Favorites: Electrified Industry and Escaped Pathogens
October 7, 2026 — Eritrean troops enter Ethiopia, construction pays extra unemployment taxes, Ben Affleck turns out to know video models.
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Posts from Tugboat Today
Favorites: Robots, Rockets, and Retatrutide
October 1, 2026 — Google previews Gemini 4 for researchers, OpenAI paused tool-use training.
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Favorites: Mosquito Massacres, Midterm Margins, and Mach 0.9 Dives
September 30, 2026 — Nuclear plants are engineered to tank a jumbo jet, a famously non-leftist Schwarzenegger crosses over to the DSA, Burnham risks voter anger over …
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Favorites: Rogue Agents, Robot Control
September 24, 2026 — Todd Achilles leads the Idaho incumbent by eleven points, a 52-year-old Ichiro throws a 127-pitch shutout, Waymo logs 90% fewer claims than human …
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Favorites: Modern Architecture, Volumetric Windows
September 14, 2026 — Western water rights reward waste, OpenAI agents breach a Ruby package manager, Miami's coast construction
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Favorites: Millennium Proofs and Malicious Models
September 10, 2026 — Jacob Coxon quits over reckless AI research, an xkcd strip skewers the 'shallow domains' worldview, Tesla truly embraces fly-by-wire
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Favorites: Robot Training, 4D Video, and Security Breaches
September 1, 2026 — A 30-seat electric plane flies short-haul over upstate New York, Noah Smith locates AI risk in virology labs, Qantas Flight 32's probe traces failure …
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Favorites: Rogue Agents, Racetracks, and Rewritten Logs
August 27, 2026 — Texas battleground House polls tilt toward Democrats, nuclear's small footprint argues for building on existing plant sites, agents pledge permadeath to …
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Favorites: Dolly Parton, Wind Power, and Miracle Drugs
August 25, 2026 — Bernie Sanders lists Andreessen and Horowitz as a donor couple, Europe automates sidewalk cleaning despite low wages, Anthropic weighs a $2 trillion …
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Favorites: Reasoning Traces, Model Exploits, and Chatbot Tics
August 23, 2026 — A 1% property tax hike cuts home prices 22%, Nate Silver's model calls Texas Senate race Lean D, a chart maps GDP per capita across world regions.
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Favorites: Walkable Streets, Warming Deaths, and Wartime Grids
August 19, 2026 — VS Code runs inside a terminal window, Nate Silver frames Ossoff and Harris as a pincer on Newsom, San Francisco crime falls below Austin's after …
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Favorites: Chess Sets, Currency, and Cyber Sabotage
August 6, 2026 — A French trial links daily AI chats to more loneliness, Michigan's primary ends with gracious concessions, Trump's 'voluntary' AI reviews carve out …
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Favorites: Minecraft Clones, Mosquito Drones
August 2, 2026 — San Francisco cuts its inclusionary housing rate to 5%, Claude maps the Iliad's Catalog of Ships and flags translation errors, Trump's Palm Beach airport …
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Favorites: Housing Hearings and Hypersonic Freight
July 30, 2026 — A cybersecurity eval runs Anthropic's models with no sandbox, California draws 51% of May electricity from solar, a Berlin FT commenter explains how rent …
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Favorites: Reward Hacking, Drowned Cities, and Kosovo
July 23, 2026 — Grad students now make up a quarter of UAW membership, US prisons shrink as crime falls, confidence in higher education keeps sliding.
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Favorites: Senate Deals, Dementia, and Traffic Routing
July 12, 2026 — Texas weighs gutting its property-tax advantage, New York finally scraps a residential cap, Washington legalizes scissor stairs.
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Favorites: Massing, Shovel Blades, and Attention
July 10, 2026 — Platner earns nothing from the oyster farm that defines him, a single infusion cuts LDL cholesterol by 62%, a professor moves the final in-person and a …
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Favorites: Hidden Words, Prediction Markets, and Clean Power
July 6, 2026 — Ukraine salutes the American Dream, Tom Clancy trashes The Sum of All Fears on its commentary track, Ossoff imagines the founders touring today's America.
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Favorites: Birthright Citizenship, Border Panic, and Bridgewater
July 2, 2026 — Advanced-degree pay bumps reward useless credentials, the median Supreme Court vote drifts right by arithmetic, Caplan sours on the online-argument utopia.
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Favorites: Obesity Drugs, Rocket Wreckage, and Spanish Sprawl
June 30, 2026 — Josh Barro pivots to defending the automatic transmission, Germans back restarting up to 18.7 gigawatts of idled reactors, UCSD STEM faculty push to …
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Favorites: SpaceX, Liquid Assets, and Whips
June 29, 2026 — California's medical association opposes the Medi-Cal billionaire tax, updated COVID shots cut cardiovascular deaths, Tokyo grows to twice New York's …
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Favorites: Missiles, Mythos, and Medical Scanners
June 23, 2026 — Valar Atomics reaches reactor criticality, Disneyland debuts a lifelike Olaf robot, a dog beats cancer with a custom mRNA vaccine.
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Favorites: Translations, Transit, and Tribal Rights
April 6, 2026 — Gene therapy restores hearing in weeks, Outlook crashes in orbit, NYC fills potholes in 90 seconds.
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Favorites: Senate Sabotage, Seaside Density, and Saturated Benchmarks
March 11, 2026 — GLP-1 patients keep weight off at lower doses, Ford's wiring harness weighs 70 pounds more than Tesla's, tech news sites lose up to 97% of their traffic.
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Favorites: Tanker Escorts, Drone Swarms, and Cheating Chatbots
March 8th, 2026 — California rewards destructive ballot propositions, Japan approves stem cells for Parkinson's, virtual fruit flies walk on their own.
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Favorites: Vintage Jets, Tax Brackets, and Building Permits
March 2, 2026 — BullshitBench v2 tests 70 models on hallucination, secretarial work disappeared across two decades, and Seedance 2.0 generates cinematic video from …
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Favorites: Bechamel Benchmarks, Gun Prosecutions, and Driving Negligence
February 28, 2026 — How students use AI matters more than whether they do, post-2020 SF traffic enforcement finds new footing, Daring Fireball tames update reminders.
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Favorites: Waymo Wins, Weary Fusion, and Whole-Aisle Coca-Cola
November 25, 2025 — Charm turns out to be a real political asset in one surreal White House exchange, a social rule about who demands the “doctor” title survives another …
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Favorites: Fission, Forgeries, and Foreign Policy
November 20, 2025 — A big tent for Democrats, skepticism on school laptops, and a new cloud for fights.
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Favorites: Some Dormant Drafts: Darth Vader, and Deficits
November 12, 2025 — A long-delayed tour through remedial math and missing test scores, electric trash trucks and aging EVs, and the awkward middle ground between fewer …
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Favorites: Data Centers, Democrats, and Disavowals
November 6, 2025 — Abundance earns policy praise, a wild SF cat saga spirals, open-weight TTS turns heads.
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Favorites: Minecraft, Medicine, and Minerals
October 19, 2025 — GLP-1s hit mainstream adoption, cabinet small talk reveals big regrets, AI revenue expectations
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Favorites: AVs replace human drivers, AI makes radiologists faster
September 24, 2025 — Broadway’s profits lag, Discord drama lingers, and The Argument's comment section AI-doom critique keeps the temperature down.
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Favorites: Fee Fiascos, Free Speech, and $150B
September 21, 2025 — Voters say climate matters but pocketbooks matter more—talk cheaper energy if you want the win.
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Favorites: Factory Fumbles, Fare Findings, and Football’s GOAT
September 16, 2025 — ICE’s Hyundai/LG raid stalls the plant until 2026, SB 79 clears the finish line, and TikTok’s “deal” leaves editorial control in Beijing.
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Favorites: Poland Provocations, PM2.5 Perils
September 10, 2025: GOP skipped one condemnation, and stupid trolley problem variations.
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New factories need nurturing, ICE raids backfire
September 8, 2025: Flock touts 700k cases solved, inspection robots replace scaffolds, and a missile from a drone downs a Russian jet
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Gemini Gains, Factories and Getting to One Stair
September 4, 2025 — Solar keeps winning in Africa, a vaccine-efficacy tweak fixes the math, and Newsom looks weak for a national run.
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Favorites: Vanishing Acts to Vanishing Vacancies
September 1, 2025 — GLP-1 remakes celebrity bodies, toilet cams promise stool analytics, and small-dollar donations tug Democrats left.
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Molecular Metal, Monochrome Menus
August 24th 2025: Germany's A/C culture war, California's drought plan, and batteries displace diesel for backup.
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Favorites: Clinton Cuts, CATL Credit, Cooling Culture Wars
August 13, 2025 — Moderation nudges vote share, the first trans House rep tells coalition trolls to pipe down, and YIMBY critics keep inventing strawmen
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Favorites: Bottles, Benchmarks, Bureaucrats
August 11, 2025 — China exit-bans a U.S. child, AI fakes nudge readers back to mainstream news, and RFK Jr. halts mRNA cancer work
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Favorites: Jobs Revisions and Retaliation, Apple’s Angle Error
August 8, 2025 – mRNA projects lose federal funding, NIMBYs equate apartments with genocide, and fur farming disappearing
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Favorites: Solar vs Ethanol, Private-Equity Hospitals
August 2, 2025 – Monopoly fire-safety gear adds $7 k per unit, Texas’s open grid slashes power prices, and U.S. students don't know what a Nazi is
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Favorites: Spinning Solar Sail, Stable Vows
HPV vaccine works wonders, Apple’s UI raises eyebrows, and monopolized FARS hardware inflates rents.
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