2026-03-14

Cool

• Pi Formulas, Algorithms and Computations

etc

• US forecasts Blizzard, polar vortex, heat dome and atmospheric river all at once

Horseshit

• Tennessee grandmother jailed after AI face recognition error links her to fraud

  Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software, according to south-east North Dakota news outlet InForum. Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the crimes. Lipps, a mother of three and grandmother of five, said she has lived most of her life in north-central Tennessee. She had never been on an airplane until authorities flew her to North Dakota last year to face charges.

• 1,900-year-old double Scythian burial in Ukraine contains toxic red mineral

• Revealed: Face of 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal from cave

• Why people in L.A. are strapping cameras on their bodies to do chores

• How to Bring Starter Homes Back from Extinction

• Gilmour's 'Black Strat' Sells for $14.55M, the Most Expensive Guitar Ever Sold

• The Hottest Job in Tech Isn't Glamorous

celebrity gossip

• Harvey Weinstein gives first interview in six years, says prison life is "hell"

• In search of Banksy, Reuters found the artist took on a new identity

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• I traced $2B in nonprofit grants for Meta and Age Verification lobbying

• Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn't About Kids, It's About Control

Musk

• Elon Musk: xAI was not built right first time round; is being rebuilt

  • Elon Musk says xAI must be 'rebuilt' as co-founder exodus continues

• Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Electric air taxis are about to take flight in 26 states

• Honda Kills Three Electric Vehicles for U.S.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Peter Thiel's Antichrist lectures stir controversy in Vatican's backyard

  ne of the hottest tickets in the Vatican’s backyard these days is for a four-lecture series on the Antichrist being given by Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The invitation-only conference in Rome, from Sunday to Wednesday, has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement.

• Erasing the Word "Woman"

  Recommendations to use desexed language started in the US and Canada around 2014–15. This was most visible in relation to the novel term “chestfeeding” and there were a number of papers aimed at health professionals promoting this word at that time. However, research suggests that chestfeeding was not then in widespread use amongst those who identified as transgender. A research team led by Trevor MacDonald considered “experiences with lactation, chestfeeding, and gender identity” of “transmasculine individuals,” but of twenty-two research participants, only three said they preferred the term chestfeeding. Similarly, Michelle Walks wrote a book chapter, “Chestfeeding as a gender fluid practice,” in the Routledge anthology Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Approaches but all study participant quotations referred to breastfeeding and none to chestfeeding. The promotion of chestfeeding by these authors demonstrates how advocating for desexed language may come not just from a desire to support individuals but also to shift how societies conceptualise sex and gender identity and use language in relation to each.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• HP has new incentive to stop blocking third-party ink in its printers

• Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found

  • Two long-lost episodes of 'Doctor Who' have been found

• Readers noticed updated pop culture references on Kindle

• Live Nation Can 'Gouge' Fans on Fees, Ticket Directors Brag

  • Live Nation director boasted of gouging ticket buyers, "robbing them blind"

• It's the Music You Hear All Day, Without Ever Noticing

• Users protest as Google Antigravity price floats upward

• Thousands of authors publish 'empty' book in protest over AI using their work

• After Amazon's Alexa asks creepy questions to tot, Mom pulls plug

• Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

• Digg cuts jobs after facing AI bot surge

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Bus-sized asteroid will fly past Earth tonight mere days after being discovered. Here’s what to expect.

  The solar system asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 11:27 p.m. EDT on March 12 (0327 GMT on March 13), when it will pass 197,466 miles (317,791 kilometers) from the southern hemisphere.

• Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is ‘bursting with methanol,’ new study finds.

• NASA targets Artemis II crewed moon mission for April 1 launch

  • NASA aims for April moon launch with Artemis astronauts

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• How The Pentagon Got Hooked on AI War Machines

• Meta delays rollout of new AI model after performance concerns

• Silicon Valley's New Obsession: Watching Bots Do Their Grunt Work

• Advertising was always going to come for AI chatbots. The real question is how

• Silicon Valley is buzzing about this new idea: AI compute as compensation

• A defense official reveals how AI chatbots could be used for targeting decisions

• Three more AI psychoses from Cory Doctorow

• AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately

• Ukraine to Make Drone Videos Available for Training A.I. Models

• New research shows most gamers find playing with AI NPCs to be enjoyable

• Anthropic gives $20M to group pushing for AI regulations ahead of 2026 elections

• AI toys for young children must be more tightly regulated, say researchers

• Google is using old news reports and AI to predict flash floods

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler

• Substack Is at the Gambling Stage of Desperation

• VeryAI raises $10M to build palm-scan identity system on Solana

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Fed to loosen capital requirements for big US banks

• 'Devastating blow': Atlassian lays off 1,600 workers ahead of AI push

• Private Credit's 'Back Leverage' Is Another Pain Point for Funds

• US private credit defaults hit record 9.2% in 2025, Fitch says

• Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

• Home prices are so high in Calif. investors are gobbling up single family homes

• Fears as banks seize 40K homes in a single month as foreclosures sweep America

  The number of Americans losing their homes to banks has risen for the twelfth consecutive month, highlighting mounting pressure in the US housing market. In February, foreclosure activity reached 38,840 properties - a 20 percent increase compared with the same month last year. Although the February total was slightly lower than January, it marked the twelfth straight month of year-over-year increases, showing how Americans are increasingly struggling to pay their bills.

• U.S. economy expanded at sluggish 0.7% in Q4, downgrading first estimate

• Adobe will pay $75M to settle US cancellation fee lawsuit

  • Adobe pays $75M to settle over termination fees, subscription cancellations

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Candidates’ faces on punching bags linked to 37 uncounted ballots in Hamtramck, Michigan - Votebeat

  Punching bags hanging inside Hamtramck’s city clerk’s office — one with mayoral candidate Muhith Mahmood’s face taped to it — helped set off a chain of events that left 37 ballots uncounted in the city’s Nov. 5 mayoral election, a race Mahmood lost by just 11 votes. Mayor Adam Alharbi, who defeated Mahmood in the race for mayor and was sworn in in January, confirmed Tuesday that the punching bags were one reason interim City Manager Alexander Lagrou and a number of other unauthorized city officials entered the clerk’s office after the polls closed on Election Day. Aside from Mahmood, the image of a City Council candidate whose name is not yet public was also featured on the bags. Inside the office were 37 uncounted absentee ballots. Officials’ entry broke the chain of custody, and canvassers ultimately chose not to count them as a result. Though those ballots could have changed the outcome of the narrowly decided race, they were not part of the count — including the recount requested by Mahmood, which slightly increased Alharbi’s margin of victory from 6 to 11 votes. Mahmood has appealed a judge’s decision allowing the ballots to remain excluded, leaving the legitimacy of the razor-thin result under continued scrutiny. That December ruling said that canvassers had the authority to leave the 37 ballots out of the final count. The case now sits before the Michigan Court of Appeals.

• Food stamp recipients ⁠sue Agriculture ⁠Department over restrictions on sugary drinks, candy.

• Senate Votes to Block Private Equity from Buying Homes

• Judge blocks DOJ’s criminal probe of Federal Reserve, blasting it as political.

Trump

• White House posts Wii Sports video mixed with Iran War footage

Democrats

• Sen. John Fetterman says Israel should kill Iran’s new supreme leader.

Left Angst

• Palantir CEO Makes Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power

• Trump Administration Opens Door for ICE to Target Anyone Suspected Being Trans

  Yesterday, the Trump administration finalized a new rule titled “Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.” For those unfamiliar, the Diversity Visa Program, commonly known as the “green card lottery,” is a program set up by the Department of State that annually awards green cards to around 55,000 applicants—randomly selected from a pool of 20,000,000+—from all but a few countries with large immigrant populations already in the US. Under this rule, the State Department will now require applicants to the program to indicate their “biological sex at birth” during all stages of the process, “even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicant’s foreign passport or other identifying documentation.” As if that wasn’t enough, the rule concurrently mandates that all applicants submit their passport information and a scan of their passport’s biographic page with the aim of “combatting fraud.”

• The War Trump Doesn't Want to Talk About

• Election Data Handed over to the FBI in Maricopa County Could Be Fatally Flawed

• I Wrote a Movie Review. Cops Used It to Brand a Protester a Terrorist

• Bike and walking trails lose millions under Trump

• Dark money group pays influencers $1.5K for posts attacking Democratic candidate

• Statement on Public Availability of Scientific Information and Scientific Evidence on Climate Change - American Meteorological Society

  The American Meteorological Society and the scientific societies listed below are surprised and concerned with the decision by the Federal Judiciary Center (FJC) to remove the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition and the subsequent letter of February 19, 2026 from 21 attorneys general to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). We also have two concerns: 1) that removal of the chapter will mean that public officials will not have access to the best available scientific knowledge and understanding with respect to climate change, and 2) that the actions of people in positions of power will discourage scientists from providing public officials with the best available knowledge and understanding.

  • Science is, or should be, a moving target. Understanding advances. Federal manuals are not noted for those qualities, rather famously.

• ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in court testimony

• Anti-ICE protesters accused of being part of Antifa found guilty of terrorism

• Prairieland Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted of Terrorism for Wearing All Black

• The US slashed research for cancer, Alzheimer's, mental health – and more

• I Watched 6 Hours of DOGE Bro Testimony. Here's What They Had to Say

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Faulty urine tests may have inflated alcohol levels in California criminal cases

• What Cops Saw Chasing Down New Jersey Drones

  The documents show how police departments and government agencies were alarmed as reports of “rogue drones” started to pour in. They also offer first-hand accounts of sightings by law enforcement officers out in the field. These direct observations include reports of drones flying over military installations, swarms interfering with airport operations and helicopter rescue flights and a host of other issues. There are also claims of the drones disabling police communications and jamming air traffic control radars, although these have to be taken as highly speculative, as we don’t have any info on further investigations into potential electronic warfare effects from any unidentified craft. We have chosen some of the most interesting reports and documents to share, published here for the first time. While they do not represent a ‘smoking gun’ as to what occurred over the Northeastern United States during the winter of 2024, they do offer additional color as to what law enforcement at least thinks they saw and how local governments reacted to these sightings

• 1 victim dead, 2 injured in shooting at Virginia's Old Dominion University, campus police say

  A gunman and one victim are dead, and two other victims are hurt after a shooting at Old Dominion University on Thursday morning, the Virginia school's police said. After the university initially said there were two victims, Shelton said authorities learned that there was a third victim who brought themselves to a hospital. It wasn't immediately clear how the shooter died. He did not acknowledge whether any officers fired a weapon.

  • ROTC students subdued Old Dominion gunman, shooting probed as terrorism

  Authorities confirmed the gunman died during the confrontation. They said one student stabbed the attacker, but it's not yet clear if that was what killed him. Police identified the suspect as Mohamed Jalloh, a former Army National Guardsman convicted in 2016 of providing material support to ISIS after attempting to carry out a terrorist attack, according to the FBI Special Agent in Charge.

• Michigan Synagogue Attack Suspect Was Naturalized US Citizen From Lebanon

  An armed man who allegedly rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue on March 12 has been identified as a naturalized United States citizen born in Lebanon, according to federal officials. Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, was fatally shot by security officers after he drove through a hallway at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit in a vehicle that then caught fire, authorities said. None of the synagogue’s staff, teachers, or the 140 children at its daycare center were injured, according to Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard. He said the suspect was found dead inside his vehicle.

• After 152% spike, NYPD changes how it reports hate crimes.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon AI chief praises Palantir tech for speeding battlefield strikes

• Emergency sirens in SF won't sound alarm even during Iranian drone threat

• Loss of U.S. KC-135 Over Iraq

  The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely. This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.

  • Four crew members killed after US refuelling plane crashes in Iraq

  • Two KC-135s were involved in fatal crash over Iraq

• Iranian missile strike damaged 5 US refueling planes at Saudi airbase

• US issues 30-day sanctions waiver for purchase of Russian oil at sea

• The Chokepoint We Missed: Sulfur, Hormuz, and the Threats to Military Readiness

• Cuba confirms talks with Trump officials, raising hopes for US deal

• Wall Street Bankers Offered Lucrative Access to Join The Pentagon

World

• Carney announces billions for defense and infrastructure in Canada's North

• Construction pipe suddenly rises 13 meters above ground in Osaka

• Canadian ISP must hand over names associated with IPs in torrent copyright case

• High court claimant was fed answers through his smart glasses, judge finds

• Precious metals boom catches the attention of organized crime in Mexico

• Drone strikes in Haiti that killed 1250, 17 children, condemned by rights group

Iran / Houthi

• Could Iran be using China's highly accurate BeiDou navigation system?

• 'Comatose' Mojtaba Khamenei 'is unaware has no idea he is supreme leader'

  Iran's new Supreme Leader is unaware of the ongoing war in the Middle East and does not know he is the Islamic Republic's new leader, according to a new report. Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, succeeded his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following his assassination on February 28. He is reportedly in a coma at the Sina University Hospital in Tehran following an airstrike, according to a source in Tehran. Due to his condition, he does not know of the ongoing war, the death of his family members, including his wife and son and of his own election as Supreme leader, the source said. Mojtaba is also reportedly in intensive care and surrounded by security officials, while a large section of the hospital has been sealed off to guard Iran's Supreme Leader.

  A separate source told The Sun through secret messages sent to an exiled dissident based in London: 'One or two of his legs have been cut off. His liver or stomach has also ruptured. He is apparently in a coma as well.' The source, who does not want to be named out of fear for his life, said the new Supreme Leader is under the care of Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi, Iran's Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education and one of the country's top trauma surgeons.

• France and Italy open talks with Iran in hope of securing safe Hormuz passage

• 'Severe water stress': why desalination plants are the Gulf's greatest weakness

• Iran unleashes oil shock to blunt US firepower

• US Says (New) Ayatollah Wounded, Disfigured - While Other Iranian Leaders Defiantly March In Tehran As Bombs Fall | ZeroHedge

• Nitrogen, Ammonia, and the Strait of Hormuz

• 'Disaster waiting to happen' as 85 large oil tankers lie trapped in the Gulf

• U.S. Tech Giants Flocked to the Persian Gulf. Now They Are Targets

• How the Strait of Hormuz closure affects global oil supply

• Trump says U.S. “obliterated” every target on Kharg Island, as Iran war nears 2-week mark.

China

• Apple's App Store in China gets lower 25% commission to appease regulators

• Chinese boats mass at sea, raising questions

• China's New Law Signals Xi Won't Curb Environmental Ambitions

• China's ByteDance Gets Access to Top Nvidia AI Chips

• Xi's anti-corruption drive began 14 years ago. Why are the purges still going?

Health / Medicine

• A 5,500-Year-Old Skeleton Reveals the Deep Origins of Syphilis.

• A single dose of psilocybin is more effective than nicotine patches for quitting smoking, study suggests.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• First rubber road laid in New Zealand is made from recycled tyres

• Phoenix Arizona is likely to see its earliest 100f(38c) day on record, in March

• California Considers Grizzly Reintroduction Plan That Could Use Wyoming Bears

• When the environment recovers, no one talks about it

• Alpine glacier holds history dating back to the Romans. And it's melting–fast

• Magic mushrooms' closest wild relative discovered in Africa

• Enhanced rock weathering is not yet a reliable climate protection measure

• Dust Outbreak Reaches Europe

• Waitrose suspends sale of mackerel because of overfishing