2025-03-25

Worthy

• Patrick Henry's Liberty or Death Speech

  it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.

Horseshit

• The 'Largest Illicit Online Marketplace' Ever Is Growing at an Alarming Rate

• A 1930s movement wanted to merge the US, Canada and Greenland

• Assault at Antarctic base could be a warning for future travellers to Mars

• The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid

• Why Did the Government Declare War on My Adorable Tiny Truck?

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Who believes in conspiracy theories?

  Individuals with economically left-wing and culturally conservative attitudes tend to score highest on conspiracy thinking. People at this ideological location seem to long for both economic and cultural protection and bemoan a “lost paradise” where equalities had not yet been destroyed by “perfidious” processes of cultural modernization and economic neoliberalism. This pattern is found across all countries and holds regardless of socioeconomic characteristics such as education and income.

Musk

• Tesla sales drop 35% in San Diego County

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Tesla Full Self-Driving is stagnating after Elon said it is going exponential

• California now has 48% more EV chargers than gasoline nozzles in the state

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The Tranhumanist Cult Test

  Notable examples of groups that have been identified as cults through using Lifton's framework have included The People’s Temple (Jonestown), Heaven’s Gate (UFO suicide cult) the Branch Davidians, the Scientologists, and Aum Shinrikyo – who were responsible for the Tokyo sarin gas attack of 1995. More recently, NXIVM, the self-help, pseudo-science, sex-cult which exploited women, was legally designated as a cult by using Lifton’s schema. Of course, I am not claiming that the respected intellectuals, scientists, industrialists of transhumanism and their many followers, are in any way connected to the violent enterprises of such cults, but there may be elements within the tranhumanist belief system that encourage the growth of cult-like behaviours.

  Transhumanism first emerged in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, where its advocates were pioneers in the internet, artificial intelligence, and robotics industries. One of the earliest notable gatherings occurred in 1994 when a group called the Extropians hosted their first meeting in Sunnyvale, California. This event focused on futuristic, science-fiction inspired, ideas like cryopreservation and uploading human consciousness to digital formats. Through “visionaries” and tech gurus working within these well-funded (and indeed DARPA funded) research fields, with peaks and troughs in investment over the last three decades, transhumanists have deepened their belief in a fated future in which the human species will achieve “augmented” evolution through fusing with machines, leading to the emergence of an artificial superintelligence that will far outstrip all human knowledge and achieve God-like powers (The Singularity). This digital deity will lead us to a new era, in which all human biological limitations will be transcended; bringing about end to sickness, suffering and even death, and leading us to colonise the cosmos.

• What Went Wrong for DEI?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• 40% of $1.8 trillion student loans are late on payments as Trump seeks to abolish Dept. of Ed

  Roughly 40 percent of loans out of the total amount of $1.8 trillion in student loans are owned by loan holders who have not met their payments on time, CNN reported. The $1.8 trillion loan portfolio, which was held by the Department of Education, will now fall under the jurisdiction of the Small Business Administration following President Trump’s executive order limiting the Department’s powers, CNN wrote.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• HP avoids monetary damages over bricked printers in class-action settlement

• A Vision for Rebuilding TikTok in America

• Google admits it deleted some customer data after 'technical issue'

• Oracle Cloud says it's not true someone broke into login servers and stole data

• Despite Rip-Replace Efforts FCC Suspects Banned Chinese Providers Still Active

• Max Removing the Original Looney Tunes Shorts Is an Act of Cultural Vandalism

• I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud

  After my dad and I got it installed, I went to run a rinse cycle, only to find that that, along with features like delayed start and eco mode, require an app. Not only that, to use the app, you have to connect your dishwasher to WiFi, set up a cloud account in something called Home Connect, and then, and only then, can you start using all the features on the dishwasher.

• TikTok withdraws controversial 'chubby' filter

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Tragic Case of Intel AI | the singularity is nearer

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI reshuffles leadership as Sam Altman pivots to technical focus

Crypto con games

• Is Washington losing its grip on crypto, or pivoting to digital dominance?

Economicon / Business / Finance

• 23andMe files for bankruptcy as CEO steps down

  • 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

  • 23andMe Files for Bankruptcy, as CEO Anne Wojcicki Resigns

• How TD Became America's Most Convenient Bank for Money Launderers

• The exurbs are where people are moving

• Startups That Set Out to Fix the Climate Are Now Talking About Jet Fighters

• Why America Struggles to Build

• There’s a Stock Exchange for Lawsuits - Bloomberg

  selling lawsuits was historically frowned upon — but we really do love financial capitalism and that situation couldn’t last. Now “litigation finance” is a big business, and a big asset class; plaintiffs and law firms get money upfront from investors in exchange for a share of their possible eventual winnings. One way to analyze this is that it is expensive but socially valuable for class-action lawyers to bring mass tort cases (I poisoned your town’s drinking water, I invented OxyContin, etc.), and selling off a portion of the prospective recovery is a way for them to finance their cases, remedy injustice and deter wrongdoing. Another way to analyze it is, look, I got punched in the face, I have an asset, markets ought to be complete, why shouldn’t I be able to sell my asset?

• Vertical farming company Plenty files for bankruptcy after raising nearly $1B

• Boeing Is Pushing to Withdraw Guilty Plea Agreement

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• GOP Congressman Expects Lawmakers in Both Parties to End Up 'In Handcuffs' Due to DOGE Findings

  In an interview with Forbes published on YouTube Wednesday, Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett said Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will not only end up cutting spending, it could end up putting some lawmakers “in handcuffs.” And he indicated it wasn’t only Democrats he was talking about. “You’re probably going to see some people in Washington, and possibly some people in Congress in handcuffs over some of this stuff, because of the money and the graft,” he said. “They think they’re slick, and … there’s no paper trail. But there’s a trail. There’s a trail for every dollar."

Trump

• "radical transparency" The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

  U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

  • Trump's national security adviser added journalist to chat on Yemen strike

  • Hegseth Disclosed Secret War Plans in a Group Chat

  • White House adds journalist to top-secret Yemen war group chat by mistake

  • Top US officials shared Yemen strike plans in group chat with journalist

  • The Atlantic's Editor Says Top Trump Officials Texted Him U.S. Secret War Plans

  • White House acknowledges 'inadvertent' leak involving top Trump officials

Democrats

• Barack Obama Was Using USAID to Pretend to Send 'Aid' Overseas But Was Laundering It to Train 'Rent-a-Riots' Instead

• 'Inorganic' - GPS Data Reveals Bernie Sanders, AOC Anti-Oligarchy Rally Was Full Of Serial Protesters | ZeroHedge

  there were 20,189 devices. Still a large crowd but not even close to the 30,000 quoted in Denver newspapers nor the 34,000 quoted by Bernie Sanders and AOC. 84% of the devices present had attended 9 or more Kamala Harris rallies, antifa/blm, pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian protests, 31% had attended over 20.

• The Democrats' Corporate Lawyers Get the Humiliation They Deserve

  A key firm in this network is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a multi-billion dollar entity that is so politically connected its New York office served as the unofficial campaign headquarters for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries worked as an associate at Paul Weiss for six years (and has a donor network there), former Obama cabinet members Jeh Johnson and Loretta Lynch are partners, and so is Chuck Schumer’s brother. Sonya Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elana Kagan were summer associates. At times Paul Weiss’ political connections were comical. In late 2024, a firm partner, Karen Dunn, both prepped Harris for her debate with Trump the very same day as she opened up for Google in its adtech antitrust case against the Biden administration.

  A week and a half ago, Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order stripping the firm of security clearances and business with the government, as well as potentially barring their lawyers from Federal courthouses. In addition, Trump implied he would penalize Paul Weiss’ clients. It’s a blatantly illegal order, the kind widely understood as an authoritarian move . It followed on Trump targeting two other big law firms, Covington and Burling and Perkins Coie, whose partners had engaged in partisan activity against the Republicans. Threatening lawyers who represent clients opposed to the government is tin pot dictator stuff, meant to chill any opposition. So you would think that a politically wired firm would recognize that they have an ethical obligation, or even just a branding one, to oppose it. Indeed, a high profile case like this is in some ways a lawyer’s dream, it’s so obviously morally repugnant and a sure loser, or winner potentially for Paul Weiss. Moreover, you would think that the rest of the big law world would rally behind these firms, seeing that any one of them could be next. And indeed, Perkins Coie fought the order in court, quickly winning a temporary stay, with the judge saying this order “sends chills down my spine.”

  But in the case of Paul Weiss, that’s not what happened. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Competitors immediately began circling after the March 14 order, calling coveted Paul Weiss clients to note that the firm had been marked as an enemy of the president, according to people familiar with the conversations.” Within a few days, Brad Karp, the firm’s Chairman, sought to cut a deal with the Trump administration. Paul Weiss hired Bill Burck, the lawyer for indicted New York City mayor Eric Adams. Working through Burck, as well as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a firm client, Karp reached out to Trump, and they met for three hours. In the middle of that meeting with Karp, Trump picked up the phone and calling Paul Weiss’s most important rival, Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell, and asked what he should do. The whole episode leaked, which revealed to the entire corporate and legal world that Paul Weiss has no juice in Trump-world, and Sullivan & Cromwell does. Finally, they cut a deal. In return for Trump ending his executive order, the firm agreed to end its diversity programs, do $40 million of free work for Trump-aligned priorities, and ensure that it would hire and represent Trump-aligned clients. Karp also disavowed former Paul Weiss lawyer Mark Pomerantz, who had worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in a case against Trump.

  This capitulation shocked and horrified the legal world, inviting Trump to expand his attack on the legal community. The next day, Trump issued another executive order calling for the government to sanction lawyers who bring “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious” lawsuits against the government. That’s a signal to the entire legal world that representing clients in disagreements with the government carries a personal and professional risk.

  One way of seeing this dynamic is to ask the question: If this venerable law firm, which has the resources to fight and a legacy to protect, capitulates, then who else will? But the way I see this dynamic is that it merely reveals to everyone in Democratic politics what we’ve already known, which is that big law is a place of toxic anti-democratic sentiment. And the entire edifice of party politics, that fancy lawyers do the real governing work while shabby hacks handle the rabble during the elections, is a charade to hand over America to private equity and monopoly. what should be crystal clear to everyone in politics is these lawyers aren’t just unethical, but are in many ways the reason that the Democratic Party is as enfeebled and pathetic as it seems to be. Big law is the brains of the Democrats, with the actual elected officials, often meek pleasers with little experience wielding real power, as ornaments who serve up slop on centrist and leftism and other meaningless terms. The alchemy of big law was always they way in which you seamlessly revolve in and out of government - the allure of making a lot of money and governing. That is what is shattering.

• We Dug Into the Polls. Democrats in Congress Should Be Very Afraid. - POLITICO

  A review of Quinnipiac University’s annual first-quarter congressional polling reveals that, for the first time in the poll’s history, congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings. Just 40 percent of Democrats approve of the job performance of congressional Democrats, compared to 49 percent who disapprove. That’s a dramatic change from this time last year, when 75 percent of Democrats approved compared to just 21 percent who disapproved. The Democratic base’s disillusionment runs so deep that it’s eerily reminiscent of Republican grassroots sentiment in the period leading up to Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.

• Congress' Democrats confront their own Tea Party: "They hate us"

  The senior House Democrat told Axios that a colleague called them after a town hall crying and said: "They hate us. They hate us." "Among the things I got [at a town hall] were: 'Will you call for Chuck Schumer to resign?'" the lawmaker said. "Last week I got: 'You need to tell your leadership they had no right rebuking Democrats for being strong at'" Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress. "Another thing I got was: 'Democrats are too nice. Nice and civility doesn't work. Are you prepared for violence?'"

Left Angst

• IRS nears deal with ICE to share addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants

• Trump EPA's Next Move: Making It Harder to Sue for Getting Cancer from Roundup

• Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts

• Wells Fargo Is Plotting to Privatize the Post Office

• FBI scales back staffing, tracking of domestic terrorism probes, sources say

  • Does this make the Tesla Terrorists happier? Or does it make it safe for a church member to attend a school board meeting again?

• Trump seeks social media profiles of all green cards applicants

• The DEI Catch-22 - The Atlantic

  They believe they have found a pattern. As far as they can tell, nearly all of the canceled grants seem to have made some mention of diversity, equity, inclusion, or other disfavored topics, several med-school researchers told me. Making the cuts even more maddening is the fact that, at least until a few months ago, the federal government required researchers to include plans to “enhance diversity” in many grant applications. And under a policy first implemented during the George H. W. Bush administration, the National Institutes of Health long offered supplemental funding for grants that employed someone from an underrepresented minority group. Now the same factors that helped researchers get their grants approved may have become liabilities. “You can imagine how it feels to be terminated for following the government guidelines,” Domenico Accili, an endocrinology professor, told me.

  Beyond the capriciousness of punishing researchers for following the prior administration’s rules, the grant cancellations demonstrate the impossible position that Columbia’s researchers are in. If they didn’t pursue DEI objectives before, they could have lost out on grants or even violated congressional mandates. If they did, they’re at risk of ending up as collateral damage in the culture war. They’d prefer to just get back to the science.

  • Integrity is hard, eh?

• Sudden Trump administration order prompts Bay Area company to lay off staff

• Trump administration's blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher

• The Indian scholar arrested in US over Palestinian sympathies

• The Doublespeak of Energy Secretary Chris Wright

• IRS Predicts Doge Lost Half a Trillion Dollars for the USA

• America Is Done Pretending About Meat

• Using Starlink Wi-Fi in the White House Is a Slippery Slope for US Federal IT

• Should we be concerned about the loss of weather balloons?

  Due to staff reductions, retirements, and a federal hiring freeze, the National Weather Service has announced a series of suspensions involving weather balloon launches in recent weeks. The question is, will this significantly degrade forecasts in the United States and around the world?

  • (2019) Weather balloons vital for climate science but pollution they create poses dilemma

• Government Spending Is Out of Control! LOL - The Big Picture

  The $9.9071 trillion numerator includes “current transfer payments, interest payments, and subsidies (and removes wage accruals less disbursements),” none of which belong when analyzing “Consumption.” “Transfer Payments,” for the uninitiated, include such things as Social Security benefits. The more appropriate number — Gov’t Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment — is $4.9893T ($4.9893/$29.1838 = 17.1%). Both the Wall St. shop involved and Scott Bessent surely know this, but the second chart is useless in advancing a government-spending-is-out-of-control-and-DOGE-will-put-an-end-to-it narrative.

  • "Don't count the uncontrolled spending and the picture is lovely!" Statistics is wonderful, you can say the numbers support whatever argument you want.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• NYPD sergeant is suspended over 'spying for the Chinese'

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Ex-US Attorney Jessica Aber Investigated Russia, CIA Leaker Before Death

• DoD kills off HR IT project after 780% budget overrun, years of delays

World

• India says quashing Volkswagen's $1.4B tax bill would be 'catastrophic'

• Paris residents to vote on making 500 more streets pedestrian

• National Grid boss says Heathrow had 'enough power' after substation fire

• Europe's elite are very nervous about freedom of speech

• Fact check: Can Canada apply to join the EU?

• International students 'bring billions to Germany'

Israel

• 'No Other Land' co-director attacked by Israeli settlers and arrested

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Two women who spied for Russia tracked down and named by BBC

China

• AI Without Nvidia: Jack Ma-Backed Ant Touts Breakthrough Built on Chinese Chips

• China's evolving punk scene draws a new generation of fans

• China Is Ready to Blockade Taiwan

Health / Medicine

• Man who almost 'ate himself to the grave' loses 30 stone

• How Beef Tallow Made a Comeback

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Bird flu detected in sheep in England

  • First case of bird flu in sheep detected in England

• In case of a bird flu pandemic, could immunity from seasonal flu help?

• Does it matter whether SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab?

• America – and the media – needs a Covid reckoning

  In the case of the Covid pandemic, early coverage that dismissed peoples’ fears and suggested they were irrational probably delayed our collective response — and lastingly decreased the credibility of the media and public health communicators when they later needed to muster a serious response. A lot of the fault here lies with public health officials, many of whom initially downplayed the threat and called the lab origin theory a conspiracy. But too often the media tended to treat these proclamations without the skeptical questioning that was warranted, especially given the uncertainty. And while I’ve chosen to highlight the early February spats over whether Covid was less concerning than the flu, this pattern repeated itself over and over again.

  • "We were wrong, but it wasn't our fault!" ... Does mention the "Bill Gates was behind it" story however, i thought that one (and its eerily early pre-bunking) had vanished.

• Court rules family can sue school for giving COVID-19 shot without consent

• Why I Got the Measles Vaccine at Age 63

• Fungus labeled 'urgent threat' by CDC is spreading rapidly, hospital study finds

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A Climate of Truth by Mike Berners-Lee: white-hot environmental policy takedown

• Fossil evidence found of humans domesticating avocados 7,500 years ago

• Giant mine machine swallowing up Senegal's fertile coast

• Desert rocks suggest unknown microorganism uses marble and limestone as a home