Many words, none of them about Santa Clause.
Posha review: this robot chef cooks better than me | The Verge: Tech firms should spend less time on the AI bubble and more time on stuff like this.
Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal — ProPublica: ‘For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law’
Rural Fire Departments Squeezed By Software Prices As Investors Profit - The New York Times: This really feels like a place for open source.
The FBI Spent a Generation Relearning How to Catch Spies. Then Came Kash Patel.: The focus here is Patel’s sabotage of this work, but the whole story is fascinating and it really does seem as if the FBI has to relearn these same rules every generation or so.
Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks: Part of the reason reading has declined is that capitalism has decided that its not worth trying to sell affordable books to the mass market.
Man shocks doctors with extreme blood pressure, stroke from energy drinks - Ars Technica: This is fascinating and a touch scary.
Orcas team up with dolphins to hunt salmon, study finds | Environment | The Guardian: Science is cool and eating fish for dinner tonight.
Will a reporter ever tell Trump to f– off? - by Mark Jacob: Why the press never pushes back on Trump’s boorish behavior.
this is such a painful loss. my heart is broken. – WIL WHEATON dot NET: Lovely tribute to Reiner.
How Mayor Brandon Scott Curbed Violent Crime in Baltimore | The New Republic: Excellent story on how one city has brought down violent crime with nary a National Guardsman in sight.
Meta’s “Trusted Experts” helped me run scam ads on Facebook and Instagram | Reuters: The culture at Meta is clearly hurt anyone for a buck.
Amazon Has Been Conning School Districts out of Millions - The American Prospect: This kind of pricing should be illegal.
Pam Bondi wants a bounty on people who support trans rights | Advocate.com: Can you feel the free speech?
AI’s water and electricity use soars in 2025 | The Verge: Imitative AI is literally reversing our progress on climate change.
Microsoft made another Copilot ad where nothing actually works | The Verge: The desperation to push these tools out, even when they do not work, is not a sign of a healthy market.
Does swearing make you stronger? Science says yes. - Ars Technica: Science: fsck yeah!
Let's talk about Goodreads. - by Nicole Brinkley: Long but really fascinating look at what Goodreads does and does not do for books, authors, and readers and why.
We Let Anthropic’s Claude AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars. - WSJ: I wish more vending machines would order live fish. And giver away PS5s.
Coin Flip – Flash Point Science Fiction: Fun story.
DP FICTION #129A: “When Eve Chose Us” by Tia Tashiro – Diabolical Plots: Good story about grief and friendship.
Springer Nature retracts, removes nearly 40 publications | The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives: The lack of ethics and commonsense involved in this story is astonishing.
the death of the mother is the death of the world: A lovely tribute to a lost mother and on living through death. Go buy her book — its really one of the best things I have ever read.
Have the best possible week everyone, and I hope you enjoy whatever holiday, if any, you celebrate.