Utah is having a record year for wildfires, and as a result, the governor has changed the state’s policy for fireworks. They’re now banned by default, though local municipalities can lift that restriction in coordination with their local fire chief. Naturally, all hell has broken loose.

As regular readers know, car bloat is killing us. Recently, the New York Times created an impressive interactive article that details the problems of massive pickups and SUVs in the US. It’s well worth a look.

Perhaps it would make sense for governments to limit the size of vehicles, for the benefit of all. Or perhaps we should all start adding some whirling spike clubs.

I was surprised to find myself hooked into reading this article about dirt, but it happened.

For 15 years, Sébastien Fontaine has been trying to kill dirt. The biochemist, who runs a lab at the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment, wanted to know how much carbon is released by soil — just dirt alone, completely devoid of life. His team sealed dirt into jars and blasted them with sterilizing gamma radiation. Then they waited for the carbon dioxide released by the soil — a sign of ongoing microbial respiration — to drop.

They waited, and waited, and waited some more: weeks, then months. Under a microscope, the irradiated soil showed no signs of life, but it continued to emit carbon dioxide. The soil wouldn’t stop breathing.

It appears the chemistry of life is not actually exclusive to life. Neat!

I was recently chatting with friends in San Francisco about the devil of a time they had buying a house. An incredible influx of cash related to A.I. coupled with decades of under-building have created a hellish market for buyers. Houses in San Francisco are already quite expensive, and some have sold for a million dollars over the asking price or more. That’s wild.

The aforementioned A.I. cash influx is apparently warping other prices as well.

I’ve often referenced and promoted the idea that billionaires should probably not exist. I’m damned sure that trillionaires shouldn’t exist.

Last fall, a report on how businesses are using A.I. contained A.I. hallucinations about A.I. usage by businesses

A KPMG report on how AI is being used by businesses across the world exaggerated adoption of the technology with bogus case studies that appear to have been based on AI hallucinations.

The October report, “Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI”, made numerous false claims about the use of AI by organisations including the Swiss bank UBS, the UK’s National Health Service and the public transit groups Swiss Federal Railways and Transport for London.

Whups.

Are you tried of your multi-ton hunk of metal nagging you to pay attention while you propel it down the road at high speed? Now, there’s a plastic doll head for that.

[Image via decentmiss_]

[Image via decentmiss_]

It’s amusing that such a low-tech solution can defeat the safeguards of high-tech systems. However, it’s also a near certainty that this will lead to car crashes, particularly given that Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” isn’t.