2026-01-01

Horseshit

• Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity

  • Most offices have coffee, a law office will have liquor; no recording studio is complete with out a fat sack of buds...

• Luxury goods once built to last now fall apart as easily as fast fashion

• The Antitrust Trial That Could Take Apart Nascar

• The world wants more Ube

• The MetroCard Never Got Its Due

• BMW Recalls 36,922 X3s over Steering Software Glitch

• How to be the archivist of your family's stories and relics

• Boston Went Big on Luxury Condos. The Buyers Didn't Show Up

• Leonardo's wood charring method predates Japanese practice

• Suddenly Everyone Is Scared to Dance at Concerts and Clubs

• Billionaires added record $2.2T in wealth in 2025

• Why 'Auld Lang Syne' still unites the world at midnight

celebrity gossip

• Flossie, the oldest cat, celebrates milestone birthday, defying all odds

  An aged cat named Flossie has just reached another major life milestone. The long-lived feline turned 30 on Dec. 29, extending her Guinness World Record run as the oldest living cat on Earth, the Express Tribune reported.

Obit

• Trailblazing senator who switched from Democrat to Republican and competed at the Olympics dies aged 92 | Daily Mail Online

  Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who served two Senate terms - 12 years - beginning in 1993, passed away on Tuesday from natural causes, his family confirmed. The motorcycle-riding, cowboy boot-wearing politician was the first Native American to chair the Committee on Indian Affairs and the only indigenous senator during his tenure. The father of two was one of just four Native Americans elected to the chamber in US history.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The science of how (and when) we decide to speak out–or self-censor

Musk

• Here's Everything Elon Musk promised in 2025 – and failed to deliver

• Tesla publishes analyst forecasts suggesting sales set to fall

• Tesla owner completes first autonomous drive across America

• Musk claims Tesla Model Y is best-selling car in the world, but there are doubts

Electric / Self Driving cars

• An abandoned ship full of EVs is burning in the Pacific

• Waymos are now coming for your coveted San Francisco parking spots

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Effective Altruists Should Embrace Sortition - by Max Clark

  The Effective Altruism (EA) movement, which I consider myself to be part of/aligned with, has worked very hard on figuring out the charity part. While we have no Pope in our holy church of EA, in my heart, the writings of Scott Alexander are our scripture :) His words are carefully chosen and his efforts are thorough. However, he neither is, nor claims to be, inerrant. He has just published a persuasive post about donations, and I confess that I slightly, but with extreme significance, disagree with Father Alexander!

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• California schools will be required to restrict, prohibit student cell phone use

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

  Banking, insurance, governments, inventory management – all the same places you'll find COBOL, you'll find mainframes as well. None of that is as sexy as the latest AI program or the newest cloud-native computing release, but old dogs with their old tricks still have useful work to perform. All of which made me wonder what other technologies are likely to still be in use 50 or more years after they were first released. Here are the ones my friends and I came up with.

• Disney will pay $10M to settle children's data privacy lawsuit

• Meta is sued by US Virgin Islands over ads for scams, dangers to children

• Nintendo 3DS prices skyrocket up to 76% — vintage Nintendo console rivals the cost of a brand new Switch 2 | Tom's Hardware

• Nothing? What Do Consumers Want in Smart Glasses?

• Leaks Predict $5000 RTX 5090 GPUs in 2026 Thanks to AI Industry Demand

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• By how much does your memory allocator overallocate?

• May God help those poor souls for whom this matters: HP-UX hits end-of-life today

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Switching off AI's ability to lie makes it more likely to claim it's conscious

• What Frankenstein's creature can tell us about AI

• Man killed his mother 'after consulting an AI chatbot'

• When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw

• Microsoft's Nadella overhauls leadership as he plots AI strategy beyond OpenAI

• ByteDance to pour US$14B into Nvidia chips in 2026

• OpenAI Is Paying Employees More Than Any Major Tech Startup in History

• Bengio: AI shows signs of self-preservation and we should be ready to pull plug

• The problem with letting AI do the grunt work.

• TPU Mania

• OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

• Five years of tinygrad

• How the AI 'bubble' compares to history

• The office block where AI 'doomers' gather to predict the apocalypse

• Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun to leave Meta and start new AI company

• GenAI may create a socioeconomic tipping point through labour displacement

• AI Has Fueled $70B in Data Center M&A Talks This Year

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

• Proposed Russian Orbital Station will stick to ISS orbit instead of polar orbit

• Radio observations to date find no evidence of technosignature from 3I/ATLAS

Crypto con games

• FTX whistleblower Caroline Ellison set for early release next month

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Nexperia got caught between two world powers

• The Fed admits it can't easily fix an economic problem it helped create

• Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

• Saks Prepares for Bankruptcy After Missing Debt Payment

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• SBA halts grants to Minnesota in wake of fraud scandal

  • KELLY LOEFFLER: Loans fraud in Minnesota welfare programs continues to grow, SBA finds

  we broadened our scope to investigate every COVID-19 loan granted in Minnesota. In a matter of weeks, we uncovered a staggering 13,600 PPP loans that were flagged for fraud but later approved, totaling about $430 million in potentially fraudulent funds

• Misspelled Minnesota day care Quality 'Learing' trucks in children after viral fraud video: 'Never seen kids go in there until today'

• In less than 48 hours at home polymer 3d printed disposable suppressors are going to make a lot more financial sense and will likely explode in popularity

Democrats

• New York's incoming mayor bans Raspberry Pi at his inauguration party

• San Francisco mayor sneaks through reparations bill that could give each black resident $5 million

  The mayor of San Francisco discreetly approved a bill to create a fund that may eventually grant each of the city's eligible black residents $5 million in reparations. Mayor Daniel Lurie quietly signed the incredibly divisive Reparations Bill just two days before Christmas. The ordinance establishes a Reparations Fund, as recommended by the city's African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in its 2023 report. The legislation merely establishes the fund but does not allocate any money to it - setting up the framework for any future contributions, whether they be through the city or privately donated.

Left Angst

• Phone Searches at U.S. Borders: What Travelers Need to Know

• Immigrant Derangement Syndrome

• SNAP bans on soda, candy and other foods take effect in five states

• NASA's Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts

• Here we go again: Retiring coal plant forced to stay open by Trump Admin

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• 100k-Watt Iron Beam laser becomes first to be operationally deployed

• Oil Tanker Pursued by the U.S. Appears to Claim Russian Protection

  • Oil Tanker Fleeing the Coast Guard Now Listed in Russian Ship Database

• Trump administration removes three spyware-linked executives from sanctions list

• Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work

World

• South Korea will require face scans to buy a SIM

• AI-generated videos showing young and attractive women promote Poland's EU exit

  • Poland calls for EU action for AI-generated TikTok videos calling for "Polexit"

• The countries where digital ID already exists

• Germany hunts Christmas thieves after Ocean's Eleven-style bank heist

  • Thieves Make Off with Millions in German Bank Heist

• Poland urges Brussels to probe TikTok over AI-generated content

• Italy antitrust agency fines Apple $116M over privacy feature

• James Dyson: Britain is a nation of doers – let's unlock our potential

• Finnish authorities seize vessel following sea cable disruption

  • Finland seizes ship from Russia suspected of breaking telecom cable to Estonia

• India overtakes Japan as 4th-largest economy, report says

• France targets Australia-style social media ban for children next year

  • France seeks to ban social media for children under 15

Iran / Houthi

• Most of Iran Shuts Down as Government Grapples with Protests and Economy

Israel

• Israel's multi-ton truck bombs ripped through Gaza City

China

• China forecast to have sold one in every 10 new cars in UK in 2025

• Yonaguni, the Japanese Island on the Front Lines of China's Feud with Japan

• China mandates 50% domestic equipment rule for chipmakers

• Xi Jinping Vows to Reunify China and Taiwan in New Year's Eve Speech

Health / Medicine

• Study links America's favorite cooking oil to obesity

• American Heart Association Revives Theory Light Drinking May Be Good for You

• Drugmakers raise US prices on 350 medicines despite pressure

• If Exercise Is Better Than a Drug, We Should Test It Like One

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Measles resurgence: US cases top 2k as vaccine rates slip

• New measles cases in S. Carolina put U.S. at risk of losing elimination status

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Google plans to power new data center with fossil fuels but almost no emissions

• Robotic rabbits vs. invasive Burmese pythons in Florida

• Can two Amazons survive? Invisible e-waste is poisoning the world

• The Price to Climb Mount Everest Will Rise to $15,000 This Year

• AI data centers are forcing dirty 'peaker' power plants back into service

• Assessment of the effects of large-scale PV development in desert areas

• 'Ghost resorts': 100s of ski slopes lie abandoned–will nature reclaim Alps?

• Tiny fee on Minneapolis carbon pollution won't do much for the climate

• The baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina