2025-12-30

Worthy

• Quite long, but worth the time: The Enshittifinancial Crisis

  The value of a “stock” is not based on whether the business is healthy, or its future certain, but on its potential price to grow, and analysts have, thanks to an incredible bull run of tech stocks going on over a decade, been able to say “I bet software will be big” for most of the time, going on CNBC or Bloomberg and blandly repeating whatever it is that a tech CEO just said, all without any worries about “responsibility” or “the truth.” This is because big tech stocks — and many other big stocks, if I’m honest — have made their lives easy as long as they don’t ask questions. Number always seems to be going up for software companies, and all you need to do is provide a vociferous defense of the “next big thing,” and come up with a smart-sounding model that justifies eternal growth. This is entirely disconnected from the products themselves, which don’t matter as long as Number Go Up. If net income is high and the company estimates it will continue to grow, then the company can do whatever the fuck it want with the product it sells or the things that it buys.

  the real problem is that analysts do not…well…analyze, not, at least, if it goes against the market consensus. That’s why Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Futurum and Gartner and Forrester and McKinsey and Morgan Stanley all said that the metaverse was inevitable — because they do not actually care about the underlying business itself, just its ability to grow on paper.

  In reality, we’re in an era of naked, blatant, shameless stock manipulation, both privately and publicly, because a “stock” no longer refers to a unit of ownership in a company so much as it is a chip at a casino where the house constantly changes the rules. Perhaps you’re able to occasionally catch the house showing its hand, and perhaps the house meant for you to see it.

  Analysts do not appear to have noticed a lack of revenue from an apparent deal for 40% of the world’s RAM! Oh well! Pobody’s nerfect!

  • It would be nice if he's wrong; but I think he's right. The clumsy vector processors they're wrapping so much money into aren't going to be used for very much at all. Perhaps we can hope that the casino aspects of the financial world will take the damage and leave the socially positive aspects of public ownership of solid companies intact.

etc

• Freedom from incompetence

• The mystery of flight MH370: will a new search find the missing airliner

Horseshit

• Slopes Are Empty as a Labor Dispute Shuts Down Telluride Colo

• The New Surveillance State Is You

• Drought linked to the decline of the hobbits 61,000 years ago

• Understanding the empirical law of large numbers and the gambler's fallacy

• He Was a Supreme Court Lawyer. Then His Double Life Caught Up with Him

• How Smell Guides Our Inner World

• Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

• New league aims to drag fencing into entertainment era

• An alternative to capitalism is possible, at least in comic books

• Welcome to the 'next big thing' for super shoes and marathon running

• Gen Zers and millennials flocking to so-called analog islands

• 'Why should we pay these criminals?' the hidden world of ransomware negotiations

• The Age of Nuclear-Powered Commercial Ships May Be Getting Closer

• Cold War bomb shelter in Nova Scotia being converted to high-end doomsday condos

Epstein

• My Flights Are in the Epstein Files - by Julie k Brown

  I didn’t expect to see was an American Airlines flight record from 2019 with my full name on them, including my maiden name, which I don’t use professionally. It’s an unusual name, so it’s clear it’s me. The document appears to be details of an itinerary for a series of flights I booked in July just before the SDNY and FBI arrested Epstein.

celebrity gossip

• MrBeast's former manager says the age of social-media superstars is fading

Obit

• Louis Gerstner, man credited with turning around IBM, dies aged 83

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Staying ahead of censors in 2025

• Our Reporters Reaching Out for Comment Were Accused of Stalking and Intimidation

Musk

• Starlink Hits 9M Customers, Adds More Than 20k Users a Day

• Starlink satellites: Facts, tracking and impact on astronomy

• The Worst Thing About Elon Musk Is That He Got Away with All of It

• Tesla's 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Why a Cheaper EV Battery Could Cost You Double in the Long Run

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• World's Smallest Programmable, Autonomous Robots

• Ouch! Watch the eye-watering moment a man is kicked in the GROIN by a robot mimicking his movements

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Pope Leo's pick to lead New York Catholics signals shift away from Maga

• What Makes Something a Cult?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• It's time for WA to ban cellphones in schools statewide at last

• PhDs Can't Find Work as Boston's Biotech Engine Sputters

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Modders Are Slapping 32GB of VRAM on Nvidia's RTX 5080 GPUs

• Hacker claims to leak WIRED database with 2.3M records

  • Hacker Claims Theft of 40M Condé Nast Records After Wired Data Leak

• Gmail to Let Users Change Their Addresses While Keeping Data

• Ubisoft helpdesk staff in India accepted bribes to hack player accounts

• Memory prices are expected to increase another 45% in 2026.

• Apple's terrible UI design is not the fault of just one fall guy

• CD Projekt and GOG Co-Founder Michał Kiciński Acquires GOG from CD Projekt

• Russian enthusiasts planning DIY DDR5 memory amidst the worldwide shortage

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI Is a Scam, but Don't Let That Spoil Machine Learning

• Payment giants preparing for a world where AI agents book flights, shop for you

• CoreWeave Has Dramatically Further to Fall

• AI Chatbots Linked to Psychosis, Say Doctors

• How Deepfakes Could Lead to Doomsday

• Are We Ready to Be Governed by Artificial Intelligence?

• 'NCIS' Actress Katrina Law Accuses Her Ex of Using AI to Impersonate Her

• Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones

• The New Billionaires of the A.I. Boom

• Teens are having disturbing interactions with chatbots

• OpenAI faces a make-or-break year in 2026

• Zuck buys Chinese AI company Manus that claims it deals in actions, not words

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA Tracking Plane-Sized Asteroid Approaching Earth

Crypto con games

• Agnelli family rejects Tether's 1B euro offer

• Trump-linked crypto venture fires auditor after FT inquiries

Economicon / Business / Finance

• A U.S. Startup Trying to Break China's Rare-Earth Monopoly

• Oracle shares on pace for worst quarter since 2001, concerns about AI build-out

• Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel under September agreement

• Why a $500 Steak Dinner Only Yields a $25 Profit

• Will Skyrocketing Silver Prices Make Photo Film More Expensive?

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• New York subway ends its MetroCard era and switches to tap-and-go fares

• Even after near-record returns, California state retirement fund still $166B short.

• A new view of two critical days that set the stage for the devastating Palisades fire

  An hour after midnight Jan. 1, as a small brush fire blazed across Topanga State Park, a California State Parks employee texted the Los Angeles Fire Department’s heavy equipment supervisor to find out if they were sending in bulldozers. “Heck no that area is full of endangered plants,” Capt. Richard Diede replied at 9:52 a.m, five hours after LAFD declared the fire contained. “I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area,” he wrote. “I’m so trained.”

• YouTuber Nick Shirley gets FBI response to Minnesota fraud probe

  Nick Shirley, a MAGA-friendly YouTuber, lit up X during Christmas week with video reports from Minnesota alleging massive fraud in government-funded child care programs — and provoked approving responses from the FBI and Vice President JD Vance.

• USPS Announces Changes to the Postmark Date System

  he rule clarifies that the date displayed on a machine-applied postmark represents the "date of the first automated processing operation" performed at a processing facility, rather than the date the mail was dropped off. The rule codifies the operational reality that postmarking operations often cross calendar days or occur after transportation from a retail unit, meaning the postmark date is not a "perfectly reliable indicator" of the date of mailing.

Trump

• Republicans are at the top of their tweeting game right now.

  They want Americans to know that they are getting busy ... writing respectful requests for data so they can hold a hearing in front of a committee.

Democrats

• Rep Ro Khanna faces Silicon Valley backlash after embracing wealth tax

Left Angst

• Americans Hate AI. Which Party Will Benefit?

• From A.I. To Chips, Big Tech Is Getting What It Wants from Trump

• The Pence Mirage: Why the Right Isn’t Leaving Trump › American Greatness

• Trump Will Be Trump's Undoing – and History Has Seen This Movie Before

• Big Tech basically took Trump's unpredictable trade war lying down

• Ten things that are going right in America

  It’s very easy to read the news every day and conclude that the world is in a never-ending hydra-headed “polycrisis”; if you have a cool, detached perspective, you’ll realize that things are rarely so dark. That said, this year I was a bit of a downer. The coming of the second Trump administration means the end of the era of stability that the world enjoyed after World War 2. Even if the U.S. can fix its domestic problems (which are not all Trump’s fault by a long stretch), the ascendance of China and Russia as the world’s dominant power bloc will not be so easily undone, and the ramifications of that shift are only getting started. That’s what motivated the somewhat darker tone of my blog this year.

• The J6 Pipebomber Explains His Motive, and the Left Won’t Be Happy

  after agents confronted him with surveillance footage, Cole admitted the truth. He said that he assembled the devices in the hours before driving to D.C. on January 5. He cleaned them with disinfectant wipes. He didn't go to attend a protest. He went specifically to plant bombs. He admitted he never tested the devices beforehand. When he learned later they didn't detonate, he was "pretty relieved." He planted them at night, he said, because he didn't want to kill people. He claimed he was barely thinking about how people would react when the bombs went off, though he hoped for news coverage. Cole told investigators "something just snapped" after "watching everything, just everything getting worse." He wanted to "do something 'to the parties' because 'they were in charge.'" His inspiration? The Troubles in Ireland. He denied that his actions targeted Congress or were related to the January 6 proceedings. In fact, the bombs had hour-long timers, so they weren't even supposed to go off on January 6. Here's where it gets interesting. Cole felt that "the people up top" on "both sides" shouldn't ignore grievances or label concerned citizens as "conspiracy theorists," "bad people," "Nazis," or "fascists." If people believe their votes are being nullified, "at the very least someone should address it," he said. When something as important as voting seems tampered with, "someone needs to speak up."

• After Conspiracy Theorist and Lunatic Marjorie Taylor Greene Turns on Trump, the NYT Offers Her a Puff-Piece with an Attempted Glamour Shot

  She claims to the NYT -- which expresses no skepticism, of course -- that Trump "screamed" at her to not release the name of Epstein's "clients," because, as Trump "screamed," "My friends will get hurt!"

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene questions President Trump's religious beliefs, slams 'sexualization' of women at Mar-a-Lago

• The state is making a list of transgender Texans, using driver licenses to help

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Father rescues abducted daughter by tracking her cell phone after kidnapping

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump Says the U.S. Struck a 'Big Facility' in Campaign Against Venezuela

  • Did US Land Strikes On Venezuela Begin Last Week & No One Knew It? | ZeroHedge

  President Trump on Friday in a radio interview disclosed something which missed the attention of the US and global media. He let slip that a large land site had been knocked out by a strike from US forces in the Caribbean - however without specifying which country was hit (whether Venezuela or perhaps Colombia). Trump may have actually assumed the attack which he disclosed publicly for the first time was already being reported on, but it had not.

  • US Confirms Strike on 'Big Facility' Inside Venezuela

• GPS successor may be needed due to jamming vulnerability

World

• EU to build no-fee payments service like Visa/Mastercard and Apple/Google Pay

  • EU Council backs digital euro with both online and offline functionality

  • Digital euro is near: EU fast-tracks the CBDC project

• Claire Brosseau Wants to Die. Will Canada Let Her?

• Many new UK drone users must take theory test before flying outside

• Uzbekistan's nationwide license plate surveillance system

• The Lure of a Rising Asian Metropolis? No Traffic.

• Customs: Council agrees to levy customs duty on small parcels as of 1 July 2026

• (2021) Votes for children Why we should lower the voting age to six

• Why India's big cities are becoming unliveable

• Why Europe's night-train Renaissance derailed

• German hackers call for 'digital independence days' to reduce US tech grip

• UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating

Iran / Houthi

• Tehran protesters target Khamenei as shopkeepers vow to continue strikes

• Growing Iran Protests Put New Pressure on an Embattled Regime

Israel

• Why Israel's recognition of Somaliland as an independent state is controversial

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• John Simpson: 'I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025'

  Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the current conflict in his country could escalate into a world war. After nearly 60 years of observing conflict, I've got a nasty feeling he's right.

• Russian Ghost Ship Sank Smuggling Nuclear Reactor Parts Likely Bound for N Korea

China

• China launches live-fire drills encircling Taiwan

  • China stages record drills designed to encircle Taiwan

• OnlyFans is no longer accessible in China

• China wants to ban making yourself into an AI to keep aged relatives company

• China drafts strictest rules to end AI-encouraged suicide, violence

Health / Medicine

• Endurance athletes have a 4x higher risk of irregular heartbeat, here's why

• Battling Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines

• Everyday conversations can delay eye movements, essential for safe driving

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Wombats make square poop to communicate and deliver information

• The costs of corn: should the US change how it grows its dominant crop?

• Do Bison Understand Death? Bison Funerals Suggest They Might

• Feasibility of Using Mealworms as an Alternative Protein Source

• Factory farming in Africa: development banks like it, but it's bad for climate

• Homeowner threatens to sue over bear that won't leave

  A homeowner says living with a bear under his house has pushed him to his breaking point. In an exclusive interview with KTLA’s Jillian Smukler, he revealed plans to sue the California Department of Fish and Wildlife after being told the state will no longer help. Ken Johnson says the bear moved under his Altadena home just before Thanksgiving — and never left. “If I kept track of everything I tried, it would be Bear 14, Homeowner 0,” said Johnson, using a sports analogy. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife initially stepped in, setting a trap near the crawl space. But instead of catching the large bear under Johnson’s home, the trap caught a smaller bear — the wrong one.

  He even asked if he could still use bait to lure the bear out. “No, can’t do that,” he said he was told. A video of a broken pipe prompted him to shut off his gas on Christmas Eve, and he hasn’t had any hot water since. Now, Johnson says he plans to sue, accusing the department of negligence and emotional distress. “This has gone on long enough, and it’s something that they should deal with. It’s a tagged bear. They’ve dealt with it before. They chose not to euthanize it, and now it’s back and it’s just going to keep on doing this,” Johnson said.

• The Unreported Story of Grid Scale Battery Fires