2026-06-20

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• Converting Coal Plants to Natural Gas

Horseshit

• Did Massachusetts Legalize Haggis?

• Office workers of the world unite: it's time to revive the three-martini lunch

• 2k retired Google Pixel phones get a second life as a private cloud

• Phone Batteries Keep Getting Better. So Why Are We Always Charging?

• Is the world becoming more predictable?

• The profound meaning and mystery of deathbed visions

• New York passes a bill aimed at halting 'ghost jobs'

• Toy Story 5 Is a Surprisingly Thoughtful Critique of Technology

• NY mayor, other leaders push to ban horse-drawn carriage rides after teen death

  The death of a young tourist who jumped from a runaway horse carriage in Central Park has intensified calls to ban the old-time attraction from one of New York City’s most recognizable destinations. Romanch Mahajan, 18, died after he got off of the four-wheeled carriage as its horse sprinted through the park without the driver. He is believed to be the first person to die in a horse carriage accident since they were introduced in Central Park more than 150 years ago,

• Hunter-gatherers in Siberia died of a plague outbreak 5,500 years ago: We can’t blame the Neolithic Transition for the plague anymore.

• Illegal excavation reveals grand Roman villa with elaborate mosaics

• On the trail of the dotcom queen

• Toy Story 5 Review: Pixar's Unnecessary and Frustrating Movie Sequel

  What’s the best way to get kids to play with toys? Selling new ones, of course! That’s why we have Woody wearing a red bandana in this movie for no reason whatsoever other than to sell you the new version of this toy. Why do we have a storyline in this movie surrounding 50 shipwrecked Buzz Lightyears, complete with a new design? To sell you the new design, of course!

• Binface, foxes and raving loonies: the UK's proud history of costumed candidates

• The Secret Revolution in Battery Technology: 3-D Printing

Obit

• Daveigh Chase, star of Lilo and Stitch and The Ring, dies aged 35

  Daveigh Chase, the voice of Lilo in Disney's animated film Lilo & Stitch, has died aged 35. Chase, a former child star also known for her role as the villain in the 2002 US remake of the Japanese horror film The Ring, reportedly died on Tuesday from complications of bacterial meningitis and a blood infection.

• Bobby Prince, composer of classic id Software and 3DRealms game music, has died

• Special Effects Pioneer Brian Johnson Dead at 86

• James Burrows , Will and Grace director and Cheers co-creator, dead at 85

Musk

• SpaceX shares fall as post-IPO frenzy loses steam

  • SpaceX posts first losing day as stock sinks 5%, losing momentum

  • The average SpaceX buyer post-IPO is almost under water after two-day slide

• Elon Musk's SpaceX plots $20B bond deal after record IPO

  • SpaceX Bankers Prepare for Bond Sale of at Least $20B

• Pentagon used Elon Musk's Grok AI to fire 2k missiles at Iran, official says

• Sweden may oppose Tesla's supervised self-driving tech in Europe over speeding

• Grok Is More Important Than Clean Air, DOJ Says

• LeCun blasts Musk's xAI as 'failure,' labs are risking a 'big bubble explosion'

• Americans express unease over SpaceX's influence on retirement savings

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Waymo Recalling 3,800+ Robotaxis over Risk of Entering Construction Zones

  • Waymo recalls \~3,900 robotaxis, some drove into 'freeway construction zones'

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics, Atlas humanoid to be used at vehicle plant by 2028

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• College students are swapping coding for healthcare: Goldman Sachs

• “Lending is Meritorious and Should be Praised”: How The Fifth Lateran Council Unlocked Financial Theory

  Joel Kaye has shown that the thirteenth-century expansion of trade helped spur refinement of scholastic economic theory, especially for Franciscans, whose views and practices of poverty were contentious. Two very important theories of finance had been developed by the great Franciscan Peter John Olivi in the late thirteenth century: opportunity cost and risk. According to Olivi, it was because of opportunity cost and risk that merchants justly can make profits on arbitrage, seek modest returns on a loan, and charge a range of prices based on market conditions. It took the radical poverty of the Franciscans to see with fresh eyes the value to society provided by merchants and trade! These theories provided groundwork for the idea that interest-bearing loans could be socially valuable rather than merely extractive. Another Franciscan, Bernardino da Feltre, took up the argument, extended it, and openly supported low-interest lending to the poor. He helped Pavia set up a Monte in the fifteenth century. The Monte was a collateralized loan service initially funded by donations. Poor and middle-class people could pawn an item in exchange for a loan. What made this controversial was that the one-year loan would bear interest between 2 and 15% per year to pay for the stewards of the fund.

• Cigars, a canceled lacrosse season and the scandal rocking a Massachusetts town

  Six of the grads were on Ipswich High School’s lacrosse team, and administrators suspended all six from a playoff game two days later for violating state athletic association rules against tobacco use. The team ultimately voted to forfeit the contest—and just like that, their championship run went up in smoke.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Meta lobbies Congress for protection from child-harm lawsuits

• Linux 7.2 Gets Rid of the Last Optimized MD5 Implementation

  the PowerPC MD5 code is removed as "the last architecture-specific implementation of MD5." MD5 support is still around in the kernel, just as the generic implementation that is "good enough" for modern hardware and legacy uses across all CPU architectures.

• Rockstar Games faces full hearing over alleged union busting

• Pull request limits are cutting down the noise

• Why Social Media Bans Alone Can't Solve the Age Verification Dilemma

• From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

• US court rules Ohio can restrict children's use of social media

• Valve is so behind on Steam Controller orders that some won’t ship until 2027

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA picks Eric Schmidt's rocket company for Mars mission, sets up race w SpaceX

• A bold satellite rescue mission came together in record time, but will it work?

  • A space telescope is falling out of space. NASA has a plan to save it

• Rebuild begins at Blue Origin launch pad; Relativity targets Mars

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Sam Altman Movie ‘Artificial’ Dropped by Amazon After OpenAI Partnership

  • Amazon Studios Won't Release Movie It Made That Makes Tech Billionaires Look Bad

  • Amazon drops Sam Altman movie after announcing OpenAI partnership

• White House talks with Anthropic shift to setting AI security rules

  • Early Users of Anthropic Mythos Still Have Access After US Order

• Amazon Workers Say They're Under Investigation for Speaking About Data Centers

  • Amazon employees say they're facing termination for backing data center limits

• A Federal Regulator Wants to Fast-Track AI Data Centers onto the Power Grid

• AI has granted America new power

• A startup claims it broke through a bottleneck that's holding back LLMs

• Barret Zoph is out at OpenAI again after just five months

• Conservatives plan nationwide protest against AI data centers

• 'We created a monster': companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

• Google Is Using Nvidia's Playbook to Build a Rival AI Chip Business

• Bernie Sanders unveils $7T plan to give Americans control of AI industry

• AI helped diagnose 18 children whose rare diseases had stumped doctors

• Why do politicians want AI to go faster?

• AI-generated ads should be exempt from EU transparency rules, retail assoc. says

• UK's top data and AI regulator quits after 'inappropriate' humour

• Home Office's AI age guesser for asylum-seekers branded biased and inaccurate

• The CEO of Allbirds' new AI biz has a plan, but no employees

• How the FAA is using AI to prevent close calls on runways

• Anthropic "pauses" token-based billing for its Claude Agent SDK

• AI credit markets at risk of 'violent' correction investors must stay clear-eyed

• 'We created a monster': companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets

• Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good

• How the Nashville Zoo Became the Latest Face of Data Center Opposition

• AI will create more jobs for humans, not replace them, Amazon founder Bezos says

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Microsoft discovers new lightweight backdoor that steals cryptocurrency

• Bitcoin Has Lost Nearly Half Its Value in 11 Months

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Teen summer employment is headed for its worst year since 1948

• The Job Market Is Thawing

• Indian IT stocks slump up to 7% as Accenture cuts revenue outlook

• Microsoft shareholders sue over $357B stock wipeout

• McDonald's is serving Fried Apple pie again for America's 250th birthday

• We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data.

• Top Bank Regulator Spoke at an Invite-Only Client Dinner After Fed Meeting

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID

  Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic. Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.

  • Anthony Fauci: Not only a liar from day one, evidence now proves he financed the creation of Covid

  evidence in black and white has been released that shows without doubt that he lied about funding the Wuhan research that actually led to the epidemic. He used American funds to finance research at a Chinese laboratory — controlled by a hostile power — that ended up sloppily (or maybe on purpose) leaking the pathogen and causing the epidemic, and then lied about it for years, taking actions against whistle-blowers or anyone in the medical community that dared to raise question about his actions.

  • Gabbard Drops Fauci COVID-19 Receipts On Last Day: He Funded The Research, Cooked The Cover Story, Then Lied To Congress

  Newly declassified documents released Thursday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that a U.S. national laboratory assessed the COVID-19 lab-origin hypothesis as a serious possibility as early as May 2020, as well as evidence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research that included planning for spike-protein modifications, receptor-adaptation experiments, and testing in humanized mice in collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The documents also prove that Anthony Fauci lied under oath. The release, issued on Gabbard’s last day on the job, includes an eight-page May 27, 2020, assessment from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Z Program. That assessment concluded that “all of the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus - specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors - were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid-to-late 2019.” It assigned equal weight to a laboratory-modification hypothesis and a natural-origin scenario.

• California 'billionaire tax' makes ballot despite opposition from tech moguls

• Google's Secret Warrant Fight over DOJ Pipe Bomb Probe Revealed

• A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

• The Stock Market Should Never Determine Foreign Policy

Trump

• New Air Force One

  • New Air Force One is unveiled, a $400M plane gifted by Qatar

Democrats

• Dems raked in millions from employees at firms newly identified as ‘Chinese military companies’. Senior employees at Alibaba, Baidu and BYD donated roughly $2.6M to Democratic committees since 2020.

• Hillary Accidentally Revealed the Dems' Big Secret About Joe Biden

  "I think there were a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes," Hillary said. "I certainly am aware of that, and participated in a number of them, but there was no way to convince him by going public." Read that again. Private conversations. Plural. Before the debate. She was a part of some of them. The official Democrat Party story has been that Biden's meltdown on that debate stage was a shocking, one-off event that nobody saw coming, and that the party only began discussing his viability afterward. Hillary just torched that narrative herself. She admitted that efforts to push Biden out were already underway behind closed doors well before he ever stumbled through a sentence on stage.

  Remnick continued to ask whether anyone of Hillary's stature went directly to Biden and told him it was over. "I know of a few people who tried that," she said, "and they were met with total denial. And not just from him but from the people around him." That detail matters more than the headline quote about Biden's "terrible mistake." It confirms that the pre-debate concern wasn't some abstract worry shared by anonymous staffers or concerned donors. It was serious enough that people close to Biden made a direct appeal to step aside, and serious enough that he and his inner circle, Jill Biden very much included, shut it down completely.

Left Angst

• How the Peter Thiel-Linked Dialog Club Ranks Its Members

• Jeff Bezos Calls Washington Post His Worst Investment, Lays Off 300 Employees

• Trump administration to Pay $765M to Cancel 4 More Wind Projects

• T1 Phone PR firm is 'not assisting Trump Mobile any further'

• Donald Trump, Champion of Renewable Energy

• Algae clouded Trump's vision for the Reflecting Pool. scientists not surprised

World

• CBC to stop airing NHL games after 74 years, end of free hockey on Canadian TV

• Norway greenlights first full-scale ship tunnel

• EU to soon classify AWS and Azure as gatekeepers under DSA

• Rolls-Royce secures deal to build small nuclear reactors for Sweden

• Brexit cost 6% of UK economy, Bank of England company data suggests

• Amazon points to water conservation steps in India amid data centre scrutiny

• UK considers putting age limits on VPNs to help enforce social media ban

• Almost the whole of Japan moved eastward after 2011 earthquake

• Apple allows alternative app stores, payments in Brazil after deal w/regulator

• Manna announces 'strategic pause' that grounds drone deliveries in Ireland

• Boy, 3, thrown to crocodiles at Cambridgeshire zoo

  The suspect and the boy, who was taken by air ambulance to Addenbrooke's hospital with serious injuries, were not believed to have known each other, officers added. It is believed that the zoo owner's wife, Tracey Johnson, jumped into the enclosure to rescue the child.

  • Boy, 3 was 'thrown' into crocodile pit 'by man with learning difficulties who broke away from carers' as suspect who is 'not fit for interview' is released on bail

  A 30-year-old man from Norfolk, believed to be a stranger to the victim, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. But he has already been released on bail until September 18 having been assessed as 'not being fit for interview,' police said today. The attacker was a 'mentally disabled' man who was at the zoo on an organised day out from his home with a carer, according to some reports.

• Cuba approves unprecedented free-market reforms to stave off economic collapse

• Pavel Durov accuses Meta of sabotaging access in India with BGP hijacks

• Keir Starmer 'considering resigning' after Andy Burnham by-election victory

Iran / Houthi

• Iran Delays U.S. Peace Talks over Israeli Attacks in Lebanon

• President Trump claims preliminary Iran deal 'probably is unconditional surrender'

  “Well, but really it probably is unconditional surrender,” Trump told Axios reporter Mark Caputo, per a preview clip of their interview. Typically, unconditional surrender has meant that the losing side agrees to all demands.

• Kurdish dissident group reports Iranian attack despite war-end deal with US.

• Hormuz relief may not ease the economic toll that’s already ‘baked in,’ analysts warn.

• Iran to seek 'insurance fees' for passage through Strait of Hormuz

  • Iran requires insurance on ships using Strait of Hormuz, fees likely to follow

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The Secret Drone Operation That's Changing the Ukraine War

• How Russia's nuclear-powered 'Skyfall' missile works

• Ukrainian drone makers target Asia as Taiwan tensions spur demand

• Ukrainian troops earn points for filmed kills in military tech 'Amazon'

China

• US Tells ASML It's Concerned China May Have Top Chip Tool

  • US says ASML's top chip tool may be in China. ASML says it isn't

  • ASML denies US Government report that EUV chipmaking tool was shipped to China

• Too much Chinese science is ignored by the West

• China says ‘spy turtles’ are snooping in its waters.

• Chinese DRAM/SSDs makers have an advantage over American and Taiwanese suppliers

• Chinese AI models have overtaken US rivals in token consumption

Health / Medicine

• FDA committee recommends a new mRNA flu vaccine

• Infant Mortality Drops to All-Time Low in United States

• US getting modern sunscreen formulations

• Hospitals serving Medicaid patients prepare to take payment caps on the chin

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• The Most Promising Ebola Vaccine Has Been Sitting on the Shelf for 15 Years

  • There's no money or leverage in cures for scary diseases...

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• in 2024: ‘Bad Omen’: An Ancient Pyramid in Mexico Collapsed Into A Heap of Rubble.

• Russian Dandelion plant offers solution to global rubber shortage

• The Major Oak, Ancient Tree of Robin Hood Legend, Has Died

• Nearly 80% of data center capacity at elevated risk to climate hazards, study

• Steel industry sounds alarm over slow progress on green steel

• Florida Scientists Broke Their Own Record Removing 4 Tons of Pythons.

• Bison herd defend a newborn calf from wolf attack in a primeval Polish forest

• The artificial ice pyramids saving India's mountain villages