Stuff They Don't Want You To Know - Strange News: Mass Surveillance, Endangered Elections, the Annabelle Doll, Radioactive Animals, and More

New reports raise growing concerns that the next US elections may be endangered -- along with a ton of other rights. After 54 years of fire, Turkmenistan's "Door to Hell" may be closing. Radioactive rhinos and wasps. Sex toys thrown during WNBA games. Israel conducts expansive surveillance of Palestinians, prompting a larger conversation about Big Brother. All this and more in this week's strange news segment.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

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Up First from NPR - Putin U.S. Meeting, Netanyahu’s Gaza Plan, Trump D.C. Action

President Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin prepare talks to end the war in Ukraine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to forcibly move Gaza's residents to take control of the entire Palestinian enclave. And Trump deploys federal agents as a show of force across Washington, D.C.


Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter. 


Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rebecca Rossman, Hannah Bloch, Kevin Drew, Olivia Hampton and Adam Bearne. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange. 

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The Daily - What C.E.O.s Really Think About Trump’s Tariffs

Last week, President Trump hit many countries with yet another round of punishing tariffs. So far, the economy has been resilient in the face of his trade war, but it’s unclear how long that will last.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor-at-large of DealBook, discusses what C.E.O.s are telling him about the president’s tariffs, and where they think all of this is headed.

Guest: Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist and the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Photo: Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Marketplace All-in-One - Data centers are causing problems for their neighbors

U.S.-based data centers are expanding at a fast pace, thanks largely to the boom in generative artificial intelligence software and cloud computing. But they’re also reportedly causing environmental issues and other problems for their neighbors. The BBC’s Michelle Fleury reports from Georgia on how the boom in data centers is raising environmental and sustainability concerns from the people who live near them.

The Daily Detail - The Daily Detail for 8.11.25

Alabama

  • Attorneys for Governor Ivey request a lawsuit be dismissed by judge
  • Protest against ICE held in Birmingham fizzles with low turnout
  • State senator talks redistricting & gerrymandering after issue erupts in TX
  • Former DHS agent discusses Bibb county sex abuse case while on the 1819 News podcast

Nationa

  • Trump to hold press conference today re: federal take over of Washington DC
  • VP Vance says he expects indictments re: Russia Collusion Hoax
  • House Oversight chairman looking for legal action to nullify Joe Biden's orders during his cognitive decline
  • TX governor making it very hard for Dems to return to state after fleeing during special session
  • HHS secretary says he is hunting down corrupt money incentives within healthcare system

Everything Everywhere Daily - The Bank of England

In the late 17th century, King William III of England was facing a problem. 

He was in the middle of a prolonged war with France. He was in desperate need of money, and he had exhausted most of the traditional sources for funding a war.

A proposal came forward for a new bank that could lend the crown money at favorable interest rates, and also solve several problems for merchants in the country. 

Learn more about the Bank of England, one of the most important banks in history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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NBN Book of the Day - Vijay Selvam, “Principles of Bitcoin: Technology, Economics, Politics, and Philosophy” (Columbia UP, 2025)

Principles of Bitcoin presents a holistic, first-principles-based framework for understanding one of the most misunderstood inventions of our time. By stripping away the hype, jargon, and superficial analysis that often surrounds the crypto industry, this book uncovers the true ingenuity behind Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation—and its profound implications for the future of money, governance, and individual freedom.

Vijay Selvam analyzes the technology, economics, politics, and philosophy of Bitcoin, making the case that only through this holistic understanding can we gain an appreciation of its true meaning and significance. Readers are invited to consider Bitcoin as a tool for individual empowerment, a catalyst for economic autonomy, and a challenge to traditional monetary systems. Selvam demonstrates why Bitcoin stands alone in the digital asset space as a path-dependent once-in-history invention that cannot be replicated.

Principles of Bitcoin is an invaluable resource for professionals in the financial world seeking a rigorous and accessible understanding of Bitcoin. Students, curious thinkers, and all who find the technology daunting will also benefit from its clear, foundational approach. Equipping readers with the tools to grasp the many facets of Bitcoin, this book is an ideal guide to exploring its role in shaping a more decentralized, transparent, and equitable future.

Vijay Selvam is a corporate lawyer and financial services expert with nearly twenty years of experience across the United States, United Kingdom, and Asia. He spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs and has also held leadership roles in the digital assets industry, advising on the evolving regulatory landscape. Selvam is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Oxford University, and Cardiff University.

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Talk Python To Me - #515: Durable Python Execution with Temporal

What if your code was crash-proof? That's the value prop for a framework called Temporal. Temporal is a durable execution platform that enables developers to build scalable applications without sacrificing productivity or reliability. The Temporal server executes units of application logic called Workflows in a resilient manner that automatically handles intermittent failures, and retries failed operations. We have Mason Egger from Temporal on to dive into durable execution.

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Python Bytes - #444 Begone Python of Yore!

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Brian #1: Coverage.py regex pragmas

  • Ned Batchelder

  • The regex implementation of how coverage.py recognizes pragmas is pretty amazing.

  • It’s extensible through plugins

    • covdefaults adds a bunch of default exclusions, and also platform- and version-specific comment syntaxes.
    • coverage-conditional-plugin gives you a way to create comment syntaxes for entire files, for whether other packages are installed, and so on.
  • A change from last year (as part of coverage.py 7.6 allows multiline regexes, which let’s us do things like:

    • Exclude an entire file with \\A(?s:.*# pragma: exclude file.*)\\Z
    • Allow start and stop delimiters with # no cover: start(?s:.*?)# no cover: stop
    • Exclude empty placeholder methods with ^\\s*(((async )?def .*?)?\\)(\\s*->.*?)?:\\s*)?\\.\\.\\.\\s*(#|$)
    • See Ned’s article for explanations of these

Michael #2: Python of Yore

  • via Matthias
  • Use YORE: ... comments to highlight CPython version dependencies.
    # YORE: EOL 3.8: Replace block with line 4.
    if sys.version_info < (3, 9):
    from astunparse import unparse
    else:
    from ast import unparse
    

Then check when they go out of support:

$ yore check --eol-within '5 months'
./src/griffe/agents/nodes/_values.py:11: Python 3.8 will reach its End of Life within approx. 4 months

Even fix them with fix .

Michael #3: nox-uv

  • via John Hagen
  • What nox-uv does is make it very simple to install uv extras and/or dependency groups into a nox session's virtual environment.
  • The versions installed are constrained by uv's lockfile meaning that everything is deterministic and pinned.
  • Dependency groups make it very easy to install only want is necessary for a session (e.g., only linting dependencies like Ruff, or main dependencies + mypy for type checking).

Brian #4: A couple Django items

  • Stop Using Django's squashmigrations: There's a Better Way
    • Johnny Metz
    • Resetting migrations is sometimes the right thing.
    • Overly simplified summary: delete migrations and start over
  • dj-lite
    • Adam Hill
    • Use SQLite in production with Django
    • “Simplify deploying and maintaining production Django websites by using SQLite in production. dj-lite helps enable the best performance for SQLite for small to medium-sized projects. It requires Django 5.1+.”

Extras

Brian:

  • Test & Code 237: FastAPI Cloud with Sebastian Ramirez
    • will be out later today
  • pythontest.com: pytest fixtures nuts and bolts - revisited
    • A blog series that I wrote a long time ago.
    • I’ve updated it into more managable bite-sized pieces, updated and tested with Python 3.13 and pytest 8

Michael:

Joke: Copy/Paste