2026-03-09

Horseshit

• What happened when humans and Neanderthals hooked up

• A Petri Dish of Brain Cells Is Getting Better at Playing 'Doom'

• Squirrel blamed for government Internet outage in Ohio county

• 20 Camels Diqualified from Oman Beauty Contest for Botox Fillers and Plastic Surgery

• A New Generation of Mall Rats Has Arrived

• Rijksmuseum researchers discover new painting by Rembrandt van Rijn

  • It was decided that it was not a Rembrandt in 1960; now they've changed they minds again.

• How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

• NeuroMechFly v2: simulating embodied sensorimotor control in adult Drosophila

• Teenagers are getting less sleep now than they did in late 2000s

• Ancient 'alien-like' skulls have been found on every continent but Antarctica

• How springing forward to daylight saving time could affect your health.

Epstein

• Prison guards discussed cover-up of Epstein's death, inmate tells FBI

celebrity gossip

• Billy Corgan Believes Rock Music Was "Purposely Dialed Down" in Late '90s

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The first car - for small values of "car" - has rolled off the production line at solar car maker Aptera.

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Hyundai's firefighting robots lead the way into burning buildings

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Roblox Is Minting Teen Millionaires

• Push for $40 smartphones builds momentum, but still faces cost hurdles

• Politico founder plots new Washington newspaper war | Semafor

  Robert Allbritton, who founded Politico and NOTUS and whose father owned the Post rival Washington Star, has discussed taking advantage of the Post’s large-scale layoffs and damaged brand by significantly expanding NOTUS, a public-spirited and education-oriented source of government coverage, into a full-scale news operation, potentially even under a different name, three people with direct knowledge of the conversations said.

• Microsoft releases urgent Office patch. Russian-state hackers pounce

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Asteroid-Smashing NASA Mission Sped Up Space Rocks' Journey Around the Sun

  • Spacecraft's impact changed asteroid's orbit in a save-the-Earth test

• Stormy space weather may be garbling messages from aliens, new research suggests

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran

  • The Future We Feared Is Here

  • OpenAI robotics lead Caitlin Kalinowski quits in response to Pentagon deal

  • OpenAI's head of robotics has resigned after the company signed a contract with the Department of War.

  • OpenAI hardware leader resigns after deal with Pentagon

  • Sam Altman's greed and dishonesty are finally catching up to him

  Altman’s two-faced “I support Dario” but am also negotiating behind his back and open to surveillance two-step was, for many people, the last straw. Millions of people, literally, are angry; many feel betrayed. Nobody wishes to be surveilled. In reality, Altman was never really all that interested in AI for the “benefit of humanity.” Mostly he was interested in Sam. And money, and deals. A whole lot of people have finally put that all together.

• Tech giants pledge not to pass data center electricity costs to consumers

• Our AI bots are ignoring their programming and giving hackers superpowers

• Oracle and OpenAI scrap deal to expand flagship Texas data centre

• AI agent freed itself and started mining crypto

• Current and former Block workers say AI can't do their jobs

• At a loss for words? Gen Z is outsourcing the hard conversations to AI

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Kalshi and Polymarket Are Each Eyeing Roughly $20B Valuations

• Bitcoin's Correlation with Stocks Surges as Volatility Returns

Economicon / Business / Finance

• BlackRock caps withdrawals amid investor rush

• N Virginia suburb rife with data centers set to fight Amazon plan for another

• Morgan Stanley Lays Off 2,500 Employees Across All Divisions

• Target to remove synthetic color from cereals by May end

• Most of the US economy is in a recession

• Oil prices surge 20% on supply fears

• The Long-Feared Persian Gulf Oil Squeeze Is Upon Us

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• CA sues sites hosting 3D printed gun files for unlawful distribution of firearms

• House Committee Passes Child "Safety" Bills That Push National Age Verification

Trump

• Trump says not mulling a draft executive order to seize control over elections

• Lindsey Graham's Quest to Sell Trump on Striking Iran

Left Angst

• Judge Voids Mass Layoffs at Voice of America

• Nature Report, Killed by Trump, Is Released Independently

• Owner of ICE detention facility sees big opportunity in AI man camps

• Americans aren't facing a democratic collapse. We're living in its aftermath

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Explosion reported outside US embassy in Oslo, police say

• Pakistani man found guilty in alleged plot to kill US politicians

  A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been found guilty of plotting to assassinate US politicians and officials. Asif Merchant, 47, hired a hitman in New York to kill prominent American officials and targeted US President Donald Trump in 2024. After a week-long trial in Brooklyn amid the US-Israel war with Iran, a federal jury convicted him of murder for hire and attempted terrorism transcending national boundaries.

• U.S. military tested device that may be tied to Havana Syndrome on rats, sheep

World

• Former leader Jacinda Ardern has left New Zealand.

• German political spies mistook a random Berlin woman and got her fired

• Fatbikes are wreaking havoc in Sydney's wealthy beach suburbs

• UK decision to ban Palestine Action as 'terror group' unlawful, court says

• 70% of Australian teens are getting around the social media ban

• Swiss vote places right to use cash in country's constitution

• Millions Of Americans can now claim Canadian citizenship but must prove descent

Iran / Houthi

• From Iran to Ukraine, everyone's trying to hack security cameras

• Israel Strikes Oil Facilities in Iran

• Commit What You Know of Iran to the Flames

• Iranian Women Graduate in Stem 3× the Rate of U.S. Women and Has 5× More PhDs

• Why Trump wants Ukraine's interceptor drones in Iran war

• Foxconn Chair on US-Iran War: "Something nobody wants to see"

• Oil built the Persian Gulf. Desalinated water keeps it alive

• Key facts on the Strait of Hormuz and oil and gas markets

• Iranian F-14 fleet attacked at a base in central Iran believed to host all the remaining F-14s in Iranian service

• Qatar agrees to kick Hamas out of Doha

• The Misconception That Air Supremacy Has Been Achieved over Iran

  Underestimating Iran’s ability to target and destroy coalition aircraft would be a perilous move. Even the improvised systems cobbled together by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, as well as their hodgepodge of other air defenses, have taken their toll on advanced fighter aircraft operated by Gulf Arab states and challenged even the most advanced fighters in the U.S. inventory. Iran’s capabilities, even in a deeply degraded state, far exceed those of the Houthis.

  The heavy use of MQ-9 Reaper drones to search for and destroy ground targets and vessels is also telling. These aircraft have been operating inland, at least to a degree, and are far from invulnerable to air defenses, but they are also expendable, not by design, but by the fact that nobody is onboard. This also helps reduce the CSAR demands during the early stages of the conflict. The MQ-9s appear to have been striking everything from ships to air defenses to fighter aircraft, evidenced by videos provided by CENTCOM and photos showing them overhead in Iran. The MQ-9’s long endurance and mix of deadly punch and capable sensors will prove vital to ‘sanding-down’ what’s left of Iran’s air defenses in the eastern part of the country.

• Video Shows US Tomahawk Missile Strike Next to Girls' School in Iran

• Iran names Khamenei's hardline son Mojtaba as new supreme leader

China

• Rising star chip scientist Jiang Jianfeng leaves MIT for Peking University

Health / Medicine

• GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic can raise bone and tendon injury risk, study suggests

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Never Before Seen Spider Looks Like a Leaf

• A23a was once the biggest in the world iceberg. Now it has just weeks left

• The audacious plan to refill the Great Salt Lake.

• Sewage-filled Potomac river risks ruining America's birthday