2026-05-08

Horseshit

• Companies help parents try to pick their babies' traits. Experts are wary

• Taiwan cops say student's radio kit brought bullet trains to a standstill

  • Student stops fоur Taiwan high-speed trains with software defined radios

• DNA donors help identify Franklin expedition members

• It worked in "The Matrix": Muscles by Electricity: The Latest Fitness Craze?

• We had people come just to see it: Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by drone

• Woman covertly filmed for 'humiliating' social media content – then told to pay

• The Life and Times of an American Tween

• For a Certain Kind of Guy, Even a Diaper Bag Needs to Be 'Tactical'

• Why So Few Babies? We Might Have Overlooked the Biggest Reason of All

  What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.

• Farmers get short-changed in our current food system

• What's Next for IVF

• What Are 'Teen Takeovers,' and Why Are Police Struggling to Stop Them?

  n Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, the nation’s capital and elsewhere, large, quickly organized gatherings of youths have popped up in downtowns, parks and leafy neighborhoods. They can be noisy, boisterous and at times violent, their impact often amplified on television, especially in conservative media outfits like Fox News. And city leaders have begun to pay more attention.

• Scientist accidentally finds shortcut to Mars could slash travel time in half

• Slightly more plausible than "in orbit": Silicon Valley bets $200M on AI data centers floating in the ocean

• The Intolerable Hypocrisy of Cyberlibertarianism

  The cyberlibertarians wanted you to believe that radical individualism plus deregulated capitalism plus inevitable technology would produce communitarian utopia. This is, on its face, insane. It is the economic equivalent of claiming that if everyone punches each other really hard, eventually we'll all be hugging.

• The Rise and Fall of Snake Oil

  Today, most people know the term ‘snake oil’ as a figure of speech: an image to capture a fake medicine or quack nostrum. The character of the ‘snake oil salesman’ has likewise become synonymous with falsehood, sleaze, and slick (but ultimately empty) promises. But what actually was snake oil and how did it acquire this slithery reputation? Snake oil had traditionally been used in Britain and America for hundreds of years as a folk remedy for rheumatism, muscle strain, and various other bodily aches and pains. Snakes do not naturally secrete oily substances, but fat taken from butchered snakes could be rendered down into a liquid by slow heating and then filtering out any remaining pieces of meat or gristle.

• A lost ancient script reveals how writing as we know it began

• JPMorgan Offered $1M Settlement Before Sexual Assault Claims Went Viral

• The Perverse Tyranny of a Perfect Transcript

• Florida surgeon who removed wrong organ says hes forever traumatized by pt death

Epstein

• Jeffrey Epstein’s Purported Suicide Note Is Released by Federal Judge

  • Jeffrey Epstein 'Suicide Note' Emerges | ZeroHedge

  The undated, unsigned document - released as part of Tartaglione’s unrelated criminal case docket - contains lines such as "They investigated me for month - found NOTHING!!!" and references to saying goodbye. It has been kept under seal for nearly seven years.

celebrity gossip

• Actor alleges James Cameron used her teenage face to create 'Avatar' character

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Study: People are stressed out by most news that isn't local news

  • you can't do anything but worry about it

• How To Actually Change Political Beliefs: Brain Shocks And Friend Swaps

  Forget traditional political persuasion. True, lasting belief change is incredibly rare because our brains fiercely defend beliefs tied to our identity. The science reveals only two consistent paths to fundamentally alter political beliefs:

  • A “Shock to the System”: This can be a literal brain shock (like tRNS stimulation) or a profound, identity-shattering external event (like economic collapse) that makes an entire worldview incoherent.
  • Completely Changing Your Friend Groups: Your social circle fundamentally shapes and sustains your core beliefs; new, trusted reference groups can lead to new, lasting beliefs.

  Most political coperations cannot, and do not, achieve either of these, meaning genuine conversion is often beyond their control.

Musk

• Anthropic leases Colossus 1 datacentre from Space X

  • SpaceX to rent data centre capacity to Anthropic

  • Anthropic strikes SpaceX data center deal as it plows ahead on AI coding

  • Anthropic Gets in Bed with SpaceX

  • Anthropic, SpaceX announce compute deal that includes space development

  • Elon Grew to Love Anthropic

• SpaceX IPO gives Musk power and curbs shareholder rights

  • SpaceX IPO gives Musk unchecked power and forbids investor lawsuits

• xAI built an illegal power plant to power its data center

• SpaceX is starting to move on from the most successful rocket

• Elon Musk's Lawyers Ask OpenAI's President Why He Is Worth $30B

• How Elon Musk Left OpenAI, According to Greg Brockman

• Elon Musk's Last-Ditch Effort to Control OpenAI

• In OpenAI trial, former CTO: Altman sowed 'chaos,' distrust among top executives

• Elon Musk’s Terafab chip factory in Texas could cost up to $119 billion, filing shows.

• Only 173? Tesla Cybertruck RWD Recall Reveals Low Sales

• Tesla's 4680 battery cells are underperforming and frustrating buyers

• Elon Musk Summoned to France to Face Criminal Charges

  • French prosecutors seek charges against Musk/X over child sexual abuse images

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Chevrolet Performance eCrate package (400v/200hp)

  • Requires a 4spd slushbox. comment: "I was excited about this idea until I found out it's $27k"

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• French professor accused of 'gigantic hoax' after inventing Nobel-style prize

• School Cellphone Ban Study Finds Mixed Results

• School shootings are declining quite a bit

• Students' personal data stolen in major education breach

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Why Apple Is Delaying the iPhone 18

• Nothing says "indie" like selling out to Google: EVE Online studio CCP Games turns independent and rebrands as Fenris Creations

  Fenris Creations is now governed by its own Board of Directors, returning to a model similar to how the company operated before 2018, and one designed to support strategic decision-making for persistent live games and long-running virtual worlds," reads an announcement on the Fenris website. Fenris has also entered into a research partnership with Google DeepMind that will see Google acquire a minority stake in the company. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed, but Fenris said the duo will focus on "advancing understanding of intelligence in complex, dynamic systems."

• Apple discontinues 256GB Mac Studio option

• What's Gone Wrong at GitHub?

  The industry standard for a production service is 99.9%. GitHub’s official status page has an uptime of 99.79%, but an unofficial status tracker built byMarek Šuppa suggests that GitHub’s measured uptime over the last 90 days sits at just 84.88%.

  • Having crushed the competition, there's no longer any need to spend money delivering a service.

• Motherboard sales are now collapsing amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI

• Toronto demands meeting with Google over Maps navigation glitch

• Extortion Using Smart Glasses Is a Thing Now

• RIP social media. What comes next is messy

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Richard Dawkins 'convinced' AI is conscious

  • Dawkins claimed that AI is conscious after conversation with Anthropic's Claude

  • Does Claude Have Feelings?

• U.S. and China Pursue Guardrails to Stop AI Rivalry from Spiraling into Crisis

• The "AI Job Apocalypse" is a complete fantasy

• Anthropic will let its managed agents dream

• Mythos Shows AI Weapons Inspectors Need Sharp Teeth

• Publishers sue Meta, claiming it violated copyrights in training AI with books

• 'FOMO has proven a stronger incentive than poor stock performance' Goldman Sachs

• If AI cuts jobs, it would also threaten Social Security and Medicare

• Discord group guessed the URL to Anthropic's Mythos model before CISA used it

• 'No one has done this in the wild': study observes AI replicate itself

• Appearing productive in the workplace

  Misunderstanding and misuse of AI in the workplace is rampant. In many of the rooms I now find myself in, expertise has been asked to look the other way: to deliver faster, produce more, integrate the tools more deeply, get out of the way of the colleagues who are “getting things done”. The artifacts are accumulating; the work is not.

• The AI fitness instructors selling unreal gains

• Fooling large language models just keeps getting simpler

• Deepfakes Are Coming for Your Bank Account

• Apple to Pay $250M to Settle Claims It Overpromised on iPhone AI Features

• What an AI productivity surge would mean for the fiscal outlook

• Consuming too much AI can be bad. Data on 'tokenmaxxing' reveals a better way

• Google shuts down Project Mariner

• OpenAI violated Canadians' privacy, watchdogs say in call for legal reform

• Chrome removes claim of On-device Al not sending data to Google Servers

• Claude Code creator Boris Cherny is sick of the phrase 'vibe coding'

• Marc Lore says that AI will soon enable anyone to open a restaurant

• Five architects of the AI economy explain where the wheels are coming off

• Hyperscaler earnings are driven by ownership markups of private AI companies

• IMF warns new AI models risk 'systemic' shock to finance

• EU hits snooze on AI Act rules after industry backlash

• Two Home Affairs officials suspended after AI 'hallucinations' found

• Google's $9.99-per-month AI health coach launches May 19

• Mr. Wonderful's Utah Data Center Will Be More Than Twice as Big as Manhattan

• How a Congressional Primary Became a Proxy Battle over A.I.

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Are Prediction Markets Good for Anything?

• Kalshi, the Prediction Market, Is Now Valued at $22B

• Campaign staffers tell NPR they make 'thousands' betting on their own candidates

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Correction Has to Occur – NYU Finance Professor Warn

• Samsung Hits $1T Valuation Amid Apple Chip Diversification Talks

• Samsung workers reject $340K bonus, demanding annual $900K like SK hynix

• Jobs at mom-and-pop shops are disappearing

• GameStop CEO says eBay shut his account after buyout funding stunt

• CEOs want tariff refunds as earnings take a hit

• Cloudflare lays off 1,100 employees

  • Cloudflare to cut 20% jobs, quarterly revenue forecast falls short

  • Cloudflare is laying off 1,100 employees to prepare for 'the agentic AI era'

  • Cloudflare stock sinks after earnings; cuts 1,100 employees due to AI changes

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Debt Has Always Been the Ruin of Great Powers. Is the U.S. Next?

  • As U.S. Debt Hits a Worrying Milestone, Washington Barely Notices

  • Why doesn't debt matter when a Democrat is president?

• Uber's $77M plan to rewrite the California constitution

• Utah senator smacks ABC reporters phone out of hand amid Data Center controversy

• US trade court rules against Trump's 10% global tariffs

Democrats

• Democratic Sex Therapist Making Strong Run for Texas House Seat Slams ‘Jews Who Own Hollywood,’ the ‘Synagogue of Satan,’ and Israeli ‘Blood Money’ in Wild Social Media Rants.

• Obama selling ugly merch shaped liked his 'Death Star' presidential center

• California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

  • If only there was some oil in their own state they could use. Perhaps they could buy some from the USA? Would that be "trading with their enemy"?

Left Angst

• Kash Patel's Personalized Bourbon Stash

• Mass Deportation and American Jobs

• Francesca Albanese on the untapped power of international law

• The race to save US Government datasets before they're deleted

  • Deletion of government data is hurting Americans – from infant deaths to hunger

• Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

  At this point it’s almost routine: Almost every time Donald Trump makes a major announcement about the Iran War, that announcement is preceded — sometimes by only a few minutes — by huge and hugely profitable bets in the oil market.

  • (Apr 15) US probes suspicious oil trades made before Trump Iran pivots, source says

• How the oilman's president boosted a green transition

• Authorities say Flock cameras' data allegedly used for immigration enforcement

  • Dayton suspends Flock contract, says data used for immigration enforcement

• U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump's Hormuz blockade for months

• A Legendary Investor on How to Prevent America's Coming 'Heart Attack'

• ICE Plans to Develop Own Smart Glasses

• Trump administration cut funding to study hantavirus

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• F-14D Tomcat Might Return to the Skies Thanks to Congress' "Maverick Act"

• Why The Pentagon Is Quadrupling Missile Production, and Why It Won't Be Enough

World

• Hokusai's erotic art on display at a Kabukicho noh theater

• Damned sand gets in everything: French nudist resort being overrun by international swingers who are banging on the beach.

• Halt of Google fine? Serious accusations against von der Leyen

  Reports from Handelsblatt and Capital Forum are shaking the credibility of European digital policy. According to these reports, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is said to have intervened personally to stop a billion-euro fine against the US giant Google, which had already been planned, at the last minute.

• Dutch government extends DigiD contract with US takeover target

• German tourist wins payout after losing sun lounger race

• 3D-printed house could help solve Japan's construction crisis

• Boris Johnson sees a "blessing" in falling British births

  Boris Johnson opens his latest Daily Mail column with bells tolling in Tuscany for far more funerals than weddings, kindergarten playgrounds eerily deserted in Tokyo, and bus routes cancelled across Europe as elderly passengers take “their last subsidised freedom pass to the sky.” He’s clearly proud of the fact that his party, post the Great Recession, had smothered UK’s nascent baby boom in the crib. Can’t have those pesky brats having their own brats after all. His argument is that the falling birth rate isn’t a crisis but a blessing. The planet will thank us. The doom-mongers should butt out. The state should let people decide.

• I took a 250k-mile minivan through Germany's rigorous car inspection

• Tests confirm tilapia in mackerel cans

• The dark fascist secret hidden beneath one of Europe's largest railway stations

• Welsh Labour faces 'existential' change as party braces for May election defeat

• Labor extends EV tax break to encourage cheaper vehicles amid soaring gas prices

• UK has wealthy Europe's '3rd-highest' rate of young adults not in work or study

Iran / Houthi

• Iran cybersnoops still LARPing as ransomware crooks in espionage ops

  Researchers at Rapid7 say that they have spotted what they believe was an Iranian intelligence cyber unit masquerading as the Chaos ransomware gang to hide a state-sponsored espionage operation. The intrusion was spotted earlier this year, and investigators say breadcrumbs left behind give them "medium confidence" in saying it was the work of MuddyWater, which has been linked to intrusions affecting Western government and banking networks in recent months.

• Iran hit more U.S. military targets than has been reported

• US launches new strikes on Iran

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's top secret spy school teaching hacking and election meddling

• As Russia Expands Internet Blackouts, Kremlin Tells Citizens to Use the Radio

China

• Samsung to exit China home appliance sales amid shrinking market share

• The Chinese Realtime Deepfake Software Powering Scams Around the World

• China's Unwinding of the Manus Deal Highlights a Key US Advantage

• China's youth are ditching the rat race

Health / Medicine

• Single dose of magic mushroom psychedelic can cause anatomical brain changes

• Ozempic Is Killing Off Weight Loss Surgeries. That's a Problem

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• The Global Effort to Figure Out Where Hantavirus Will Strike Next

• Hantavirus explained: Symptoms, transmission and treatment

• KLM flight attendant hospitalized after contact with hantavirus

  • Flight Attendant Hospitalized as Hantavirus Testing Starts in Singapore

• "Super-Spreaders" and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Microsoft in Talks to Ax Energy Pledge Amid Data Center Boom

• The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps

• Rivercane: Our Native Bamboo

  Rivercane (genus Arundinaria) is a woody grass native to floodplains of the southeastern US, extending up into the National Capital Region (NCR). Once a wide-ranging species, rivercane provides important wildlife habitat and holds cultural significance to many Indigenous peoples.

• The New El Niño Might Make 2027 the Hottest Year on Record

• Scientists Gave 'Aggressive' Fish Psychedelic Drugs. A Breakthrough Came Next

• Preserving pollinators is good for health and income

• Why Fears Are Growing over the Fate of a Key Atlantic Current

• Cancer Rates Are Higher Near Large Livestock Feeding Operations in 3 States

• The balcony solar boom is coming to the US

• New wasp named after Sir David Attenborough for his 100th birthday