2025-12-22

etc

• PG&E outages in S.F. leave 130k without electricity

  • San Francisco power outage puts 130k in the dark

  • Power restored to about 110k San Francisco customers after widespread outage

Horseshit

• 'Welcome In.' The Two-Word Greeting That's Taking over and Driving Shoppers Nuts

• When Were Things The Best?

• Humanity May Reach Singularity Within Just 4 Years, Trend Shows

• Americans are hungry for community. So why don't we have European-style squares?

• 'We feel excluded': expensive tickets dampen World Cup excitement in Mexico

• Did Las Vegas get too greedy?

  Las Vegas is capitalism in its most naked, sometimes exploitative form. I really like the city: off the Strip, it resembles other growing, diverse Sunbelt metros like Raleigh, Houston and Nashville, full of fantastic strip-mall restaurants and middle-class housing. But it also serves as a laboratory for economic experimentation. And because state regulators obsessively track the gambling industry’s performance — tourism reflects more than a third of Nevada’s economy — Vegas is a surprisingly data-rich environment. So, for instance, we might ask questions like these: How much additional profit can you squeeze out of your customers before they rebel? Even if you’re doing it in ways that initially might be hard for them to notice? A slump in tourism this year suggests that Vegas may have passed its saturation point. Once a town of penny slots and cheap buffets, Vegas no longer feels like a good value to middle-class consumers.

  Vegas customers are now wagering 32 percent less on slots than they did in 2006. The higher house edge helps curb losses, but not by enough to make up for the decline in betting volume.

• The End of Reason

  Two centuries ago, at the early stages of our scientific endeavors, it took only two people, Darwin and Wallace, to figure out evolution and usher in a revolution in biology. Similarly, it took only one Bell to revolutionize telecommunication, two Wright brothers to figure out motorized flight, and one Einstein to crank out a theory of relativity. Now, it literally takes hundreds of scientists to make the next, ever more incremental step towards understanding how Life, Quantum Mechanics or anything else for that matter actually works. By doing so, they only discover that the answer to these questions are as elusive as ever, forcing scientists to push out the deadline for delivering anything substantial by decades, repeatedly. It is no wonder then, that we keep hearing such claims as ‘fusion is just a couple of decades away’ time after time, for more than sixty years now.

  • Misinterpreting ~~history~~ hagiography to justify present despair. Smells familiar.

• Mountain home near Aspen, built for monks, sold to Palantir CEO for $120M

• Give Thanks for the Winter Solstice. You Might Not Be Here Without It

Epstein

• I Need to Talk About the Weirdest Part of Epstein's Emails–Besides the Obvious

• Epstein Files Photos Disappear from Government Website, Including One of Trump

• The Epstein Files Memes Are Pouring in, and They're Hilarious

• DOJ releases Epstein files, says review identified over 1,200 victims, families

Musk

• Starlink Satellite Is Tumbling Toward Earth After an Anomaly in Orbit

  • Starlink satellite just exploded and left 'trackable' debris

• Elon Musk becomes first person worth $700B following pay package ruling

• Extreme safety risk warning from FAA after three passenger jets in panic

  A SpaceX test flight that was 'destroyed' less than ten minutes after its launch in January put multiple passenger jets in serious danger while in flight over the Caribbean. The seventh un-crewed Starship test flight was CEO Elon Musk's latest attempt to make life on Mars a reality and took place days before he launched the Department of Government Efficiency in President Donald Trump's White House.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

  • Waymo suspends service amid widespread blackout-related disruption

  • Waymo suspends service in San Francisco as robotaxis stall during blackout

  • Waymos Froze, Blocked Traffic During San Francisco Power Outage

• The Electric Vehicle Collapse: Wow, That Was Quick!

• A Price War Is Looming for Electric Vehicles

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Walmart and other US companies want to build a pipeline of skilled tradespeople

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• TikTok Says Chinese Owner Will Retain Core US Business

• Google killed the 25-year-old Sega Dreamcast PlanetWeb 3.0 web browser this week

• Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results 'at an astonishing scale'

• Why I Wouldn't Want John Solomon's New CMO Job at Mozilla

  Mitchell Baker’s pay during her last four-year stint as Mozilla’s CEO (she served twice: from 2005 to 2008, and from 2019 to 2024) totaled something like $20-$30 million, based on what we know about her pay during the first two years of that period. I should note that when Mitchell took over as CEO in 2019, Firefox’s share of the browser market was in the 5%-6% range. By 2024, that number had dropped to about 3%. That’s important when you consider that a substantial part of Mozilla’s income comes from money paid by Google in exchange for Firefox making Google its default search engine. Google’s been paying plenty. Last year, Mozilla took in roughly $570 million, with its CFO telling The Verge that roughly 85% of that came from the Google search deal.

• Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title

• Nvidia Might Cut RTX 50 GPU Supply by Up to 40% in 2026 Due to Memory Shortages

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Are these AI prompts damaging your thinking skills?

• Profile of Josh Woodward, head of Google Labs that turned around Gemini app

• Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

• What If Readers Like A.I.-Generated Fiction?

• A brief history of Sam Altman's hype

• Al Jazeera launches new integrative AI model, 'The Core'

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Saturn's biggest moon might not have global ocean, but search for life not over

• Solar storms could hit Earth and produce auroras

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Seattle's Delivery Minimum Wage Failed Drivers and Raised Costs

• Young Adults Making Good Money Say Life Is Unaffordable

• Marriott App Now Prompts You to Tip Staff – So Hotels Can Cut Wage Costs

• Day laborers protest noise machines installed at Home Depot

• The Squishy Number Behind the Rise and Fall of Oracle's Stock

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• NY Gov. vetoes bill to mandate 2-person subway train crews

Left Angst

• Trump AI czar David Sacks starts to worry the industry

• Acting CISA director failed polygraph. Career staff are now under investigation

• Trump admin to hire 1k specialists for 'Tech Force' to build AI projects

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Police push back on potential ban on Chinese-made drones

• Live cameras are tracking faces in New Orleans. Who should control them?

  • "lets not do that' ain't an option?

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US submarines are outnumbered in the Pacific. South Korea has a plan to help

• Bring Back the Privateers!

  privateers were historically very successful. During the War of 1812, roughly 500 privateers operated alongside a tiny U.S. Navy. The market responded swiftly—privateers like the Comet were commissioned within days of war’s declaration and began capturing prizes within weeks.

• China, Russia pulling ahead of NATO in Arctic drone capabilities: report

World

• Grappling with its worst drought in a century, Iraq bets on oil-for-water deal

• Japanese companies demand commercial-grade support for open source at no cost

• Rights groups condemn new record number of executions in Saudi Arabia

• As it happened: Thousands gather for vigil to 'reclaim' Bondi

• Google joins attacks on Britain over free speech online

• Is Gen Z's love of Fried chicken pushing Britain to 'peak pizza'?

• Canada's First Christmas Without the Hudson's Bay Company

• Too Early, Too Alone: France Prepares for Russia as US Withdraws

• As U.S. Guns Pour into Canada, the Bodies Pile Up

China

• Chinese surveillance based on US tech is used to silence Tibetans in Nepal

Health / Medicine

• Weight-loss jabs: What happens when you stop?

• Indoor tanning makes youthful skin much older on a genetic level

• Scientists Discover Neural Basis of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

• The uncertain origins of aspirin

• Hospitals Cater to 'Transplant Tourists' as U.S. Patients Wait for Organs

• World Health Organization to explore benefits of traditional medicines

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Mushrooms as Rainmakers: How Spores Act as Nuclei for Raindrops

• Feds order Washington power plant to keep burning coal

• Scientists log rare case of female polar bear adopting cub

• CO2 Batteries That Store Grid Energy Take Off Globally

• Earth's Seasons Are Strangely Out of Sync, Scientists Discover from Space

  Just because two places exist in the same hemisphere, at similar altitudes, or at the same latitude doesn't guarantee they'll experience the same seasonal changes at the same time. Even regions that are side by side can experience different weather and ecological patterns, sculpting wildly different neighboring habitats.

• Global warming could trigger the next Ice Age

• Why the world is running out of frankincense

• Great White Sharks Were Scared Out of Their Habitat by Just 2 Predators