2026-07-18

Horseshit

• Scientists Created a Wearable You Can Paint Directly onto Your Skin

• Barefoot shoes are trendy after years of mockery. Do they work?

• Humans evolved to be twice as big as our ancestors

• We cannot wait for better post-quantum signature algorithms

• 'I felt Holden was talking to me alone': The Catcher in the Rye at 75

• The Attention-Span Class Divide

• A Mathematical Tribute to the Soccer Ball

• Smartphones Erode the Public World

• 'Adversarial clothing': Garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems

• The death of the stick shift is almost here

• America had a love affair with 'fixer-upper' homes. That may be over

• There's no evidence that mobile phones will give you brain cancer

  • Best to wear the foil helmet anyway, just to be certain.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Against "Stochastic Terrorism"

  The “stochastic terrorism” concept is near-unique in how effectively it can be discredited merely by listing many examples of its use together in the same place. Almost no one supports a blanket prohibition on criticizing of all of these different groups of people. “Stochastic terrorism” mostly gets deployed opportunistically, by people who either are too blinkered to realize that the same argument could be leveraged against their own speech, or who hope you’re too blinkered to realize that.

Musk

• SpaceX scrubs Starship launch after some of its engines didn't start

  • SpaceX Starship launch aborted on the pad at the last moment

• xAI can't deny Grok makes CSAM anymore. So it's suing users

• SpaceX Post-Listing Collapse Threatens IPO Market's AI Euphoria

  • Short sellers notch $8.7B profit as SpaceX shares dip to IPO price

  • SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1T in value in a month

  • SpaceX and the myth of independent Wall St research

• SpaceX declared a military target by Iran

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Honda is officially pulling the plug on its only EV in the US.

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Fear of humanoid robots spurs human workers to strike at Hyundai auto factory

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Peter Thiel: The Pope and the Antichrist

  One priest who had not attended the talk wondered publicly whether I should be burned at the stake for heresy (albeit a political “heresy against the liberal consensus”). I say this not as an exercise in self-aggrand­izement or self-pity, but because it made me feel greater sympathy for Pope Benedict XVI. Allow me to explain. I did not come to Rome to try to be more Catholic than the pope, but I did hope, even as a Protestant, to be more Catholic than the average Catholic. To clear this bar, as I explained in my lectures, one need simply listen to Pope Benedict not only when he spoke ex cathedra­, but when he spoke sotto voce. One will hear him whisper, and then shout: The world is ending. Benedict believed he was living in the end times. This claim shocks us, because Benedict chose not to speak openly on this topic until the final years of his life, at which point he had resigned the papacy, his allies had been purged from Vatican leadership, and almost nobody was listening. We will never know why he waited.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Brown Professor Suspects Majority of His Class Used AI to Cheat

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker

• AWS Investigating Inaccurate Billing Data

  • AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

  • Amazon fixing bug that billed some AWS customers billions of dollars

• Meta axes feature allowing tagging Instagram users to generate AI images of them

• Coca-Cola suspended production at its Fairlife dairy after a ransomware attack

• FBI arrests man accused of using Steam games to drain victims' crypto wallets

• Apple raises prices for Apple Music and Apple One subscriptions

• Flock Safety had a car journalist stalked, wrongly accused, and detained

• Meta trying to destroy whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, US senator says

• LG monitors installing adware on Windows PCs

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Orion: More Bounce to the Ounce!

  The nuclear pulse rocket is what you’d get if you hired a 12 year old to get you to Jupiter. It works by farting a continuous string of nuclear bombs (at the rate of about one per second) out its back end and riding the ensuing blast waves on a giant shock absorber, like a pogo stick.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Nadella criticizes Anthropic's Fable for being 'editorially controlled'

• OpenAI faces sanctions bid as newspapers say ChatGPT was trained on stolen news

• AI's real bottleneck is data delivery

• OpenAI Staffers Are Funding a Rival Super Pac to Take on Their Boss

• Why is OpenAI selling a ChatGPT basketball?

• Anthropic Thinks Its Own Success Is Key to Making AI Safe

• Body Bags Found Outside OpenAI HQ as Execs Increasingly Fear for Their Lives

• Apple targets dozens of OpenAI employees with legal letters

• A.I. Is Running on Borrowed Money

• AI's Wider Availability Is Good for China, Not Great for OpenAI and Anthropic

• Amsterdam activists throw acid at Microsoft datacenter project

• I Gave an AI Agent Access to My Passwords. Here's What Happened.

• China just erased America's AI lead

• How to Maintain Our Privacy in the AI Age

• Meta in Talks to Lease Computing Power to Anthropic in Potential $10B Deal

• CIA director gives chilling account of AI's battlefield lethality

• The Truth About AI's Water Use

• Patreon stops asking AI bots not to scrape and starts blocking them

• Meta accused of using AI to pick employees with medical conditions for layoffs

• Netflix Paid $587M for Ben Affleck's AI Company

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Kalshi says it caught Trump's teleprompter operator insider trading

  • Trump teleprompter aide made $100k betting on what Trump would say, reports say

  • White House Teleprompter Operator Bet on Trump Speeches, Kalshi Says

• French regulators order block of Polymarket's website

  • France blocks access to Polymarket website

Economicon / Business / Finance

• TSMC Expands US Semiconductor Investment to $265B

• Buffett reveals he was behind Berkshire's $31B bet on Google

  • Warren Buffett Initiates Berkshire Hathaway's Investment in Alphabet

• Netflix plateauing engagement, stock drops after Q3 revenue falls short

• US Corporate Insiders Are Selling Stocks at a Near Record Pace

• America's Enterprising Spirit Is Booming After Decades-Long Slump

• The Inside Story of IBM’s Shocking Profit Warning

• This time fer sure! FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again

• 4,500 Google Employees Sign Petition Demanding Layoff Protections

• What a Monopoly importer learned when it tried to make things in the USA

  "We turned over every single leaf trying to find someone who would make 10,000 dice for us in the U.S.," Silva says. "It requires special machinery. It requires investment. And that type of stuff just can't happen on a random Tuesday and be ready in a couple of months." Silva ultimately had to settle for imported dice. He was able to find the rest of what he needed domestically, but it wasn't easy. ... the cost to manufacture the games — which retail for $80 — was at least double what it would have been in China.

Trump

• Declassified Documents detailing Voting System Vulnerabilities

  For years Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot-counting systems. We are releasing a series of previously-classified U.S. Intelligence Community Assessments and other reports proving that our government has long known these machines are extremely exposed to attack. As one assessment states: “We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.” The documents also state: “We assess that centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes.” Tonight, we are releasing all of these findings, spanning from January 2020 to June 2026. This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy.

  Many people have questioned whether it could actually be possible to electronically manipulate vote totals or change election results. Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot by the Maduro regime in Venezuela to do exactly that—conspiring to digitally rig their own country’s elections in 2020. This reporting included precise details about methods the regime developed to digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected even with an audit.

  • White House website crashes after Trump releases alleged voter fraud documents

  • Trump reveals China stole voter registration data from 220M Americans

  “Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files,” Trump said in remarks from the East Room of the White House. “That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening,” the president continued. “This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare.

  • CBS cuts away from Trump's election fraud speech — as ABC, NBC refused to air on TV

  CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil explained why the network was airing it: “Much of what the President has said on [security of American elections] has been false.” “There is an argument that it’s irresponsible to air the president’s speech tonight. But this speech will be made. It will be news. And it’s our job to cover the news,” Dokoupil said.

  • President Trump Reveals What We All Suspected About the 2020 Election in Primetime Address.

  The FBI obtained raw intelligence indicating that China’s activities included efforts to produce illegal ballots for Joe Biden. These were kept out of the presidential briefing. One analyst admitted to intentionally downplaying Chinese election activities. Another official stated she was running a shadow government to keep intelligence on China’s election interference away from the media and the White House. Numerous burn bags have been found.

  • Election denial activists briefed at White House ahead of primetime speech

Left Angst

• US postgraduate student visas will be limited to 4 years

• Trump made $1.4B from crypto in one year. Is Justin Sun the man who helped him?

• Trump Media to sell instant access to 'market-moving' social posts

  • Trump firm plans to sell priority access to Truth Social posts, possibly his own

  • Trump Media pitched $100k monthly fee for fast feed of president's posts

• Trump to declare emergency around midterms, former White House attorney says

• The Mar-a-Lago Accord's Economic Ripple Effect Widens

• Most Supreme Court Rulings are Secretive Votes with Little Justification

• People in Many Countries Now View China More Positively Than the U.S.

• SpaceX IPO Earns Millions for US Small Business Administration Head

• Brazil's Pix – The payments darling in Trump's tariff crosshairs

• Mullin Threatens 'Prison Time' for State Officials Not Cooperating on Elections

• Hegseth wants a "High-T" military; doctors call it a clinical minefield

• The CDC Has a Cyclospora Lab. DOGE Downsized It Last Year

• Repeal of national park rule could impact drinking water for millions

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• All US forces to withdraw from Iraq by Sept. 30: al-Zaidi

  All remaining US military forces will be out of Iraq by the end of September, the nation’s new prime minister Ali al-Zaidi said during a Tuesday visit to the White House. “On the 30th of September, the US forces will be out of Iraq, while these companies will be inside Iraq,” al-Zaidi said through a translator when speaking to reporters alongside President Trump in the Oval Office. About 2,000 US troops currently are stationed in Iraq, mostly at the Harir Air Base in Erbil in the northern Kurdistan region.

• US imposes new sanctions on Cuba tourism ministry, state-owned companies

• US seeks share of Korean chipmakers' 'excess profits'

World

• EU forces Google to share search data and open Android to rival AI companies

  • Google Ordered to Give A.I. Rivals More Access on Android Smartphones

  • Google ordered to open Android and Search to rivals in Europe

  • EU to force Google to share search data and open up AI on Android

• UK unveils plans for social media curfew for older teens – but it's voluntary

• Meta data centre in Alberta to start operating before neighbouring power plant

• HP fined 1.4B rupees for "cartelization" of ink cartridges, toner, PCs

• Canada says bridge tolls won't be split with U.S. until $6.4B of debt is repaid

• British Authorities Now Suspect Murder of Reform Party Spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe Was Political.

• EU Adds Exemptions To User-Serviceable Batteries Rules

Iran / Houthi

• Iran issues grim new order to citizens after US strikes ‘hit power plants’ as conflict spirals

Israel

• Israel changes crocodiles legal status in push for Ben-Gvir's 'crocodile prison'

  In an attempt to obtain approval for the plan, a request was made to declare the Nile crocodile a “cultivated wild animal.” Crocodiles had previously been given that designation to allow them to be raised commercially for their skins. Former environmental protection minister Gilad Erdan ended the practice following a recommendation from the advisory committee of the Nature and Parks Authority’s plenum.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Dismissal of Ukraine's defence minister highlights wider issues for Zelenskyy

China

• China's EV pirate ship is coming for Western carmakers

• Chinese automakers are taking on the UK – and many Brits are embracing it

• Xi Jinping sets out China's goal to be global AI leader

  • Xi pitches China as leader of new global AI order, challenging US dominance

  • China Just Dropped Another Bomb on America's Frontier AI Companies

  • China's Xi to outline AI diplomacy vision at key Shanghai forum

  • As Trump accuses China of election theft, Xi pitches Beijing as AI leader

  • What Is China's Moonshot AI and Why Is It Roiling Markets?

  • China's Latest A.I. Breakthrough Threatens America's Lead

  • China's Xi Jinping launches new AI alliance, WAICO

• Z.ai Set to Be First China AI Firm with $1B Annual Sales

• Chinese memory ban would cut off RAMpocalypse relief

• China wants to end AI romances

• Cutting China reliance would cost the West $23T, research suggests

• The Best Running Shoes You Can't Get Your Hands On

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Taco Bell lettuce at centre of growing US diarrhoea outbreak

• A Map of the Cyclospora Outbreak

• Parasites Are Surging in The US. Here’s Exactly How to Wash Your Produce.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• High temperatures put French gas plant at risk of outage

• As Blazes Spread Near Paris, Extreme Heat Is Changing How France Fights Fires

• Strong El Nino could make 2027 the hottest year on record

• "Why do so many modern people hate insects? The urbanization–disgust hypothesis"

• Canada's Forests Will Burn and Burn

• Number of wildfires doubles after lightning strikes across B.C

• Trump blames Canada for wildfire smoke, says he'll add cost to tariffs

• Billion-dollar weather disasters have pushed US home insurance up 47% in 5 years

• EU loosens carbon market rules to let industry pollute for longer

• The Colorado River's 2 biggest reservoirs just hit a new record low

• CO2 overload, detected in human blood, suggests toxic atmosphere within 50 years

• Major earthquake off Mexican coast triggers tsunami threat

• Colorado uses tech and tip lines to enforce drought water restrictions

• Smoke, fire, floods: US faces triple extreme summer weather threats

• EU set to axe 2039 net-zero industry target

• More than 100 homes destroyed in Norway fire