Auditing the AI Giants

Another suggested explanation for Anthropic’s erratic behavior of late: Anthropic desires to file an S-1, as they would like to go public. Therefore they need an audit. And by “they”, I mean the VC’s who invested in them. So “they” can exit their position and pass the bag to firemen, nurses, teachers and policemen. How […]

https://voxday.net/2026/09/16/auditing-the-ai-giants/

Mexican cartels are increasingly using drones for surveillance and to drop drug packages, raising concerns among U.S. security officials about the technology being used along the southern border. (Reuters⁠)

Earlier this year, El Paso’s airspace was temporarily shut down after U.S. authorities said cartel-operated drones had entered U.S. airspace near the airport. The FAA reopened the airspace hours later after officials said the threat had been neutralized. (Al Jazeera⁠)

However, the circumstances remain disputed. Reporting from the Associated Press and other outlets indicated that the shutdown was connected to a Pentagon–FAA dispute over the use of an experimental anti-drone laser, while the Trump administration publicly attributed the closure to a cartel drone incursion.

U.S. officials have warned that cartel drones could be used for drug drops, surveillance and other criminal activity. Reuters reported that experts had not identified a confirmed cartel drone attack on U.S. soil at the time of the El Paso incident. (Reuters⁠)

The border threat is evolving — and drones are becoming part of the cartel arsenal.

The Cost of the Codex

A fascinating article on the massive amount of information that was lost as a result of the change from rolled scrolls to bound codices at Fields & Energy: The codex transformed books from narratives to be read from beginning to end into repositories to be consulted anywhere at will. For science, this shift was revolutionary: […]

https://voxday.net/2026/09/16/the-cost-of-the-codex/

‼️🇰🇵👉🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇰🇷North Korea threatens the United States and South Korea with the use of nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang accused Washington and Seoul of intensifying military cooperation and increasing the American military presence in the region.

German hospitals are preparing for a potential war with Russia and a mass influx of wounded troops, according to Bloomberg.

The Bundeswehr is modeling a scenario in which a conflict between Russia and NATO could result in up to 1,000 wounded soldiers arriving in Germany daily. Five military hospitals would quickly become overwhelmed, forcing civilian clinics to take in the casualties.

In Ulm, military officials are considering reactivating a Cold War-era medical bunker capable of housing up to 2,000 people and operating autonomously for 90 days. Other hospitals are exploring the conversion of underground parking garages into shelters and conducting mass-casualty drills.

However, the system is not yet prepared for such a scenario. Only a few hundred German doctors have experience treating combat injuries, and hospitals need to bolster their infrastructure, medical supplies, and power systems.

🇪🇺 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 E.U. Talks of Making Canada first 'Associate Member as US. Ties Weaken

Details are scant, and the linkup is not a done deal, but the announcement was the boldest step yet in a joint quest by the European Union and Canada for tighter global partnerships. Both economies have been trying to build stronger alliances with a variety of countries as they find themselves caught between a competitive China and an at-times-hostile United States.

Mr. Carney gave a headline-grabbing speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this year during which he argued that the world order that emerged from the Cold War was facing a “rupture, not a transition,” and that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

The move on Wednesday was a clear demonstration of that strategy.

Ms. von der Leyen did not lay out in detail what associate membership to the European Union might entail. But European diplomats and officials in recent days have made it clear that Canada and the European Union, which will meet for a summit at the end of October, are working toward closer cooperation on technology regulation, trade and the supply of critical minerals.

Since trade talks between Canada and the United States collapsed last month, the two countries have been locked in a trade war. President Trump has also repeatedly called for Canada to become the 51st state, prompting a wave of patriotism among Canadians.

By contrast, polls suggest that four out of five Canadians want Mr. Carney to bring their country closer to the European Union and that more than half would like Canada to join the bloc as a member.

Mr. Carney often calls Canada “the most European non-European country.” Already, Ottawa and Brussels have a free-trade agreement, though the deal has not been approved by 10 of the 27 E.U. member states. Nonetheless, about 90 percent of trade between the European Union and Canada is tariff-free. Total trade between the two was $150 billion last year, compared with the United States-Canada trade relationship, which was worth more than $800 billion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/world/europe/eu-canada-associate-member.html

📎 The New York Times

Harvest Crisis Update: Diesel Tops $6 + USDA FOIA Response

Three weeks ago I said watch diesel as we go into harvest. Prices have exploded since; ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery just shut down unexpectedly, and the situation in the Middle East keeps getting worse. Other voices are now also warning about crop abandonment as expenses are making a harvest economically unviable.

Also: the USDA responds to one of my FOIAs about DARPA’s Tellus sensing-and-reporting microbes in the food supply. (at 7:14)

YouTube: https://youtu.be/NyFAIMYvj9E
Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/yielLelV421F

Scientists neglect history at their peril. That’s how the poets appropriated Chaucer’s legacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_the_Astrolabe

FAA Greenlights Laser Sentry Guns To Combat Attack Drones In U.S. Airspace

The Federal Aviation Administration has given the green light for the U.S. military to deploy high-energy counter-drone laser weapons in U.S. airspace, adding a new, low-cost layer of protection against the rising threat from kamikaze drones. The decision follows a two-month interagency standoff over whether the systems posed a risk to general aviation and commercial aircraft, as well as incidents in Texas earlier this year that briefly led to an airspace closure.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford was quoted by The New York Times as saying the new laser weapon systems had completed a safety assessment that "determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public."

The decision paves the way for broader use of these 20- to 35+-kilowatt-class laser weapon systems along the southern border to combat drug cartel drones and one-way attack drones. These threats have caused alarm at the highest levels in Washington, especially following the use of drones by Iran in the Gulf area to target data centers, civilian infrastructure, and U.S. military bases.

The NYTimes provided more color on the FAA's decision:

The statement did not address whether the agency had determined that the high-energy lasers posed no physical risk to aircraft, or whether the safety determination was based on how the lasers were being deployed. But the F.A.A. determined that the risk would be minimal even if the laser came into contact with an airplane, according to an agency official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

The controversy surrounding these laser weapons stems from the February 10 incident when the FAA briefly closed airspace over El Paso after Border Patrol fired the weapon at an object that turned out to be a metallic balloon. With the interagency standoff over, the U.S. military has considered deploying these lasers in Washington, D.C., to combat low-cost, one-way attack drones.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/faa-greenlights-laser-sentry-guns-combat-attack-drones-us-airspace

🇺🇸🇺🇦 Russia may launch another massive strike on Kyiv by September 20th - U.S. intelligence warned Ukraine.

However, last night's attack on the Ukrainian capital was not the one previously warned about.

According to U.S. intelligence, Russia may be trying to deplete Ukraine's air defense reserves before a more devastating strike.

Apparently another leader at the function had the same thing happen to them, leading to speculation it might have been a Havana Syndrome device. That might explain why Xi’s first move was not to seek medical treatment, but rather to get home to controlled territory, and put the Army on alert. Shades of Biden in Las Vegas aborting the hospital run to board Air Force One and flee to a bunker in DC: https://x.com/AvelinoReAu/status/2100340506504974593

Cynthia's latest essay has dropped today featuring a series of major revelations about the parasitic growth of a shadow state within China, untold battles behind the scenes before during and after Tiananmen Square and the hives of Soros operatives that were purged after 1989
https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-revenge-of-the-beijing-technocrats

🧬 Life Uses 4 DNA Letters. Scientists Just Made 8 Work.

Every known organism on Earth writes its genetic instructions using the same four DNA letters: A, T, C and G.

Scientists have now shown that one of biology’s most fundamental molecular machines can read an alphabet containing eight.

Researchers tested E. coli RNA polymerase — the enzyme that reads DNA and turns its information into RNA — with synthetic DNA containing four additional chemical letters known as P, Z, B and S. Remarkably, the enzyme successfully recognized and transcribed the artificial base pairs using much of the same molecular machinery it employs for natural DNA.

Using cryo-electron microscopy at resolutions down to about 2.4 ångströms, the team could watch how the synthetic letters fit inside the polymerase. The artificial pairs adopted almost the same geometry as ordinary Watson–Crick DNA pairs, allowing the enzyme’s catalytic machinery to close around them and continue transcription. Researchers also engineered a modified version of one synthetic letter to reduce copying errors.

The implications are potentially enormous. A larger genetic alphabet could eventually produce RNA molecules with chemical capabilities unavailable to natural biology and might help scientists design new diagnostics, drugs and engineered biological systems. Expanded genetic alphabets have already been used experimentally to create molecules that recognize cancer cells.

But there is an important boundary: scientists have not created an eight-letter living organism here. The experiment demonstrates transcription by bacterial RNA polymerase; reliably replicating a full eight-letter genome and translating that expanded information into proteins inside living cells remain much harder problems.

For four billion years, life on Earth has been writing with four letters.

Apparently, biology’s machinery can read a bigger alphabet than evolution ever gave it.

#Genetics #DNA #SyntheticBiology #Biotechnology #RNA #Science

Primary paper — Nature Communications⁠

"Notice how the observed primordial abundances—the dashed rectangles–contain the predicted and observed data.

"Unfortunately, this is not so for lithium-7. The observed Li/H relative abundance is about 1-2 x 10^-10, but what is predicted is 5 x 10^-10 — that is, lithium appears to be about three to four times less than predicted by the BBN model. This inconsistency is called the ‘cosmological lithium problem’."

https://quantumworld.substack.com/p/the-big-bangs-smoking-gun-the-birth?r=lp6h7&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Diesel Prices Are Surging, But a Bigger Fertilizer Crisis Could Be Right Behind It:

Sulfur prices have surged more than fivefold, threatening phosphate fertilizer production. With global supply tightening, farmers could face higher prices, or even fertilizer shortages, heading into the months ahead.

“Let’s just talk numbers for one second,” Pratt says. “Typically, the global phosphate fertilizer market every year is 75 million tons. That’s how much phosphate fertilizer global farmers consume every year. Our best estimates are that producers around the world will probably make about 45 million tons this year, because they either can’t get or can’t afford sulfur.

"There is a looming crisis out there, and it’s not too far removed, it becomes a food crisis.”

“They could be looking at higher fertilizer prices, or they could be not able to find it at all,” Pratt says. “If we’re not able to produce phosphate fertilizers here, and our big competitors in other parts of the world are either slowed down or not producing, that’s a pretty dire situation.”

And the tension in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea doesn’t seem to be easing anytime soon , meaning the sulfur squeeze could get worse before it gets better.

https://www.agweb.com/news/crops/crop-production/diesel-prices-are-surging-bigger-fertilizer-crisis-could-be-right-behi