I pay $10 a month for Kagi, & it is worth every bit of it. Google's front has devolved into a digital amalgam of old yellow pages, Sears catalogs, and coin-operated trinket machines, while the back end scans our family photos, reads our emails and deletes our work at will.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 7h ago

If Kagi (with a handful of engineers) can extract useful search results from Google's databases, then Google - a thrice-convicted monopolist that's had its pick of *thousands* of the top computer scientists from the world's most prestigious universities for a generation - could also do so. 14/

❗️ Russia is methodically hitting the only aeration station that purifies the wastewater of Kyiv and nearby cities with ballistic missiles - the enemy wants to cause a humanitarian catastrophe, writes the head of the Eidos analytical center. There is no backup system.

Murky brew: Guinness found on 162-year-old shipwreck inspires divers with ‘Project Jurassic Beer’

Murky brew: Guinness found on 162-year-old shipwreck inspires divers with ‘Project Jurassic Beer’

Divers aim to scientifically ‘rebrew’ old stout to ‘unlock a form of liquid time travel’

irishtimes.com

Mass funeral held in Gaza for victims of 2023 Israeli strike

Mass funeral held in Gaza for victims of 2023 Israeli strike

Remains of 112 victims, including 40 children, recovered from rubble more than two years after residential block was destroyed Mourners gathered in central Gaza on Tuesday for a mass funeral for 112 people, including 40 children, who were killed in 2023 in one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the Gaza war. Their bodies could not be recovered until now because of Israel’s continuing strikes, which have slowed, though not halted, since the ceasefire in October. Continue reading...

theguardian.com

One day.

Chatham House@chathamhouse.org · 9h ago

Pressure on Hamas has been necessary and fully warranted. It remains so – both for Gaza’s stability and Israel’s security. But it must now be met with pressure on Israel too.

For the first time in nearly 14 years, a civilian passenger aircraft has landed at Deir ez-Zor International Airport on a domestic flight arriving from Damascus International Airport, Syria.

ME: And another thing, It should be called a buycycle when it's in the shop and a bicycle when you get it home. MY KIDNAPPER: *crying* Omg we let you go two hours ago

It is 2006. I am 22. The US is mired in a costly Forever War. A predictable historic market collapse looms. I do not have health insurance. It is 2026. I am 42. The US is mired in a costly Forever War. A predictable historic market collapse looms. I do not have health insurance.

Good framing.

Kindergarten girls targeted for invasive exams by new GOP-led ballot measure

Washington State voters will decide the fate of a ballot initiative that would require girls from kindergarten through high school to undergo sex-verification testing before playing school sports — a ...

rawstory.com

"Today is August 4, 2026" There Will Come Soft Rains By: Ray Bradbury

🎙️ Tá caidreamh aisteach ag comhlachtaí stát agus an rialtas maidir leis an síneadh fada in Éírinn, ach cén fáth go bhfuil sé comh deacair an fhadhb seo a réiteach i 2026? Labhair muid le @grainnenia.bsky.social chun fáil amach! pod.link/1452246930/e...

I must say this is one of the best things I've read in days. Absolutely dripping with charts and insights on the scale and intricacies of the wildfire season in Europe, as things currently stand. It is a complex picture - and yh, it's *bad* in many places. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/europe-wil...

Is Europe having a bad wildfire year?

Several countries in Europe are having a very large wildfire year; this is offset by lower burn in the Balkans

hannahritchie.substack.com

You know…I said I wouldn’t move platforms ever again but I think I’d be willing to go back to MySpace.

Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · 2d ago

first order of business: alienate your base🫡

Brilliant letter from Stuart Thompson to Jeremy Clarkson about his comments that benefit claimants should write weekly thank you letters to tax payers detailing how they spend their benefits each week.

Apparently DEI was the only thing standing between us and death lettuce

Reuters@reuters.com · 2d ago

Michigan reports two deaths in ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak reut.rs/4w4bd4E

Who could have predicted the "Leopards Eating People's Faces Party" itself would get eaten?

MJ@bstnboy.bsky.social · 3d ago

Ooomph!! "MAGA exiles declare war on Trump: ‘He betrayed us all’" l.smartnews.com/p-8dMDktTa/I...

Great letter in today's Irish Times. The government has refused the visas for Palestinian students in Gaza on outrageous grounds and imposed appeal conditions *which they know* are impossible. #FreePalestine

This isn't a harmless frippery: contracts are delayed and work is put off until the work can be made "sufficiently AI" to attain the minimum degree of buzzword compliance. 57/

The spectacle of AI that *does something* galvanizes corporate leaders who feel like they're the only bosses who can't find a revolutionary use for AI in their businesses. 50/

What's more, the Cortex demos were, by Suresh's account, pretty uninspiring. The thing that these demos had going for them is that they showed AI actually doing something marginally useful, to execs who'd already spent millions on AI without having *anything* to show for their money. 49/

Today, the business press is full of articles about the conflict between the workforce and CEOs who *demand* that they use AI. Suresh describes workers who feel they have to "AI wash" their work: "They just do the work, the same way they have for decades, and say Claude did it." 42/

Suresh points out that it would be very weird for the CEO of an engineering firm or a hospital to mandate "specific procedures or building techniques without explicit agreement from the professionals on staff." 39/

Suresh describes this as a literal religious mania. In the 500+ employee businesses Suresh studied, the only people who were promoted - or even spared from being fired - were people who professed "religious declarations of faith" about "the transformative power of AI." 23/

A person worked for a division that "pivoted" to re-engineer its software to create interfaces that support AI agents. When it became apparent that only *ten users* had touched this expensive new technology, they "pivoted" again to support "agentic workflows." 21/

Suresh reports on his experience talking with hundreds of executives (and, more importantly, their subordinates) about what (if anything) AI is doing for business in an essay entitled "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking": hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mani... 11/

AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking

The reality of how much damage AI mania is doing to our ability to run institutions effectively.

hermit-tech.com

(Your country would effectively cease to exist. If "digital sovereignty" means anything, it means doing something about *this* urgent fact): pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/t... 7/

Doctorow’s latest delves into the intense belief among execs that AI is changing everything while they are simultaneously unable to describe any genuine successes of AI in their companies.

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 4d ago

Neoclassical econ assumes rationality. The corollary of, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is "you're rich, so you must be very smart!" Thus, people assume that if powerful, well-compensated CEOs insist that "AI is changing everything," well then, *AI must be changing everything*. 1/