in Presidential Vote.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• World War III inches closer Putin upscales unstoppable nuclear-capable missile

China

• The Chinese Billionaires Having 100s of U.S.-Born Babies via Surrogate

• China Makes History with $1T Trade Surplus for First Time

• China installs defensive countermeasures on space station.

Health / Medicine

• Will blockbuster obesity drugs revolutionize addiction treatment?

• FDA leaders propose new 'plausible mechanism' pathway for bespoke medicines

• FDA drug trials exclude a widening slice of Americans

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• 'It was like a dream': How Australia's rarest bird of prey was found

• Tiger teeth, dried seahorses and shark fins sold illegally on Facebook

• Unexpected microbes are fixing carbon in deep ocean

• In one of the driest places on Earth, recurrent floods have become deadlier

• More atmospheric rivers coming for flooded Washington and the West Coast

• How the US freight rail industry got dirtier than coal power plants