2026-08-30

Horseshit

• It's One Parking Spot in New York City. What Could It Cost, $250k?

• How to spot a psychopath: 'the difference between a domestic cat and a wild cat'

• The fixer at the center of FIFA's meltdown

• Why Everybody Hates Palantir

• Study links listening to live metal improves tolerance for pain, cold

• Steve Jobs' 8th Grade Science Project Sells for $34,375

• What we want is a hunter gatherer lifestyle with space age tools

• Some US cities have begun rewarding careful drivers with fewer red lights

• I wanted to find the slowest fashion imaginable: the woman growing her own dress

• I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul

• Man accused of posing as SF 49ers player to defraud women out of $1.3M, feds say

celebrity gossip

• Gov. Lee Announces Partnership to Name Nashville International Airport in Honor of Dolly Parton

• Benjamin Franklin's Alter Egos Gave Him the Most Freedom

Obit

• American Airlines' Legendary Mechanic Passes Away at 100 After 80-Year Career

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• X claims it found a Chinese bot farm posting anti-AI data center sentiments

  • America's data center revolt is getting a boost from China-linked bots

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says China isn't behind the anti-data-center debate

Musk

• Lawsuit: Grok Not Only Generates Child Porn but Was Also Trained on It

• OpenAI Dumps Cursor

  • Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX

  we intend to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor, with a proposed shutoff date of November 12, 2026. To maximize the time that developers can retain access to our models through Cursor, we are giving the maximum notice provided by our contract. We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts.

  • OpenAI to end agreement with SpaceX's AI coding tool Cursor

  • Will it be Anthropic or X AI after Cursor getting no access to OpenAI?

• SpaceX recovers Starship from the Indian Ocean a month after launch and is shipping it back to Texas

• Musk says Grok's political lean is 'a function of SF Bay Area political views'

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Is Slate Auto's new electric truck the EV Americans need?

• E.V. Sales Are Rising After the Gulf Oil Shock. Here's Where.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Ali G Movie Backlash Intensifies in the U.K. as Campaigners Try to Get Film Pulled From Cinemas

  The campaign accuses Cohen of using satire as a “cover for enforcing racist stereotypes,” citing a newspaper report from 2000, just two years after Ali G first landed on British TV screens, in which Black British comedians claimed the character was an “alibi for racism.”

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• A Cop's Case for Flock

  • Police departments weren’t looking for Flock abuse. We did it for them.

  • Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras

• ICANN de-accredits "bulletproof" domain registrar Trustname

• Right to Repair State Laws Continue to Surge – Enforcement Remains Nonexistent

• Security researchers find surveillance implants in Chinese-made routers sold worldwide — three different backdoor-like implants hidden in firmware

  The hardware is sold around the world under a bewildering array of brands, meaning you may not even realize you're using a ZBT router. The research, published by security firm VulnCheck, began with a Zbtlink AX3000 router. Researchers found that its firmware contained an implant that they dubbed ENDLESSDOORS, as it automatically phones home to a command-and-control server and can execute arbitrary commands as root.

• Meta's Newspaper Ad Blitz Ups Pressure on Social Media Rivals

• Is short-form video rotting our brains?

  • Broadcast TV commercials ruined minds for decades.

• Burning Man tells AI glasses wearers: Don’t be a creep, get permission to record

TechSuck / Geek Bait

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Thousands of Interstellar Objects May Be Lurking in Our Solar System

• Who was Nancy Grace Roman? NASA's space telescope named after 'Mother of Hubble'

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Anti-AI Populism is Reshaping American Politics

• Tech Leaders Blame China for America's Anti-AI Backlash

• Andrew Garfield on Playing Sam Altman in "Artifical"

• Debian Votes to Allow "Responsible Use of Generative AI"

• Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic

• "Hopefully a meteor will strike the Earth soon": Game devs talk GenAI witchhunts

  Over the past few weeks, I've been chatting to game developers and artists who've been falsely accused of using genAI for visual art in particular, while also trying to understand why, exactly, their images and videos attracted suspicion. It's been a funny journey, both depressing and at times uplifting. The difficulty of identifying generated imagery at a glance is a political and social priority that goes far beyond videogames – genAI fakes are routinely used to manipulate people and foment conspiracies, including racist and xenophobic narratives about the "great replacement". We need to become better at spotting the snakeoil salesmen in our midst.

• A Collectivist Economic Vision for AI

• Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic was unlawful, US judge rules

• Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users' control, research finds

• Yes, We're in an AI Bubble. Just Look to 1980s Japan

• Nvidia Starts Pac as AI Chip Maker Builds DC Influence Force

• Meta's Push to Put Robots to Work in Data Centers

• OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AI | TechCrunch

• Did AI write this? It's getting harder to tell

• Google further buries search results under AI mode

• Blue-Collar Jobs Are the New Flashpoint in Data-Center Fight

• The Fed confronts a powerful new economic force (AI)

• Major security weaknesses found in leading open AI models

• Microsoft-backed AI data center faces backlash over 62 unpermitted gas turbines

• Tech backlash reaches fever pitch as AI angst collides with social media fears

• Sony Music and Warner Chappell Are Suing Anthropic

  • Music publishers sue Anthropic, allege "blantant theft" of copyrighted music

  • Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a "brazen campaign" of intellectual

• How Big Tech Blinded Itself to the Grassroots AI Revolt

• By Opening a Model, a Chinese A.I. Lab May Test the World's Cybersecurity

• AI is changing religion and religions are trying to change AI

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• The Ninth Circuit has ruled that gambling is gambling and can be regulated as gambling.

  • Prediction Markets Should Be Regulated as Gambling, Appeals Court Says

• White House teleprompter operator ordered to pay $172K for insider trading

  • Ex-White House teleprompter operator ordered to pay $172k for Trump speech bets

  • Ex-White House teleprompter operator fined $172,000 for Trump speech bets

Economicon / Business / Finance

• How A Private Equity Group Drove an Apartment Complex into the Ground

• Stripe and Advent end PayPal pursuit

• You Probably Own This 7-Eleven and That’s Why It Looks So Sad

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• America Strikes Back Against Foreign Censors with the Rulli Granite Act HR 10174

• Thomas Massie reups PRIME Act after Trump meat processing order

• This clip perfectly embodies the uselessness of so many of our politicians.

  Senator Blumenthal (from my home state of Connecticut), holds a press conference on train safety. Blumenthal breaks the rules, walks too close to the edge, and almost gets hit by a train.

Trump

• Trump announces new US oil agreement with Venezuela

  The terms of the agreement remain to be seen, but the US president said on his social-media platform that it had been brokered “through a partnership with ⁠private business” by his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. The administration, Trump wrote, has “secured majority U.S. control of more ​than 65 BILLION ‌BARRELS of proven Oil ‌Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the ‌American Taxpayer”.

  • American too: Venezuelan opposition up in arms over reports US wants big stake in oil and gas

• A Top FBI Official's Remarks About Running a Secret Government Are Now More Chilling

  Given the latest trove of documents about the FBI’s investigation into former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and his Chinese tryst with Fang Fang, who everyone knew was an intelligence agent, the pattern emerges: the FBI truly was running a secret government of sorts. They eschewed investigations into foreign influence involving Democrats, the Biden family, and the Clintons, and redirected all efforts to legitimize shoddy evidence and outright lies about Trump. Again, you knew this, but now you have mountains of paperwork and damning emails from top FBI officials who admitted to “basically running a shadow government across the FBI.” That official reported to then-FBI Director Chris Wray daily. Even worse, under Operation Round River, the FBI targeted those who brought forward evidence regarding allegations of foreign influence and corruption on the Hunter Biden laptop

Left Angst

• Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right political commentator, detained by ICE

  • Far-right media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos deported by ICE from US to UK

• "We quit the CDC last year. The problems we protested remain"

• Canadian council considers changing street named after Trump to Taco Avenue

• Senator calls for criminal investigation of RFK Jr after Guardian report

  Wyden was among the senators who asked Kennedy during two confirmation hearings last year about a 2019 trip he took to Samoa, at a time when Kennedy was leading an anti-vaccine group. Months later, a measles outbreak sickened thousands and killed 83 people, mostly children under five. When asked about the trip by Wyden and Ed Markey, the senator from Massachusetts, Kennedy testified that his visit had “nothing to do with vaccines”. The newly obtained letters contradict that testimony. In one, Kennedy explicitly told the Samoan prime minister he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the Pacific island nation and used the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times.

  • What has he done to piss them off lately? Oh: RFK Jr. says Shapiro’s office may have fabricated measles deaths

  Kennedy’s claim centers on the scant information Shapiro and Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen provided during the press conference about the two people who died. The state officials only said the two people were from Pennsylvania’s Lancaster county and that they were unvaccinated, but declined to specify if they were children or adults or if they were part of a religious community that typically refuses vaccination. The two Pennsylvania officials cited patient privacy concerns.

  • Lancaster County coroner says no measles deaths amid Pennsylvania outbreak

  Parsons noted that national media outlets framed the deaths as being from measles. The New York Times, in a Tuesday story still posted to its website, wrote the headline, "Two Unvaccinated People Died From Measles in Pennsylvania, Officials Say." owever, according to conversations he had with the Lancaster County Coroner, Parsons claimed nobody in the county has died from measles this year. "The coroner reported that they don't have… they had zero measles deaths or measles associated-deaths reported. And in Pennsylvania if you have someone who dies of a contagious disease, that does have to be reported to the county coroner," Parsons told Fox News Digital.

• ICE eyes spending up to $2M on Boston Dynamics robot dogs to up 'officer safety'

• DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• A history of stealing from employer may no longer prevent being hired by FBI

• Why America's prisons are shrinking and racial gaps are closing

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• A Great Rebalancing Is Coming

• Landlady to 9/11 hijackers reveals their links to alleged Saudi spy

• US Military uses laser to down three Mexican cartel drones near border

• DoD confirms 'refrigeration disruption' at military commissaries

• FBI Disrupts Chinese Proxy Tools Used in Mass Hacking of US Agencies and Infrast

World

• Nepal's flood damage may cost up to a tenth of economy to rebuild

  • Satellite images reveal scale of flood devastation in Nepal villages

• Taiwan prosecutors search Unimicron in suspected China fraud case

• Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

  • Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining European Union

• Berlin is being blackmailed by hackers, mayor says

• India's 'Cockroaches' Are Fighting Back

Iran / Houthi

• Gulf Oil Exports at Two Thirds of Pre War Level

China

• New Chinese surveillance leaves foreigners nowhere to hide

• China’s Super-Dam Is Becoming an Upstream Water Bomb by Brahma Chellaney

Health / Medicine

• Juul gets FDA approval for new e-cigarette with age-verification

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Influenza A spike: Covid-era measures return as doctor say system under pressure

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Scientists Analyzed Earth’s Hidden Seed Vaults And Made a Disturbing Realization.

• Heat Waves Are Disproportionately Harming People with Schizophrenia

• One 'absolutely prolific' male bird is keeping his species alive in the U.K

• When Fruit Is Scarce, These Monkeys Hunt Animals

• Scientists collaborated with narwhals to study warming waters in the Arctic

• Appetite for insect protein is early evidence of an El Niño shock wave

• How the weather in space can affect us on Earth

• Highest-ever ocean temperature measured as powerful El Niño forms