Zelensky’s New Peace Talks Chief Caught Up in Same £76 Million Fraud Scandal as Ousted Chief of Staff
December 4th, 2025Via: Daily Mail:
The corruption crisis rocking Ukraine has deepened after it emerged Volodymyr Zelensky’s new peace talks chief has been caught up in the £76million scandal.
Anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO have been investigating allegations that a group of eight people, including Ukrainian government officials, were collecting bribes from the state nuclear power company, Energoatom.
The group of officials are said to have collected 10-15 per cent of the value of each contract given, amounting to £76million that was unlawfully given to the tiny group – money that could have been used to help defend Ukraine from Russian attacks.
The scandal, which has shaken Ukraine as it sends negotiators across the world to try and end Russia’s invasion, has claimed the scalp of Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s right hand man and now-ex chief of staff who resigned after anti-corruption investigators raided his home and offices in connection with the ongoing probe.
Yermak, once considered the second-most powerful man in Ukraine, was due to be in Florida to speak with top Trump officials about a peace plan that would end the nearly four-year-long war.
He was instead replaced by Rustem Umierov, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, who was called up at the last minute, the Telegraph reported.
But Umierov, the 43-year-old former minister of defence, is also caught up in the same anti-corruption investigation, having been called in as a witness as recently as November 25.
Research Credit: OF
Polarization by Design: How Elites Could Shape Mass Preferences as AI Reduces Persuasion Costs
December 4th, 2025Via: arXiv:
In democracies, major policy decisions typically require some form of majority or consensus, so elites must secure mass support to govern. Historically, elites could shape support only through limited instruments like schooling and mass media; advances in AI-driven persuasion sharply reduce the cost and increase the precision of shaping public opinion, making the distribution of preferences itself an object of deliberate design.
Related: AI Rivals Humans in Political Persuasion
Micron Will Stop Selling RAM to Consumers
December 4th, 2025—
Via: Ars Technica:
On Wednesday, Micron Technology announced it will exit the consumer RAM business in 2026, ending 29 years of selling RAM and SSDs to PC builders and enthusiasts under the Crucial brand. The company cited heavy demand from AI data centers as the reason for abandoning its consumer brand, a move that will remove one of the most recognizable names in the do-it-yourself PC upgrade market.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief business officer at Micron Technology, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”
Trump Just Pardoned Honduran Drug Smuggler Who Flooded the U.S. with Cocaine
December 3rd, 2025The Honduran drug smuggler whom Trump just pardoned received a 45-year sentence from a US federal court for flooding the US with cocaine.
Given this, how can anyone believe Trump’s motive for toppling Maduro is to impede drug trafficking to the US????pic.twitter.com/i3HPo9QHM4 https://t.co/nI0jBxBzsg
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 2, 2025
People Living in Hotels Instead of Renting Homes or Apartments
December 3rd, 2025I don’t think this is a new phenomenon, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
A friend of mine did this over 20 years ago in Oregon.
Via: Epic Economist:
IBM CEO Says There’s ‘No Way’ Spending Trillions on AI Data Centers Will Pay Off
December 2nd, 2025
Via: Business Insider:
AI companies are spending billions on data centers in the race to AGI. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has some thoughts on the math behind those bets.
Data center spending is on the rise. During Meta’s recent earnings call, words like “capacity” and AI “infrastructure” were frequently used. Google just announced that it wants to eventually build them in space. The question remains: will the revenue generated from data centers ever justify all the capital expenditure?
On the “Decoder” podcast, Krishna concluded that there was likely “no way” these companies would make a return on their capex spending on data centers.
Couching that his napkin math was based on today’s costs, “because anything in the future is speculative,” Kirshna said that it takes about $80 billion to fill up a one-gigawatt data center.
“Okay, that’s today’s number. So, if you are going to commit 20 to 30 gigawatts, that’s one company, that’s $1.5 trillion of capex,” he said.
Krishna also referenced the depreciation of the AI chips inside data centers as another factor: “You’ve got to use it all in five years because at that point, you’ve got to throw it away and refill it,” he said.
Related: Yann LeCun Leaving Meta — Large Language Models Are a Dead End
The College Students Who Can’t Do Elementary Math
December 1st, 2025This is ending. pic.twitter.com/iZwltSmXr0
— Made by Jimbob (@ByJimbob) May 14, 2025
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Kids in elementary school learn—or are supposed to learn—how to add fractions and round numbers. But many students at the University of California, San Diego—a top public university ranked sixth nationally by U.S. News & World Report—can’t do either, according to a new analysis from the university.
Related: Why Are 38 Percent of Stanford Students Saying They’re Disabled?
Homeschooling Hits Record Numbers
December 1st, 2025Via: Reason:
Whether called homeschooling or DIY education, family-directed learning has been growing in popularity for years in the U.S. alongside disappointment in the rigidity, politicization, and flat-out poor results of traditional public schools. That growth was supercharged during the COVID-19 pandemic when extended closures and bumbled remote learning drove many families to experiment with teaching their own kids. The big question was whether the end of public health controls would also curtail interest in homeschooling. We know now that it didn’t. Americans’ taste for DIY education is on the rise.
Limited Hangout: Director of the FDA’s Vaccine Division Says COVID Shots Killed At Least 10 Children
December 1st, 2025Limited disclosure shoves the mass casualties under the rug. pic.twitter.com/tRek4WzqSy
— Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (@NicHulscher) December 2, 2025
Via: ZeroHedge:
The Food and Drug Administration’s top overseer of vaccine policy on Friday told employees that at least 10 American children died “after and because of receiving” a Covid-19 vaccine. In a 3,000-word memorandum first reported by PBS, Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s vaccine division, also committed to implementing changes to the FDA’s evaluation of vaccine efficacy and safety, and encouraged dissenting employees to find a new job.
“This is a profound revelation,” Prasad wrote. “For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children.” Prasad said the conclusion about children dying from Covid-19 vaccines was reached after he and other FDA staffers undertook a multi-month, “detailed analysis of deaths voluntarily reported to the [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] system (VAERS).”
That effort focused on 96 deaths that occurred between 2021 and 2024, and said “no fewer” than 10 of them were caused by the vaccines. “If anything, this represents conservative coding, where vaccines are exculpated rather than indicted in cases of ambiguity. The real number is higher.” He added, “It is horrifying to consider that the US vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.”
Britain: Midazolam and Euthanasia in the COVID-19 Pandemic
November 29th, 2025Via: Dr. John Campbell:
Paper: Excess Deaths in the United Kingdom: Midazolam and Euthanasia in the COVID-19 Pandemic
