Plowing Through Tuesday’s Bookmarks

Well, it’s Tuesday. Time to either read those bookmarks, or nuke them from orbit, just to be sure. If you’re like me (I meant no insult), you put things aside to read later. When later comes, it’s sometimes much later. For instance, I wonder if reading this newspaper clipping of a third-quarter GDP chart from 1993 I’ve got here is going to change my investment strategy at this point. Of course I’ve always been convinced that the conservative, sandwich-heavy portfolio pays off for the hungry investor, and I didn’t diversify much, so I doubt it. But let’s see what’s doing around these here intertunnels, shall we? If you like, you can press print, cut out the parts you like, and keep them in a desk drawer for future reference to kick it old skool.

How to break free from smart TV ads and tracking

Dumb TVs sold today have serious image and sound quality tradeoffs, simply because companies don’t make dumb versions of their high-end models. On the image side, you can expect lower resolutions, sizes, and brightness levels and poorer viewing angles. You also won’t find premium panel technologies like OLED. If you want premium image quality or sound, you’re better off using a smart TV offline. Dumb TVs also usually have shorter (one-year) warranties.

Everything wants to phone home, not just your TV. The solution is simple. Don’t say “yes” to anything on the startup screen. I never got tired of seeing “WiFi Failure!” on my smart thermostat, for instance. Get a Roku TV, Jellyfin or Plex, and stream everything from a hardrive with your media on it. Ads? Whatchoo talkin’ about Willis?

CEO of ICE on Making Mortgages “Portable” & “Assumable” in the Era of MBS, and on AI at ICE and its Impact on Hiring

“Those kinds of loans [portable and assumable mortgages] exist in other countries where they don’t have mortgage-backed securities, where the loan stays on the balance sheet of the lender. “We’re trying to figure out with the industry, can we keep the MBS market, which is a very robust market, but maybe find ways of facilitating some of this other activity.”

No, not that ICE. These guys are banking pirates. And yes, Mr. CEO, the Mortgage Backed Security market is very robust. Until it ain’t. See 2008. BTW, you can already have a portable loan. Just don’t put the house up as collateral. I’m sure your good looks and charm will be enough to get a half-mil from a bank manager.

8 Million Users’ AI Conversations Sold for Profit by “Privacy” Extensions

Midway through the conversation, I paused. I realized how much I’d shared: not just this decision, but months of conversations-personal dilemmas, health questions, financial details, work frustrations, things I hadn’t told anyone else. I’d developed a level of candor with my AI assistant that I don’t have with most people in my life. And then an uncomfortable thought: what if someone was reading all of this?

Oh great. I thought I only had to lie to girls, and now I have to lie to chatbots, too.

The appropriate amount of effort is zero

There is an appropriate amount of energy required for each activity. Holding a cup, turning a steering wheel, or writing a blog post all need exactly the amount of energy that they need. This may sound like a truism, but if it were so obvious, why do many drivers often realise they are driving with a vice-like grip, with tension running up into their shoulders and jaws?

When I first read the headline, I figured the article would be about the post office. But it has advice for everybody, I guess. I notice the author put zero effort into spelling “vise” correctly.

“I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off.” Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry

The work that client firms are settling for is not better when it’s produced by AI, but it’s cheaper, and deemed “good enough.” Copywriting work has not vanished completely, but has often been degraded to gigs editing client-generated AI output. Wages and rates are in free fall, though some hold out hope that business will realize that a human touch will help them stand out from the avalanche of AI homogeneity.

Um, I hate to break it to these drivel merchants, but “AI homogeneity” just means that “vise” is always spelled correctly. Copywriting on the internet has always been bad. When it wasn’t fraudulent and bad, I mean. AI isn’t making it worse.

Meet the biggest heat pumps in the world

Work on the Mannheim project is due to start next year. The heat pumps – with a combined capacity of 162MW – are set to become fully operational in the winter of 2028-29. Mr Hack adds that a multi-step filter system will prevent the heat pumps sucking up fish from the river, and that modelling suggests the system will affect the average temperature of the river by less than 0.1C.

Installations such as this are not cheap. The Mannheim heat pump setup will cost €200m ($235m; £176m). Mr de Rougemont at Everllence says that, at his company, heat-pump equipment costs roughly €500,000 per megawatt of installed capacity – this does not include the additional cost of buildings, associated infrastructure and so on.

The article is all over the place. I’m a fan of heat pumps, but not an acolyte. I know something about construction. I got out the calculator. The equipment is probably only 40 percent of the cost of the project. And it’s a public project, so it will be a shitshow. It’ll cost $600 million before it’s done. That’s just to heat 40,000 homes, and you’ll need electricity to run it. Maybe boycotting Russian natural gas wasn’t the smart move, Germany.

FRAUDULENT REMOTE IT WORKERS FROM DPRK

Kim Kwang Jin, Kang Tae Bok, Jong Pong Ju, and Chang Nam Il, are wanted for their alleged involvement with a scheme to steal virtual currency from two companies, valued at over $900,000 at the time of the theft, and to launder the proceeds of those thefts in 2022. Using fraudulent names and identification documents, the men allegedly gained employment at two companies as Remote IT Workers. With these roles, these individuals allegedly abused their access at the companies to steal virtual currency.

Say what you want about fraudulent remote IT workers from North Korea, but they never take the last donut in the breakroom.

Did cats really disappear from North America for 7 million years?

Domestic cats sometimes disappear for days at a time before, generally speaking, turning up safe and sound. But this relatively short vanishing act is nothing compared with the “cat gap” — a period in the fossil record from approximately 25 million to 18.5 million years ago when cats and cat-like species seem to have “disappeared” from North America for almost 7 million years.

I wonder if the Cat Gap coincided with the Great Box Wine Lagniappe during the Cenozoic.

Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve complete tumor elimination in preclinical model

The research team isolated a total of 45 bacterial strains from the intestines of Japanese tree frogs, Japanese fire belly newts (Cynops pyrrhogaster), and Japanese grass lizards (Takydromus tachydromoides). Through systematic screening, nine strains demonstrated antitumor effects, with E. americana exhibiting the most exceptional therapeutic efficacy.

Interestingly, the Japanese Fire Belly Newts is the name of my Vapors tribute band. But I digress.

What Is the Nicest Thing A Stranger Has Ever Done for You?

He was exceptionally calm. He didn’t ask me if I was OK, since I clearly wasn’t. It was obvious that he knew what he was doing. He made certain I could breathe, paused long enough to dial 911, and then started pulling stuff out of a medical bag (WTF?) to clean the extensive road rash I had. In a minute, he asked for my home phone number so he could call my wife to let her know I was going to be riding in an ambulance to the hospital. He told her he was an emergency room doctor who just happened to be right behind me when I crashed.

What’s the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for me? Married me, I guess. How about you?

Tuesday Real Estate Browser Bookmark Trash Day

Well, we’ve been featuring lots of real estate shenanigans here at the cottage lately, so it’s only natural that our Tuesday Trash Day roundup of festering browser bookmarks should feature some good ol’ real estate info. Feel free to opine on the selections in the comments. And remember, no wagering.

Billionaire In-N-Out Heiress Lynsi Snyder Reveals She’s Quitting California for Tennessee: ‘It’s Not Easy Here’

The businesswoman, who became president of the popular fast-food chain in 2010 and now has an estimated net worth of $7.3 billion, explained during a new episode of Allie Beth Stuckey’s “Relatable” podcast that it’s “not easy” living and working in California anymore.

Forgive me, but for a moment when I saw the headline about an in and out heiress, I mistakenly thought her mother was a very successful courtesan.

The 19 Bigger Cities with the Biggest Price Declines of Condos (-12% to -24% from Peak through June)

The 19 cities with price declines of 12% to 24% through June:

Oakland, CA: -24%
Austin, TX: -24%
Saint Petersburg, FL: -21%
Fort Myers, FL: -17%
Sarasota, FL: -17%
San Francisco, CA: -16%
Boise, ID: -14%
Jacksonville, FL: -14%
Detroit, MI: -13%
Denver, CO: -13%
Tampa, FL: -13%
Arlington, TX: -13%
Naples, FL: -13%
New Orleans, LA: -12%
Seattle: -12%
Reno, NV: -12.0%
Mesa, AZ: -12%
Portland, OR: -12%
Aurora, CO: -12%

That’s funny. That’s a list of 19 places I don’t want to live in. Perhaps I’m the problem. But I doubt it.

Planning for Home Maintenance Expenses: What Every Homeowner Needs to Know

Many homeowners use the “1% rule.” This means you should save about 1% of your home’s value each year for maintenance. For example, if your home costs $300,000, aim to set aside $3,000 per year.

Older homes or homes in rough climates may need more care. In those cases, 2% of the home’s value might be more realistic. You can also track your yearly spending to see what amount works best for your situation.

At the very least, save enough money to afford home insurance, a pile of oily rags, and a carelessly discarded cigarette.

1 in 7 Pending Home Sales Fell Through Last Month, The Highest June Level on Record

“Sellers are willing to make deals because in today’s buyer’s market, they don’t want to lose out on a sale once they have a buyer under contract,” said Van Welborn, a Redfin Premier agent in Phoenix. “A few years ago, when the market was more competitive, sellers were able to tell buyers to move on rather than pay for repairs found during the inspection period. Now, sellers are they’re doing whatever they can to close the deal. I have one buyer who discovered a septic issue on an ultra-luxury home and was able to talk the seller into reducing the price by $1 million.”

If you have a million dollar septic problem, I suggest you stop eating at Taco Bell.

Former Warren Buffett exec makes bold real estate bet

Investor Ian Jacobs, a longtime protégé of Warren Buffett and a former Berkshire Hathaway executive, is doubling down on Union Square in downtown San Francisco, according to a July 1 report in the San Francisco Standard.

Jacobs, who leads the investment firm 402 Capital, has gone into escrow to buy 111 Ellis Street, an office building at the corner of Powell and Ellis streets. The building was once home to Blondie’s Pizza and sits near several still-vacant retail spaces.

Berkshire Hathaway has around one trillion dollars of assets under management. This guy bought a shuttered pizza joint. Bold, indeed.

Decoded: 5 things brokers can do to increase walk-in traffic

To many in the industry, walk-in business is dead — and I’m unsure if natural causes or our failure to adapt as an industry dealt the final blow.

In the years following the pandemic, we “returned” to our downsized offices, but after a few weeks or months of tepid effort, many threw in the towel. Now, it’s a chicken and egg conundrum: Most agents don’t want to sit in an office alone when the only walk-in they’re likely to get is someone selling Girl Scout cookies, and potential clients aren’t inspired when they see a cubicle graveyard.

But walk-in business — when we get it — is superior to internet inquiries. It is every licensee’s goal to be belly-to-belly with a live human seeking an address change.

I’ve always preferred going belly to belly with a live human. Mortuaries kill the mood.

Top 25 Best Places to Live for Quality of Life

21. Somerville, Massachusetts

Best Places 2025-2026 Rank: 226
Population: 82,140
Median Home Value: $861,806
Median Household Income: $127,440

Just five miles from Boston is Somerville, a town known for its diversity and robust arts and entertainment scene. In fact, after New York City, Somerville has the most artists per capita than any other U.S. city, boasting over 20 city squares filled with markets, theaters and restaurants. Somerville notably ranks No. 21 in health care access and places in the top 15% in both air quality and the safest places to live in the U.S. Its walkable neighborhoods and connections to the green, orange and red metro lines make the Boston city center accessible to Somerville residents.

Starts right in with a tangled passive voice sentence. Beautiful. And Somerville? That Somerville? The one we used to call Slummerville? Well, things change. Maybe it’s perked up enough to make a list of places with a high quality of life. Let’s check how safe it is:

I’m unsure of what a “high quality of life” would entail, exactly. Polite muggers? Carjackers who put premium gas in your car while they’re driving it around? Inquiring minds want to know.

LA burglar who killed American Idol boss was junkie w/ repeat arrests

A burglar accused of murdering ‘American Idol’ executive Robin Kaye and her husband was a ‘junkie’ well known in the neighborhood with multiple previous arrests, including assault.

Raymond Boodarian, 22, lived just 13 minutes from the $4.5 million Encino home where 70-year-old Kaye and her husband, Thomas DeLuca were shot dead during a suspected break-in last week as the local man sought to rob the well to do couple.

It’s unclear how this will affect the “quality of life” rating of Encino.

Well, that’s it for the bookmarks roundup. I hope the quality of life where you are is just ducky today.

Tuesday Overlooked Bookmark Roundup

Well, it’s Tuesday. Time to clean out the bookmarks we’ve been meaning to read, but never got around to. Pull up a seat, and stay awhile. But be careful where you sit.

TSA Quietly Dropping Shoe Removal Requirement During Airport Screening

Even though the TSA did not formally release a statement, multiple travelers across the U.S. are already reporting on social media that they were not required to take off their shoes. At some major airports, passengers reported that some non-PreCheck lines allowed customers to keep their shoes on while others still required that they take them off.

I flew on a plane for the first time in twenty years last year. The airports had all the charm of a bus station, and none of the efficiency.

Never Work Alone, Even in the Age of AI

The question is whether—with enough automation—one person could handle everything needed to build a sizable business: coming up with a product idea, building it end-to-end, selling it, supporting customers, and more. But there’s another, similarly important question within the first one: Would anyone actually want to do all of that work alone? And would they stay sane if they tried?

I’ve done it several times, and without much automation, too. Man up, Nancy.

Investors snap up growing share of US homes as traditional buyers struggle to afford one

As home sales have slowed, properties are taking longer to sell. That’s led to a sharply higher inventory of homes on the market, benefitting investors and other home shoppers who can afford to bypass current mortgage rates by paying in cash or tapping home equity gains.

Apparently only investors read my Great Moments in Maine Real Estate series.

Musk’s Grok Update Sparks Outcry Over Politically Incorrect AI

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has updated its chatbot Grok to adopt a more openly politically incorrect stance, sparking new controversy. Over the weekend, xAI publicly modified Grok’s system prompts, instructing it to view media-sourced viewpoints as biased and to embrace politically incorrect claims—provided they are well-supported. The new directives also tell Grok not to reference these instructions unless asked directly.

Oh no! Anyway…

The Nothing Phone (3) surprised me – a week in, it’s the best phone I’ve used for creating content

Phone (3)’s 6.67-inch flexible AMOLED display is one of the best I’ve used at this price, and it matters. For anyone working with visual content, whether that’s sketching UI ideas in Figma, finger painting in the best drawing apps for Android like Heavy Paint and ArtRage Vitae, reviewing photos, or editing images on the go, this screen delivers clarity, colour fidelity, and contrast.

There’s a lot of words on that page, but I didn’t notice any about whether you could use this device to make phone calls.

‘Village of one kidney’: India-Bangladesh organ traffickers rob poor donors

“Some people knowingly sell their kidneys due to extreme poverty, but a significant number are deceived,” said Shariful Hasan, associate director of the Migration Programme at BRAC, formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, one of the world’s largest nongovernmental development organisations. “A rich patient in India needs a kidney, a middleman either finds a poor Bangladeshi donor or lures someone in the name of employment, and the cycle continues.”

My local hospital was begging for kidney donations recently. I decided to help them out. They were pretty unreasonable about the whole thing, though, with lots of paperwork, and asking all sorts of impertinent questions like, “Whose kidney is this?”

Oldest wooden tools in East Asia may have come from any of three species

Archaeologists excavating at Gantangqing (an archaeological site on the shore of Lake Fuxian in what’s now southwestern China) unearthed 35 wooden tools from layers of soil dating to around 300,000 years ago. According to Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology archaeologist Jian-Hui Liu and colleagues, all 35 tools seem to have been designed, crafted, and used to harvest plants—specifically, the rhizomes, bulb-like corms, and other underground organs that many plants use to store nutrients.

I’m a woodworker. And I can assure you that it would take me around 300,000 years to find my bevel square.

Bear-Sized Giant Beavers Once Roamed North America, and They’re Now the Official State Fossil of Minnesota

The giant beaver’s journey to becoming Minnesota’s state fossil has been a long and winding one. The saga dates back to at least 1988, when a group of third graders first proposed making the massive mammal the official state fossil, according to Minnesota Star Tribune columnist Jennifer Brooks. Since then, the proposal has come up again and again. Each time, lawmakers have said no—but that changed this year.

Bones are pretty good, but I’m going to have to see some more damming evidence before I believe in these rodents of unusual size.

Are We Star Trek Yet?

Matter replicators, organic transporters, and warp drives are a little hazy on the timeline, but it seems like the holodeck and emergency medical hologram are just about here.

I’m disappointed that “Jumping a hot green chick’s bones” isn’t on the list.

Deafness reversed: Single injection brings hearing back within weeks

A cutting-edge gene therapy has significantly restored hearing in children and adults with congenital deafness, showing dramatic results just one month after a single injection. Researchers used a virus to deliver a healthy copy of the OTOF gene into the inner ear, improving auditory function across all ten participants in the study. The therapy worked best in young children but still benefited adults, with one 7-year-old girl regaining almost full hearing.

This sounds promising, but it’s likely to ruin a lot of perfectly good marriages, too.

Tuesday Trash Day Extravaganza

Cheese may really be giving you nightmares, scientists find

“Nightmare severity is robustly associated with lactose intolerance and other food allergies,” said Dr. Tore Nielsen of Université de Montréal, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Psychology. “These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensitivities could alleviate nightmares. They could also explain why people so often blame dairy for bad dreams.”

I stopped eating Swiss cheese at bedtime because my nightmares had plot holes.

After successfully entering Earth’s atmosphere, a European spacecraft is lost

“The capsule was launched successfully, powered the payloads nominally in-orbit, stabilized itself after separation with the launcher, re-entered and re-established communication after black out,” the company said in a statement. “We are still investigating the root causes and will share more information soon. We apologize to all our clients who entrusted us with their payloads.”

The CEO of this company is a woman with a Master’s degree in Public Administration. Not exactly a rocket scientist.

AI vs. MDs: Microsoft AI tool outperforms doctors in diagnosing complex medical cases

The Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) faced off against 21 experienced physicians from the U.S. and United Kingdom presented with complex cases documented in the New England Journal of Medicine. MAI-DxO gave a correct diagnosis for 85.5% of the test cases while the doctors hit the mark 20% of the time.

Medical schools should use Seinfeld re-runs to improve the doctor’s scores.

This Sahara Railway Is One of the Most Extreme in the World

Passenger cars are sometimes attached to freight trains, but more often passengers simply ride atop the ore hopper cars freely. Passengers include locals, merchants, and occasionally some adventure tourists. Conditions for these passengers are incredibly harsh with daytime temperatures exceeding 40°C, night-time temperatures approaching freezing, and death from falls being common.

Cool video at the link.

Rogue IT worker gets seven months in prison over $200,000 digital rampage — technician changed all of his company’s passwords after getting suspended

The source indicates that Taj sprang into vindictive action “within hours of being suspended from work in July 2022.” He proceeded to unlawfully access company systems “to deliberately alter login credentials to disrupt the company’s day-to-day activities,” says the law enforcement source. On the second day of his spree, Taj would go on to hobble the company’s MFA systems.

There’s something about the internet that fools people into believing that regular laws don’t apply there.

Sinaloa cartel used phone data and surveillance cameras to find FBI informants, DOJ says

The report said the hacker identified an FBI assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and was able to use the attaché’s phone number “to obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data.” The report said the hacker also “used Mexico City’s camera system to follow the (FBI official) through the city and identify people the (official) met with.”

There’s something about cellphones that make people believe that regular security doesn’t apply there.

This $7,000 single-seat electric car has become a hit in Japan

At under 1.5 meters in height, KG Motors’ Mibot has a range of 100 kilometers, a charging time of five hours and a top speed of 60 kilometers per hour. It will cost ¥1 million ($7,000) before tax when production starts in October at KG Motors’ new factory east of the city. That’s about half the price of Japan’s most popular EV, Nissan’s Sakura.

They got little baby legs
And they stand so low
You got to pick ’em up
Just to say hello
They got little cars
That got beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin’ peep, peep, peep

Job Seeker AI Usage Statistics: 2025 Trends & Insights

The share of applicants who used AI to write their cover letters or resumes more than doubled from February 2024 to January 2025.

Lots of colorful charts at the link. The internet is basically USA Today, with less reliable information, if that’s even possible.

Stanford cuts $140 million, warns of layoffs as research funding dries up, endowment tax looms

Stanford University will cut $140 million from its operations and may lay off employees as it contends with “significant budget consequences from federal policy changes” including reductions in research support and an increase in the endowment tax, officials said.

I’m heartbroken. Torn up. Devastated. Bereft. Gutted. About Stanford? No. My cat lost a fuzzy ball under the radiator. I feel her pain.

Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models

On Monday, court documents revealed that AI company Anthropic spent millions of dollars physically scanning print books to build Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT. In the process, the company cut millions of print books from their bindings, scanned them into digital files, and threw away the originals solely for the purpose of training AI—details buried in a copyright ruling on fair use whose broader fair use implications we reported yesterday.

A book is like a man, Granpa says. You have to hold them both in respect. You can only bend a book or a man so far until they can’t take it no more and then their back breaks. 

Save the Basement, Get Rid of the Bookmarks: Tuesday Trash Day

There was a fire drill at our apartment today.

Well, it added up to a drill. I imagine someone was sneaking a doobie somewhere in our non-smoking building, and the alarm went off. Instead of the blattering klaxon I was expecting, the alarm system started hectoring me like an ex-wife about where to go and what to do when I got there. Brave new world we live in.

Anyway, my wife and I, a couple of neighbors, and the four hundred or so dogs our neighbors own, stood on the curb for a spell. The fire station is within shouting distance. They sent all kinds of vehicles. A Fire Rescue truck rolled up. Out popped two little girls. They put on the entire firefighting getup, including masks and breathing tanks. They looked like they were wearing their dad’s clothes. If they fell over, I doubt they could have stood up under their own power. They carried Halligan Bars, which is the greatest demolition tool ever, but looked too heavy for their slight frames. They went in the front door, wandered around a bit, and wandered back out a while later. We wandered back in, and never did figure out exactly what set off the alarms.

My, how things have changed. Several of my relatives are/were firemen. They are robust fellows. They had to pass a very rigorous physical and mental examination to become firemen back in the day. As I recall, they had to be able to lift and carry a 200-pound (ostensibly unconscious) person to pass. I’m a fairly large, fairly robust man. I would have had a very hard time passing that fireman’s examination. But I guess Save the Basement is now the official policy of fire departments everywhere.

On to this week’s browser bookmark cleanout!

A federal judge sides with Anthropic in lawsuit over training AI on books without authors’ permission

Federal judge William Alsup ruled that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI models on published books without the authors’ permission. This marks the first time that the courts have given credence to AI companies’ claim that fair use doctrine can absolve AI companies from fault when they use copyrighted materials to train large language models (LLMs).

At this point, I trust judges as much as Quija Boards. But reading and remembering things is not plagiarism, no matter how thinly you slice the silicon wafers.

World’s Largest Wildlife Bridge Spanning 10 Lanes of 101 Freeway Is Nearly Complete

Mountain lions are the main conservation focus of this wildlife bridge. The big cats are territorial, and being locked in by freeways limits their roaming range and biodiversity. Without the crossing to expand their habitat, SoCal cougars could be extinct within 50 years. They also continue to be killed by vehicles.

I predict fewer poodles in Agoura Hills.

Fossil found in Texas may be one of the most complete yet

The genus name Eryops means “drawn-out face,” and megacephalus translates to “large-headed,” referencing the animal’s broad skull. Its wide jaws and palatal teeth suggest it could not chew and instead swallowed prey by tossing its head back, similar to modern alligators and crocodiles.

Click on the link to see the happiest dinosaur ever.

Deloitte’s US employees can now buy $1,000 of Lego on the company’s dime to boost their well-being

The Big Four professional services firm has updated its long-running well-being subsidy program to include “Legos and puzzles” on a list of items that Deloitte will reimburse, internal policy documents seen by Business Insider show. The firm has long offered eligible US staff an annual subsidy to spend on one or a combination of subscriptions, equipment, and experiences. In 2021, the firm doubled the allowance from $500 to $1,000, an internal webpage shows.

Before I could even shave, I remember wanting a driver’s license, a car, a house, a wife, some kids, a boat, and several bartenders who knew me by name. These supposed adults want legos, and want their new mommy, Deloitte, to pay for them.

Greek man sentenced to prison for running a private torrent site 10 years ago

A 59-year-old living in the Greek city of Piraeus was recently sentenced by a local court to five years in prison, a €10,000 fine, and an additional €1,800 in legal costs. According to reports, the man was involved with a popular Greek BitTorrent site more than a decade ago. The website is long defunct and does not appear to have provided him with significant financial gain.

I’m of the opinion that basically no non-violent crimes should be punished with jail time. At the top of the list of things no one should ever go to jail for, torrenting movies has to be right up there.

London’s Largest Ancient Roman Fresco Makes for the ‘World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle’

Han Li, MOLA’s Senior Building Material Specialist, spent three months reconfiguring the artwork with the help of a team of researchers. He explained that pieces had been jumbled together when the building was demolished, so figuring out how the fresco was originally composed took a lot of tinkering and patience. “It was like assembling the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle,” he says.

I’d love that job.

The No. 1 AI Jigsaw Puzzle Generator

JigsawCat is an innovative online platform that combines AI art generation with jigsaw puzzles. Our service allows you to create beautiful, unique puzzles using various AI art models, or challenge yourself with puzzles created by users from around the world. It’s a creative way to blend traditional puzzle experiences with modern technology.

You can practice up before you take a crack at any Roman ruins.

Better an Absence of Men Than Imperfect Men

Later, after the communist takeover in Cambodia, Pol Pot and his boys would line suspected class enemies up against a wall and speak French to them. If they reacted (indicating they understood and were therefore rich/educated) he’d have them shot.

I wonder if anyone in France would understand French at this point.

Amazon aims to reach ‘tens of millions’ more small town and rural customers with same-day delivery

Amazon is also using machine learning algorithms to predict which items will resonate with Prime members based on their unique needs in a given area. This includes stocking a mix of the most-popular and frequently purchased items and “products curated to fit local preferences like wild bird food in Dubuque, Iowa, travel backpacks in Findlay, Ohio, and after sun body butter in Sharptown, Maryland,” Amazon said.

I don’t shop online much. Is “body butter” used by cannibals?

Bezos vs Venice: Will the billionaire’s wedding sink in the Italian city of love?

One of the richest men on the planet is holding their home “hostage”, they say – to the Venetians, this isn’t so much of a destination wedding but an occupation. Residents and activists say that the nuptials – and the pure extravagance planned for the celebration – are set to turn their home into a “playground for the wealthy”.

I wonder how long it will be until Jeff takes his second gondola ride under Venice’s famous Bridge of Sighzable Divorce Settlements.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. Feel free to kvetch about the selection in the comments.