“Is There Alien Debris on the Moon? Some Scientists Plan to Find Out.”
September 5th, 2026If you liked the one about Satam al-Suqami’s passport, you’ll love this!
Via: New York Times (backup):
Imagine an alien civilization that runs on dazzling technologies far more advanced than our own. Picture city-size starships, planet-wide mines or swarms of solar panels that harvest energy directly from a star.
As these aliens go about their otherworldly business, the erosive forces of space wear down their infrastructure, loosening tiny bits of debris that detach and drift into the cosmos. If the civilization collapses, its remains degrade even faster. Clouds of particles might be unleashed into the galaxy, akin to the microplastics in Earth’s oceans, sprinkling countless worlds with the detritus of an extraterrestrial society.
Some of these particles, if they exist, may have even wafted through our solar system, perhaps settling on the surface of the moon, proposes a team of scientists focused on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. In their provocative study, which is in peer review for the International Journal of Astrobiology, they suggest that searching for these microscopic remnants in lunar soil could resolve one of humanity’s great questions: Are we alone in the universe?
“If any other technological civilization has ever existed in our galaxy, it’s not an unreasonable hypothesis to think that particles of them are on the moon in some quantity,” said Lewis Pinault, an affiliate scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. and a researcher at Birkbeck College, University of London , who led the research.
More: Micron-Scale Technosignatures: How a Cubic Metre of Lunar Regolith May Begin to Constrain the Number of Past Technological Civilisations in the Galaxy
Alejandro Betancourt: Venezuelan Billionaire the U.S. Investigated for Money Laundering Now Has a Pentagon Oil Deal
September 5th, 2026Via: Reuters:
The billionaire who helped broker the Trump administration’s sweeping long-term oil deal with Venezuela was until recently a target of U.S. money-laundering investigations involving funds embezzled from the state-owned oil company PDVSA. Now, after assisting U.S. authorities ahead of the capture ?of authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro, Alejandro Betancourt is Washington’s key partner in an unusual oil agreement with Caracas.
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Earlier this year U.S. federal prosecutors in Florida paused their investigation into Betancourt in connection with an alleged plan that involved embezzling over $1 billion from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and laundering it through real estate in Miami and bank accounts in Malta and Switzerland.
Two of those people said U.S. prosecutors had been subsequently discouraged by supervisors from investigating Betancourt further.
More: Who is Alejandro Betancourt, the Venezuelan tycoon behind the big oil deal with Trump?
U.S. Diesel Pump Prices Hit Record
September 4th, 2026Via: ZeroHedge:
Goldman explained this week that Gulf oil exports had recovered to between 15 million and 16 million barrels per day, roughly two-thirds of prewar levels, with the rise of dark tanker transits obscuring some flows from conventional tracking via the Automatic Identification System (AIS). Yet headline crude volumes don’t tell the entire story. As we have repeatedly noted, crude itself does not keep the industrial economy humming. Diesel does.
Make no mistake: There is a refined-products crisis because of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and Ukrainian one-way drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. That tightening in physical markets, especially for diesel, was evident on Thursday, when US retail pump prices reached a record high.
Opinion: Military Age Americans Should Enlist in U.S. Military to Invade Iran for Israel in Exchange for Debt Relief
September 3rd, 2026Comedy gold?
Rage bait?
Keeping track of who notices?
Via: The Jerusalem Post:
The narrative war on the domestic American front has already failed. The Pentagon has not been able to sell this war to the American public because the war has been rhetorically fused with Israel’s operations in Gaza, and the American public rejects the fusion.
Recruitment numbers are running below what a ground invasion of Iran would require. Estimates for a successful ground campaign against Iran’s 31 provincial commands and its Mosaic Defense Doctrine run between 750 thousand and 1.5 million American troops. The current active US Army stands at roughly 452 thousand. The math does not work, obviously.
Based on American history, however, there is a path forward. Not conscription or a draft in a world war-era sense, but enlistment through a “debt forgiveness program.”
The average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40 thousand in non-mortgage debt across student loans, credit card balances, auto loans, and personal loans, with some estimates go as high as $100 thousand.
This is the cohort the Pentagon needs. A federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program that fully discharges student loan, credit card, and loan balances after 24 or 36 months of service, and extends the GI Bill, would produce voluntary enlistment at scale.
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The moral reading on this is uncomfortable. But states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have.
Ukraine: Shooting Down Drones with a Rifle from Soviet-Era Open Cockpit Yak-52
September 2nd, 2026Via: The War Zone:
The interception process involves the crew waiting close to their Yak-52 while awaiting the order to scramble. Once a Russian drone is spotted on air defense sensors, the Yak is normally airborne within 15 minutes.
With no radar and apparently no other onboard sensors, the Yak-52 crew relies on radio commands from the ground to get close to the drone. From the open rear cockpit, the gunner then gets the drone in their sights, wielding a handheld gun. Typically, engagements are made from a distance of 200 to 300 feet.
USS Abraham Lincoln Covered in Rust and Algae After 286 Days At Sea
September 2nd, 2026Via: The War Zone:
The U.S. Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln is now in Thailand for a much-deserved and highly publicized liberty port call. The carrier had gone 286 days without making such a stop, with much of that time spent executing grueling combat operations against Iran. The ship has been run very hard, relying on at times a rickety conveyor of sea replenishments to continue operating for months on end, and it has the scars to show for it. The Lincoln looks very much worse for wear, with so-called “running rust” and algae caked all along the sides of the hull, as well as around the edges of the flight deck and sponsons on either side.
Bloomberg Agri Index Posts Biggest Monthly Jump Since Arab Spring Riots As Food-Crisis Risks Mount
September 2nd, 2026Via: ZeroHedge:
The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index (BCOMAGSP) posted its largest monthly gain since the chaotic days of the Arab Spring riots and is nearing a breakout above its 2023 highs, signaling a broad-based acceleration in agricultural commodity prices. The upside momentum comes as Wall Street increasingly warns that a perfect storm of factors, from El Niño and higher fertilizer and diesel prices to disruptions in the Black Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, could push the global food system toward another crisis.
Strong Solar Storm Caused GPS Readings to Suddenly Veer Off by 33 Feet
September 1st, 2026Via: Futurism:
As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a team of scientists found that global navigation satellite systems experienced “significant positioning errors” of over 33 feet during the superstorm, “large enough to disrupt precision agriculture and autonomous transportation industries” across the continental United States.
That’s enough risk to warrant a careful study on these types of events can impact human activity on Earth.
“The results underscore the importance of accurate understanding of various space weather phenomena to enhance our predictive capabilities through coordinated observations and physics?based modeling and ultimately reducing disruptions to RF applications during space weather events,” the paper reads.
Enterprises Building Their Own AI Infrastructure, Buying Up Apple Hardware
August 31st, 2026Commentary on Kimi K3 back in July:
Trillion dollar valuations on U.S. AI companies… while Chinese companies are running knowledge distillation operations and then releasing competitive models for free…
Hmm.
While nobody is claiming that Kimi K3 is better, overall, than top proprietary systems, companies can potentially run it in their own data centers. If companies are spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on Anthropic/OpenAI/etc. they will definitely be looking at this.
While I have no idea if enterprises are ramping up their buildouts to run Kimi K3, this news about Apple seems to indicate that some enterprises are going to be spending less on services from Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceXAI/Grok.
Trillion dollar valuations while losing billions per month?
Launching the thinking machines into space?
Maybe running the free Chinese thing privately in your own datacenter makes more sense.
Apple happens to make good hardware for this purpose.
Via: MacRumors:
Apple’s unusually timed announcement of new Mac mini and Mac Studio models this week was driven by unexpectedly strong enterprise appetite for AI hardware, according to The Information.
Apple normally releases new Mac models in the autumn, closer to October or November, making this week’s announcement unusually early, falling just before the anticipated arrival of new iPhone models. The Information says that the AI-driven boom in ?Mac Studio? and ?Mac mini? sales is behind the early launch.
Apple noticeably promoted the ability to link multiple Mac Studios together into a single, more capable system for running large frontier AI models, a feature aimed at business and developer customers rather than everyday consumers.
Britain: White People Not Allowed to Apply for MI5 Internship
August 31st, 2026Via: Modernity News:
Britain’s domestic intelligence service is once again telling White university students they are not wanted.
For the 2027 Summer Intelligence Internship, MI5 has confined applications to people from a “black, Asian, mixed heritage or ethnic minority background” who also come from a “socially or economically disadvantaged background.”
White British candidates — including those from the poorest homes — cannot even submit an application. The agency calls this a response to “underrepresentation.” Critics call it what it is: racial exclusion.
