The biggest surprises from this report are that Brits drink more coffee than tea now and also that Mexicans drink way more tea than anybody would have guessed. https://www.statista.com/chart/34497/respondents-who-regularly-drink-tea-or-coffee/

Water system cyberattacks spread to Georgia, Michigan amid US-Iran conflict. Damn you, Tim Walz!
https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/03/georgia-michigan-say-water-systems-hacked-by-iran-tied-crew/5282262

Claim of the moment: "Donald Trump has gone to remarkable lengths to make the US a breeding ground for a widening range of viruses, bacterium, and parasites — and no, we’re not talking about his cabinet." https://futurism.com/health-medicine/america-consequences-trump-public-health-rare-disease-outbreak-ravaging-usa

This floating ‘Tinkerbell’ robot wants to be your friend
https://www.theattachmenteconomy.com/p/this-floating-tinkerbell-robot-wants

#MachineSociety

Linkedin introduces a button for reporting AI slop. https://www.404media.co/linkedin-introduces-a-seems-like-ai-slop-button/

#MachineSociety

These two sentences are the whole story of AI-generated journalism:

Buzzfeed "was caught publishing AI-generated articles riddled with errors, and it shut its Pulitzer-winning news division the same year. Traffic collapsed, and the share price fell... to under 50 cents."

https://thenextweb.com/news/buzzfeed-layoffs-byron-allen-ai-pivot-decline

Donald Trump's decisions and statements during the Covid pandemic led directly to the needless deaths of 188,000 Americans, so of course Trump and his allies are going after Fauci.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n439#:~:text=by%20JH%20Tanne,maternal%20mortality%2C%20and&text=US%20health%20status,the%20study%20estimated.

Phrase of the moment: "literary counterculture"
https://www.wired.com/story/more-typos-fewer-em-dashes-writers-are-creating-an-anti-ai-literary-counterculture/

#MachineSociety

Phrase of the moment: “the age of decadence without pleasure” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/26/age-of-decadence-pleasure-ai

Instagram is suggesting that I follow myself.

Chinese AI model user of the moment: Hugging Face https://fortune.com/2026/07/20/hugging-face-turns-to-chinese-open-source-ai-to-fend-off-autonomous-ai-cyber-attack-after-american-ai-guardrails-stymie-defense/

#MachineSociety

I bought a Netgear Nighthawk 5G M7 Portable WiFi Hotspot for $500 on Amazon. While in Europe, I discovered that it didn't work right. By the time I got back to the US, the window to return it was closed. Netgear refused to process a return as well. So now I've got a $500 paperweight.