Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ People didn’t read my 8-track post

  Do people… read things before commenting? Evidently not! I wonder if I can do something sneaky with this knowledge?

• James G ☛ Blog posts as starting points

  This got me thinking about how blog posts can, in many ways, be a starting point. A blog post can start a discussion, help build community around an idea, be a written representation of one’s foundational thinking on a topic, contribute an idea to the commons that needs further development, and more. 1

• Flamed Fury ☛ I Am A Link Curator

  What’s going on, Internet? Friend of the site James recently shared a new post Blogger Archetypes which asks a series of questions to help you narrow down your character as a member of the blogging community. A bit of indie web fun.

  Here are my results: [...]

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Estonian-Swedish grammar challenges established theories

    The phenomenon has its roots in a period when Swedish was losing its old case system. The Old Swedish case endings had already begun to lose their grammatical function when Swedish settlers arrived in Estonia.

    In Sweden, these endings eventually disappeared altogether. In Estonia, however, they acquired a new role: The old endings were reinterpreted and came to mark the position of the adjective within the sentence.

    "What were once remnants of a dying grammatical system were repurposed to create something new. You could compare it to linguistic recycling," Västerdal said.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Underwater drone to explore deep Norwegian sea at 20,000 feet depth

    The vehicle is operated by the Norwegian Marine Data Center (NORMAR), at the University of Bergen. Officials revealed that it is set to gather highly detailed data about the seabed and underwater geological features.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: The New Result on Off-diagonal Ramsey Numbers

    Recall that \(R(s,k) \) is the least \(n\) so that, for all 2-colorings of the edges of \(K_n\), there is either a RED \(s\)-clique or a BLUE \(k\)-clique.

    \(R(k,k)\) has been well studied and is often called \(R(k)\).

    However, today we are concerned with \(R(s,k)\) \(s\) is fixed and \(k\) goes to infinity.

• Career/Education

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] German students up in arms about funding cuts

  • Troy Patterson ☛ Expiration Date

    I’ve also looked into an opportunity to provide support for a Moodle installation. Currently, it looks like that is on hold, but that is something that I would enjoy. I may be reaching out to some previous contacts to let them know that I’m available to provide some support and resources if it would be helpful to them. I’ve got a couple of Annual Training Courses that are pretty much ready to go and can be customized to a particular school.

  • Rob Knight ☛ People and Blogs Interview

    I've had a lot of blogs over the years, most of which would get a handful of posts before being abandoned. There was a version that ran on Tumblr which I did do for at least a year or two — any interesting posts from that have been saved. The current iteration is by far the longest serving and will be the final version. There's no chance of me wiping it all and starting again.

  • Igor Roztropiński ☛ The Joy and Power of Understanding

    Deeper understanding of the code and software systems we work on, is not only pragmatic and practical but highly enjoyable as well.

    The usefulness is quite obvious: understanding gives us control and ownership of the systems and code we are responsible for. What we do not understand, we can neither fix nor change.

    Interestingly, that deeper understanding not only allows us to be masters of our tools and not their slaves, but also is simply fun and brings lots of joy. There most likely are solid evolutionary reasons behind it - why is comprehension so psychologically satisfying? It actually makes a ton of sense - behaviors and traits that increase our control over the environment should be accompanied by feeling positive emotions strongly.

    But, if it is both joyful and powerful, why are we so often prone to skip the struggle to understand and take shortcuts, accepting copy-pasted/generated solutions and generic answers, not analyzed?

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ The motherboard market is so bad that flagship boards are selling at entry-level prices — save up to 57% of premium motherboard designs while RAM prices surge

    It looks like motherboard vendors are hurting badly. As Prime Day gets underway, we're seeing some price discounts on motherboards that are frankly hard to believe. Take the flagship ASRock Z890 Taichi as an example, which is normally $460, but you can get it for a massive 56% off, bringing the price down to $200. When you see a discount that big (its previous low was $300), you know something is afoot.

    That something is the price of RAM and SSDs. With prices high on those components, enthusiasts aren't building new PCs, and by extension, not buying motherboards. Motherboard sales have apparently dropped by as much as 37%, and vendors are massively cutting prices to get those numbers up.

  • Hackaday ☛ SDS-Remote Brings Power-User Features To Siglent Scope

    The 1000X-E series oscilloscopes have both USB and network interfaces, and the SDS-Remote can use either (though the USB interface is still somewhat experimental). SDS-Remote allows for remote controlling the oscilloscope, capturing waveforms super handy as it lets you export a CSV file of the waveforms for further analysis. You can also capture screenshots of the scope through the web interface, making it much easier to compare waveforms as you’re working on a project. The built-in data logging lets you run long experiments and save out their results. The macro recorder lets you automate complex tests using SCPI commands and brings basic scripting to the interface without needing to run separate code. There’s also a mechanism to integrate an AI LLM to help translate common language into the correct scope configuration.

  • Hackaday ☛ Dynamic RAM From First Principles

    Before the past year, many of us took computer memory for granted. It was one of the lower-cost parts of a PC build and was usually available in whatever quantity one desired. As its cost has skyrocketed, a lot of PC builders and other users of computers in general are taking a deeper look at memory, how much is really needed, and what its functions truly are. [Igor] is working on a drum sequencer project which needs a small amount of memory, and has built this dynamic RAM from discrete components.

  • Herman Õunapuu ☛ These cheap USB-to-HDMI adapters are terrible, and yet incredibly useful

    In 2023, I ordered a cheap piece of crap USB to HDMI adapter. From time to time, I dabble with computers, but I don’t always have a convenient display at hand. Capture cards aren’t anything new, but the good ones a bit expensive for a hobbyist like myself.

    The adapter sucks, and somehow it’s been one of the most useful tools that I own.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] Stoned rats get the munchies. Here's what that means for people with eating disorders, appetite loss

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] His colon cancer was originally misdiagnosed. Now he's encouraging screening as Ontario boosts capacity

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] Red flag or red herring? The numbers behind assisted dying in the Netherlands

  • Science Alert ☛ Strength Training Is Linked to Longevity, 30-Year Study Finds

    People who did around 90 to 120 minutes of strength training a week – or roughly an hour and a half to two hours – had about a 13% lower risk of dying from any cause than those who did none.

  • The New Lede ☛ Dow insecticide causes Parkinson's disease, lawsuit alleges

    A New York man has filed a lawsuit blaming exposure to Dow Chemical’s once-commonly used insecticide chlorpyrifos for his development of Parkinson’s disease, a claim that adds a new twist to an explosion of litigation over alleged pesticide impacts on human health.

  • Sal ☛ Is Active Noise Cancelling good or bad for your hearing?

    But that may not be the end of the story. The BBC reported in February 2025 that audiologists are concerned there may be a link between ANC overuse and “auditory processing disorder (APD), a neurological condition where the brain finds it difficult to understand sounds and spoken words.”

  • [Old] New York Times ☛ Why Are So Many American Pedestrians Dying at Night?

    In America, these trends present a puzzle that has stumped experts on vehicle design, driver behavior, road safety and how they interact: What changed, starting about 15 years ago, that would cause rising numbers of pedestrian deaths specifically in the U.S. — and overwhelmingly at night?

  • Nick Heer ☛ The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks

    In Alberta, specifically, we seem disinterested in learning anything. Speed camera use has been sharply curtailed and the province has raised the speed limit of a busy stretch of highway. The result is a modest increase in collisions overall in the province and a significant increase in fatal and injurious collisions, including a record-breaking number of fatalities last year in Calgary. Some of that is, undoubtably, due to the factors in this Times article about big trucks and SUVs which, unfortunately, are still growing. Chevrolet just announced its newest Silverado pickup truck line “with a bolder stance [and] stronger face”, one trim level of which, according to Motor Trend, “include[s] a 2.0-inch lift that makes it one inch taller than 2026”.

  • New York Times ☛ The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s

    For decades, American roads were steadily getting safer for pedestrians. But around 2009, the trend reversed. Since then, the number of pedestrians killed each year has risen by about 75 percent.

  • Greg Morris ☛ The Finish Line

    None of this takes anything away from how I ended that last post. Getting over the line was enough on its own, it was only ever going to be a beginning, and the Ironman sat somewhere down the road still scares the life out of me. I move forward again in three weeks to a longer Triathlon, and now I am really looking forward to it.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-10 [Older] Video game company Ubisoft shutters Winnipeg studio

  • India Today ☛ Oracle confirms 21,000 layoffs due to AI, says more job cuts may happen

    Artificial intelligence is helping companies become more efficient. But for many workers, it is also becoming a source of uncertainty. Oracle is the latest example. The US technology giant cut about 21,000 jobs globally in fiscal 2026 as it reshapes its business around artificial intelligence, according to its latest annual report. The company's workforce fell 13 per cent, dropping from about 1,62,000 employees last year to 1,41,000 as of May 31, 2026.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ MonoLisa, my favorite monospaced font ever, released v3

    According to my emails, I purchased MonoLisa almost exactly five years ago today in 2021. Since then, it's been my monospace font across every Mac I've owned, whether it be my text editors or my terminals. It's one of those things where I was trying out every monospaced font I could get my hands on, and once I got this, I stopped looking because it was exactly what I wanted.

  • David Revoy ☛ Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux FLOSS Drivers - David Revoy

    But more recently, during a discussion with Gaomon, things became more promising: they actually connected me with someone technical. Someone working at "Shenzhen Huion Trend Technology Co.,Ltd.". Huion? Hehe, not really surprising: I had long observed in my reviews that the proprietary drivers of Gaomon, XpPen, Huion and Ugee all had a similar structure in their Debian packages and were using the same tools. Now I know what brand is in charge.

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] German court holds Google liable for fake AI answers

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Americans Have Turned Against AI in Incredible Numbers

      In other words, the tech’s widespread adoption isn’t helping its perception. A full 40 percent of respondents said they anticipate AI will have a negative impact on society, and 31 percent said it will impact them personally in a negative way, too.

      This varies quite a bit by age. Gen Z adults, ages 18 to 29, were the most wary of AI, with 48 percent believing it’ll be negative for society. Yet they’re also the group that reported using AI the most, at 66 percent.

    • Futurism ☛ Beloved Grandmother Was Standing in Her Own House When a Tesla, Allegedly on Autopilot, Smashed Through the Wall and Killed Her in Grandchildren's Playroom

      A grandmother in Texas was killed after a Tesla allegedly in self-driving mode swerved off the road and crashed into her family’s home.

      The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said that the driver of the vehicle, a Tesla Model 3, veered out of the lane, left the roadway, and failed to make a right turn before slamming into the home at a high speed on Friday evening, local broadcaster KHOU 11 reports.

    • Futurism ☛ Head of Microsoft Rages at His Fellow CEOs for Admitting What They're Actually Doing to Society With AI

      Microsoft’s approach follows the same playbook. If Nadella were genuinely concerned about AI’s impact on working people, he has the power to rein the company’s efforts in. Instead, he’s simply taking a more pragmatic approach to public relations. As Nadella himself puts it: “we now have to do the hard work in earning the social permission.”

    • University of Michigan ☛ We must change course on AI development

      Although tech firms are making multibillion-dollar investments in infrastructure, actual progress on these projects is markedly slower than the growth of the companies backing them. This means that there is a discrepancy between what investors are being told about these companies and their actual fiscal prospects. It also means there is an enormous blind spot concealing what is actually happening in the AI space from an investor’s standpoint. And from the uninformed consumer perspective, the gap between AI’s observed value and alleged value is even wider.

    • C4ISRNET ☛ The unlikely role of Operation Epic Fury in a Mississippi AI data center lawsuit

      A Defense Department official disclosed that U.S. forces used Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool to help deploy “over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets” during the first four days of combat operations in Iran.

      The disclosure offered a glimpse into how generative AI is being used by the military. It came in a court filing supporting the Justice Department’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit targeting a Mississippi power plant, also owned by Musk, that supplies electricity to data centers used to run the AI system.

    • Sal ☛ Botsitting

      With agent skills, the bugs seem to come and go as they please. I figured I could just get more and more verbose and explicit in my skill instructions as the bugs arise, instructing the agent how to avoid each one next time, but it’s not that simple. Something that was working fine last time, like the aforementioned report, will suddenly stop working without any changes to the relevant instructions. It feels like I’m Mickey Mouse waving a magic wand each time I run one: I can sense the power at my disposal, but I’m not sure what’s going to come from it.

    • Kev Quirk ☛ No, I don't want you to summarise the page!

      Checking my code, or helping me with a problem in said code? Count me in.

      But summarising a page I'm reading? Absofuckinglutely not.

      One of the things I really enjoy about the web is surfing it and reading. Reading is one of the great joys I get from the web, and in general. Why would I want a bastardised version of your words presented to me by a computer when I can read the actual words you took time to write?

    • Jono Alderson ☛ Technical debt is becoming an AI problem

      What strikes me, though, is how much of the current discussion assumes that we’re living through a temporary period of uncertainty. The underlying belief seems to be that, sooner or later, these competing standards will consolidate, the market will settle down, and we’ll return to a more familiar pace of change. Businesses simply need to identify the winners and position themselves accordingly.

      I’m increasingly convinced that this assumption is wrong.

    • Jérôme Marin ☛ Apple warns of “unavoidable” price increases

      The situation is unlikely to improve before mid-2027 at the earliest. At the heart of the disruption is the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, which requires enormous amounts of memory, particularly high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. To meet this demand, the industry’s three dominant players — South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung, and US’ Micron — have redirected part of their manufacturing capacity toward these more profitable products, at the expense of DRAM and NAND memory used in smartphones, PCs, tablets and gaming consoles.

  • Social Control Media

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] Why is Instagram Down Today? What We Know So Far

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-06-10 [Older] $725M Facebook Settlement Triggers Second Payment — Check Your Eligibility Now

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] Canada vows to restrict social media for kids under 16. Teens say they'll 'always find a way'

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Meta Exec Admits Zuckerberg Has Crushed Workers' Spirits

      Evidently, the vibes at Meta are so bad that even the company’s C-suite is taking notice, and they’re not even trying to sugarcoat it. During an internal team meeting earlier in June, Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth admitted that workplace morale is downright rancid, Business Insider reports.

      Bosworth said that the situation is “maybe not the worst it’s ever been in 20 years here, but it’s probably up there. It’s definitely up there.”

    • Press Gazette ☛ News publishers could be made prominent on Youtube and social feeds

      The exact details have not yet been decided but one of the examples given was that news publishers could be more likely to appear at the top of search results for news-related queries on social and video feeds.

      The Government is currently planning to ask big tech like Youtube and Meta to make the changes voluntarily but could ultimately pursue regulation and legislation if they do not do so, DCMS minister Ian Murray told journalists.

• Security

  • 2026-06-08 [Older] JP: Hokkaido hospitals data leak may hit 510k, HDDs sold online blamed

  • 2026-06-15 [Older] JLR ordered 30,000 staff to reset passwords in person after cyberattack

  • Fierce Pharma ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] Novo Nordisk reports data breach, tells clinical trial patients to ‘remain vigilant’

  • International Business Times ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] ShinyHunters Claims Theft of 297GB of Council of Europe Data; Claims Unconfirmed As Yet

  • 2026-06-14 [Older] UK: Hotel guests issued urgent ‘check’ alert as personal details stolen from major chain

  • 2026-06-13 [Older] South Korea Hands Coupang a Record-Breaking $409 Million Data Privacy Fine

  • 2026-06-12 [Older] Former Saydel schools IT worker sentenced for Iowa cyber sabotage

  • Google ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] ShinyHunters Targets Education Sector with Oracle PeopleSoft Exploit

  • 2026-06-10 [Older] 67 million Thais exposed in massive data leak, parliament launches probe

  • Gray Local Media ☛ 2026-06-10 [Older] LA: St. George fire district sues IT company over cyberattack

  • 2026-06-10 [Older] Power company in Japan fears data breach after losing storage drive containing customer details

  • 2026-06-10 [Older] Saskatoon man facing extradition for cyberattacks on American institutions

  • 2026-06-10 [Older] WA: Chelan County enters third week of disruptions with no recovery timeline

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ 2026-06-09 [Older] CISA gives feds 3 days to patch Check Point VPN bug exploited as zero-day

  • 2026-06-09 [Older] ZA: Confidential medical records of 3,000 South African Police Service officers leaked

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • BobDaHacker ☛ I Could've Rickrolled the Entire FIFA World Cup. All I Needed Was My ID.

      They fixed it without ever responding to me. I had to call FIFA, MediaKind, HBS, CISA, and the FBI at 3am Tokyo time just to get someone to listen. This is that story.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hindustan Times ☛ No way out: How smoke, biometric lock gate fueled Lucknow fire tragedy

      Yash alleged that the office’s main gate was equipped with a thumb-impression scanner for access control. When the fire broke out and rapidly spread through the premises, the gate allegedly locked automatically, creating difficulties for those trying to escape.

      “The office had a biometric entry system. After the fire spread, the gate locked automatically and it took time to open it. That delay made the situation much worse,” Yash told reporters at the site.

    • Wired ☛ Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

      The move comes after the company left potentially sensitive data from the initiative exposed internally.

    • Terence Eden ☛ Cybersecurity for the paranoid business traveller

      Over the years, I've worked for organisations with various levels of risk tolerance for business travellers. Some have been (rightly) paranoid and others have been (wrongly) placid about the threats their employees face.

      The fact is, individuals are often targeted for espionage, blackmail, or other state-sponsored attacks.

      Here's a list of some of the different advice I've received, roughly sorted into levels of suitability. Start at the top and work your way down until you reach a suitable level.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ These tacky men with ridiculous glasses want you to wear them too

      You’ll find only CEOs wearing ridiculous glasses in this piece. I’ll make one exception for Google Glass. The photo below — of startup cheerleader blogger Robert Scoble wearing his in the shower — proved to be the photograph that finally doused (!) Google’s ambitions to mainstream its bizarre eyewear: [...]

    • Matthew Weber ☛ I Miss Streaming Music

      I don’t miss paying for music. I do miss the algorithm that seemed to know just what new music to send my way. I found loads of good stuff that way and loads of stuff that I had forgotten about.

      Self hosting just doesn’t do that. There is no algorithm. And yes, I know the perils of algorithms and the data stuff that goes along with it. I’m fully aware about all that stuff. But in all the demonizing of algorithms that goes on, we forget that there is some good use for them.

    • Matt Birchler ☛ Advanced Dictation is off by default in iOS 27. Here's how to enable it

      I assumed this would have been on by default, so I was a little disappointed when dictation felt exactly the same two weeks ago when I installed the first iOS 27 beta. But enabling this does absolutely help. It's still not 100% perfect, and it's not as good as something like Aqua Voice or WhisperFlow on the Mac, but it's definitely an improvement and is something that I will use more often. Ironically, it kind of Sherlock's one of the use cases for Quick Notes, which exists in part because I hated iOS dictation so much.

    • Don Marti ☛ Insulating people from fake consent

      One of the rackets that make up this whole mess is “consent.” The “consent” as managed by adtech’s “consent management” is not consent as we know it. In order to count for anything, consent has to be informed. And if I ordered pizzas to feed everyone in the world who understands web ads well enough to give informed consent to them, the driver would be able to bring all the pizzas from the car in one trip.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] American Express ordered to fix security gaps after customer was spied on

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] Far-reaching gag order means we will never know how bad security is at AMEX

• Defence/Aggression

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] Canada's newest destroyer carries on legacy of warship lost in 1940 tragedy

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] Why some say Quebec politicians helped fuel the racism they unanimously denounced

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] Fast-track border checks, return centers, 'mandatory solidarity': What the EU’s new asylum rules could change — and what they may not.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] A major submarine deal between India and Germany reflects New Delhi's push for military self-reliance — and Berlin's interest in the Indo-Pacific.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] Belfast: Thousands denounce violence at anti-racism rally

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Namibia tells Starlink to take a hike - again

    The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) rejected Starlink’s applications for a telecommunications service licence and radio spectrum access licence in March, citing non-compliance with ownership and control requirements under the country’s Communications Act.

    “Starlink’s application remained non-compliant with the ownership and control requirements under section 46 of the Communications Act,” said Cran a statement. Cran received 624 reconsideration requests from the public, 622 of which were dismissed

  • New Yorker ☛ The Teen Believers in Christian Nationalism

    Kirk helped popularize some of the principles of Seven Mountains, introducing the idea of the seven spheres to his millions of followers. His broader notion of returning America to its supposed theological origins is often known as Christian nationalism. (Kolvet rejected the term, calling it “a pejorative used to smear and categorize conservative Christians.”) Kirk often spoke about the Founders, arguing that the country had been envisioned by and for Protestants. “One of the reasons we’re living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government, and they’re incompatible,” he said in 2024. His later posts online interspersed paeans to Scripture with warnings about American decline and support for President Trump’s immigration policies. “No civilization has ever collapsed because it prays too much,” he wrote on X a week before his death. “But a civilization that abandons God will deteriorate and ultimately collapse from the inside out, or because it loses the will to repel a malicious, external force.” For Kirk and millions of other believers, those forces were terrifyingly real. Speaking at Illinois State University in 2025, he warned of “an unknown, unseen demonic realm.”

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ How Angry, Out-of-Work Fishermen Saved the Patriots During the American Revolution

    To punish the rebels for their treason, Parliament passed the New England Restraining Act of 1775, banning locals from fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. Overnight, thousands of skilled mariners—men who spent their lives wrestling cod out of the freezing, storm-tossed North Atlantic—were out of a job. They weren’t just unemployed; they were furious. These fishermen left their work tools and ships behind, picked up weapons, and joined the siege of Boston alongside American farmers.

  • Mike Brock ☛ They Confirmed Her

    On February 12, 2025, the Senate voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, head of the office that oversees eighteen federal intelligence agencies and a budget of approximately seventy-five billion dollars. The vote was 52–48. Every Senate Republican voted in favor except Mitch McConnell. Every Senate Democrat voted against. The Select Committee on Intelligence had reported her nomination to the floor on a party-line vote of 9–8 the previous day. The eight Republicans on the committee who voted yes were Tom Cotton, the chair, James Risch, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Jerry Moran, James Lankford, Mike Rounds, and Todd Young. They are not naive people. They are not unsophisticated people. They have been briefed for years on the operational signatures of foreign influence, on the techniques by which states and non-state actors attempt to compromise public officials, on the patterns of behavior that the counterintelligence apparatus exists to catch. They voted yes anyway.

    The question is what they knew when they voted yes. The answer is: everything.

  • [Old] US National Archives ☛ President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961) | National Archives

    In a speech of less than 10 minutes, on January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his political farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. Those who expected the military leader and hero of World War II to depart his Presidency with a nostalgic, "old soldier" speech like Gen. Douglas MacArthur's, were surprised at his strong warnings about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

  • [Old] Internet Archive ☛ The Jonestown Death Tape (FBI No. Q 042) : The Rev. Jim Jones, et al. (The Peoples Temple cult) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

    An audio recording made on November 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana immediately preceding and during the mass suicide and murder of over 900 members of the cult.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Mediaite ☛ From Superglued Gold to Epstein: 5 Jaw-Dropping Trump WH Revelations From the NY Times

    In an excerpt published by the Times on Friday ahead of next week’s release of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Haberman and Swan recounted several unusual moments from Trump’s second term.

  • America Online ☛ Donald Trump in World Cup 'crisis mode' as Epstein chants put attendance in doubt

    Fans from England, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand have all crafted songs that now ring out through bars before matches and reverberate around stadiums during games. A source said: "There isn't a fan alive who doesn't know how fragile Trump's ego is. In recent months, he has had to contend with widespread booing whenever he attends major sporting events in America, but this is another level entirely. New Yorkers were furious when he turned up at the recent Knicks basketball game. But World Cup supporters are taking it to a whole new level, linking Trump to his friendship with Epstein and to his appearance in Epstein-related files. His staff are in crisis mode trying to prevent the President from being exposed to the chants in person, and that includes avoiding matches involving English-speaking teams." It comes after Iran stars left an emotional handwritten note in the World Cup locker room.

  • New Republic ☛ DOJ Refusing to Release Old Epstein Emails That Could Expose Trump

    But Epstein had other, older email addresses that were mentioned in only a few, highly redacted publicly released files. One missing account, littlestjeff@yahoo.com, was from the early 2000s—the time when Epstein was most in touch with Donald Trump.

  • CBS ☛ What's missing from the Epstein files? Questions persist about unexplained redactions, missing documents, email gaps

    The Justice Department tells CBS News it "has released every document required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act," and maintains that those unreleased 3 million documents were either duplicative, unrelated to Epstein or protected by legal privilege.

    But concerns persist about evidence that important documents are still being withheld. CBS News has analyzed the archive not only for what has been disclosed, but also for documents that appear to be absent. Our key findings include:

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] Environment wins of the week

  • RFI ☛ Heatwave deaths in France as record May temperatures grip Europe - RFI

    Weather agency Meteo-France said Monday was the hottest May day ever recorded in France since measurements began, with highs of 33C to 36C expected in some regions as the week continued.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ E-motos, sometimes mistaken for e-bikes, causing trouble on Michigan trails - Bridge Michigan

    After the DNR started allowing class 1 and 2 e-bikes on natural surface trails in 2024, it put up signs with QR codes through which users could leave comments about e-bike use. Novak said the vast majority of comments, more than 100 total, appeared to be about incidents involving e-motos.

    “Most of it is they’re going too fast or they’re being erratic,” he said.

    In one report, a guy on an e-moto allegedly pushed a horse while riding past it, Novak said.

  • The New Lede ☛ This is the wrong time for major media to shut down environmental coverage

    “Sorry. The person you emailed is no longer working here.”

    As a PR person with decades in the business, I’ve never witnessed a bloodbath like what’s happened to reporters who cover climate and environmental health over the past year.

    In 2026 alone, media outlets that have cut climate and health reporters include: [...]

  • Common Dreams ☛ Big Oil Companies Have Blood on Their Hands in European Heat Wave

    Heat records are again being smashed across Europe as the region is engulfed in another historic heat wave this week. France, Spain, and the United Kingdom face the most severe threat—Monday is on track to be France’s hottest day on record. The heat is affecting millions, as schools are closed, outdoor recreation and festivities are limited, and fatalities are already starting to add up. A recent attribution analysis found that Europe’s record-breaking heat this year “has the fingerprints of climate change all over it.”

    In response, Aaron Regunberg, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, issued the following statement: [...]

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ Colorado River faces ‘devastating consequences’ if another dry winter lands, experts warn

    Another warm, arid winter could leave Colorado River reservoirs nearly dry.

    That is one of the projections a group of Colorado River experts released Monday, building on a previous report released last September assessing the future of the waterway’s federally managed dams under different hydrological scenarios. The new report forecasted the impacts of another dry winter and a wetter one, which it found would not provide enough water to extricate the basin from the depths of a climate change-fueled drought.

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ Hoover Dam approaches a hydropower cliff

    That is the water-level elevation at which hydropower generating capacity at Hoover Dam, the largest in the Colorado River basin, will be cut by 70 percent. The drastic and immediate reduction in a cheap source of power that is responsive to hourly changes in electricity demand will have consequences for the region’s power customers and the broader electric grid alike.

    Water managers have known for at least a year and a half that elevation 1,035 feet will be a problem for Hoover’s hydropower. Twelve of the dam’s 17 turbines are not designed to operate in low-water conditions that would be present when Mead is below that level. After record-low winter runoff into already-depleted reservoirs, water managers now know that the day of reckoning is coming soon.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] El Nino threatens livelihoods in Southeast Asia

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Tallinn sees 60% rise in bike and scooter traffic in recent years

      Former deputy mayor Pärtel-Peeter Pere, who also previously held the title of bike mayor of Tallinn through the Amsterdam-based urban cycling nonprofit BYCS, welcomed the growth, but questioned whether the city has meaningful data on how people actually get around the Estonian capital.

      "The way Tallinn has collected bike traffic data so far reflects a rather primitive, Eastern European approach by the city to a very Nordic form of mobility," Pere said, criticizing the reliance on once-a-year manual counts.

    • Paris Buttfield-Addison ☛ Our hydro deserves better than a chatbot — Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison

      The pitch for turning Tasmania into an “AI Island” has captured a lot of people, which is probably why we keep hearing it. We’ve supposedly got cheap hydro power, and the world apparently wants somewhere clean to run artificial intelligence. So we sell ours as “green compute” and the investment rolls in. That’s the theory, anyway. The Premier loves it, and so does a Singaporean startup called Firmus.

      One of the core problem with this is the power. We don’t uniformly have a surplus to sell. Last year we were importing electricity from Victoria just to keep our own lights on, and the government wants to hand about a sixth of the grid to a handful of foreign-owned sheds full of NVIDIA chips. What we get back is a few dozen permanent jobs, a stack of environmental claims nobody has audited, and a contract we’re not allowed to read. It’s a bad deal, and it’s being pushed and pushed and pushed.

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] For Chinese automakers, markets like Canada are more important than ever

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-11 [Older] Canada Post announces 485,000 more addresses to lose home delivery

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-09 [Older] Stellantis recalling more than 1.3 million Jeep vehicles over fire concerns

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-09 [Older] Former Air Canada captain charged after allegedly flying hundreds of flights without proper licence: police

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] US: Skydiving plane crash leaves 12 people dead in Missouri

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Yle ☛ Watch: Horses relax with classical concert in Finnish Lapland

      "Maybe Croisos was wondering what Mom was doing over there with that instrument. Normally, he's used to me coming over with a snack and going for a ride," Rahkonen said.

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-09 [Older] Grizzly bear trapped, killed after trying to break into central Alberta chicken coop

    • CBC ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] 'A remarkable day': Northern cod total allowable catch increases by 55 per cent

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] Why bear attacks are rising fast in Japan

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] Swiss voters reject population cap proposal

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] Swiss to vote on whether to cap population at 10 million

    • Western Water ☛ Americans use far less water at home than 30 years ago

      In 1999, the average person in a single-family home used about 69.3 gallons of water per day for indoor purposes such as flushing toilets, running faucets, doing laundry, and bathing. By 2026, that number had fallen to 38.5 gallons per person per day, a drop of 44.4%.

      To put that in plain terms: households are now doing all the same things they were doing in 1999 while using roughly 30 fewer gallons per person every single day. Over the course of a year, that adds up fast.

    • Hindustan Times ☛ As water crisis deepens, corporators seek revival of wells, crackdown on tanker mafia | Mumbai news

      The worsening water shortage dominated the BMC’s general body meeting, with elected representatives pressing the civic administration to adopt immediate and long-term measures to ease the crisis.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] US clears Paramount's mammoth Warner Bros merger

  • Mitchell Hashimoto ☛ Pledging Another $400,000 to the Zig Software Foundation

    My family is pledging another $400,0001 to the Zig Software Foundation (ZSF). This brings our total pledged support for ZSF to $700,000, after our initial donation in 2024.

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] The Social Security Shortfall and Cheeto Mussolini’s Big Military Budget

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CBC ☛ 2026-06-10 [Older] RCMP investigating allegation of money for council votes in Calgary city hall corruption probe: court doc

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-15 [Older] Norway: Crown princess's son sentenced to 4 years in prison

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] Police fire tear gas at anti-G7 protesters in Geneva

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-14 [Older] The creatives trying to fix Germany's bureaucracy

  • The Revelator ☛ America 250: Echoes of the Buy-Centennial

    The “patriotic” commerce was everywhere. SeaWorld renamed one of its captive killer whales “Yankee Doodle.” Companies marketed toilet seats with eagles underneath the lids. George Washington and other Revolutionary icons were painted onto just about any piece of crap you could imagine.

    There were even awards to celebrate the “most tasteless exploitation” of the Bicentennial, with “winners” such as “Paul Revere” ice cream and red-white-and-blue funeral caskets. (I’m sure that last one was some sort of violation of the Flag Code.)

  • Futurism ☛ Musk Furious After SpaceX Stock Get Worst Possible Environmental Grade

    The initial warning signs were certainly there. As the Financial Times revealed over the weekend, SpaceX received a brutal report card one day ahead of its IPO from global index provider MSCI. The firm issues Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings, an index that stakeholders use to evaluate risks and exposure to controversies.

    SpaceX scored the lowest possible ESG score, putting it on the same level as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin in the wake of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, per the FT.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Women negotiate as effectively as men—but leave people happier

    In the final study, the researchers used an AI model to code a handful of different behaviors in a negotiation transcript and found that women were more likely to accept an offer, which led to more positive feelings from their partners. However, they also found that women were not accepting deals earlier in the process or making worse deals than their male counterparts.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Green Algae President: How He's Handling Four Messes He Created

    Referring to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, Minnesota governor Tim Walz commented on X: “Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.” (Walz could have added: “blamed others for his failure, conjured up a conspiracy, then prosecuted them.”)

    One remarkable aspect of Trump’s horrendous reign is how many crises and problems he’s brought on himself — created them out of thin air. Then he brags about how well he’s handled them. And when they go wrong — as they inevitably do — he casts blame on others or on his political opponents.

    Four examples from the last few days: [...]

  • Robert Reich ☛ R.I.P. Alan Greenspan: You were charming, thoughtful, powerful, and wrong

    But the truth must be told: If any single person was responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, it was Greenspan. That crisis — the worst collapse since 1929, which led to the worst recession in decades, in which millions of Americans lost their jobs, their savings, and even their homes — resulted from the deregulation of Wall Street that Greenspan advocated.

    Greenspan pushed Clinton and Congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Depression decade of the 1930s had separated investment banking from commercial banking, thereby preventing banks from gambling with personal savings. He also argued vigorously against regulating derivatives — essentially, financial bets on financial bets — that proved to be weapons of mass financial destruction.

  • Miloslav Homer ☛ Security Is A Political Problem

    Every now and then I meet a (usually) young and passionate security practitioner, uttering sentences like: “But this is just the bare minimum, we have to do (insert here: firewalls, phishing simulations, SAST, bcrypt, encryption at rest... pick one). We cannot work without it!“

    I’m afraid I have bad news. We absolutely can work without it, even though we disagree. I know you don’t want to hear this, hell I remember I didn’t like hearing this, but here goes. Security is not a technical problem, security is a political problem that sometimes uses technical solutions.

    I’m writing this article as a reference point. It is critical for me to get this argument right, because it underpins nearly every other effort in security.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Moscow Tries To Muzzle Strike Footage After Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Refinery

    After recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow’s main oil refinery, Russian media are downplaying the impact of the dramatic attacks. As Current Time's Andrey Cherkasov explains, authorities and pro-Kremlin pundits are calling for a crackdown on people who post videos of burning ruins online.

  • 404 Media ☛ Are Public Libraries Becoming Children’s Libraries?

    The majority of U.S. anti-library laws introduced from 2022 to now have largely focused on school libraries. Only a few states have laws that affect municipal and county public libraries, and so far, most of these efforts have either failed to pass or were struck down by governors. That’s not to say state governments haven’t found other ways to do censorship. As of now, at least two states have mechanisms tying public library funding to content restrictions. One of them happens to be South Carolina, which has a legislative requirement that threatens to strike the system from its budget unless the system certifies with the State Librarian that they don’t keep books in the children, youth or teen sections that could be of "prurient interest” to a 17 year old. A more aggressive version of state library-agency rulemaking comes from Alabama.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ, FPU report exposes serious flaws in Indonesia’s investigation of journalist’s murder

    CPJ and FPU call on Indonesian police to reopen the investigation of the case, with a focus on the alleged involvement of Bukit.

    “The brutal murder of journalist Rico Sempurna Pasaribu and his family is a heinous crime,” said Beh Lih Yi, Asia-Pacific director at the Committee to Protect Journalists. “It adds to long-standing concerns about journalists’ safety, and that Indonesia’s military justice system is failing to deliver accountability. Indonesian authorities must now reopen the investigation into Pasaribu’s murder and try any military personnel involved in a civilian court. Impunity for crimes against journalists has no place in a democracy like Indonesia.”

  • CPJ ☛ Bangladesh charges 6 journalists over corruption reporting

    CPJ has in recent years documented a rise in physical attacks on media outlets, threats, and harassment linked to political polarization in Bangladesh. In early June, CPJ called on Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to start living up to his election manifesto pledge of protecting press freedom.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-12 [Older] Taliban arrest 30 women for violating hijab rules, UN says

  • Deseret Media ☛ Uber board sued over alleged 'serial' compliance failures, sexual abuse lawsuits

    Shareholders said oversight failures were also a factor ‌in lawsuits filed last ‌year by the federal government, which accused Uber of routinely refusing ⁠to serve disabled passengers, including people with ⁠service animals or stowable wheelchairs, and engaging in deceptive billing and cancellation practices.

    "Uber is a serial compliance offender," whose reputation has been "irredeemably damaged" by negative media coverage, the complaint said.

  • Site36 ☛ Police use of firearms and tasers in Germany: New statistics show record highs and disprove hardliners

    More injuries and still many deaths from police shootings, along with more taser deployments: Current figures from Germany show a significant increase in police use of police weapons. This undermines the arguments of taser advocates.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Consistency, But in Excellence Not Appearance

    In fact, their aversion to familial visual consistency almost seems like an intentional choice — a deliberate augmentation of individual purpose.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Six Colors ☛ Prime Day, again?! Why it’s OK to ignore Amazon’s big sales event

    With all the noise surrounding Amazon Prime Day, it’s going to be tempting to head over to that site and load up your virtual cart with all manner of marked-down gizmos. While I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, my humble suggestion would be to… maybe not do that? I don’t know the particulars of your current life situation well enough to be handing out blanket advice. Maybe you really need a new robot vacuum cleaner, in which case, hey, this is your time to shine.

    But for most of us, Amazon Prime Day is probably something best viewed at a distance with our eyes shielded to prevent permanent damage. Here’s why: [...]

  • Patents

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-06-13 [Older] Recent activity on plant breeders' rights in Canada [Ed: Patent monopolies on life as a "right"?]

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • Variety ☛ Tom Hanks Says AI Could Create Woody Voice for 'Toy Story 6'

        However, Hanks is also aware that Disney probably doesn’t even need him to return as Woody if it wants to make “Toy Story 6.” The studio has access to so much recorded dialogue of Hanks as Woody over the last 31 years that AI could easily string words together into new sentences in order to bring Woody back for “Toy Story 6” without Hanks’ physical participation.

  • Copyrights

    • RTL ☛ Lack of trust: Wikipedia won't let AI edit articles, cofounder says

      "We would not let it edit directly because you can't really trust it enough," he said.

      Artificial intelligence platforms, meanwhile, rely on Wikipedia's content to answer users' questions.

      That has contributed to an overall growth in visitors to the site from AI bots, while human traffic has dropped eight percent.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Warner Music Settles $24M Legal Battle with Crumbl Cookies

      WMG described the videos posted to Crumbl’s social media accounts as being central to the company’s marketing strategy, “frequently [featuring] unauthorized use of Plaintiffs’ sound recordings and musical compositions—usually featuring chart-topping and award-winning artists—as a principal and indispensable element of the Crumbl videos.” These videos typically featured “no speaking or sound other than the music integrated into the video.”

    • Digital Music News ☛ Judge Tosses RBX's Spotify Streaming Fraud Lawsuit

      “But such allegations are vague, and fail to identify with particularity how Plaintiff changed his position as a result of Spotify’s purported misrepresentations,” Judge Staton wrote. Meanwhile, as the “complaint focuses exclusively on the artificial streams of only one artist’s music,” the alleged “extent to which Plaintiff is injured by artificial streaming as a whole is unclear,” according to the order.

      Finally, the court dismissed the negligence claim due to the plaintiff’s described failure to illustrate a “special relationship” between Spotify and rightsholders or the alleged bots.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Rightsholders Have Inked Nearly 300 AI Licensing Deals: Report

      As many know, despite being signed and sealed, some of these deals are actively eliciting pushback. Warner Music is the sole major that’s allied with Suno, which is still facing litigation from Universal Music and Sony Music.

      Additionally, the AFM is suing for a piece of the relevant majors’ Suno and Udio licensing revenue. And the above-noted 29 organizations are criticizing labels’ and publishers’ various alleged efforts to compel AI opt-ins without painting a complete picture (in terms of revenue and otherwise) for creatives.

    • Amanda Williams ☛ How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine

      In the last year (2024), I have lost roughly 40% of the traffic on this site alone. My ad income (which is the main way I earn money) is down 34% year over year (though a couple months ago, it was down 42% year over year). And I'm actually considered to be one of the lucky ones, as many of my fellow bloggers have lost nearly everything in the last 12 months.

      So what the hell happened? It's a mixture of AI becoming more ubiquitous and “learning” (read: stealing) from sites like mine, and Google making changes to its algorithms that actively hurt small publishers in order to boost its own earnings.