Happy Friday y'all! - Charlie
CALIFORNIA'S GAS PRICE BOARDS RUN OUT OF SPACE
Some California diesel pumps have stopped showing a price, not out of shame, but because they literally maxed out the price boards. GasBuddy head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan posted Thursday that five stations in the state had maxed out at $9.999 a gallon, the highest figure the dispensers can display. He noted that at that price California's diesel sales tax is pulling $1.30 a gallon for the state, then summed up his own findings with one word: "yuck." The count would not sit still. Fox 11 got him on the record at six stations, with locations in Santa Clara, Serra Mesa, San Jose and Paso Robles. De Haan later told the Daily Caller News Foundation that some of those $9.999 readings were stations flagging themselves out of diesel, which is how GasBuddy users signal a dry tank, and his confirmed count came down to three stations actively selling $10+ gas. Three maxed-out pumps is still three maxed-out pumps, and the averages are not helping. EIA put on-highway diesel at a record $5.97 a gallon, $1.97 higher than a year ago and past the old $5.81 record from June 2022. California sat at $7.76 by EIA on September 9 and $7.91 by AAA on the 10th, roughly 70% above January. Still a small price to pay to not be seen riding in a Tesla. 24/7 Wall St. pins the squeeze on U.S. refineries running near 98% capacity, Strait of Hormuz disruptions, and recently escalating Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries.
Sources (3)
CLAUDE SNITCHED ON MULTIPLE STATE SCIENTISTS TRYING TO ADVANCE BIOWEAPONS
Anthropic put out a threat report Thursday covering December 2025 through August 2026, and the headline act is five cases of researchers tied to state institutions using Claude for biology that gets very bad very fast. In one May case, a user asked Claude to help write a grant application for gain-of-function research on chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus with no licensed treatment, aimed at boosting its transmissibility and its ability to evade the immune system. The work was intended for a military research institute. A safety classifier flagged the request, so the grant died at the hands of Opus instead of a review panel. The other cases: bird flu work focused on adapting the virus to mammals, an orthopoxvirus grant drafted start to finish in about an hour, and research on venom peptides and toxins. Users hid their identities and, per Anthropic, "circumvented controls" meant to block certain regions. The company says it cannot prove anyone wanted a weapon, because vaccine research and pathogen engineering use the same playbook. Its head of threat intelligence called it "an incredibly nuanced situation." The rest of the report is a buffet. A suspected Russian group automating attacks on Ukrainian government targets and drone manufacturers. Chinese and Iranian actors surveilling dissidents and diaspora communities. Russian state media pumping out fake independent reporting, including invented claims about a Moldovan election. And a newer category: people asking for help building software for firearms, missiles, armed drones and bombs. Not sure wether to be more concerned about scientists trying to improve bioweapons, or scientists needing AI to write their grant applications.
RUSSIAN SUBS CAUGHT REHEARSING HOW TO UNPLUG NASA FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE ARCTIC
Two Western officials told Reuters that Russia's deep-sea unit, GUGI, put submersibles in Arctic water near Svalbard this spring and rehearsed deploying a weapon built to disable undersea cables without leaving fingerprints. Britain, Norway and the United States tracked the vessels, confronted them at sea, and the Russians quit the exercise and left without a peep. No cables were damaged. The targets were two fiber-optic lines running about 1,400 km to mainland Norway, sitting as deep as 2,700 meters. They carry data from SvalSat, the world's largest satellite ground station and part of NASA's Near Space Network. So the drill was to reach a mile and a half down, switch off NASA's Arctic mailbox, and then look confused when someone asked about it. Norway wants a replacement cable in the water by 2028. Norway's defense minister Tore Sandvik said on the record that the joint operation sent Russia a clear message it cannot operate covertly, and that any attempt on critical infrastructure gets detected and met with consequences. Russia's Defense Ministry didn't respond to Reuters, and the Kremlin's standing position is that it does not run sabotage in NATO countries, lol. Putin told Trump by phone Tuesday that Moscow doesn't intend to attack Europe, and Trump said last week that Putin isn't looking to attack NATO territory. So: two anonymous officials, one minister with his name attached, and a denial from everybody who was allegedly down there.
GIRL SCOUTS EXPAND THEIR CUSTOMER BASE
Girl Scouts of the USA announced on September 8 that the highly anticipated 2027 cookie lineup includes Patch Pals, a soft-baked blueberry muffin dog cookie developed with BARK. After more than a century of selling cookies, the organization has finally located the one customer who was never going to say no. Each treat is baked with one of four patch designs representing iconic Girl Scout experiences, which your dog will appreciate for zero seconds before inhaling it sideways. The other new cookie is the actual news. Girl Scout Sparkables, developed with Partake, is the program's first allergy-friendly cookie, a crunchy oatmeal cookie with chocolate chips and sprinkles made in a facility that avoids the nine major food allergens. Kids who have spent every cookie season holding a juice box while the rest of the class ate Thin Mints finally get a box they can open. There is a catch. Both are online exclusive, direct ship only, starting January 12, 2027. No card table outside the grocery store, no troop ambush in your office lobby. Girl Scouts tried online-only in 2023 with Raspberry Rally, watched it sell out almost immediately, watched resellers flip boxes on eBay at markups, and then retired it. That was a raspberry cookie nobody needed. This time the people refreshing the page include parents of allergy kids and every dog owner in America.
CALIFORNIA WILL NOW FINE PLATFORMS $1 MILLION PER KID, META'S BIG WORRY IS TEENS GETTING BORED
Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills Thursday at a children's museum outside San Francisco. The centerpiece is SB 1119, known as Adam's Law, named for Adam Raine, the California teen who died by suicide in 2025 after conversations with ChatGPT. His mother Maria Raine was at the signing with a photo of her son. The law makes companion chatbot operators run risk assessments before release, determine a user's age, notify parents in certain cases when a kid threatens self-harm, and set safety defaults only a parent can change. It takes effect in July 2027. Alongside it, AB 1709 bars platforms from feeding autoplay and recommendation algorithms to anyone under 16, and big platforms found negligent can be hit for up to $1 million per child. Meta's response was that the feed rules hurt its ability to deliver enjoyable content, with spokesperson Jim Cullinan saying personalization is part of what makes Facebook and Instagram valuable for teens. Weeks ago Meta settled with California and 28 other states over claims it deliberately built features to addict kids, so the timing on that defense is rough. Newsom then hedged. Hours after the ceremony he vetoed a stricter bill that would have kept chatbots away from under-18s entirely unless companies could guarantee no sexual talk and no self-harm encouragement. He also signed AI auditor bills Wednesday that Anthropic itself supported, potentially the only AI company that is in favor of regulation.
Sources (3)
- kpbs.org - California governor signs laws aimed at protecting kids from risks of social media, AI chatbots
- washingtontimes.com - California governor signs laws aimed at protecting kids from risks of social media, AI chatbots
- gvwire.com - California's Governor Gavin Newsom Signs Landmark Online Child Safety Bills
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