2026-08-21

Worthy

• Nostalgie De La Boue

  It goes to teachers who don’t teach, because teaching and actually enforcing learning is white supremacy or right wing (and right wing is bad, remember). (It inevitably results in students who can’t read, and now four generations in, in graduate students, or professor, who likewise can’t read. Or at least not with any fluency.) It goes to jobs exported overseas, because your workers were convinced to be as bad as slave workers in China. It goes into unsafe cities, because requiring people not to kill or rob is bad and right wing. In fact, this nostalgie de la boue, this craving for the low and evil and dark is ultimately a wrench unscrewing all the underpinnings of civilization. And it is built so deeply that even after you free yourself of every other leftist illusion, you still find it trying to destroy your novel or your art by making it pointlessly dark or despairing. Because you internalized that as being “thoughtful” or “important.”

Horseshit

• Neo-Etiquette Basics: The New Rules of Being Human

• The little-told story of the WWII pet cull

• Forty First Dates and Still Searching

• Cannabis facility goes up in smoke near High River

• Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis

• Choking victims should perform Heimlich manoeuvre on themselves

• Static electricity is a mystery, and scientists are all charged up

• The "Kerry Cow" Wasn't a Cow at All–and It Upends Stone Age Irish History

  According to the team’s analysis, the splintered bones didn’t belong to cattle at all. Instead they were the remains of two indigenous mammals—a wild boar and a bear (although researchers aren’t sure if it’s a brown bear or a polar bear). Essentially, the history of agriculture in Ireland has been rewritten once again.

• Scientists use gene editing to create hypoallergenic dogs

• Robots are asking for tips. But who gets the money?

celebrity gossip

• Mark Zuckerberg buys 440-acre Strancally castle estate in Ireland

Obit

• Frank Beard, ZZ Top drummer for more than five decades, dies at 77

Musk

• Cognition CEO denies report that SpaceX tried to acquire the startup

• Grok exfiltrates user data when malicious instructions are encrypted

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Alphabet's Waymo Has Built a Custom Chip for Its Robotaxis

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• How Persona AI Makes Humanoids Pay Off in Welding

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The city of Cupertino is 70.9% Asian. A new TV show set there ignores this

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Jason Arday's Final Self-Delusion

  Some are now suggesting that Arday was the victim, and the people who drew attention to his lies, the villains. Ibram X. Kendi suggests that Arday might even be vindicated after a full accounting of the allegations against him. (Keep in mind that in addition to his straightforward acts of fabrication and plagiarism, always of less powerful academics, he claimed to have taken part in a British documentary series that preceded his birth.)

  • Ghent University’s trans rector suspends ‘race realist’ Nathan Cofnas over Jason Arday’s death

  Professor Nathan Cofnas has been suspended from his position at Ghent University over the death of Jason Arday following his blog post amplifying plagiarism allegations against the former Cambridge professor. He posted, "I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me. The decision was made by rector Petra De Sutter, a former leader of the Green Party."

  • Academic who accused Jason Arday of plagiarism suspended by university

  • The Jason Arday delusion: Scapegoating is punitive and crass

• Armwood High graduate uses 40 scholarships to attend Princeton

  A Bay area student who recently graduated from Armwood High School, made Princeton University more affordable by applying for more than 200 scholarships, reflecting growing interest in outside aid as college costs remain a concern for families. Adeola Adeyemo said she was awarded about 40 of the scholarships she applied for, including $2,500 from the DeBartolo Family Foundation, $20,000 from the New York Life Insurance Empowerment Scholarship, $20,000 from the William Gregory Foundation and $20,000 from the Stem Scholars Program.

• Foreign Students Applying to US Colleges Fell 10% This Year

• Omaha school district asks police to stop using shock gloves on students

• Can Head Start Be Deregulated Out of Existence?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Whistleblower Arturo Béjar leads testimony in landmark trial against Meta

  • Zuckerberg encouraged growth over child safety, ex-Meta executive testifies

  • The Facebook Files

  • Meta's Trial Adds a Trillion-Dollar Risk to Its Struggling Stock

• Did someone wearing Meta Glasses film you today? Are you sure?

  • Meta glasses are a workplace menace

  • UK cinemas are now restricting Meta smart glasses over film piracy concerns

• Anti-Flock signs removed as Rolling Meadows, Il debates license plate cameras

  • Have you been Flocked? This website lets you find out

  • Gardner police discontinue Flock cameras as license plate readers face scrutiny

  • 'Darth Vader' Wants Flock in San Diego

  • Darth Vader defends Flock to San Diego: 'This is what the emperor needs'

  • Where Vandals Can't Reach? Flock Safety's Future Is Full of Spying Drones

• More incredible tales of App Store curation

  There are 59 reviews, 54 of which are 1 star, and 3 of which are 2 stars. Two of the reviews are 5 stars; of those, one is titled “space jam” and goes on to say, “i believe i can fly and touch the sky.” Anyway, the question is, how did the app manage ratings of 4.1 out of 5 when the reviews average 1.2 out of 5? (That’s a rhetorical question. I think we all know the answer.)

• The Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA

• YouTube offering creators millions if they don't sign deals with Netflix

• Microdramas boom in a shrinking Hollywood as studios chase a TikTok audience

• T-Mobile 'chopped a cable' to expel Chinese hackers from its network

• British Groups Push Age Verification Bills in 21 US States

  A trade association whose members sell ID checks spent years arguing that more places need ID checks.

• FCC abolishes gigabit speed goal

• Meta ran ads for an app promising to nudify female politicians

• UK internet age checks have boosted rogue adult sites, says Pornhub

• Epic Games Store to get an official Linux version

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA calls off mission to rescue Swift gamma-ray observatory

  • NASA's Attempt to Save the Swift Telescope Has Failed

  • NASA calls off Swift rescue mission

  • NASA mission to save sinking space telescope fails

• Blue Origin adding second pad to Cape Canaveral launch complex amid rocket explosion repairs

• Satellite proliferation imperils astronomical observations, study finds

• Lifeforms Can Survive on 'Significant' Regions of the Moon, Study Finds

  common Earth microbes could survive for up to a week in shadowed regions of the lunar south pole, a region targeted for future human exploration.

  • If anything can survive there, then it's already there waiting for us to find it.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Stripe says "the singularity" has begun

• A $21B 'Kids in Chips' Startup Is Scooping Up Nvidia Talent

• The war on data centres is a bit fake

• AI fired an S.F. store employee. Will California crack down on 'robobosses'?

• AI is entertainment's scarlet letter

• It used to be our imperfect bodies that made us insecure. With AI, its our minds

• The data center fight is heating up

• AI hasn't gone rogue. It's worse than that

• Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt

• Google strikes $12B AI chip deal with Marvell to develop TPUs

• Frustrated GP patients hang up as Yorkshire accent baffles AI receptionist

• GOP issues stark warning to AI companies

  In the memo, obtained by Axios, the National Republican Senatorial Committee says Democrats have made data centers a "centerpiece" of their campaign to defeat Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) — and that it's working.

• OpenAI 'will be a public company in 2027' or sooner, CFO Friar tells employees

• If You Weren't Worried About A.I., You Should Be After the Past Few Weeks

• Could AIs Become Conscious?

• AI Is Undermining Leaders' Judgment. Here's What to Do About It

• UC Berkeley professor admits to using AI to edit op-ed on students' math skills

• The Teens Taking on Data Centers

• Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

• Hyperscalers' Off-Grid Power Push Comes with Risks

• The poets trying to give AI taste

• Study reveals that almost 40% of music released globally in July 2026 used AI

• OpenAI's Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face

• Anthropic Expects to Match SpaceX's Record IPO Size or Top It

• With Val Kilmer's AI Twin, Is Gen AI Forcing Hollywood to the Edge?

• Protesters haul a guillotine to city council meeting about an AI data center

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• California lawmakers call for crackdown on wildfire betting

• More than 150 Polymarket wallets may have traded on military secrets

• Judge orders Kalshi cease Washington operations starting August 20

Economicon / Business / Finance

• ASML tries to keep employees until 2030 with €20K stock

• Moderna and Merck shares soar on mRNA cancer vaccine

• Amazon's Drones Will Soon Deliver to Nearly 500 US Cities and Towns

  • Drone drops delivery into pool

• US Government debt hits $40T as borrowing rises at historic rate

  • The US national debt now stands at $40T

  • US debt tops $40T as Treasury doubles bond buybacks to calm markets

  • Surprise Treasury Move Can't Mask America's Record Debt Problem

  • Treasury demand has become materially more valuation-sensitive

  • Treasury plan to subdue yields fails

• How Big Tech's A.I. Borrowing Binge Is Driving Up Bond Yields

• Samsung hikes chipmaking prices by up to 15% for new orders, on demand spike

• 50% of all "employment growth" in California and New York is home care fraud

• Has Stock Market Participation Changed How Interest Rates Affect the Economy?

• How Taylor Farms became a top salad supplier before US diarrhea outbreak

• US retail giant Target doubles $1 BILLION income last quarter via tariff refunds

• U.S. Workers Are Paying More for Healthcare, and Next Year Will Be Worse

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• David Morens, former NIAID adviser, pleads guilty in COVID-19 records scheme

  Under a deal reached with federal prosecutors in Maryland, David Morens, 78, agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses and to defraud the United States. He faces up to five years in prison. Prosecutors said Morens worked with two co-conspirators. The first, "co-conspirator 1," served as the president and CEO of a New York-based nonprofit that received a grant in 2014 titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, received a subaward from the New York group on the coronavirus grant, prosecutors said, though the National Institutes of Health terminated the award in April 2020 following allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the lab. The NIAID is part of the NIH. The second co-conspirator was described in charging documents as a physician, scientist and professor who worked for an academic institute that received federal grants. Emails made public by the GOP-led Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic indicate that the New York-based nonprofit is the EcoHealth Alliance and co-conspirator 1 is its president, Peter Daszak. According to the guilty plea, Morens and the two co-conspirators agreed to exchange emails about COVID-19 and its origins, as well as the terminated coronavirus grant, through Morens' personal Gmail account, rather than his official NIH account, to hide federal records and evade public records laws. Morens and his co-conspirators also used his Gmail account to share nonpublic information from the NIH about COVID-19 and "back-channel" information to an unidentified senior NIAID official, who appears to be Anthony Fauci, the institute's former director, according to court filings.

• Kingmakers: Crypto, AI, betting firms fuel record spending on the 2026 midterms

• State probes nonprofit We Heart Seattle over drug cleanup operations

Trump

• 'With All My Heart, Natalie.' Trump's Most Devoted Aide Emerges

• Trump's Justice Dept. Targets Smaller Fraud Cases

Democrats

• Why Senate polling is always worse in summer

  In the last few election cycles, we’ve seen a pattern of Democrats looking competitive in red state Senate contests during the summer only to fade by election day. I wanted to test if this was a consistent pattern, not just the selective memory of a Republican. 3,312 polls over the last four election cycles in the old FiveThirtyEight archive confirmed the pattern. In each of those four cycles, the Democratic candidate’s margin was overstated. The average polling error across all polls was D+3.7, and 73% of polls released overstated the Democrat relative to the election result. Again, that’s across more than 3,000 polls, so that’s hardly just statistical noise. And the pattern is most pronounced during the summer, right where we are now. Polling error peaks at 5.9 points too Democratic sometime in late July, and doesn’t start coming down until late August, before settling into an average error of D+2.6 on election day.

• FBI Raids Eric Swalwell’s Home, Seizes Electronics in Connection with Sexual Assault Investigation

Left Angst

• Call-buying near Trump's Hyperliquid comments shows some eyebrow-raising trades

• How I Became a Subaru Socialist

• Under Trump, Protected Wild Horses Are Going to Slaughter

• Trump calls for Congress to pass crypto bill at White House event

• ICE and Iran worked together to deport Iranians from U.S.

• FOIA Chief Brings Right-Wing Bona Fides to Apolitical DOJ Office

• Trump's Police Spying on Americans? It's Darker Than We Knew

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• 'It wasn't me': Weed use in Allegheny County jury room forces homicide mistrial

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US warns of AI-powered attacks on Siemens PLCs in critical infrastructure

  • Why the richest country can't defend vital infrastructure

• Invited media and military members held at gunpoint at Space Force base in Calif

  Five news reporters and two members of the military who were invited to an event at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California were briefly detained at gunpoint by security officers who thought they were gate crashers, according to local news reports.

World

• Death Stalks the Irish Pub

• Taxpayers to fund clear-up of illegal dumps in West Yorkshire, Surrey and Kent

• U.S. preparing to foce Netherlands to ban ASML from selling to China

• Scenic spot in Italian mountains overrun by tourists seeking the perfect pastry

• Australia passes law to levy tech giants that fail to pay for local news

• German court rules: Emails must be end-to-end encrypted

• London brewery is begging customers to stop queuing in single file at the bar

• American killed by lightning while climbing Italian volcano

  • On Mount Etna, Lightning Has Claimed More Lives Than Eruptions Since 1980

• A magnitude 6.7 earthquake has shaken Peru's southern Andes

• European gas prices hit highest point since March

• Canadian premier says Trump is a 'bad person' as Canada weighs concessions

Iran / Houthi

• Why does the U.S. military seem stymied in the war with Iran?

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian court jails Kremlin critic for 11 years for opposing the war in Ukraine.

• Ukrainian publishers call for support after Russian attacks destroy 10M books

China

• Chinese firms are wrapping their supply chains around the globe

• The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China's space program

  • Chinese company lands a reusable Falcon-9 analog

  • China marches towards re-usable rockets with successful first-stage landing

  • China lands its Zhuque-3 rocket, rivaling Blue Origin and SpaceX

• Founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande sentenced to life in prison

• At Beijing AI-themed bar, DeepSeek tokens come with the pints

• China's humanoid robot boom is fueled by government-backed training centres

• After Europe ditched Windows, China follows suit with its own home-grown Linux

• When Was the Last Time You Lost It with Everyone in a Movie Theater?

  During the screening, everyone was laughing pretty much from beginning to end. Just like at cult movie screenings abroad, people shouted along with lines they’d picked up from clips online, and by the end, the whole audience was mooing along with the movie. At this point, Niu Lai has pretty much all the ingredients of a cult film, making it arguably the biggest cult movie phenomenon in China today, even if most of the audience knows little or nothing about cult film culture. Before this, I had serious doubts that cult film culture could really emerge in China today. After I saw Niu Lai, a lot of friends asked me what I thought of the movie. But honestly, the movie itself isn’t really the point. It’s every bit as bad as you’d expect. What matters is being there in person, surrounded by real people, and joining in the madness together. Cult movies have never really been about the movies themselves. They’re about the people who join the cult.

• Swiss and Chinese reach agreement on updated free trade deal

• The Women in China choosing AI boyfriends over human men

• Chinese Video Platform Bilibili Is Going Global

Health / Medicine

• Moderna pins hopes on mRNA 'game-changer' for cancer vaccines

• GreenWise blueberry recall upgraded over E. coli risk

• Scientific spat erupts over claim that bones have key immune vessels

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• World may warm by 25 per cent more than current projections suggest

• 'Success story' hailed as bluefin tuna caught off Yorkshire first time since 60s

• Climate change is cooking Europe's oceans, scientists find

• Jet engines can't tell coconut-blend fuel from jet fuel–but the environment can

• Willow and poplar trees are making air quality in cities worse by releasing VOCs

• Seoul to cover all sidewalks with shade by 2028 to combat heat waves

• Giant whales move into Greenland waters as ice disappears

• Why the Ocean Cleanup Hasn't Solved the Plastic Pollution Crisis

• Bulgaria's Nuclear Plant Plans First Output Cut Due to Low Danube

• Your mattress is probably crawling with thousands of dust mites. Here’s how to fix that.

• Fewer contrails would be good for the climate

• Ozone: The Fault Is Not in Our Trees, but in Ourselves

• US broccoli supply under major threat of California droughts: study

  Broccoli is the most consumed vegetable in the country, and the sunshine state grows over 90% of America’s fresh broccoli.