Tootfinder

Jensen Huang says its Blackwell GPUs are now in full production in Arizona, after being solely manufactured in Taiwan previously (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/nvidia-jensen-huang-gtc-washington-dc-ai.html

Jensen Huang says Nvidia's AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona
Previously, Nvidia's fastest GPUs were solely manufactured in Taiwan.

Trump un-banned the use of no-click, smartphone Spyware for use by ICE against immigrants & PROTESTORS.
☑️ICE reactivates contract with previously banned spyware vendor
https://wapo.st/4httse1
(Archive:

ICE reactivates contract with previously banned spyware vendor
The Biden administration had barred Paragon Solutions from U.S. government use after finding that the company’s software had been used unethically elsewhere.

I began earlier than previously thought

Spotify raises UK prices by £1 after previously raising them in April 2024; the Premium individual monthly plan will now cost £12.99 (Mandy Dalugdug/Music Business Worldwide)
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spo

Spotify raises UK and Switzerland Premium prices again as analysts see US hike by early 2026
The 8.3% increase marks the second time in 18 months that the Swedish streaming giant has raised UK prices by £1.

Richard Murphy, who previously advocated green growth, gets there in the end.
"The real challenge we face is not how to restart a growth engine that has already driven us to the edge of environmental collapse. It is how to redesign the economy so that the resources we already have are used to meet human and ecological needs.
Growth is not coming back — and nor should our democracy depend upon it."

Growth is not coming back — and nor should our democracy depend upon it
Martin Wolf has (once again) declared in the Financial Times that the fate of democracy rests on economic growth. As he said, in advance of the Budget: [Reeves'] first priority must be to get whatever growth she can.  Growth made democracy possible, he claims, and only growth can now save it, in...

For ESA’s mission #Vigil to forecast dangerous space weather, #mpsgoettingen is providing one of the key instruments: Vigil's Photospheric Magnetic Field Imager. Read more about the instrument and the science we plan to do with it here:

The CCGS Amundsen is a Canadian research icebreaker run by the non-profit Amundsen Science at Université Laval and operated by Canadian Coast Guard. This past summer, the ship was able to navigate into areas previously off limits due to very thick multi-year ice (5 yrs, 7 or more metres thick). There is much less of this thick stable ice in the Arctic now due to #ClimateChange, meaning prev…

Cool Dark Gas in Cygnus X - The First Large-scale Mapping of Low-frequency Carbon Recombination Lines: #MilkyWay: https://public.nrao.edu/news/astronomers-map-mysterious-dark-gas-in-the-milky-way/ - new research exposes CO-dark molecular gas, previously invisible to telescopes, uncovering the hidden building blocks of our Galaxy.

I figure even if it is someday possible for the transhumanists to upload themselves into a machine, it will be a nightmare attempting to later transplant themselves into the new improved updated wow machine that will someday replace it!
Folks who balk about Mastodon not letting you migrate your entire presence elsewhere likely have never tried to extricate their personal workflow from a 15 year old laptop! 😅
That is, of course, AFTER previously spending an hour or so to weed out the about:config AI functions and add no-AI search engines to the fresh Firefox install 😞
Yes, I have contemplated installing Emacs and nothing else. Would seem the only sensible thing to do, but 'sensible' was never listed on my report card.

C.J. Gardner-Johnson signs with third team of the season, per report

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/c-j-gardner-johnson-bears-dennis-allen-defensive-secondary/

#Measles On The Rise Across Globe As #Vaccination Rates Decline...Third World Has Highest Spike, But #USA in The Mix As Well Now.

Now that the Epstein Transparency Act has passed both Houses,
the Department of Justice is obligated to share with the public thousands of previously secret documents, emails, and photos.
Although many critics are concerned that redactions will make these documents ineffectual in exposing the predators and predator protectors,
there is still hope that these women will finally be able to reveal the corruption that has survived multiple presidential administrations.
…

Thanks to Epstein, America’s elite are losing control of the narrative
The Epstein Transparency Act may trigger the most significant crack in oligarchic power in a generation. With Congress compelling the DOJ to reveal Epstein’s secret files, the protective wall around America’s most powerful men is beginning to crumble. This moment could be the first genuine challenge to the impunity enjoyed by the country’s wealthiest predators.

📝How a 10’ coding session with copilot 🧑🏻‍💻 added tags to 10 years of blogging #hugo

Add tags automatically to this blog · Technical inconsistencies blog
When starting this blog, I didn’t think about adding tags. As time passed, I wondered about adding them, but back-filling them was a chore. But with LLMs, this can be done relatively quickly and easily: Pass the LLM some text, and it will happily tell you which tags you might use. And, while you’re at it, it can create the script to call the LLM on all the posts and the code to visualize tags (which were previously hidden).

In the Skyraider II crash in Oklahoma the other day, I hadn't previously seen this angle showing the stop sign. I guess they did eventually come to a complete stop!
(Everyone on the ground and in the plane was OK, thanks to a driver with a dashcam noticing and swerving out of the way, whence this sti…

CBS News hires Charles Forelle, who recently left his role as deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal; he had been with the WSJ since 2002 (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/cbs-news-hires-wsjs-forelle/

CBS News hires WSJ's Forelle - Talking Biz News
Charles Forelle, who recently left his role as deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal, has been hired at CBS News in a similar role, reports Lachlan Cartwright of Breaker. He had been deputy editor in chief at The Journal since 2023. He was previously financial editor and had been a reporter at the Journal since 2002, […]

EU member states backed a revised proposal to combat online child sexual abuse, despite opposition from Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, and the Netherlands.
The plan allows companies to voluntarily scan encrypted messages as part of risk-mitigation duties, replacing earlier mandatory detection orders. Germany’s shift secured a qualified majority.
The Council will now negotiate final wording with the European Parliament, which previously rejected the scanning.

I don't need to buy gasoline very often thanks the the PHEV, but I did ned to fill up last night. It was an Esso station where in addition to showing me ads on the pump screen, the tiny speaker started squawking audio for the ads. This happened to me previously on a road trip. The other brand stations—around here at least—don't play obnoxious audio ads.
No one is measuring my displeasure here. There's no cancel/mute button.
I'm done with Esso. I'll go out of m…

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation
Local Plans are what guide the pattern of a land use and and building across a council area.  In the case of Greater Manchester (excluding Stockport), the Joint Strategic Plan, Places for Everyone sets the scene, as does the government's National Planning Policy Framework.  That means that there are some very real constraints on what can be put into a so-called Local Plan (not very local - in the case of…

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation
UPDATE!  11 Nov.  We have now submitted a revised version.  It adds some answers to questions we didn’t address in the previously published draft, and has some additions to some of the other …

The other day, @… published a agreat video explaining whats is wrong with the Digital Omnibus, a bundle of laws the EU commission wants to pass quickly in order to weaken the data protection standards the EU previously established in the GDPR.
My favourite quote is what @…

Internal memo: Meta's head of AI product Nat Friedman says Vishal Shah, who previously led the metaverse unit, is joining his team to lead AI product management (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/89a089db-432e-44eb-96e3-21f9ffce555c

Follow-up: looks like the possibility mentioned previously will become a reality:

Jerry Jones previously eyed Sean Payton for Cowboys job, but timing never aligned, he explains

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/jerry-j…

🦠 Genomes of 24,000 previously unknown microbes revealed by new tools
#microbes

Genomes of 24,000 previously unknown microbes revealed by new tools
QUT researchers have recovered the genomes of more than 24,000 previously unknown microbial species—some from entirely new branches of life that likely evolved before plants and animals. The microbes are detailed in two studies published in Nature Biotechnology and Nature Methods.

@… the endless 'pkg autoremove' issue may be be fixed. IIRC it was previously reproducible after deleting a meta package or two.

Donald Trump has bizarrely claimed he didn’t approve of the massive ICE raid of a Hyundai manufacturing plant in Georgia.
“I was very much opposed,”
the MAGA leader told reporters aboard Air Force One,
en route to Japan as part of his wider diplomatic tour of Asia.
Hyundai is a major South Korean car manufacturer.
On Oct. 29, Trump will meet with its President, Lee Jae Myung, who has previously blasted the raid.
She warned the action would have severe con…

Trump Hammers His Own ICE Goons to Suck Up to Foreign Leader
He is slamming ICE over a raid at a U.S. Hyundai plant as he prepares to meet with South Korea’s president.

watching die hard as is tradition
i had not previously noticed the sleigh bells in the soundtrack

"Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country"
#Iceland #Mosquitoes #Climate

My company is not presently hiring anyone.
But if it were I would have a policy that said that any candidate who had previously worked for ICE was automatically disqualified and would not be hired as an employee or used in any consulting (or similar) relationship.

About Manchester’s Local Plan and how to respond to the consultation.
#Manchester #planning #LandUse

Manchester’s Local Plan – responding to the consultation
UPDATE!  11 Nov.  We have now submitted a revised version.  It adds some answers to questions we didn’t address in the previously published draft, and has some additions to some of the other …

Updating previously this morning I realized the quartet Slackware, Gentoo, FreeBSD and Nix really covers all my nerd-needs 🤓

I wasn't previously aware, but apparently the government is looking, again, at updating the Computer Misuse Act 1990 with proposals to protect researchers. (Although I haven't seen an open consultation since 2023.)

Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time after record heat https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyz3vv62pgo?at_medium=RSS/Mastodon
Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country

Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time after record heat
Previously the country was one of the world's only mosquito-free zones.

"Trump travelled on Epstein's plane more than previously thought, prosecutor says"
where there is mega smoke there is fire

Just another corrupt Trump crony getting a pardon.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/23/trump-pardons-binance-founder-changpeng-zhao/

Good Morning #Canada
I'm sitting my sunroom sipping coffee and contemplating the year that's past, and thinking about #NewYearsResolutions. I've never previously indulged in making promises to myself that I forget about in a few months, but I might make one for 2026. According to Narrative Research, 48% of Canadians made resolutions in 2025, with most setting goals related to health or finances. More than 71% are confident they’ll reach their 2025 goals. Quebec residents are more likely to have made a resolution for 2025, and resolutions are more likely for Canadians age 34 or younger, with the likelihood decreasing with age.
What about you? Please select an option from the survey below, and please boost for additional data collection. I've included a tune to set the mood.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Poll
Do you make New Years Resolutions?
Yes, and I always complete them.
Yes, but I don't remember any.
Maybe, but it's confidential and between me and my bathroom scale.
No, I prefer to enjoy life, one day at a time.
I only make resolutions for other people.

As I said previously, I do, do ❤️ ridges... This was six days ago, on almost the last day of autumn (meanwhile it's all white)...
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Hiking

Expedition 33 is one of my all time fav games but I'm happy the Indie Game Dev Awards is taking a hard line on AI in games.
https://mashable.com/article/clair-obscur-expedition-33-indie-game-awards-revoked-ai

Die #Klimakrise trifft #Island:
Erstmals wurden in Island #Mücken nachgewiesen. Drei Exemplare der kälteresistenten Art Culiseta annulata wurden im Westen des Landes entdeckt.
Durch di…

Cowboys Announce Reunion With Previously Suspended DB https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/julius-wood-reunite-with-previously-suspended-db/?adt_ei=[email]

Chomsky had deeper ties with Epstein than previously known, documents reveal (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/22/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-ties-emails
http://www.memeorandum.com/251122/p63#a251122p63

Amazon's #Deadline renderfarm manager is now in "maintenance mode". It was only a matter of time until they made it AWS cloud only... They had previously discontinued the built-in on-demand render licensing and made it AWS cloud only.
I need to look at alternatives in the long term. But for now it works nicely in our pipeline and doesn't need new features. The only proble…

the grand opening of oakshire place mobile home sales of union city, tennessee, may 1970, with free entertainment by... who?! (i don't think this was a previously known/rumored VU date?)

"This Week in Videogames spoke to a dozen professional concept artists in the wake of Vincke’s comments, all of whom currently or have previously worked in game development, ranging from indie studios to large AAA developers. All, without exception, said that ‌generative AI image tools had only made their lives more difficult – even when simply used as reference material."

Two information panels about Black soldiers have been installed just outside the American military cemetery in Margraten, The Netherlands. The action was undertaken by a Dutch TV channel.
Similar panels had previously been permanently removed from the cemetery by the Trump administration.
News article in Dutch:
https://nos.nl/l/2591602

Tv-programma zet nieuwe panelen naast begraafplaats Margraten
De twee panelen met informatie over zwarte Amerikaanse militairen werden onthuld in het bijzijn van nazaten. De VS had eerder dergelijke panelen verwijderd.

I just updated 8 libraries I maintain to run on PHP 8.5.
None of them required any changes for 8.5. One had two deprecation nitpicks left over from 8.4 that I'd not previously caught, trivially fixed.
It took me a little over an hour to do all 8, including some other maintenance at the same time.
PHP upgrades rock if your code is good. 🙂 :elephpant:
#PHP

Bengals DC Al Golden says players-only meeting following loss to Jets underscores 'sense of urgency' https://www.nfl.com/news/bengals-dc-al-golden-says-players-only-meeting-following-loss-to-jets-underscores-sense-…

Sign up for the Convention Zero games and events are open ... And so it's the sign up for my 'lil seminar about keeping backups for creative folks:
https://warhorn.net/events/conzero-fall-2025
It will be held this Saturday at 8 am EST, 1 pm GMT, 2 pm CET.

What Really Doomed Napoleon’s Army? Scientists Find New Clues in DNA https://www.404media.co/what-really-doomed-napoleons-army-scientists-find-new-clues-in-dna/

“Additionally, Cursor’s Amazon Web Services bills more than doubled from $6.2 million in May 2025 to $12.6 million in June 2025, exacerbating a cash crunch that began when Anthropic introduced Priority Service Tiers, an aggressive rent-seeking measure that begun what I call the Subprime AI Crisis, where model providers begin jacking up the prices on their previously subsidized rates.”
#SubprimeAI
https://www.wheresyoured.at/costs/?ref=ed-zitrons-wheres-your-ed-at-newsletter

Greg Olson to take over as offensive playcaller https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-greg-olson-interim-offensive-coordinator-pete-carroll-2025-coaching-staff

🥳 New Kitten Release
• Reduces minimum Bash version requirement for installing Kitten to Bash 3.2 (was previously Bash 5 ). This removes the requirement for people on macOS to upgrade the ancient version of Bash that Apple ships with their desktop operating system. (If you’re on Linux none of this was ever an issue for you.)¹
• Updates runtime to Node 24.12.0, the latest long-term support (LTS) version.

Posting this here for others with #LongCovid.
One of the things I've done this year is rule out potential other causes of my symptoms (imaging, blood work, neurological testing). This, in addition to treating symptoms as best I can (insomnia, brain fog, joint pain, double vision, tinnitus, hearing loss, etc.).
This fall, I wrapped up with neurology (I didn't want to, a…

"As people’s access to the world is so much influenced by what’s digitally accessible, and as we’re seeing the undermining of whatever might have previously passed as authentic, it’s absolutely essential that we are offering the user buttressing evidence that proves the authenticity of what they’re looking at."

🌴 Making LAZY plants stand up: Research reveals new pathway plants use to detect gravity
#plants <…

Making LAZY plants stand up: Research reveals new pathway plants use to detect gravity
A study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has revealed a previously unknown pathway plants use to detect gravity and orient the direction they grow in. Publishing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study may one day open the door for improvements in crop cultivation.

„Tech companies’ use of Pfas gas at facilities may mean datacenters’ climate impact is worse than previously thought“ (via @… )
https://www.

https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/12/trump-formally-taps-joshua-rudd-lead-nsa-cyber-command/410266/
“Rudd, the current deputy director for Indo-Pacific Command, appears to not have previously held a military cybersecurity po…

Trump formally taps Joshua Rudd to lead NSA, Cyber Command
The nomination marks a turning point for the electronic surveillance and hacking teams that have been without a permanent leader for eight months.

Games That Weren't: How can you possibly squeeze a 32-bit PlayStation CD ROM game into a small Game Boy Color Cartridge? Well, HotGen would attempt to do just that with a conversion of Resident Evil in mid-1999 and to make it as close as possible with similar 3D perspectives using scaled sprites.
https://www.ga…

The Worst Greenhouse Gas on Planet Earth: #SF6 💨🟡🌍🔥
Scientists have identified a factory in Germany emitting far more of the world's most damaging greenhouse gas than officially reported.
I previously covered this in my newsletter and have now also made a short video presentation 🎥

South Korean prosecutors allege China's CXMT mass-produced 10nm-class DRAM using leaked Samsung tech, indicting 10 employees who previously worked for Samsung (Heo Kyungjun/아시아 ...)
https://cm.asiae.co.kr/en/article/2025122311034625685

Prosecutors Indict Former Samsung Executive and Others for Leaking ‘K-Semiconductor’ Technology to China’s CXMT
The prosecution has uncovered the full extent of a case involving the leak of Samsung Electronics’ state-designated core technology for 10-nanometer-c...

Yet one more adverse impact of climate change:
"Greater warmth enables pests to develop faster, produce more generations each year and attack crops for longer as winters shorten. Rising temperatures are also helping pests invade places further from the equator and on higher ground that were previously too cold"
In hindsight, not surprising - but this is the first time I have seen this impact publicly discussed.
‘Borrowed time’: crop pests and food losses superchar…

Yet one more adverse impact of climate change:
"Greater warmth enables pests to develop faster, produce more generations each year and attack crops for longer as winters shorten. Rising temperatures are also helping pests invade places further from the equator and on higher ground that were previously too cold"
In hindsight, not surprising - but this is the first time I have seen this impact publicly discussed.
‘Borrowed time’: crop pests and food losses superchar…

North Korea on Thursday displayed apparent progress in the construction of a
nuclear-powered submarine,
with state media photos showing a largely completed hull,
as leader Kim Jong Un condemned rival South Korea’s push to acquire the technology.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim visited a shipyard to inspect the construction of what the North describes as
an 8,700-ton-class nuclear-propelled submarine,
which the leader has called a…

North Korea shows progress on nuclear-powered submarine
North Korea displayed apparent progress in the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine, with state media photos showing a largely completed hull as leader Kim Jong Un condemned rival South Korea’s push to acquire the technology. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on Thursday said Kim had visited a shipyard to inspect the construction of what the North describes as an 8,700-ton-class nuclear-propelled submarine, which he has previously called a crucial step in the moderniz…

Hyperbolic Dispersion and Low-Frequency Plasmons in Electrides
Qi-Dong Hao, Hao Wang, Hong-Xing Song, Xiang-Rong Chen, Hua Y. Geng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17859 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.17859 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.17859
arXiv:2511.17859v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Natural hyperbolic materials have attracted significant interest in the field of photonics due to their unique optical properties. Based on the initial successful explorations on layered crystalline materials, hyperbolic dispersion was associated with extreme structural anisotropy, despite the rarity of natural materials exhibiting this property. Here we show that non cubic electrides are generally promising natural hyperbolic materials owing to charge localization in interstitial sites. This includes elemental and binary electrides, as well as some two-dimensional materials that show prominent in-plane hyperbolic dispersion. They exhibit low plasma frequencies and a broad hyperbolic window spanning the infrared to the ultraviolet. In semiconductor electrides, anisotropic interband transitions provide an additional mechanism for hyperbolic behaviour. These findings remove the previously held prerequisite of structural anisotropy for natural hyperbolic materials, and open up new opportunities, which might change the current strategy for searching and design photonic materials.
toXiv_bot_toot

Just finished "Kirby's Lessons for Falling (In Love)" by Laura Gao. I'd previously read her autobiographical graphic novel "Messy Roots" which was excellent, and this book continues that trend. Yet another complicated look at a Chinese-American immigrant experience, wrapped into a queer romance with a dose of spirituality in there as well. I think the background metaphor of falling is really strong, and gets used in so many senses it's beautiful.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

"One pretty foolproof way of encouraging right wing populism in the UK is to pretend the market requires public spending cuts when public spending levels are already weak."
mainly macro: What the call for fiscal headroom reveals
https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/

What the call for fiscal headroom reveals
  Everyone, including the IFS, is agreed that the Chancellor should in the budget create more fiscal headroom than she did previously. Rath...

Geek-speak. We chit-chat a lot about KDE 6.5, but if you have Slackware Current , kernel 6.17.4, Ghostty terminal, Mango (previously MaoMao) windowmanager DankMaterialShell running quite easily (and Niri is there also), you know you're onto something 😜
cc @…
#slackware

Molecular Gas in Major Mergers Hosting Dual and Single AGNs at <10 kpc Nuclear Separations: #BlackHoles May Be Picky Eaters: https://public.nrao.edu/news/super-massive-black-holes-may-be-picky-eaters/ - new ALMA research reveals galaxy mergers that feed black holes may be not be a the buffet astronomers previously thought.

🛡️ Big trees in Amazon more climate-resistant than previously believed
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/25/study-shows-big-trees-in-amazon-more-climate-resistant-than-previously-believed

With an influx of Meta alums, some OpenAI staffers worry it is adopting Meta's tactics, like using social media dynamics with Sora and a softening stance on ads (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-readies-facebook-era

OpenAI Readies Itself for Its Facebook Era
This summer, Fidji Simo wasted no time addressing a concern among many at OpenAI. Leading her first all-hands meeting as the startup’s new CEO of applications, she acknowledged that she and many others at OpenAI shared the same background: They’d previously worked at Meta Platforms. And then ...

Bolts' Hampton dealt with fracture, hopeful for Sun. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47113545/chargers-hampton-dealt-ankle-fracture-hopeful-sunday

Greg Olson to take over as offensive playcaller https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-greg-olson-interim-offensive-coordinator-pete-carroll-2025-coaching-staff

Netflix plans to release the Stranger Things S5 finale in 350 movie theaters in the US and Canada from December 31 to January 1, despite previous statements (James Hibberd/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-ne

Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ Series Finale Officially Coming to Theaters, Despite Previous Statements
The streamer has confirmed that the hit show's finale will be in theaters after previously seeming to shoot down the idea amid the show's creators, The Duffers Brothers, defecting to Paramount: "They would have been nuts not to do it."

FINANCIAL TIMES
The US and Ukraine have drafted a new 19-point peace deal,
but left the most politically sensitive elements to be decided by the countries' presidents,
according to Ukrainian first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya.
Washington had previously put Kyiv under pressure to agree a 28-point proposal that had been developed by US and Russian officials and crossed several long-standing Ukrainian red lines.
Kyslytsya, who was in the room as par…

US and Ukraine draft new 19-point peace plan but defer biggest decisions
The most politically sensitive elements are left for Trump and Zelenskyy to discuss

Were they perchance inspired by the Dutch government? (The shameful false accusations of childcare benefit fraud, which all but ruined numerous families, known in the Netherlands as the #toeslagenaffaire – still not fully resolved and remedied.)

Labour admits 60% of parents wrongly targeted in HMRC child benefit fraud crackdown
Exclusive: Scale of government’s anti-fraud fiasco is four times higher than previously admitted

South Africa considers site near African penguin colony for third nuclear power plant https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/south-africa-considers-site-near-african-penguin-colony-for-third-nuclear-pow…

South Africa considers site near African penguin colony for third nuclear power plant
South African state electricity company Eskom is reevaluating two sites to host the country’s third nuclear power plant, having previously dismissed both for an earlier facility. The two potential sites are Thyspunt, on the Eastern Cape coast, and Bantamsklip, near Dyer Island in the Western Cape, home to a significant, but declining colony of critically […]

🫓 Ultra-flat optic pushes beyond what was previously thought possible
#optics

Ultra-flat optic pushes beyond what was previously thought possible
Cameras are everywhere. For over two centuries, these devices have grown increasingly popular and proven to be so useful, they have become an indispensable part of modern life.

On Sunday night Bari Weiss,
the editor of The Free Press and the new head of CBS News,
abruptly stopped a forthcoming 60 Minutes report on the torture endured by migrants in the brutal El Salvadoran prison CECOT,
where the Trump administration has sent more than 280 men.
Trump supporters praised the decision from Weiss, who,
notwithstanding her description of conditions at CECOT as “horrific,”
had previously praised El Salvadoran leader Nayib Bukele for ma…

Cancel Culture’s Boomerang Effect
How we got to a place where free speech means whatever conservatives want to say

Indirect CW for teen pregnancy, rape, death.
Just finished "Girls Like Us" by Randi Pink. Pink has a knack for telling stories that capture the grim but also vibrant nuances of African-American history. I previously read "Under the Heron's Light" which has more elements of magical realism and connects more directly to the history of enslavement; "Girls Like Us" is more historical fiction, with a bridge at the end to contemporary times (circa 2019, when the book was published). It tells the story of a disparate group of mostly-Black teens who are pregnant in 1972, and shows a range of different outcomes as varied as the backstories of the different girls. Rather than just separate vignettes, the girls' stories are women together into a single plot, and Pink is a expert at pulling us in to deeply contemplate all the complexities of these girls' lives, showing rather than telling us truths about the politics of teen pregnancy and abortion, and how even though the choices involved don't have simple answers, taking those choices out of the hands of the people they most intimately affect is cruel and deadly.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

"Biodiversity loss due to land use change could be highly underestimated: Study"
#Animals #Biodiversity

Biodiversity loss due to land use change could be highly underestimated: Study
A survey of Colombian birdlife, which evolved over more than a decade into the world’s largest-ever ornithological study, has found that clearing forests to create new pastures is causing as much as 60% more damage to biodiversity than previously thought. Until now, research into the impact on biodiversity of land use change has generally involved […]

The Boston Globe says Brian McGrory will return as editor, after Nancy Barnes' departure at the end of 2025; McGrory previously was editor from 2012 to 2023 (Aidan Ryan/The Boston Globe)
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/15/business/boston-globe-edito…

Brian McGrory rejoins Boston Globe as editor
McGrory, currently the chair of Boston University’s journalism department, previously served as Globe editor from 2012 until early 2023.

Contribution of Thermal Tides to Venus Upper Cloud-Layer Superrotation: #Venus Identified: https://eos.org/research-spotlights/key-driver-of-extreme-winds-on-venus-identified - a new study suggests that a once-daily atmospheric tidal cycle may be a bigger driver of rapid Venusian winds than previously thought.

Elon Musk says Grok 5 would be released "in Q1 sometime", later than a deadline he previously set of releasing the model by the end of 2025 (Theo Wayt/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/elon-musks-xai-delays-grok-5-rele…

Elon Musk’s xAI Delays Grok 5 Release to Next Year
XAI plans to release its next-generation Grok 5 artificial intelligence model in the first three months of next year, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday. That’s later than a deadline Musk had previously set of releasing the model by the end of 2025. In an interview with the investor Ron Baron, who has backed several Musk companies including xAI, Musk said that Grok 5 would be released “in Q1

🫙 Light-triggered process lets 3D printers create custom glass structures without glue or high temperatures
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-triggered-3d-printers-custom-glass.html

Light-triggered process lets 3D printers create custom glass structures without glue or high temperatures
Researchers have developed the first binder-free method for 3D printing glass, using light to trigger a chemical reaction that directly forms silica structures without the need for organic additives or extreme heat. This breakthrough makes glass printing faster, cleaner, and more precise, with the potential to revolutionize fields from optics to medicine by enabling custom, high-performance glass components that were previously impossible to manufacture.

Google says it needs more time to upgrade Assistant to Gemini on most Android devices; Google previously planned to complete the transition by the end of 2025 (Mariella Moon/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-assista

Google Assistant will stick around a bit longer than expected for some Android users
Google has announced that it needs a bit more time to make Gemini the new default digital helper for most of its users.

Coinbase confirms that it has called off acquisition talks with stablecoin infra startup BVNK; reports previously put the acquisition price around $2B (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/11/11/coinbase-bvnk-2-billion-deal-falls-through-stableco…

Exclusive: Coinbase and stablecoin startup BVNK call off $2 billion acquisition
BVNK was previously fielding offers from not only Coinbase but Mastercard.

BBC News hires Lindsay McIntosh, previously Head of News at The Sunday Times, as its Executive News Editor (BBC Press Office on LinkedIn)
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7407013484615409664

We are delighted to announce Lindsay McIntosh as the new Executive News Editor, BBC News.    As Executive News Editor, Lindsay will be at the heart of the BBC newsroom – driving the BBC’s editorial… | BBC Press Office
We are delighted to announce Lindsay McIntosh as the new Executive News Editor, BBC News.    As Executive News Editor, Lindsay will be at the heart of the BBC newsroom – driving the BBC’s editorial agenda and working across BBC News to ensure we continue to deliver high quality, distinctive news across our platforms.   Lindsay joins us from The Sunday Times where she is currently the Head of News and oversees its award-winning political and investigative journalism across digital and pr…

AWS says services have "returned to normal operations" after an outage in its US-EAST-1 region, first reported at 3:11am ET, that took down major websites (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/20/amazon-web-services-outage-takes-down-major-we…

AWS services recover after daylong outage hits major sites
Downdetector previously showed user reports of problems at sites including Amazon, Snapchat, Disney+, Reddit and Canva.

Trump is just the worst!
The National Park Service is reshuffling its free-admission schedule
so that visitors get in free on Donald Trump’s birthday next year,
while Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth (previously free days) will now require regular entrance fees.
https://bsky.app…

Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social)
Trump is just the worst! The National Park Service is reshuffling its free-admission schedule so that visitors get in free on Donald Trump’s birthday next year, while Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth (previously free days) will now require regular entrance fees. https://www.axios.com/2025/12/05/national-park-service-free-days-2026-trump-birthday-mlk-juneteenth

🧋 Study: There is less room to store carbon dioxide, driver of climate change, than previously thought
#co2

Study: There is less room to store carbon dioxide, driver of climate change, than previously thought
The world has far fewer places to securely store carbon dioxide deep underground than previously thought, steeply lowering its potential to help stem global warming, according to a new study that challenges long-held industry claims about the practice.

Alibaba Cloud details a GPU pooling system that it claims reduced the number of Nvidia H20 required by 82% when serving dozens of LLMs of up to 72B parameters (Vincent Chow/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3329

Alibaba Cloud claims to slash Nvidia GPU use by 82% with new pooling system
The new Aegaeon system can serve dozens of large language models using a fraction of the GPUs previously required, potentially reshaping AI workloads.

The BBC says "as we have made clear previously, we will be defending" against Trump's defamation lawsuit and "we are not going to make further comment" (Christal Hayes/BBC)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvd81470v1o

BBC says it will defend Trump defamation lawsuit over Panorama speech edit
The US president is requesting $5bn (£3.7bn) in damages, according to court documents filed in Florida.

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…

How ICE is becoming a secret police force under the Trump administration
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement meets most criteria that have defined secret police forces in authoritarian regimes. And the worst may be yet to come.

A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department have spilled that
the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported, according to journalist David Schuster.
Michael Wolff, a longtime chronicler of Trump’s White House who conducted extensive interviews with Epstein prior to his death, told The Daily Beast last month that
Epstein had shown him photos of Trump with half-naked “young girls” in his lap.

DOJ Admits to Republicans That Epstein Files Are Even Worse for Trump
Details in the files are reportedly even more damning for Donald Trump than previously indicated—and it was already bad.

TSMC reports Q3 net profit up 39% YoY to ~$14.8B, beating est., after previously reporting a 30% rise in revenue, the latest sign of robust spending on AI chips (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

The American Library Association (ALA) has touted a "massive win"
after previously revoked federal funding for libraries and museums was reinstated nationwide.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
announced on Wednesday it had
"reinstated all federal grants,"
8 months after an executive order from Donald Trump kick-started a firestorm
at the agency that supports the nation’s libraries.
Most of IMLS' staff, and i…

Library Grants Reinstated Nationwide After ‘Massive’ Legal Victory
Grants being restored after a Trump and DOGE firestorm are being hailed as "a massive win for libraries."

Trump's latest pardons underscore the breadth of his efforts to clear anyone involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which was won by Joe Biden.
Donald Trump on Friday issued a second pardon to Daniel Edwin Wilson,
whom he had previously pardoned for participation in the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,
but was in prison on a separate gun charge. The action was announced Saturday morning.

Trump also pardoned Suzanne Kaye, who had been sentenced to…

Trump gives second pardon to Jan. 6 participant and pardons two others
The latest pardons underscore the breadth of the efforts the president has taken to clear anyone involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Testing confirmed the patient has H5N5, a strain of bird flu that has previously been reported in animals but never before in humans
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/suspected-human-bird-flu-case-1st-us-9/story?id=127519769

1st US human bird flu case in 9 months confirmed with strain only seen in animals before
The patient is an older adult with underlying health conditions.

Sources: Microsoft's US data center crunch will last through H1 2026, longer than previously outlined, as the company restricts new Azure cloud subscriptions (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

The Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the United States next year to the token level of just 7,500
– and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.
The low number represents a dramatic drop after the US previously allowed in hundreds of thousands of people
fleeing war and persecution from around the world