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 pensions.

Now that we have such a clear way of eliminating mosquitos, it’s clear that no wealthy country should have mosquitos anymore (cached).

A sudden massive drop in cheating certainly sounds good, but the obvious issue is that it actually seems likely that it simply learned not to get caught.

Nate Silver’s polling average also confirms (cached) how bad things are looking for Republicans.

Scott Manley mentions that this is faster descent (cached) than the space shuttle, which famously ‘flew’ like a brick. Seems like it reached something like Mach 0.9? A military pilot said that basically any time he’s heard of a plane going that far beyond spec in terms of speed the tail has been ripped off (cached), but not here. Turns out those structural safety margins can come in handy! Apparently the copilot stabbed the pilot and attempted to crash the plane. The guy who subdued the copilot and pulled the plane out of the dive had learned how to do it by watching YouTube videos about plane crashes (cached). Further, the pilot who heroically got the cockpit door open after being stabbed happened to have been interviewed on a podcast a year ago (cached), he was asked which was more important: smooth landing or on-time arrival. He answered: a safe flight

Egregiously, in this relationship Sam should be Gotye, and Kimbra should be Dario (the one who left). This is not the only video created this week of Sam and Dario singing. You can see them sing APT. by Rosé you can see Gangnam Style.

Longer Reads

• Congress has published details on the bipartisan permitting deal. Here’s a slightly shorter summary (cached) of the bill if you’re interested. Otherwise click through to the source for a longer thread of details. (src)(cached)

Flotsam and Jetsam

– Wow, someone got the original Halo running in a browser by decompiling it (presumably using AI). Now they’ve modified it to support way more players, and they played a game with 40 players. (src)(cached)

– In 2024 there was an amusing exchange where Ethan Mollick repeatedly asked Claude to remove the squid from All Quiet on the Western Front. Today, Claude can make a film about the event. (src)(cached)

– UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is signaling that they may end the extremely foolishly conceived pension ’triple lock’. Voters are gonna hate it, but it’s the right move. (src)(cached)

– Austin removed their Flock license plate cameras in 2025, and now there’s enough data to do a comparison to a synthetic control group city. Seems like there’s been a significant increase in stolen cars vs what there would have been otherwise. Here’s a short discussion from a Vox reporter about the pros and cons (cached) of Flock cameras. Overall, the summary is that while they’re creepy, they seem like they’re [probably worth it], especially if steps are taken to reduce abuse by the officers using it. (src)(cached)

– While by many measures, the impact of AI on employment has been minimal, it seems that specifically employment in the arts really has fallen. It’s hard to show that this has been caused by AI, but it’s undeniably happening. (src)(cached)

– New Nuclear power plants in the US are required to be able to survive a strike from a 747. (src)(cached)

– The incumbent mayor in Los Angeles is so bad that Schwarzenegger, famously not a leftist, is supporting the DSA challenger Nithya Raman. (src)(cached)

– OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Astra cheated so much on evals that they’ve decided to scrap the entire version and move on. They launched 6.1 sol without an Astra option to go with it. (src)(cached)