2026-05-20

Horseshit

• The million-dollar math problem hardly anyone is trying to solve

• Badger Badger Badger Video Officially Preserved by British Film Institute

• Governments are ruining the internet to protect kids

• Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars

• Baseball is learning to live with shorter attention spans

• Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity

• Caltrans explores 140mph 'bullet buses' between L.A. and San Francisco

• The Billionaire Who Wired San Francisco

• 'Capitalism has to become more humane': a Stanford economist on big tech

Obit

• Edmund Phelps, Who Upended the Way We View Inflation, Dies at 92

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn's "thought leadership" content mill

• Who's behind Facebook's hateful AI slop about the UK? They may be in South Asia

Musk

• Jury Hands Victory to Sam Altman and OpenAI in Battle with Elon Musk

  • Elon Musk Loses OpenAI Lawsuit After Jury Finds It Was Filed Too Late

  • Why Elon Musk lost his suit against OpenAI

  • He's king of the AI boom. Why do former colleagues say he can't be trusted?

• The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship–will it deliver?

• SpaceX IPO set to ensure Elon Musk cannot be fired

• Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

Electric / Self Driving cars

• A Rant on Owning a Modern EV

  Ultimately, my frustrations with EV ownership has little to do with the vehicle itself and entirely to do with the software ecosystem wrapped around it. Of course, most of these issues can be found in all modern cars. Auto companies are forcing consumers to use invasive and overall obnoxious software, locked down devices, subscriptions fees, and shoving advertisements down their throats.

• Stellantis plans $17,500 small EV to revive European market

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Parents Are Fuming About Other Peoples' Kids Getting Extra Time on the SAT

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Users turn to jailbreaking their older Kindles as Amazon ends support

  • Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

• Sony Pulls Back from PlayStation Games on PC

• Publishers Tell Common Crawl to Stop Unauthorized Scraping

• Comprehensive Response to Bambu's AGPLv3 Violations

• GitHub will start paying some bug bounty hunters in swag instead of cash

• Researchers attack AMD's Infinity Fabric to bypass hardware security protections

• Plex's 200% Lifetime Pass price hike tries forcing users to another subscription

• Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

  All of the former FiveThirtyEight site from my nearly decade-long tenure at ESPN/Disney/ABC is gone.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• SIMD-accelerated integer-to-string conversion

  • back in the day, using such optimizations was "not portable" and unprofessional and all of that. That was when next years computer could be assumed to be twice as fast as this year's.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• All arguments are more convincing in comic book form: The Palomar Lights

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta Reassigns 7k Employees to Focus on A.I

• Anthropic co-founder to present AI encyclical alongside Pope Leo XIV

• Google, Blackstone plan AI cloud venture with $5B backing, WSJ reports

  • Google and Blackstone to Create New AI Cloud Company

• The big AI companies are going to see their margins disappear

• AI is likely to widen the gap between corporate giants and everyone else

• Legal fail: Don't use AI to sue Facebook users for calling you a bad date

• Pizza Hut's AI system caused 'cascading' problems and $100M in damages

• Korean bill seeks strict watermark mandate on AI-generated content

• Meta lays out details of May 20 restructuring in internal document

  • Layoffs and Harsh AI Reality Inside Meta

• Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis emerges as early Anthropic investor

• No, I don't want my kids using your stupid AI

• Data centers raise nearby temperatures by up to 4 degrees in Phoenix

• The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

• Public have more fear than hope on AI and future of work, UK study finds

• Pope Leo to issue text on human dignity and AI with Anthropic co-founder

• Standard Chartered to cut more than 7k jobs as it steps up AI use

• Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I

• Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic

  • Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, former Tesla AI leader

• AI system fails during Glendale Community College graduation ceremony

  • An AI announcer mispronounced and skipped names during a graduation

• 1 in 5 Brits think AI layoffs could trigger civil unrest

• AI helps topple decades-old geometry problem

• 'You can hear me now or pay me later' Music exec tells graduates booing AI

• Demis Hassabis Thinks AI Job Cuts Are Dumb

• The AI economy is rewriting the American Dream; and blue-collar is poised to win

• Paul Schrader Had an 'AI Girlfriend' Who 'Terminated Our Conversation'

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• SEC to Ready Plan for Trading Crypto Versions of Stocks

  • SEC to propose tokenized stock framework as Wall Street efforts deepen

• Polymarket debuts prediction markets tied to private companies

• Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets

  • CFTC sues to block Minnesota's first-in-nation ban on prediction markets

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon Cuts Affiliate Commissions Up to 50% for Publishers

• Walmart, Target and Dollar General Spend Billions to Make Stores Look Nicer

• Bond Yields Near Two-Decade High Open Rift Among Investors

• Meta Employees Are Scrambling to Use Up Benefits Ahead of Layoffs

Trump

• Trump admin creates $1.7B fund for allies of the president

  • Trump admin creates $1.776 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund. How it might work and who could get a payout.

  • Heads, Trump Wins ( Tails, he still wins)

• IRS Must Drop Audits of Trump and Family

  • Donald Trump and sons to be 'forever' exempt from tax audits

  • (PDF) Trump's deal with government ends his tax audits

Democrats

• Nancy Pelosi endorses Connie Chan to succeed her after 40 years in Congress.

Left Angst

• Is this him putting God above the Declaration of Independence?

  What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government; they come from our creator...

• Landmark regulations against 'forever' toxins removed by Trump administration

• Trump started to decouple America from China

• How Corrupt Is Trump? Here Are the Numbers

• Trump official helped secure US visa for fugitive Polish minister

• Trump Mobile Phone Is Finally Released–With a Major Blunder

  • Trump Mobile has a real phone, but it may also have a real data leak

• US transportation bill would add a $130 annual fee for EV drivers

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• A Fearful Phone Call and a Frantic Search Preceded Mosque Shooting

  The teens’ target was a mosque, the police said. They shot and killed three people there, including a security guard who worked for the mosque and whose actions, police said, likely saved lives. And then the teens killed themselves, the police said. The shooting came amid increased threats and acts of violence against religious institutions in America, fueled by the wars in the Middle East. In March, a man attacked a synagogue outside Detroit with a truck before he died in a confrontation with security guards. The growing threats have prompted increased security at mosques, synagogues and churches across America.

  • 3 killed at Islamic Center of San Diego, suspects dead, police say

  • Teenage Gunmen Open Fire On San Diego Mosque, Killing 3 Men And Then Themselves | HuffPost Latest News

  • Shooting at San Diego mosque kills 3 and both shooters are dead | AP News

  • Five dead including mosque security guard after two teenage gunmen open fire at San Diego Islamic Center… before shooting themselves as police closed in

• Cybersecurity Agency Leaves Its Digital Keys Out in Public on GitHub

  The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been leaving the digital keys to its own cloud storage accounts sitting out in the open, in plain text form, for some unknown amount of time, according to a report from Krebs on Security. The problem finally got fixed over the weekend, the report says.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• All Non-drone Militaries are Obsolete

• NATO Has Seen the Future and Is Unprepared

World

• Finnish spy chief warns Europe may never break free from foreign tech

• The Coming Food Crisis in South Asia

• Thousands hit London streets for "Unite the Kingdom" march organized by far-right activist Tommy Robinson

  Christian imagery was highly visible throughout the demonstration. Protesters carried large wooden crosses, waved crucifixes and some dressed as Knights Templar. Chris Wickland, who described himself as a priest from the Confessing Anglican Church, told CBS News he was there "to represent Christianity," adding that "something is disappearing from our culture and from our nation … and that was Christianity." Another man, draped in an Israeli flag, said he wanted to "bring back Judeo-Christian values to this nation."

• The EU's plan to tackle 'cookie fatigue'

• Ontario police using spyware that lets them remotely take over your smartphone

Iran / Houthi

• Iran invites CNN to show "a call to arms", arming and training 7-8 year olds

• Iran demands Big Tech pay fees for undersea Internet cables in Strait of Hormuz

Israel

• Growing bread queues in Gaza as Israel restricts fuel, flour imports

• IDF struggles to curb endless feed of soldiers posting misdeeds on social media

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia and Ukraine Trade Blows in Huge Night of Drone Strikes.

• How Ukraine is driving doctrinal change in modern warfare

• Russia's War Is Going Badly–On the Ground and in the Air

• Xi told Trump that Putin might 'regret' Ukraine invasion

China

• China deploys first wind-powered and ocean-cooled underwater data center

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Ebola outbreak: WHO declares emergency, US restricts travel, American infected

• Aid cuts and war complicate Ebola response in Congo

• WHO declares global health emergency over Congo Ebola outbreak

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Please, Not Again: Large, Fast-Moving Wildfire Breaks Out in SoCal, Evacuations Ordered

• Declare climate crisis a global public health emergency, experts tell WHO

• Al Gore predicted FL would lose 60% of its population due to climate change

• 'De-Extinction' Startup Just Hatched Baby Chicks from 3D-Printed Artificial Egg

  • Biosciences is growing chickens in a 3D-printed container

• Climate report says world won't get as hot as feared but will pass warming limit