2025-12-28
Horseshit
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No gels, no foams: Catalonia turns to grannies to teach traditional cooking
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The nightmares were horrific: Dads open up about crippling post-natal depression
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Move Over, Genghis Khan. Many Other Men Left Genetic Legacies
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Christian Marclay on Why 'The Clock' Challenges a Digitally Obsessed Generation
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Election betting on prediction markets apps is set to boom ahead of midterms
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How the Highest-Earning Millennials Made It to the Top of Their Generation
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Why do men find it so hard to connect with other people, and their own emotions?
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How Screen-Time Limits Fail and What Matters More
The modern debate over youth mental health has settled on a familiar explanation. Smartphones and social media are said to be addictive, to crowd out real life, and to leave young people anxious, lonely, and depressed. If that account were sufficient, the remedy would be obvious. Restrict access, and well-being should recover. Yet the groups most likely to face strict limits are not the ones that see the largest gains from them.
When we look closely at the data, a different picture emerges. Phones do matter, but their role is often misunderstood. Instead of operating as a primary source of distress, heavy phone use appears to function as a compensatory behavior. When young people lack reliable sources of support or connection, they turn to tools that provide stimulation or regulation. Heavy screen use fills gaps left by unmet material and psychological needs.
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Childhood and Education 16: Letting Kids Be Kids
The Revolution of Rising Requirements has many elements. The most onerous are the supervisory requirements on children. They have become, as Kelsey Piper recently documented, completely, utterly insane, to the point where:
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A third of people, both parents and non-parents, responded in a survey that it is not appropriate to leave a 13 year old at home for an hour or two, as opposed to when we used to be 11 year olds babysitting for other neighborhood kids.
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A third of people said in that same survey that if a 10-year-old is allowed to play alone in the park, there needs to be an investigation by CPS.
Whereas I think that if you don’t allow your 10-year-old to play alone in a park, that is a much better (although still quite bad) potential reason for a CPS investigation. This is not an idle threat, per the common statistic that around 35% of American families get investigated by CPS. Even if you are confident that will ultimately turn out fine, and given the vagaries and insanities one can never fully be sure, the process is already the punishment.
As Kelsey Piper says, we don’t want a lot of 14-year-olds being breadwinners for their families. But this is so bad in the other direction it might be even worse than that, even discounting the kids that this causes to never be born at all. Kids need to be kids. We don’t let them. It’s a big problem, both greatly raising the dollar, time and lifestyle costs of having kids and also destroying their childhoods.
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Airlines call in psychologists to stop passengers risking their lives for bags
Obit
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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CloudFlare is ruining the internet
The idea that a single company can negatively influence the experience of such a large portion of the internet for users is kinda scary. I would urge everyone to reconsider using Cloudflare as your CDN/DNS/DDOS solution. Being free is not a good enough reason to use something, if you are concerned about your site speed there are more important things to look into for optimization before considering a CDN. DDOS might be a good reason to choose CloudFlare, but an only a small portion of total users probably gets affected by DDOS anyways. Not to mention their free tier doesn’t cover the complex DDOS attacks that you really should be concerned about. So something that you configured because its free to use and relatively easy to set up because of its integration to most cheap hosts, turns out to be a nuisance to a large part of the internet users.
- There are numerous sites that I'm less likely to read or link to because of Cloudflare blocks; some require a captcha and some will not be served to me at all. I'm in the USA, too.
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History of abridged 'It's a Wonderful Life' that cuts pivotal scene
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Can Apple's AirPod Translation Get You Through Tokyo? We Tested It.
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New York to require social media platforms to display mental health warnings
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Concert cancelled after AI wrongly accuses artist of being sex offender
Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender. The Juno Award-winning musician said he learned of the online misinformation last week after a First Nation north of Halifax confronted him with the summary and cancelled a concert planned for Dec. 19. MacIsaac said the summary falsely asserted he had been convicted of a series of offences including sexual assault, internet luring, assaulting a woman and attempting to assault a minor. As well, he said the Google entry accused him of being listed on the national sex offender registry, which is also untrue.
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New York Times reporter sues Google, xAI, OpenAI over chatbot training
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Tech groups shift $120B of AI data centre debt off balance sheets
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GenAI experts replace 'Halo: Evolved' staff to impact Xbox game development
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Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn't know why. Then she found the AI chat
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As A.I. Companies Borrow Billions, Debt Investors Grow Wary - The New York Times
In one debt deal for Applied Digital, a data center builder, the company had to pay as much as 3.75 percentage points above similarly rated companies, equivalent to roughly 70 percent more in interest.
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AI boom adds $500B to net worth of US tech billionaires in 2025
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Nvidia Just Paid $20 Billion for a Company That Missed Its Revenue Target by 75%
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More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are 'AI slop', study finds
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Data centres turn to aircraft engines to avoid grid connection delays
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Nvidia's $20B Antitrust Loophole
Nvidia paid $20 billion for a company valued at $6.9 billion three months earlier, structured the deal to avoid traditional M&A oversight, killed the cloud business without inheriting Saudi contracts, and enriched the exact people (Chamath, Sacks) who spent the last year promoting "American AI leadership" while cutting deals with foreign governments. The employees who built the technology either got hired by Nvidia or have been utterly shafted.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Democrats
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Minnesota video shows alleged multi-million daycare fraud under Walz | Fox News
The third-ranking leader in the House of Representatives, who also happens to hail from Minnesota, demanded answers from Gov. Tim Walz after a YouTuber tried to confront employees of an alleged daycare center that had misspelled signage and no signs of activity outside but reportedly received $4 million in state funds. The video went viral this week amid the burgeoning scandal enveloping the Walz administration that notably included at least $1 billion lost to alleged social services fraud largely tied to the Somali community in the Twin Cities. A portion reportedly ended up in the hands of the Somali terror group Al-Shabab. Responding to the video, Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who represents Twin Cities suburbs and St. Cloud, lashed out at the governor. "4 million dollars of hard-earned tax dollars going to an education center that can’t even spell learning correctly. Care to explain this one, Tim Walz?" he wrote on X.
Left Angst
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Limewire Re-Emerges in Online Rush to Share Pulled News Segment
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Tourism Crisis Hits the United States in 2025 as International Visitor Plunge
- Wasn't "Overtourism" a big evil last year?
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The Economy Survived 2025, But Many Americans Are Reeling - The New York Times
After a chaotic year filled with trade wars, market gyrations and the longest government shutdown in history, the U.S. economy has, once again, proved more resilient than many forecasters feared. But “resilient” isn’t quite the same thing as “good.”
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Marco Rubio Is Not the Adult in the Room. He's the Warmonger
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Trump’s First Year Back, in 10 Charts - The New York Times
President Trump indisputably dominated 2025. Only the second president to be elected to nonconsecutive terms, the reinvigorated Mr. Trump plunged back into office with a muscularity unmatched by any other president in my lifetime. Ignoring convention, precedent and, at times, the law, he rammed through vast changes aimed at curtailing immigration, walling off our economy and dismantling the agenda of his predecessor (and successor) Joe Biden. But by year’s end Mr. Trump’s popularity had sunk to historical lows, as many Americans recoiled from his brutality and his extremism. Above all, they fretted about his failure to improve their economic well-being.
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USD Share as Global Reserve Currency Drops to Lowest Since 1994
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Former 'South Park' writer owns Trump Kennedy Center domain names
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White House pushes to dismantle leading climate and weather research center
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Late last night, I received a final Christmas gift
official notification from the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs that I, Palmer Luckey (Male), have been personally sanctioned as a dangerous actor. I want to thank my family, my team, and my Lord Jesus Christ for this award. Anduril has been sanctioned for a while now, as have many of my peers, but it means so much to finally have my non-existent Chinese assets seized and repurposed. The sanctions also prohibit all Chinese nationals from engaging with me in any way, which should really clear up my social media feeds.
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The European Commission strongly condemns the U.S. decision to impose travel restrictions on five European individuals, including former European Commissioner Thierry Breton. Our digital rules ensure a safe, fair, and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination. We have requested clarifications from the U.S. authorities and remain engaged. If needed, we will respond swiftly and decisively to defend our regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures.
World
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Germany’s empty churches repurposed as congregations shrink.
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The Metropolitan Police has announced it will stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents” following the decision to take no further action against Father Ted creator Graham Linehan. The 57-year-old Irish comedy writer was arrested at Heathrow in September on suspicion of inciting violence over three social media posts concerning transgender issues.
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My father first came to the UK, people looked after him. Would that happen now?
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Taiwan rattled by 7.0 magnitude quake, no major damage reported
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Thailand, Attacking Cambodia, Says Its Target Is the Scam Industry
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
Health / Medicine
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Scientists Edited Genes Inside a Living Person for First Time, Saved His Life
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Cat Ownership Linked to Increased Risk of Schizophrenia, Research Suggests
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(Nov 2025) Multilingualism and Extending Healthspan
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Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control Confirms Rabies-Positive Dog
The dog, vaccinated earlier this year, was surrendered to a local rescue and euthanized for behavioral reasons before testing positive for rabies. The source of rabies is currently unknown and under investigation. t this time, 13 individuals known to have had direct contact with the dog have begun post-exposure prophylaxis, and no one is symptomatic.
The dog was vaccinated for rabies in June 2025. On December 16, 2025, the dog had a marked change in behavior and was ultimately euthanized and tested for rabies. Rabies was confirmed through laboratory testing on December 19; samples are undergoing further analysis to determine the rabies strain and potential exposure