2026-06-26

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• US Subways Build Too Many Cross Passages

Horseshit

• The World’s Biggest Population Fear Has Flipped – and It Could Change Everything.

• Human Brain Has Separate Circuits for Belly Laughs and Polite Chuckles

• The Harvard Data Nerd Defending America's Goal at the World Cup

• Electronics can now be printed onto living tissues

• Young Cornish people are turning to campervans to have a roof over their heads

• Silicon Valley has much to learn from the spreadsheet jockeys it despises

• No one is self-made

• Hair Braiding Can Take Hours. Alexis Ohanian Backing Halo to Cut It to Minutes

  Halo is an exception, raising a $7 million seed round led by Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm 776 as it aims to become the Dyson for textured hair.

• Tech billionaires hire Democratic dealmakers in push to build a Bay Area city

• Everyone's Been Drawing Pterosaur Wings Wrong

• What if some of history's earliest kings were queens?

• Potatoes Reshaped People's DNA

• Every Homo Naledi we know of is female, and the implications are fascinating

• The Dumb House: In Praise of an Analog Home

• Cracks Discovered on Wings of World’s Largest Passenger Planes Prompt Urgent Inspection of 16 Aircraft.

• Older tech workers are tapping out early

• Forget Work. Passive Income Is the New American Dream

• FM Radio Is Being Nixed from New Vehicles, Too

Epstein

• Bill Gates says Epstein sought to blackmail him over extramarital affairs

  • Bill Gates names women he had affairs with in Epstein testimony about blackmail

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Larry Sanger Said Wikipedia Punishes Dissent. Then It Banned Him

Musk

• Elon Musk loses trillionaire status as SpaceX and Tesla stock drops

• Masayoshi Son dismisses Musk's idea for orbital data centers

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Hands-on with the $24,950 Slate auto

• Polestar says Trump administration forcing it to end US sales

  • The U.S. Strongarms Polestar Out of the American EV Market

  • Feds deny Polestar authorization to sell cars in US from model year 2027

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• 'Digit' maker Agility Robotics to go public in $2.5B deal

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Medical students are using popular research tool to pump out misleading studies

• LAUSD bans screen time before second grade

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Hollywood and Big Tech Are Preparing for War

  That is the context for Fox‘s $22 billion deal for Roku: The streaming platform fundamentally changes the relationship Fox has with other players in the ecosystem. Despite intense competition from the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple, Roku has asserted itself as the dominant streaming platform, effectively the gateway to TV.

• Microsoft admits 8GB RAM is fine for Windows 11, after years of pushing 16GB

• Hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will cost more than other AAA games

  • Grand Theft Auto VI will come in an empty box and cost $80.

  • The GTA VI controversy isn't the price – it's what's missing from the box

• The database that refused to die: How Postgres survived its own creators

• The future of TV: lots of choice, lots of hassle

• Meta debuts AI-powered Meta Glasses, starting at $299

• Apple announces significant price increases for MacBooks, iPads, more

  • Apple Raises Prices on Macs, iPads by $200 or More on Some Models

  • Apple ratchets up prices, blames the cost of memory

  • Apple Raises Refurbished Mac and iPad Prices After New Product Hikes

• Windows 10 quietly gets one more year of support and updates

• The hits keep on coming for Cisco vulnerabilities

• Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

  Memory-maker Micron has found a way to keep prices for its products sky-high for another five years, by signing 16 “strategic customer agreements” (SCAs) that include a floor price the company says comes with “a very robust gross margin for Micron, well above our peak quarterly margins in any past cycle.”

• FCC plans ID mandate that could block anonymous use of prepaid burner phones

  • If the FCC Bans Burner Phones, It Could Be a Privacy Nightmare

• Whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams sues Meta over attempts to 'silence' her

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• 13 years and $500M for a stage adapter? Report justifies NASA cancellations

• NASA rover detects potential signatures of ancient microbial life on Mars

• Asteroid as large as 5 cruise ships will soar past Earth this weekend.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Anthropic says Alibaba illicitly extracted Claude AI model capabilities

  • Anthropic Claims Alibaba Ran 'Brazen' Campaign to Access Its Claude AI Model

  • Anthropic accuses Alibaba of largest distillation attack to date

• The A.I.-Design Aesthetic That's Taking over the Internet

• Florida sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, claiming company hid ChatGPT risks

• SoftBank's Son calls AI bubble talk an 'insult,' delays retiring

• The Era of Tokenmaxxing Is Over

• The Tokenpocalypse:Companies Are Scrambling to Stop Spending So Much on AI

• Wikipedia advocacy shapes LLM values

• Robert Schiller: This Doommaxxing Has Got to Stop

• Michael Caine's new AI audiobook is everything that's wrong with Hollywood

• Chinese models are sometimes better, even if they're distilled

• Loop engineering, latest AI buzzword, still needs humans in the loop

• Software engineers are facing an 'identity crisis bordering on depression'

• Ford rehires 350 engineers after AI fails to preserve expertise or train juniors

• Bodycam Shows Cops Arrest a Man for Speaking Too Long at Data Center Meeting

• A Solution to A.I.'S Growing Power Demand: Homes

• How We'll fight the platform war against Big AI

• Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

• There's One Clear Reason Americans Are Gloomy About A.I

• Meta forced engineers into AI training. Now it's giving some a way out

• AI shows promise in the fight against fake news

• The AI backlash is only getting started

• The AI-Tutor Revolution That Wasn't

• The AI Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation

• AI models' values are different from most people's

• Hasbro's TV Contracts Ask Child Voice Actors to Sign Rights Away for AI Use

• Trump administration asks OpenAI to stagger release of new model

  • OpenAI to Stagger Release of GPT 5.6 at Request of U.S. Government

  • Trump administration asks OpenAI to stagger release of GPT5.6

  • Trump administration asks to hold OpenAI's next model

  • Trump admin asks OpenAI to stagger the release of its new model

• OpenAI Leans Toward Waiting Until Next Year for IPO

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Bitcoin hits 20-month low as market sentiment sours

• Bitcoin falls back under $60k, hitting its lowest level since October 2024

Economicon / Business / Finance

• TVA pursues 6.2 GW of new generation, citing data centers, population growth | Utility Dive

• The Boeing 747 Begins Its Final Descent

• Micron overtakes Meta, Tesla in market value amid relentless AI infra demand

  • Investors bet on AI again after Micron reports 346% sales jump

• These are the real slides shown in a speech where Masayoshi Son said he wouldn’t retire for at least another decade.

  • Untethered Goose Game (SoftBank)

• Wall Street Embraces the Dollar as Warsh's Fed Activates Bulls

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Postmaster General says he will comply with Trump rule to hold back mail ballots.

  Postmaster General David Steiner told senators during a hearing Wednesday that he plans to abide by the Trump administration’s rule regarding not delivering mail-in ballots in states that decline to hand over sensitive data about voters to the federal government. The proposed rule faces court challenges and Steiner said he would follow any court ruling on the matter, but will follow the rule until an order blocks it. The proposed rule seeks to create lists of citizens in each state to help determine who is eligible to vote and calls on the Postal Service not to distribute mail ballots to those not on state lists.

• Rep. Keith Self proposes repealing 17th Amendment as House-Senate feud intensifies.

  Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) is proposing to repeal a constitutional amendment regarding who gets to choose members of the Senate. The 17th Amendment, as it stands, allows voters to pick their state’s senators directly, but before the amendment was added to the Constitution, state legislatures selected senators.

  • Restoration of secret ballots to Congress should come first. They should be allowed the same privacy of voting that citizens are.

Left Angst

• The weirdest things a leak revealed about Peter Thiel's club

• Charlie Kirk's legacy is a 30-year sentence for moving zines

  • "Austere religious scholar" levels of propaganda

• Throwing my Roku in the trash

  This was the lone Roku device on our home network, it was mostly idle and the top two domains blocked by NextDNS were a pair of Roku tracking subdomains. Roku is also being acquired by an odious media company. I'm invested to the tune of, maybe, $29.99. I bought a cheap device and got a progressively crappy experience. It's not a whole ecosystem, it's not inescapable, but it's all irritating.

  • The actual irritations weren't enough to make them switch, but the religious impurity of being bought by Fox make it necessary now.

• Hollywood celebrities at center of LA voter registration controversy

  Hollywood stars including Jennifer Aniston, Jenna Dewan and Nicollette Sheridan were allegedly registered to vote using the address of a WeHo financial management office, rather than their homes. According to the Daily Mail, 36 voters were linked to Suite 600 of a building on Sunset Boulevard that serves as the office of financial adviser Michael Ullman and his firm, Platinum Financial Management. “Under Los Angeles County guidance cited by the Daily Mail, voters are generally required to register at their place of residence, while business addresses and post office boxes may be used only for mailing purposes.”

  • "No one is above the law"...

• White House Helped Mark Zuckerberg and the Google CEO Dodge a Senate Grilling

• Federal agents track down woman, demand she remove Instagram post about ICE

• MAGA Congresswoman Denies Using AI to Write Bill

• The girly wellness aesthetic as a white supremacist dog whistle

• US Supreme Court scales back Roundup cancer lawsuits

  • Supreme Court Gives Pesticide Corporations Immunity from Cancer Lawsuits

  • Or was it about FIFRA’s preemption clause?

• As banks close accounts, experts point to immigration crackdown

• Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' immigration detention center has closed

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• One-two punch delivered in global operation disrupts cybercrime "assembly line"

• Americans are inundated with suspected scams

• New Mexico governor calls for criminal probe of DEA allowing fentanyl shipments

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US military says it killed senior ISIS leader in airstrike on Syria last week.

• US says PRC trying to discourage states, businesses from engaging with Taiwan

• Military branches restore flu shot requirement after virus swept through base

World

• Venezuela earthquake: powerful back-to-back quakes collapse buildings in Caracas

  • Venezuela hit by 7.5 magnitude earthquake

  • Powerful back-to-back earthquakes strike Venezuela, collapsing buildings

  • Venezuela rocked by strongest earthquakes in over a century, as USGS fears up to 100K deaths

• US fighter pilot avoids British trial after raping a woman in England

  • "furriners raping our women" was just Musk propaganda, 'til they couldn't sell that anymore.

• Japan defense forces used USB drives with China-linked virus

• Netherlands euthanizes child under 12 in first case since major law change.

• German swimming lake criticised for ban on non-German speakers

• Study: Australia's social media ban has made no 'meaningful difference' to teens

• EU targets Amazon, Microsoft cloud units for Big Tech "gatekeeper" rules

• British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine

• The BBC switches off its oldest service

• Why Jane Street, a US trading giant, is in trouble in India

Iran / Houthi

• Iran: Israel Killed "Handala" Head Hacker

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's plan to drill superdeep revives controversial theory of 'endless oil'

• Kremlin demands explanation from Apple after Russian apps removed from App Store

China

• The reason China is building most of the robots

• New EV-makers keep appearing in China

• What is China's SpaceSail, and could it rival Elon Musk's Starlink?

• China's Electric Vehicle Exports Reach Record High in May

• Chinese scientists unveil glowing Avatar-like plants that could light cities

• China claims to have developed AI 'cyber nuclear weapon', matching Mythos

  • China's 360 says it has developed tools to match Anthropic's Mythos

• China's coal power on the rise again in '26, reversing first-in-a-decade decline

Health / Medicine

• Man becomes first in Louisiana functionally cured of sickle cell disease

• $0 copays could save billions

• The negative impacts of fruit juices and other sugary treats for children

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• What Europe's heat wave means for the power grid

  • Global warming has made Europe's heatwave 2-4°C worse

  • The UK's summers are getting hotter – but how prepared are we?

  • Europe swelters under deadly 'Omega' heatwave, more records broken

  • France experiences its hottest day since measurements began in 1947

  • UK professor says smearing yogurt on your windows can cool your home

  • First-ever Code Red alert issued for heat in the Netherlands

  • Hospitals in UK Declare Critical Incidents as Machines, IT Systems Fail in Heat

  • Why Germans don't have air conditioning

• Pesticide exposure may relate to colorectal cancer in younger adults

• Droughts are transforming the Turkish landscape with sinkholes

• Beyond Denial: How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study

• Being a Therapist in a Time of Climate Breakdown

• Utah wildfires: Here's a breakdown of all 6 fires burning in the state

• Grotesque 'zombie squirrels' with oozing flesh pods spark alarm across the US

• Fruit Fly Sperm Are Giant. How Do They Stay Untangled? - The New York Times

• Mushroom Behind 'Tiny Human' Visions Lacks Genes for Known Psychedelics

• The race to understand how and when Thwaites glacier will collapse