We are at most a few years away from the mainstream media becoming controlled top to bottom, with a few very exceptions, by ultrarich conservatives and their hirelings.
CBS News is gone;
CNN seems about to follow.
The Los Angeles Times installed an AI-powered “bias meter” to warn readers against taking some of what they read in the paper’s columns at face value.
And all across the country, local news is on a ventilator;
the right-wing Sinclair network is taking…
Okay, for those who want to switch Email providers and think about Fastmail (as I described in my article https://tante.cc/2026/01/05/exiting-the-billionaire-castle/ ):
This link gives you 10% off your first year. (It will give me 10 USD, too, so you can consider this a…
Cloudflare warns the US government that site-blocking efforts in Europe and Asia to combat online piracy are creating digital trade barriers for US providers (Ernesto Van der Sar/TorrentFreak)
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-te
Are you racing against time or listening to it?
We live by the clock. We measure speed and fear being late. But there is another kind of time.
A time of ripeness. Of openings. Of things becoming ready.
What if change isn't about hurrying? What if it's about sensing when conditions align?
Read more: ⬇️
Imagine a future where saying YES to your kids or grandkids doesn't trigger financial stress. Chris and Karen aim for a retirement that fosters independence and generosity without becoming burdensome. By building an extra income stream, they are crafting a transformative legacy! Quite the game-changer, wouldn't you say? 💬 #RetirementPlanning #FinancialFreedom
"Here’s a problem that’s highly likely going to get much worse, people [are] outsourcing their thinking to AI. “Many people are becoming reliant on AI to navigate some of the most basic aspects of daily life. A colleague suggested that we might even call the most extreme users “LLeMmings”"
Brilliant. From the Crank.
Read it Now
Love it when I start writing a brief post to blab out here, and it starts becoming a list of ideas, and I quickly realize a blog post needs to happen 🔥
#writing #blogs #blogging
Zero Carbon V2X Tariffs for Non-Domestic Customers
Elisheva S Shamash, Zhong Fan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07308 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.07308 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.07308
arXiv:2512.07308v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: With the aim of meeting the worlds net-zero objectives, electricity trading through contractual agreements is becoming increasingly relevant in global and local energy markets. We develop contracts enabling efficient energy trading using Vehicle to Everything technology which can be applied to regulate energy markets and reduce costs and carbon emissions by using electric vehicles with bidirectional batteries to store energy during offpeak hours for export during peak hours. We introduce a contract based on the VCG mechanism which enables fleets of electric vehicles to export electricity to the grid efficiently throughout the day, where each electric vehicle has its energy consumption and exporting schedules and costs.
toXiv_bot_toot
I need to be careful. I'm becoming the reply bloke.
Becoming such a bike advocacy nerd I now know the names/designations of certain bridges. Watching the planned replacement of B-40-998 and B-40-
999 very closely! (Might even go to a meeting about them.)
Here's a very interesting read about life as an academic and how you're never "good enough":
Under pressure: Becoming the good enough academic
By Milena Tekeste. Some quotes below (I removed citations for smoother reading):
"I learned publishing in specific journals would lead to tenure. It was the first time that anyone had sat me down and explained “…
"In 2025 I have spend some time to untangle my digital life from billionaire/fascist run platforms. So at the beginning of 2026 maybe it makes sense to talk a bit about what I did, why I went certain ways and what works and what doesn’t."
(Original title: Exiting the Billionaire Castle)
https://
Opinion | Nick Fuentes Is Becoming Charlie Kirk’s Successor - The New York Times
https://archive.ph/9tBjN
Home batteries are quietly becoming a game-changer for grid stability. As installations surge, utilities are tapping residential storage to manage peak demand during extreme weather—deferring costly upgrades while boosting resilience.
The key to scaling? Treat it like market development, not just tech deployment. Simple enrollment, risk-sharing models, and coordinated action between utilities and manufacturers can unlock massive participation.
I admit that, through 2025, I have become an #AI #doomer. Not that I believe the LLM-becoming-sentient-and-killing-humanity self-serving hype bullshit for a second. There are much more concrete impact points that may lead to or greatly accelerate several crises, each of which will actively harm humanity…
#ARTIS Park in #Amsterdam becomes an Urban Night Sky Place, becoming first zoo in the world to earn #DarkSky certification: https://darksky.org/news/artis-park-becomes-an-urban-night-sky-place-becoming-first-zoo-in-the-world-to-earn-darksky-certification/ - > "ARTIS Park is now the first location in the heart of a European capital to receive this certification—and the first zoo in the world to earn the designation. This recognition honors ARTIS’s commitment to reducing light pollution and highlights the importance of darkness for both nature and people in urban environments."
the real sign of becoming middle-aged is when you start writing unit tests for even "simple" code
I regret that I have inadvertantly informed you falsely. Yes, there is widespread fraud in gift cards around but Apple (and Shoppers Drug Mart) did deliver when I found the right strip to scan.
The link below has not been changed but I have deleted what I typed
https://glo…
Dear LazyWeb: I need to get my blog search off Google, it’s becoming unusable. Sometime in the last year I saw talk (Fedi posts I think?) about two different local-search packages (both JavaScript I think?). Thought I bookmarked ’em but can’t find ’em. Does this ring bells for anyone?
After sharing #vim and #neovim keybindings all over the place, I finally connected a couple of neurons and realized, 'Hey, maybe it’s time to share the one I actually use the most.' So here’s a handy little list, perfect for when I inevitably need to share them again (because I will).
…
Omar Fateh,
the son of Somali immigrants and a democratic socialist,
is a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Minneapolis
and seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey.
Fateh made history in 2020 by becoming the first Muslim and first Somali American to be elected to Minnesota’s state Senate.
Fateh has run for mayor on a platform advocating for rent stabilization,
raising the minimum wage
and reforming how the city handles public safety.
“…
Why does Trump want Greenland? “National security.”
Why should Trump’s ballroom vanity project proceed? “National security.”
Why is Trump killing the wind energy industry? “National security.”
Why does #Trump hate the New York Times? “National security.”
The pattern is ... not subtle.
☑️ For the
The victim numbers keep climbing in this #flooding event, geographically widespread across the Indian Ocean. Cyclones and monsoon have combined to affect the Indonesian Peninsula, Sumatra, and even Sri Lanka on the other side with torrential rains with single day values greater than the entire typical month. These are rare events becoming more common under
"catching a few 'bad cops' cannot, and has never, changed #police culture. What we need is a proactive, culture-improving model: one that identifies, rewards, and replicates the kind of policing that protects and saves lives."
An excellent summary here via @… about how the structures of our civil society have failed to stop ICE from becoming Trump’s Brownshirts.
The one thing the piece omits: someone •is• stopping ICE. It’s the citizens filling the streets, honking and shouting and filming and generally harassing ICE, doing the work our government has failed to do. If it were not for that response being so widespread, sustained, and forceful, we’d be in far worse place right now. https://mastodon.social/@AnnaAnthro/115616389777857234
"I'm an average user, so I don't need all the options and apps the programme has to offer. But, to be honest, #Microsoft is making it increasingly attractive to switch. Now that the company is putting #AI in everything, everything is becoming more annoying to use."
Can Dutch
Big Tech's dominance on the S&P 500 is becoming more extreme; the eight biggest tech stocks account for 60% of the gains since the market bottomed in April 2025 (George Steer/Financial Times)
In an effort to avoid becoming a boomer, I bought some Dubai chocolate. Verdict: it’s fine. Don’t understand the fuss.
Next up, I’ll buy a Labubu, I guess.
Am I supposed to feel sympathy when someone keeps all their data on a single platform's "free" services & then loses access arbitrarily and has no access to "their" data?
I can certainly join them in anger again the #platform but, there really needs to be more awareness of the risks of becoming so dependent on companies and the need to keep control of your
The #genAI *research* bubble will burst around the same time; it’s largely driven by the economic promises, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that, as for any technology, it’s not going to scale up indefinitely: some *actual* research will be necessary to advance the SOTA.
As @…
The #genAI *research* bubble will burst around the same time; it’s largely driven by the economic promises, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that, as for any technology, it’s not going to scale up indefinitely: some *actual* research will be necessary to advance the SOTA.
As @…
congrats on donald trump becoming the first openly queer US president ❤️
This weekend I watched Mike Monteiro's "How to draw an orange" keynote and I think more people should. Because while it has some great "AI" criticism emerging from a deeply humanist and creative perspective I really enjoyed how it talks more about the structures that keep us from becoming ourselves. It's such a treat.
https://w…
I am so sick of how badly companies maintain their software.
Take Roku. Their devices are rapidly becoming less reliable than a 1960 Austin Healey - meaning that you always have to have al alternate 'cause something is always broken.
Today it was the Roku Media Player. It no longer can play .mp4 files that it used to be able to play. It can do the sound, but not the video. It used to do 'em both, with decent synchronization.
But now, nope. Has Roku become yet a…
Tennessee just turned exhausted farmland into something remarkable. Middle Fork Bottoms State Park now teems with wildlife and draws 15,000 visitors monthly.
The secret? Letting floodplains do what they do best—control floods, filter water, recharge groundwater naturally.
It's becoming a model for climate solutions across neighboring states.
Whereas with our tiny not-for-profit, Small Technology Foundation, we set things up so we don’t have shares/ownership and we only receive a salary and pay all our taxes. Which is how it should be and would be perfectly fine if we taxed these motherfuckers their fair share also.
PS. I know I suck at advocating for ourselves but here’s your infrequent reminder that you can help us continue to exist, should you like to see that, by becoming a patron:
Hundreds of megawatts of new data center capacity are being planned in Vernon, a city near LA, which is a key US-Asia cable-linking hub and is becoming crowded (Nilesh Christopher/Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/202
The rise of candidates centering gun violence is a result of the growing prevention movement across the US, which has become something of 👉a pipeline for new candidates running for office.
#Maxwell #Frost, the nation’s first gen Z US representative, started off as a volunteer before becoming organizing director for <…
Tensions over right-wing antisemitism have burst to the forefront of Republican politics,
and show signs of becoming a fierce point of contention in the midterms and beyond.
For years, Jewish Republicans often denied that the right had a serious problem with antisemitism,
pointing instead to anti-Jewish bigotry on the left and celebrating President Trump’s support for Israel.
But now that problem is staring them directly in the face.
Tensions over antisemitism in…
Amnesty: So-Called Gaza 'Ceasefire' becoming Smokescreen for continued Israeli Genocide
https://www.juancole.com/2025/11/ceasefire-smokescreen-continued.html
Guangzhou is quietly becoming a blueprint for sustainable cities.
The Chinese megacity has transformed urban living with vertical gardens replacing concrete, parks built over malls, and green spaces woven throughout. They're prioritizing clean transit and renewable energy while proving dense cities can actually improve quality of life.
Extrajudicial killings within the Russian military are becoming more widespread,
according to an investigation published by the Russian independent outlet Verstka.
The practice of "nullifying" (Russian: "obnulenie")
— the Russian military's term for executing its soldiers
— increasingly involves sending personnel on deadly assualt missions without proper protection
Nvidia opens at a $5T market cap, becoming the first company to hit the milestone, climbing 5% in early trading; NVDA is up 50% in 2025 and 1,275% since 2022 (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/62933c70-261c-4b7a-a045-3f9f9cceccd7
Johannesburg is showing African cities how climate action gets done.
The city is racing toward net-zero by 2050 with bold moves: diverting 100% of garden waste from landfills by 2040, building micro-grids in informal settlements, and creating jobs while cutting emissions.
Their approach is becoming a model for scalable climate solutions across the continent.
The tug-of-war over space shuttle Discovery is becoming more volatile.
Discovery — the crown jewel of the Smithsonian Institution's Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia
— is the subject of a political battle over whether the shuttle should remain part of the National Air and Space Museum's collection
or be relocated to Houston, home to NASA's Johnson Space Center.
New correspondence between the space agency, Ted Cruz and the Smithsonian shows both the p…
"UK ‘risks becoming dumping ground’ for products linked to modern slavery
#UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.
Indonesia and other developing countries are becoming AI hubs amid the multitrillion-dollar spending boom, in part driven by an "AI decolonization" philosophy (Stu Woo/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.w…
Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka said his non-resident visa to enter the U.S. had been rejected, adding that he believes it may be because he recently criticized President Trump.
The Nigerian author, 91, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, becoming the first African to do so.
Speaking to the press on Tuesday, Soyinka said he believed it had little to do with him and was instead a product of the United States’ immigration policies. He said he was told to reapply if he…
Mem0, which aims to build a "memory passport" so users' AI memory can travel across their devices, apps, and agents, raised $24M, including a $20M Series A (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/mem0
Self-hosting is becoming popular among a certain kind of user,
-- say the typical readership of ItsFoss.
There is a simple explanation for this shift:
people want their data, dollars, and destiny back.
Centralized platforms optimized for engagement and extraction are colliding with real-world needs
— privacy, compliance, predictability, and craft.
Linux, containers, and a flood of polished open-source apps have turned what used to be an enthusiast’s pro…
ICE has used the pretext of combating antisemitism to target dissidents.
A branch of the agency previously used to target drug smugglers and human traffickers has reportedly been directed to scan social media for posts sympathetic to Hamas.
Though ICE is ostensibly still bound by constitutional limits,
the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making.
They typically meet five criteria:
they’re a police force targeting pol…
Beckstrom initially did not want to go to the capital because she was concerned about feeling lonely away from home.
“She hated it. She cried about it,” her boyfriend said.
But with time, she came to enjoy the deployment and bonded with other troops.
In her spare time, he said, she visited monuments and museums, taking pictures and soaking up D.C.’s history.
She was especially interested in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
PUBG maker Krafton unveils an "AI First" strategy, investing ~$70M to build a GPU cluster to automate AI workflows and strengthen AI R&D and in-game AI services (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/805509/krafton-pubg-ai-…
South Carolina already ranks 8th nationally in highest maternal mortality rate,
and MAGA extremists are vying to become #1.
Now, for the third time since 2023, MAGA Republicans in South Carolina have introduced
S 323, also known as
The Unborn Child Protection Act.
South Carolina Senate Bill 323 is one of the most extreme pieces of legislation we’ve seen.
It proposes changing the legal definition of the word “person” to include an unborn fetus.
Th…
Republican congressman Thomas Massie challenged Donald Trump on Sunday
over whether the US president is making a “last-ditch effort” to keep the full files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein from becoming public
by ordering a fresh investigation.
Massie and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna,
the two US representatives leading the bipartisan push to make all the files held by the government public
both raised fresh concerns about the latest actions by the Wh…
Morgan Stanley: ad tiers account for 30% of Netflix subscribers and 50% of Disney subscribers; ad tiers accounted for all net subscriber additions in 2025 (Max Knoblauch/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/business/netflix-and-disne…
While the US can protect security in Europe and deserves our undying gratitude for having done so for the last 80 years,
Europeans cannot protect democracy in the US.
They can and must, however, protect liberal democracy in Europe,
which risks becoming a collateral victim of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agenda.
What happens in America doesn’t stay in America.
It is often a precursor for trends in Europe.
Just as the
Casualty figures for Drone Operators are not disclosed
but widely understood to be high
And Ukraine is becoming reliant on civilians to fill roles that once belonged to trained military personnel.
A short but intensive 15-day course is given to a trainee operator for frontline deployment,
a turnaround that reflects the urgent need.
Eli Lilly, the maker of hugely popular weight loss drugs, has reached $1 trillion in value, becoming the first publicly traded company in health care to hit the milestone.
The second-most valuable health care company, Johnson & Johnson, is worth about half a trillion dollars.
Lilly’s stock has surged in large part because of the company’s success in seizing the biggest potential market in the history of the drug industry:
the class of weight loss medicines known as GLP-1…
An older adult with underlying health conditions is believed to be the first person to die from a rare strain of bird flu,
but Washington state health officials said on Friday the risk to the public is low.
The person – from Grays Harbor county, about 78 miles (125km) south-west of Seattle – had a backyard flock of domestic poultry that had been exposed to wild birds.
The person was treated for the H5N5 bird flu strain after becoming seemingly the first known human infected…