Labor Is in the House. What a difference a different presidential candidate makes.

The typical U.S. insurance policy will jump 22% this year to an average annual premium of $2,469 by year-end, the report found. That comes after drivers saw their policies jump 24% in 2023.

The big idea: are we all beginning to have the same taste? Music seems to be at the forefront of a rush to uniformity. It’s time to rebel.

If the internet can be said to have a geographic location, then perhaps it is Northern Virginia, which has the largest share of the hyperscale datacenter capacity within which the world’s data is stored.

Strange and wondrous creatures: plankton and the origins of life on Earth.

Guess What? Kamalanomics Isn’t Radical at All. For once I agree with Krugman.

No Exit Opportunities: Business Models and Political Thought in Silicon Valley.

Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia.

Harris is right about housing assistance and price gouging.

China’s overall sand supply surged by approximately 400% over the study period, yet the proportion of natural sand dropped from ~80% to ~21% due to the increasing use of manufactured sand.

Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.

Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse. TV software is getting loaded with ads, changing what it means to own a TV set. Dystopia now. Fuck every part of all of this.

NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour.

The CEO Who Made a Fortune While His Hospital Chain Collapsed.

What Americans Get Wrong About Electric Cars.

A Safety Net for Unemployed Workers. The job market is strong. Now is the perfect time to fix the unemployment system.

Keep talking, JD! Vance’s creepy views on ‘females’ are repelling women voters. Indeed they are.

Kamala Harris needs to take on Google and other monopolies.

The big question touching a nerve this election: “Can my husband find out who I am voting for?”

Harris has the right idea on housing. It has to be managed as both a consumer good and as an asset class. I don’t agree with this completely, but Harris on housing is far better than most Dems and all Repubs.

How The U.S. Could Transform Its Drone Industry For The Price Of One F-35. We must do this, and much more.

America’s Home Insurance Time Bomb.

Armed conflict is stressing the bones of the global economy. From shipping lanes to airspace to undersea cables, globalization is under physical attack. This is going to get a lot worse.

Screaming Man Lying On The Ground Supposed To Be There Probably.

Russia Hunts Down Deserters to Backfill Its Massive War Losses.

Harris Was Hamstrung by Caution. Now She’s the Democrats’ Driving Force.

How Israel Killed a Ghost. Hezbollah’s commander Fuad Shukr lived a life so secret few knew his name or face before an airstrike killed him and helped put the Middle East on the brink of war.

Americans’ IQ scores are trending in a downward direction. In fact, they’ve been falling for over a decade.

Harris’ Campaign Is Working—Get Used to It.

Zelensky says Ukraine ‘getting stronger’ in Kursk as his troops blow up second bridge.

Colleges Can’t Say They Weren’t Warned.

ANPC’s Transponder Landing System (TLS) equips runways that are inhospitable to standard ILSs, like the ones at McMurdo, with a full Category I ILS approach.

Data from the Fed’s Emergency Funding Program Shows Spring 2023 Banking Crisis Was Far Deeper than Americans Were Told.

We Now Have a Chance to Stop the Most Deadly Infectious Disease — if We Act.

Doubting America’s ‘Nuclear Umbrella,’ Some South Koreans Want Their Own.

‘Strange and mysterious’: rarely seen, 12ft-long oarfish found in waters off San Diego.

The Inflation Reduction Act at Two. Challenges remain, but there’s been a lot of progress on restoring an industrial base, creating union jobs, and transforming our energy economy.

Republicans Pump Brakes on KOSA After Realizing It Could Censor Them Too.

The reason disinformation is effective enough to be nearly invisible to a whole lot of highly educated and presumably at least moderately intelligent people is that they haven’t done the work on knowing themselves.

Why elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender.

Carmel-by-the-Sea has never had street addresses. A plan to adopt them is causing a rift.

Meteorites give the Moon its extremely thin atmosphere. Impacts that vaporize bits of the lunar surface maintain the Moon’s thin atmosphere.

Why you didn’t get the job after 100 rounds of interview, homework assignment and stool sample.

Medicare announces lower prices on 10 common, high-cost drugs. The negotiations with drugmakers are projected to save older adults $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs when the new prices go into effect in 2026.

On the Record: Music Before Mass Production. Despite advances in technology, the fledgling music industry had a problem: it could not mass-produce phonograph records. For a brief period, every recording committed to wax was unique, forcing labels to find creative ways of meeting demand.

These Retail Sales, in Face of Dropping Prices of Goods Retailers Sell, Support Solid Growth in “Real” GDP & Inflation-Adjusted Consumer Spending.

The Share of Million-Dollar Homes in America Just Hit an All-Time High. This is bad for everyone everywhere.

JD Vance Is the New Sarah Palin.

Ukraine’s incursion disrupts Putin’s war of attempted conquest.

An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, not a comet, new study finds. I’m sure the dinosaurs feel very consoled by that clarification.

The IRA’s Labor Provisions Look Like They’re Working.

Blackstone raised rent prices at double the market rate — up 79% at one building — in San Diego, report says.

US Inflation Is Looking Good, Except for Housing Costs.

Conservatives exhibit greater metacognitive inefficiency, study finds.

Family poisoned after using AI-generated mushroom identification book we bought from major online retailer.

Press reaction to Trump campaign email leak starkly different from 2016, when Clinton was hacked.

China as a model.

Kamala Harris doesn’t owe the national press anything. Exactly right.

Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps. She learned from Biden’s fatal error.

Russian Troop Shortage Is Exposed After Ukraine’s Incursion, Raising Risk of New Draft.

Popping the Bubble of Noise-Cancelling Headphones. A new Japanese-designed device promises to “unmute the world,” as if it were no longer possible to do so simply by uncovering your ears.

Are We Living in the Age of Info-Determinism? Increasingly, our networks seem to be steering our history in ways we don’t like and can’t control. I thought the future would be cooler.

Is COVID endemic yet? Yep, says the CDC. Here’s what that means. In reality has been endemic for a while.

Scientists hail ‘smart’ insulin that responds to changing blood sugar levels in real time.

NASA shuts down asteroid-hunting telescope, but a better one is on the way.

Cisco slashes thousands of workers as it announces yearly profit of $10.3 billion.

Shelter inflation is ‘the most disappointing aspect’ of July CPI report.

USA Average Home Price By State July 2024.

Average Car Insurance Prices Expected to Hit $2,500 This Year.

Democratic attacks on JD Vance are working. Good. That guy is a fucking weasel.

Press Must Cover Trump’s Cognitive Decline. But they will not. They need the election to be a close one.

Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History.

Florida Invests in Catastrophe. The Sunshine State is putting public pension money into risky bonds that transfer risk away from insurance companies.

The coming Republican freakout.

Mass deportation would accomplish nothing.

China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine. Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression. Yeah, long-term China has really fucked itself over there.

‘Stress on Shelves’—the Battle for Space in Store Aisles.

Why false claims that a picture of a Kamala Harris rally was AI-generated matter. There are absolutely zero signs of AI generation there and I am exceptionally good at detecting such manipulations.

Algorithmic price-fixing appears to be spreading to more and more industries. And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it.

Power-hungry AI data centers are raising electric bills and blackout risk. Absurd that we allow this.

Solar Photovoltaics with Battery Storage Cheaper than Conventional Power Plants. I remember when this was “impossible.”

UN Delegates Cheer As They Vote To Approve Increased Surveillance Via Russia-Backed Cybercrime Treaty.

Scientists find oceans of water on Mars. It’s just too deep to tap.

The many, many signs that Kamala Harris’ rally crowds aren’t AI creations. But Trump’s false accusation highlights problems with media trust in the AI age.

NIH study to pinpoint long Covid diagnosis comes up short. Researchers pored over lab results from more than 10,000 patients from across the U.S. but couldn’t find differences between patients with and without long Covid.

Childhood vaccinations will have prevented more than 500 million illnesses and 1 million deaths in US since 1994, CDC report says.

I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better.

Get Ready Now: Republicans Will Refuse to Certify a Harris Win.

Spirit Aero CEO Shanahan to get $28.5 million ‘golden parachute.’

Hackers may have leaked the Social Security Numbers of every American.

A $150,000 House in 1988 Now Costs $707,500 Thank You Fed.

Record-setting heat waves are baking the Arctic region.

Senator Wicker Unveils Major Defense Investment Plan. Good. Let’s do it.

In 2011, when many British rioters were poor non-white people, conservatives called them riffraff while the left defended them. Now that white rioters are attacking Muslims, the roles of prosecutor and defender are reversed.

A reckoning is coming for Florida’s condo owners as buildings face millions in repairs.

520-million-year-old larva fossil reveals the origins of arthropods.

Donald Trump isn’t fun anymore: How Kamala Harris stole the show — and extinguished his flame.

Kroger’s new dynamic AI pricing scheme is ‘corporate greed out of control’: critics.

Americans who locked in a job, home, and stocks are thriving. Everyone else missed out on their ticket to wealth.

How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points? Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.

The US Navy’s warship production is in its worst state in 25 years. Ugh.

Americans’ refusal to keep paying higher prices may be dealing a final blow to US inflation spike.

Ukrainian Soldiers Describe Rapid Offensive Across Border as Russians Fled.

Habitat for Humanity Helped Them Get Homes. An Insurance Crisis May Take Them Away.

The Real Reason Trump and Vance Hate Being Called ‘Weird.’

Does Anyone in America Miss Joe Biden as Much as Donald Trump? The ex-President is having a very hard time pivoting to Kamala Harris.

The Euro and Its Imperial Ancestors.

The Past and Future of Military Drones.

Fed’s Bowman Sees Upside Inflation Risk, Signals Caution on Cuts.

Federal infrastructure funding is fueling a push to remove dams and restore river habitat.

Sexual sensation. What makes touch on some parts of the body erotic but not others? Cutting-edge biologists are arriving at new answers.

Tim Walz’s Finances Don’t Look Anything Like a Typical Politician’s. He’s still far below where a 60-year-old should be if they want to retire.

First Known Survivor of China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Speaks Out.

The Great Wealth Transfer is set to be a $90 trillion disappointment—especially for millennials.

‘It’s going to be hair-raising’: high-risk slingshot move will send robot craft to Jupiter.

Boomers Buying Houses Had It Bad in the ’80s. Millennials Have It Worse.

ChatGPT unexpectedly began speaking in a user’s cloned voice during testing.

The New York Times Is An Arm Of The Trump Campaign.

Tim Walz. Hell yeah. The electoral math made Shapiro look like the safer pick. But Walz better communicates the story and stakes of this election.

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented by diet and exercise even in individuals with a high genetic risk. What remains of the Fat Acceptance movement is probably crying into their ice cream.

JPMorgan Chase’s Plan to Charge 80,000,000 Customers for Basic Checking Accounts and Services Is ‘Outrageous,’ Say US Senators in Blistering Response to Banking Giant.

With US Chips Act Money Mostly Divvied Up, the Real Test Begins.

Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Blitzed Russia With Electronic Warfare And Drones. Great, and also I love things that make Ian Welsh types sad or have cognitive dissonance.

How Algorithms Keep Workers Under Their Control. Who wrote and put in place the algorithms?

Intel’s Immiseration. The long, seemingly inevitable decline of an icon.

Apple’s sheer size as a buyer puts this into perspective. In 2022, Apple bought $67 billion of semiconductor chips, a full 11% of the global market for chips across all industries.

Unsurprisingly, workers who are able to work from home are happier at their jobs.

Maybe It Should Be Illegal To Instantly Delete A Website’s Archives.

Covid fell to 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. last year, down from 4th. The disease represented less than 2% of deaths in the U.S. in 2023.

TSMC Arizona struggles to overcome vast differences between Taiwanese and US work culture. Worker treatment that’s acceptable in Taiwan simply won’t be tolerated by US employees.

Ukraine presses offensive inside Russia as Moscow scrambles to respond.

‘Soulless’ gray vinyl floors have infested L.A.’s rental market — and tenants hate them. This is true everywhere now.

Customers didn’t stop spending. Companies stopped serving. Exactly right.

Why many American seniors are forced to work in retirement.

The Olympics’ Hostile Architecture Is a Preview of What’s to Come.

What are the Olympics Shooting Competitors Wearing On Their Faces?

On Ancient Stars (and a Thought on SETI).

Robot Dog With Gun Turret For Hunting Aerial Drones Being Tested By Army.

The Third Atomic Bomb.

Giant, Sparkly Clams Hide the Most Efficient Solar Panels Ever Found.

The Benefits of Ozempic Are Multiplying. There’s mounting evidence that GLP-1 drugs have health benefits beyond diabetes and weight loss, for conditions ranging from addiction to Parkinson’s—and scientists are evolving theories of why.

How tariffs on China could help the world.

Dear relentless salesperson….

Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes. This is the right approach.

Tony Soprano and Robert Nozick.

The Battle Over Institutions. A challenge to democracy’s infrastructure.

The Inside Story of the University of the Arts’s Stunning Collapse.

Emily White was dragged for predicting the future of music streaming 12 years ago. Where is she now? It never, ever pays to be right. Except in the stock market.

10 reasons why AI may be overrated. Very overrated.

More Americans are moving into flood and fire hot spots.

Dell makes new round of layoffs while it looks to unlock modern AI. HR apparently overwhelmed by attempt to sack 12.5k people in one day.

Florida’s Biggest Insurer Says It Needs to Increase Rates by 93 Percent.

Congress Wants To Let Private Companies Own The Law.

HP plans its most aggressive shift of production away from China.

The Democrats’ new sunny vibes.

Indonesia’s tiny hobbits descended from even smaller ancestors.A 700,000-year-old humerus suggests small hominins have a long history on Flores.

Health Officials Urge Doctors to Address IUD Insertion Pain.

CrowdStrike Faces a Potential Tsunami of Lawsuits. Only the Fine Print Can Save It, Experts Say.

Despite the Recession-Emergency-Rate-Cut Buffoonery, the Services Sector Expands Strongly on Growth in New Orders & Employment. Inflation Pressures Still On.

The rest of the world is building subways like crazy. The U.S. has pretty much given up. Cities around the globe are doubling down on transit. Why can’t the U.S. do the same?

Homes to Stay Unaffordable Whatever the Fed Does, Survey Shows.

Exporting Autocracy. China’s Role in Democratic Backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean. Generally not allowed to talk about this because only the US can be “imperialist.”

Samsung Just Showed a 600-Mile Solid-State EV Battery, Charges in 9 Minute.

ARPA-E Is Cleantech’s Favorite Shadow VC. The government agency is quietly funding some of the industry’s most exciting early stage companies.

Federal Appeals Court Rules That Fair Use May Be Narrowed to Serve Hollywood Profits.

The most dominant female athlete in America won Olympic gold — in wrestling. She is a complete beast.