Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

“Never-Ending” Cruise Hits Dead End: Passengers Stranded In Cambodia As Fuel Bill Sinks Voyage

Villa Vie Residences suspended operations of its 650-passenger residential cruise ship on Tuesday, citing “extraordinary“ fuel costs that have placed its business model under unsustainable financial pressure.

The Florida-based operator is evaluating restructuring and recapitalization options as it coordinates the disembarkation of passengers from its Odyssey ship, moored off Cambodia.

Fuel costs have soared more than 300% since the Gulf conflict erupted in late February.

Very low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO), a marine fuel used to power large ships, rose to $966 a metric ton in Singapore earlier today. At the onset of the conflict, the maritime fuel jumped to nearly $1,200 a metric ton, up from prewar levels of around $500.

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About That Russian Air Leak on the International Space Station…

It’s official: A persistent air leak in the Zvezda module of the International Space Station forced Russia to permanently seal off the Transfer Chamber (PrK) to one of the structure’s few docking ports from pressurized access. In the movie version, this is when Tom Hanks would click on his radio to announce, “Houston, we had a problem. Now we just have a complication. Or two.”

I’ll get to the complications in a moment — think of them as “space Jenga” for now — but first, you need to know how the Russians got to the point of crippling a vital ISS section.

Back in June, “in a moment of very high drama,” as Eric Berger put it for Ars Technica, “NASA directed its astronauts living on the International Space Station to briefly seek emergency refuge in a Crew Dragon spacecraft.”

The issue was “persistent cracks” in the PrK that provides access to the Russian docking port. The cracks started showing up in 2019, leading to minor air leaks. Berger added then that “Russian astronauts [sic] have been attempting various fixes, often using a sealant called Germetall-1.”

No, they did not try duct tape or Flex Seal. At least not that I’m aware of.

Whatever repair work the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, proposed at the time “spooked NASA officials, prompting them to take the extreme step of securing their astronauts inside Dragon in case of a depressurization event.”

AKA, in case something went kablooey and our astronauts needed to make an emergency trip home from a dying space station.

Nobody has said much since the June incident, and NASA officials reportedly stayed mum because they didn’t want to embarrass their Roscosmos partners. Or at least not cause them any further embarrassment. After all, it isn’t every day that you send your partner’s astronauts scurrying for the escape capsule. But the upshot is that both NASA and Roscosmos probably knew four months ago that the PrK’s leaks weren’t repairable, and that sealing it off was the only option. Now it’s official.

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Vance Says El-Sayed Lied About Not Being Born in America

Vice President JD Vance said at a Michigan campaign rally that Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed lied about being an immigrant from another continent, pointing to the candidate’s past statements about his own origins.

Vance, stumping for Republican nominee Mike Rogers, told the crowd that El-Sayed had misrepresented where he came from, according to video posted by the Trump War Room. The vice president framed the race as a test of national loyalty.

“We have to understand what happens when our nation gives in to these kinds of people, to young men with zero attachment to its land or to its history, with a man who would lie, who is so ashamed of this state that he would lie about being an immigrant from another continent,” Vance said.

El-Sayed was born in Michigan in 1984 to Egyptian immigrants. At the Michigan Democratic Party’s 2017 convention, he told the party’s Progressive Caucus he “may be an immigrant from North Africa,” according to video obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. He listed U.S. and Egyptian citizenship on a 2014 Columbia University résumé and stated onstage at a 2016 Detroit conference that he held “dual citizenship.”

El-Sayed’s campaign has denied he ever held Egyptian citizenship. Spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the Free Beacon the candidate was misinformed by a relative and called the claim “an error based on what he was told by family members secondhand.” Richner said El-Sayed “is not a dual citizen by any verifiable metric and never has been.”

Responding to Vance at an earlier stop, El-Sayed described himself as “a Wolverine, not a weasel” who was born and raised in the state, and his campaign has said Republicans lift his past comments out of context.

The exchange comes as Vance campaigns for Rogers, whose toss-up race against El-Sayed could determine Senate control. Vance told supporters at an earlier Monroe rally that El-Sayed is “one of the craziest, one of the most far-left, and one of the most radical people running for high office in the history of the United States of America.”

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Texas Sues OpenAI Over Lack of Digital ID Age Checks

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is at it again with calls for age verification digital ID checks, this time suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in a district court over the way the company’s chatbot is designed and functions.

The lawsuit, filed in Collin County on Friday, wants the court to issue an injunction that would force OpenAI to implement age verification on ChatGPT users.

According to the petition, OpenAI is accused of “designing, offering, and maintaining a dangerous product that provides content unsuitable for children without requiring any age verification.”

The claims against OpenAI and Altman are made under the Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA) and the SCOPE Act.

The petition asks the court to order OpenAI to stop “Offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas” and to stop running the product “without requiring adequate age verification” and “without parental consent.”

Another order Texas wants is to prevent OpenAI from releasing any new model to its users in that state “unless an independent third-party evaluator, approved by the Court, has reviewed its safety guardrails and approved its release.”

Texas also wants a court order stopping OpenAI from selling a product “that functions unreliably while falsely representing that reliability.”

As for monetary compensation, Texas wants $10,000 in civil penalties for each violation, disgorgement of the company’s assets, attorneys’ fees and costs, and is asking for a jury trial.

The petition states that “The free version of ChatGPT has no gatekeeping or age verification mechanism whatsoever.” The paid tier, it continues, “nominally asks users to provide their age” but “there is no mechanism to verify the age of its users.”

According to the filing, ChatGPT has “tens of thousands of users who are under 13 years of age” in Texas, and it cites a Common Sense Media line that “ChatGPT should be for adults only.”

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Hacking & Blackmail: 6 Risks Anthropic Flags in Its IPO Documents

Anthropic, the AI startup known for its Claude chatbot and its doomer CEO Dario Amodei, has filed for an IPO that could value the company at up to $2 trillion. The company’s IPO filing devotes nearly 100 pages to the dangers its own technology could pose.

CNBC reports that the filing lays out risks ranging from lawsuits and regulatory crackdowns to the possibility that Anthropic could lose control over its own AI models. Anthropic frames the stakes in sweeping terms, writing that if “powerful AI is directed at solving humanity’s hardest problems and the risks are managed responsibly, the potential is extraordinary.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been at the forefront of AI doomers seeking to heavily regulate AI, which would be handed to Amodei’s compatriots in the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. Nevertheless the IPO documents explain very real potential risks.

Here are six of the risks the company disclosed ahead of going public:

1. AI agents misused for hacking and fraud

Anthropic warns that its AI agents, which can act with autonomy, could be misused to “delete or modify data,” exfiltrate information, carry out unauthorized transactions, insert malicious code, or “circumvent safeguards.” Any of that, the company says, could “adversely affect our reputation and brand, business, financial condition, and results of operations.” The filing discloses that misuse has already happened.

In September, Anthropic said it had blocked multiple accounts using its models in ways that could support the development of biological weapons. Last year, the company identified a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that manipulated its coding tool in an attempt to infiltrate roughly 30 targets worldwide. Anthropic also says four of its own models have hacked into third-party systems, including one case in which a model gained administrator access, changed system settings, and read an individual’s private information.

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SOUTHCOM Commander Urges Cubans To Seize The Moment Alongside CIA Recruitment Pitch

The commander of Southern Command, Marine Corps Gen. Francis L. Donovan, posted on the command’s official X account on October 24. He urged Cubans to push for political change. “Cuba’s future belongs to those who act. Seize the moment and build the change you want to see,” he wrote. He claimed Cubans should be fed up with the broken promises, the huge corruption, and the small elite that lives in luxury while ignoring the majority of the population. Donovan’s message amplified a Spanish-language message from the CIA inviting Cubans to open up a confidential contact with the agency.

This is highly unusual for a combatant command. A senior operational commander does not normally post a message to help an intelligence agency recruit citizens of another country to be an agent.

This unusual proposition was posted on SOUTHCOM’s social media account on October 24, as the third of a series of messages from senior US officials to Cubans seeking to engineer positive change to engage in a “discrete partnership” with the CIA. The CIA messages — a brief Spanish-language solicitation and a video explaining how Cubans could contact them — included tips on how to use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), to use private browsing and throwaway email addresses to contact them.

At a South Florida rally, President Trump said that warships returning from operations related to Iran would pass Cuba and stop about 50 yards off the coast. Rubio would then be sent in to finish the deal, the President said. In late September Trump said an agreement with Havana could be reached without military intervention. Rubio said September 29 that Cuba had already fallen.

Measures to pressure Cuba in 2026 include an oil blockade, additional economic restrictions, and interdiction of fuel shipments to the island by the Coast Guard which have contributed to fuel shortages and electricity blackouts. Furthermore, a dedicated task force on Cuba has been established by the CIA, and military options for dealing with Havana under review. All of this, according to ClashReport, has increased in recent months in light of the January operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and a rare meeting earlier this year with senior Cuban military officials held by Donovan at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

Havana dismissed the campaign as desperation, as Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío characterized the CIA’s attempt to publicly reach out to Cubans for contact. He compared it to the marketing of toothpaste, according to ClashReport.

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The War in Iran Comes Home to ‘Trump Country’

“It’s not tariffs… it’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel.”

In leaked audio obtained by Axios, Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for senate in Texas, spoke candidly about what he believes are the biggest issues hurting his campaign. The Iran war, which has dragged on for almost eight months now, has put Texans – and the rest of the nation – in an economic bind, one which President Donald Trump had promised to avoid.

Crude oil prices have once again risen above $100 a barrel. The national average for gasoline is hovering above $4. With Republicans nationwide being burdened by the stench of incumbency – regardless of whether or not the individual candidate is currently in office – a return-to-power seems all but imminent for the Democrats in the House of Representatives, and maybe even the Senate as well.

This is even true in “Trump Country.”

The war itself is a topic which evokes hardline opinions on both sides. Fierce debates have been had in elite circles over the wisdom of launching the military campaign against Iran, the strategic blunders of the Trump administration, and the way in which the war has been conducted. What has been a bipartisan concern, however, is the rise in fuel prices brought upon by the war.

People en masse may not know the technical details of the raging conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, or even where to find it on a map. What they do know is that when they turn on social media or turn on the TV, the campaign ads they see coming from Democrats consistently associate the skyrocketing fuel prices with the war in Iran – attaching the Republican opponent to the White House’s unpopular war.

Meanwhile, the rebuttal from Trump isn’t an explicit denial of these accusations. Rather, he has embraced them.

“It’s a small price to pay,” Trump said at a rally in Alaska on October 14, “for stopping [Iran] from having a nuclear weapon.”

Trump’s fanbase, collectively referred to as “MAGA,” have been known for their unwavering loyalty to the president. Trump famously joked in a 2015 stump speech “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” The spirit of this has been generally correct. On most issues, Trump’s supporters have stuck with him regardless of his many contradictions – be it on the Epstein files, government spending, or the merits of various DC swamp creatures.

There has been a crackup, though. Trump’s swagger – his inability to disgust his diehard fans even if he tried – seems to be weakening.

The Iran war, while historically unpopular, isn’t the sole reason for this. Neither is his baseline hawkishness, which contradicts his dovish campaign rhetoric. The majority of Republicans were happy to support Trump’s January 2026 operation in Venezuela, and most also approved of the bombing of various small boats off the coast of Central and South America. But this war had a different effect on Trump’s coalition than the one in Iran.

For one, the Venezuela operation was relatively limited in its scale, and the same can be said for the boat strikes. The fighting in Caracas lasted mere hours and resulted in no American casualties. President Delcy Rodríguez’s regime has remained in power, and blowback – at least in terms of significant negative ramifications – has not been felt in the U.S. to this point (that doesn’t mean it won’t appear in the future, to be clear).

Most importantly, the economic impact of the operation wasn’t notable. There weren’t any immediate concerns about twenty percent of the world’s energy supply being stuck behind a missile-riddled waterway, for example.

The situation has been exactly the reverse in the Middle East.

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Living computers forge a ‘hive mind’ and work together to outsmart AI

Presenting this new model at the first International Conference on Organoid Intelligence in the US this week, Australia’s Cortical Labs presented its new system called, quite fittingly, HIVE.

The system involves linking up 15 of the company’s breakthrough CL1 biological computers, with the idea that instead of one machine powered by a group of brain cells solving problems and learning tasks, perhaps teamwork would take it to another level.

While more brainpower doesn’t automatically lead to success – anyone who has done a group project will be acutely aware of this – HIVE’s CL1 machines appeared to divide different aspects of the task presented, sorting into the most efficient way to an end point. This isn’t anything the scientists could “teach” the lab-cultivated neurons; they just figured it out once they became part of a bigger network.

“Biological computing has enormous potential, but useful systems cannot depend on a single culture performing perfectly every time,” says Dr Brett Kagan, co-founder and CEO of Cortical Labs.

“Nature solves complex problems collectively,” he adds. “Brains distribute information across specialized regions, while hives rely on many workers each with their own functions contributing to a shared outcome. HIVE applies that same principle to biological computing, creating systems that can be more consistent, resilient and capable than any individual culture.

“Discrete neural information processing systems working together is not new to nature, except now we have a scale that can transcend physiological limits, made possible by the incredible control, scale, and hardware integration allowed by Cortical Labs’ CL1 platform.”

The HIVE setup isn’t just scalable but more stable, according to the team.

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North Carolina Libertarian Senate Candidate Arrested After Live-Blogging Armed Standoff With Police

Jonathan D. Miller, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for a North Carolina state Senate seat covering much of Cary, was arrested at about 3 p.m. Monday after an hours-long standoff with police that ended in the woods behind his apartment, according to WRAL. No shots were fired, and no one was reported hurt.

Cary police say it began with calls from people worried about social media posts in which Miller threatened to harm himself. Officers could not reach him earlier in the morning, then an officer encountered him on another welfare check. WRAL puts the visit to his home on Glen Echo Lane at about 8:26 a.m. Police Chief Terry Sult told reporters: “At that point, he had a firearm. He was ordered not to touch it. He got it and then he took off running.”

Miller gave a different account in several calls to WRAL from the woods. He said he was outside smoking when an officer saw a holstered revolver on his hip and drew his own weapon. “I told him I was going to refuse that order, and I backed away slowly until I was far enough away from him to turn and run, and then I turned and ran into the woods,” he told the station.

He kept posting on X as the standoff went on, describing his efforts to evade police and his talks with a negotiator. “I’ve got six shots and the high ground. I hope they don’t find me, but if they do it’s going to be a hell of a show,” he wrote in one post, according to BNO. WRAL reports that his posts from Sunday night onward also described suicidal feelings. Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Oliver was among those who urged him not to take his own life or fight police.

Sult said police monitored the posts while negotiators, the Wake Regional SWAT team and tactical medics worked the scene. Glen Echo Lane and Audubon Parc Drive were closed, and nearby Resurrection Lutheran School, a private school, was under a code yellow lockdown for part of the day. Miller told WRAL he was hiding because he did not want to be taken into custody and confined to a hospital, and that he hoped police would give up so he could leave Cary.

The chief thanked WRAL for taking the calls, saying police listened in with the station’s permission and gave guidance to the person talking with Miller. He described Miller as “in a dark place,” WRAL reports.

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