2025-05-01

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• Dog found after 529 days in Australian wilderness

Horseshit

• Legendary Bose Magic Carpet Suspension Is Finally Going Global

• Most parents don't enjoy reading to their children, survey suggests

• The fewer the merrier - by Samuel Hughes

  One of the perennial problems of urban life is that land ownership normally fragments when the development is complete and the new properties are sold to their occupants. This means that neighborhoods with a unified landowner up to the point of occupation start to suffer the collective action problems of fragmented land ownership afterwards. Nobody wants to be the one who pays for public goods. And many people might like to do things on their plot that maximize its value even while blighting its neighbors. Urban politics is, among other things, a long-running attempt to solve this problem through forcing fragmented property owners to contribute to public goods and abstain from activities that harm the city as a whole. There are, however, some interesting cases where property ownership does not fragment at the point of occupation, and where unified landowners continue to provide services that we normally expect to receive only (if at all) from local government.

• Thom Browne Launched a Multi-Million Dollar Fashion Brand from His Bedroom

• Maryland man pleads guilty of holding 13 remote IT jobs for developers in China

• Child damages €50M Rothko painting in Dutch museum

• How the biggest flood in the history of the Earth created the Mediterranean

• Fusion Reactor Called Norm Could Outperform Everything We've Built So Far

• Australian identical twins speak in unison during interview about alleged crime

• Maltose-negative yeasts: new flavors and faster brewing for nonalcoholic beers

• F1 in Saudi Arabia: Blind corners and walls at over 200 MPH

Obit

• A Great Warrior for Freedom Has Passed Away | Frontpage Mag

  One of the great Americans of our age, David Horowitz, died on Tuesday at the age of 86.

Musk

• The Cybertruck is all tricks and no truck, a musky Tesla fail

• Wall Street banks rid themselves of Elon Musk's X debt

• Elon Musk Just Doesn't Understand the Sci-Fi Visions of Iain M. Banks

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Why the lettering on Pope Francis's tomb looks so bad

  Francis—a modest man who opted to live in humble quarters alongside his peers rather than in the Vatican’s official housing for the leader of the church—requested nothing more than his name and a cross to adorn regional marble (“the stone of Liguria, the land of his grandparents”). Vatican News goes as far as to position this stone, not the most premium, as “the people’s stone.” It really is quietly beautiful. But atop that marble is a tomb inscribed with the name “Franciscus.” Or what—due to terrible spacing between letters, known as kerning—reads something more like “F R A NCIS VS.”

  “No, there is no historical or aesthetic reason why the kerning is so poor,” Christopher Calderhead, editor and designer of Letter Arts Review, writes via email, while also pointing out that the inscription was set in Times New Roman and then carved. He suspects the work was “farmed out to a run-of-the-mill tombstone company.”

  for a pope famous for his humility, perhaps there is no greater immortalization of that virtue than his name being chiseled so poorly in stone for the rest of time.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

• New York state budget to include school cellphone ban

• Limestone University in South Carolina to Shut After Failing to Raise $6M

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• How the Internet Left 4chan Behind

  The anonymous forum thrived when edgelord content wasn’t acceptable on more mainstream social media. Today, it can be found most anywhere.

  • It wasn't the same forum after they removed the horse porn.

• Oscars' New Viewing Requirement Has Loopholes

• Always-on processor magic: how "Find My" works while iPhone is powered off

• Reddit Bans AI Researchers for Secret User Tests

  • Reddit users thought they were debating real people. Instead, it was a secret AI

• Cybersecurity vendors are themselves under attack by hackers, SentinelOne says

• What It Takes to Defend a Cybersecurity Company from Today's Adversaries

• The Future of Gadgets: Fewer Updates, More Subscriptions, Bigger Price Tags

• I use zip bombs to protect my server

• Meta, App Makers Launch Washington Lobby to Fight Apple and Google

• Duolingo drops nearly 150 new language courses, says AI helped build them

• Electronic Arts, worth $37B, lays off hundreds for 3rd year in a row

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Intel experimenting with direct liquid cooling for up to 1000W CPUs

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Why Even Try If You Have A.I.?

• Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI

• I would use more crude terms to describe it: 'Model collapse': Scientists warn against letting AI eat its own tail

• Colorado lawmakers scale back artificial intelligence law

• OpenAI rolls back update that made ChatGPT a sycophantic mess

• The AI that sparked tech panic and scared world leaders heads to retirement - Ars Technica

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Firefly's rocket suffers one of the strangest launch failures we've ever seen

  The rocket's first stage may have exploded moments after it separated from the upper stage. Firefly released a statement acknowledging a "mishap during first stage separation... that impacted the Stage 2 Lightning engine nozzle." As a result, the rocket achieved an orbit lower than its target altitude, Firefly said.

  • Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket fails during launch, falls into the sea

• Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval

Crypto con games

• Leaders of $190M Brazilian Crypto Ponzi Scheme Sentenced to over 170 Years

• It costs more than one Bitcoin to mine one Bitcoin.

  • Many are in a position to steal the electricity, however...

• 'Dire Picture' for BTC Miners as Revenue Flatlines Near Record Low

Economicon / Business / Finance

• New Silicon Valley espionage scandal between startups embroils Deel

• Super Micro shares dive after server maker issues weak preliminary financials

• UPS to cut 20k jobs as it reduces amount of Amazon shipments it handles

• The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025

  In 2025, the federal minimum wage is officially a “poverty wage.” The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650

• Hudson's Bay falls after 355 years: failure of retail icon

• U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter

  The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That was the steepest decline since the first quarter of 2022. The reading fell short of the 0.4% growth that economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected.

  • U.S. Economy Shrank in First Quarter

  • The US economy shrank 0.3% in first three months of the year

  • US economy contracts in the first quarter; tariffs unleash flood of imports

• Fed's Preferred Inflation Gauge Stalls While Spending Picks Up

• Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

  • What we can VERIFY about Port of Seattle 'ghost town' rumors | king5.com

  As the Trump administration continues to impose up to 145% tariffs on most Chinese imports and as smaller tariffs on additional countries, a post is circulating online claiming the Port of Seattle is a “ghost town” because of it. The post, shared Sunday, reads in part, “Not a single international cargo ship at the Port of Seattle. The port is effectively dead.” We decided to verify.

  The Seaport Alliance said port traffic in Seattle is up 7.3% in the last 30 days. The port saw an 18.4% increase in volumes in March, partially driven by shippers moving cargo before anticipated tariffs. Northwest Seaport Alliance Port of Seattle Commissioner, Ryan Calkins, said the future does not look as good. "The last forecast I saw was forecasting out over the next three months, and each month was forecasted to be down around 25% per month,” Calkins said.

• Starbucks says cutting shop staff in favour of automation has failed

• America may be just weeks away from a mighty economic shock

• The End of the ‘Generic’ Grocery-Store Brand - The Atlantic

  he remembers a lot of the store-brand stuff being “terrible.” It went on the bottom shelf, and both the retailer and the consumer knew that it was an inferior product.

  Fifty years later, inflation is (pretty) high, economic growth is stagnant, food prices are soaring, and Americans are once again turning to store-brand goods: In 2024, sales grew 3.9 percent, and the year before that, 5 percent. But this time, people actually want to be buying the stuff. One survey indicates that in 2023 and 2024, more than half of shoppers made decisions about where to shop based on stores’ brands, compared with a third in 2016. If grocery-store products used to be unremarkable, undesirable, inferior—the thing you bought because it was cheap and available—they have, over the past decade or so, become a draw. And they genuinely, truly taste much better than they used to. The new term of art for a store or house brand is private label, and it comes with all the surface-level signifiers of exclusivity and refinement that phrase is meant to connote: chic packages, blandly appealing brand names, unique and limited-edition flavors, even if the quality is variable.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• House GOP Proposes Eliminating Key Antitrust Law

• FCC to Review Spectrum Sharing Rules to Unleash Space Innovation

• Supreme Court appears ready to bless the first public religious charter school

Democrats

• Common Sense Is Highly Contagious — Except Among Dems

  At a town hall meeting last week, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — one of the few moderate Democrats left in the world — made a perfectly common-sensical statement: “Americans believe that only U.S. citizens should be determining the outcome of American elections.” She was greeted with a torrent shouts, boos, and profanity, signs that said “shame” from her constituents, and was ushered out of room for “security reasons.”

  ust three other Democrats in the House joined Gluesenkamp Perez in voting for the SAVE Act, which will require proof of citizenship to register to vote (a requirement overwhelmingly supported by the public). None voted for a bill to protect girls’ sports from “transgender” boys.

• Native American woman gets a chance to topple Hogg at DNC | Semafor

  “By aggregating votes across ballots and failing to distinguish between gender categories in a meaningful way, the DNC’s process violated its own Charter and Bylaws, undermining both fairness and gender diversity,” argued Free, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation.

  (Hogg) told me last week that he would not quit the DNC if asked to, and that the party would have to force him out. Changing the endorsement rule at an August meeting wouldn’t have automatically done that. But if the party agrees with Free and grants the relief she wants, it would hold new elections for vice chair, giving anti-Hogg members a chance to get rid of him.

Left Angst

• Amazon Rules Out Displaying Tariff Impact After White House Attack

  • White House Panics After Report Claims Amazon Will Display Tariff Prices

  • Trump called Amazon's Jeff Bezos about tariff cost report

• The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs

  President Trump’s approval rating has fallen to near-historic lows. With economic disruption from the tariffs likely to hit next month, his numbers will probably get even worse; this administration could reach unprecedented levels of unpopularity. If I were a far-right populist, I would be thinking hard about a strategy to prevent the blowback from crippling the movement. Such a strategy is easy to come by. Anger over DOGE and deportations has a natural floor. If Trump’s base starts abandoning him, it will be because of the tariffs. But tariffs aren’t a load-bearing part of the MAGA platform. Other right-populist leaders like Orban, Bukele, and Modi show no interest in them. They seem an idiosyncratic obsession of Trump’s, a cost that the rest of the movement pays to keep him around.

  • Biden had tariffs, too. They are a great example of identical actions being heroic or heinous for the media, depending on who took them.

• EU's von der Leyen invites scientists, researchers to make Europe their home

  European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday invited scientists and researchers from the world over to make Europe their home when the Trump administration is threatening to cut federal funding for Harvard and other U.S. universities. They have been in the administration's crosshairs, mainly over how they handled pro-Palestinian rallies against Israel's war in Gaza that roiled campuses last year, but also over issues like DEI programs, climate initiatives and transgender policies.

  • one response:

  The EU council can publish whatever press release they want - that's not gonna make a slightest dent in the business-hostile environment. Maybe it's perfectly clear for von der Leyen why the EU needs engineers and scientists but these sweet old ladies in the local job center will make sure your application shall never pass. And between those two entities (EU council and your local city council) guess who has the real power over your success?

• The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency | Techdirt

  Over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.

• Doug Emhoff Rages As President Trump Reclaims Holocaust Board From Biden’s Political Cronies – RedState

  Former second gentleman Doug Emhoff got some pretty brutal news from President Trump on Tuesday: You're fired. Emhoff, along with a slew of other high-profile Democrats, was summarily dismissed from his role on the board that oversees the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Also sent packing were:

  • Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Joe Biden
  • Susan Rice, Biden's director of Domestic Policy Council of the United States
  • Tom Perez, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee
  • Anthony Bernal, who was an advisor to former First Lady Jill Biden

  Here's the thing, though, about Emhoff's claim that the dismissals were politically motivated: The now-dismissed slate of lefty politicos were appointed by Joe Biden on his way out of the White House. Yes, the appointments were made on January 17, 2025, in what can only be described as a last-minute, overtly political attempt to stack the Holocaust Museum board with leftists.

• The Impossible Four-Hour Test You Need to Pass to Become a Tariff Pencil Pusher

• DOGE is learning 'fast,' says Booz Allen Hamilton CEO

• The New American Surveillance State

• Big Tech's MAGA alliance hits a big speedbump

• The Right Demands Loyalty, The Left Demands Purity

  if the Democratic party makes it so that anyone who isn’t liberal enough is disowned, while the Republican party embraces them, that’s a recipe for losing moderates and centrists to the Republicans. I think history has shown clearly that the Dems could have afforded to be a bit nicer to Joe Rogan and not to treat him like Hitler. Yes, Rogan is often poorly educated and spreads misinformation, but this is a property he shares with the median voter. Now, I wouldn’t find this tendency so noxious if the Democrats only disowned morons and crazy people. While I’d still think it was bad politics, I could at least understand an aesthetic revulsion of being on the same side as morons and crazy people. But instead, it seems like the Democrats spend lots of their time attacking people who are smart, well-read, thoughtful, and left-wing, so long as those people aren’t left-wing enough.

  While the left has a tendency to be close-minded and intolerant, the right has descended into a full-on cult of personality that demands nothing in the way of principles. The right no longer has principles, just loyalty. You just have to bow your head before King Trump and they will reward you.

• Right-Wing Gramscianism vs. Classical Liberalism

  if by “forfeited” Mr. Rufo means that classical liberals do not support using institutions (e.g., the Department of Education or the NEA) to forge social change, then he’s at least partially correct. Classical liberals want to restore the founders’ vision of government and abolish many of the post-Civil War institutions that have been slowly added to our federal Leviathan over the course of the last 150 years.

• Eight Charts That Sum Up Trump's First 100 Days

• Republicans want to tax EV drivers $200/year in new transport bill

• Why can’t stinking rich Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

  Columbia, the first victim of Donald Trump’s assault on America’s grandest universities, has an endowment of roughly $15bn. Mr Trump’s administration withheld a mere $400m in federal funding when it handed Columbia its peremptory list of demands. Why, indignant alumni ask, did Columbia not simply tell Mr Trump to get lost and fall back on its plump cushion of billions? Alas for Columbia and other rich universities, the calculus is not so simple. Their endowments are not easy to access. Research grants are not the government’s only leverage. And the chaos Mr Trump has created in the markets makes it a bad time to be selling or borrowing. Indeed, even if research funding were still flowing, the Ivies’ accountants would be losing sleep. Federal research grants account for a double-digit share of the revenue of most prestigious private universities, so losing them permanently would be a body-blow for any of them. They make up 11%, 15% and 18% of the income of Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities respectively. Columbia, at 20%, is especially vulnerable.

• Study finds that budget cuts to public R&D would significantly hurt the economy

• Former Space Shuttle boss's blog booted from NASA's website

• Trump Is the Godfather in Reverse – Paul Krugman

• RFK Jr is wrong – there's a rich history of autistic poets

• On Track for Cold War with China

• Brendan Carr's FCC is an anti-consumer, rights-trampling harassment machine

• Denmark Attracts American Researchers Amid U.S. Uncertainty

• Can the Only U.S. Highway Measured in Kilometers Survive 'America First'?

• International scientists rethink U.S. conference attendance

• Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi is free after judge orders his release

• Donald Trump might believe these Calibri labels are real MS-13 tattoos

• TikTok Brainrot Is Normalizing Alt-Right Ideologies

• Doge Put a College Student in Charge of Using AI to Rewrite Regulations

• Musk's DOGE probed by top watchdog after poking around Uncle Sam's systems

• CBS Folds in Response to Baseless Trump Threats

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• US arrests two alleged leaders of online extremist 764 group

• FBI steps in amid rash of politically charged swattings

  Although the Feds didn't specify any swatting incidents, referring to them only generally, it can be assumed that among them are recent attacks on conservative media pundits as well as on the family home of a murdered Texas athlete.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• China sends a stern video message to Trump: We won't 'kneel down'

• Ukraine Ready to Sign US Resources Deal in a Matter of Hours - Bloomberg

  The draft agreement, which envisages creating a joint fund to manage Ukraine’s investment projects, has been finalized and may be signed as soon as Wednesday, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks are private. Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko is on her way to Washington for the signing, they said.

  • US-Ukraine minerals deal hits last-minute hurdle

  The US and Ukraine ran into last-minute hurdles on Wednesday as they were on the verge of signing a framework deal on exploiting Ukraine’s minerals. The deal they had been due to sign after marathon negotiations, which was seen by the Financial Times, said the US and Ukraine — through development of Kyiv’s natural resources and the creation of a joint investment fund — would “seek to create the conditions necessary to ... increase investment in mining, energy and related technology in Ukraine”. It came after Kyiv secured a significant concession from the Trump administration that only future military aid would count as the US contribution to the deal. Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, has flown to Washington to sign the deal with US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, said three Ukrainian officials. But problems arose as Svyrydenko’s plane headed to Washington, and Bessent’s team told her she should “be ready to sign all agreements, or go back home”, said three people familiar with the matter.

  • U.S. and Ukraine sign minerals deal

  After some last-minute hiccups, the U.S. and Ukraine signed a closely watched minerals deal on Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

World

• Pakistan claims India planning imminent military strike

• How many dams India needs to deprive Pakistan of Indus waters

• Engineers got power back in Spain and Portugal

  • 'Shipwrecked': how people experienced Europe's worst blackout in living memory

  • Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout

  • Wild conspiracy theories flood the internet after Spanish power blackout

  • Now Spain opens SABOTAGE probe amid chaotic scramble for cause of mass blackout

  • Spain, Portugal Mass Power Outage Is First of Renewable-Energy Era

• Laser beacons light the way in Saudi Arabia's northern Nafud Deserts

• Indian gov allowed to read WhatsApp chats under existing income tax laws

• Cocaine, corruption & bribes: the German port under siege by Europe's drug gangs

• Trial begins for Australia woman accused of killing relos with mushroom lunch

• EU's top court orders end to Malta's 'golden passport' program

• SK Telecom overwhelmed as customers rush to replace SIM cards over security fear

• European Exchange electricity prices calculated at shorter intervals

• EU Set to Concede Dependence on US Tech as Tarif Tensions Flare

• Brazil to offer tax breaks to lure data center investments, sources say

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Body of Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian detention returned mutilated

• The Russian Military Moves That Have Europe on Edge

China

• China deploys army of fake NGOs at UN to intimidate, silence critics

• Chinese singles looking for love in video chats – thousands follow in real time

• Exclusive: China waives tariffs on US ethane imports, sources say | Reuters

  China has waived the 125% tariff on ethane imports from the United States imposed earlier this month, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday, among a group of products that have been granted exemptions. The move will ease pressure on Chinese firms that import U.S. ethane for petrochemical production as well as provide an outlet for the natural gas liquid, a byproduct of U.S. shale gas production.

• Facing High U.S. Tariffs, Chinese Solar, Batteries Flow to Poorer Countries

• The U.S. battle with China over an island paradise deep in the Pacific

• Chinese Hacking Competitions Fuel the Country's Broad Cyber Ambitions

Health / Medicine

• Metagenomics test saves woman's sight after mystery infection

• The decline in cancer mortality is about much more than smoking

  The age-standardized death rate from cancer has declined by around a third since 1990 in the US. This means that, on average, people of a given age in 2021 had a third lower risk of cancer death than people of the same age in 1990. In many other high-income countries, the trend is similar, with a general decline since the late 80s or early 90s.

  • Sure wouldn't know it from the rest of the stories on cancer.

• Statewide fluoride ban for tap water passes in Florida

• The secret liberalization of animal drugs - by Trevor Klee

  As someone who makes drugs for animals, I am occasionally asked if there’s an FDA for animal drugs. There is: the very same FDA that approves human drugs, or at least a subdivision of it. Specifically, there’s a department called the Center for Veterinary Medicine, or the CVM. It regulates most animal drugs, using pretty much the same criteria it employs for human drugs, as does its European counterpart at the European Medical Agency.

  ... This little-known regulatory shift became much more important in 2018. That’s when the FDA quietly and unceremoniously expanded the MUMS Act to include major uses in major species, if the major use would require an overly expensive or complex trial. So, instead of MUMS just including hedgehogs, fish fry, or incredibly rare canine diseases, it would also include major animal diseases, like canine dementia or feline chronic kidney disease. They called this expansion ‘expanded conditional approval’ or XCA.

• Lilly's Zepbound Keeps Weight Off for Three Years, Study Finds

  • And no one in the study as grown (or lost) a second head to this point.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Why is a Fauci HIV vax sequence in a Moderna's C19 vaccine?

  This is the 5th paper where plasmid DNA sequences can be found in patients or mice post vaccination with C19 mRNA vaccines. This particular paper is a gold mine and it does a thorough job of teasing apart unappreciated biology in cells post transfection It also follows up its hypothesis with knock out models and Nanopore sequencing to dissect the problem.

• The U.S. Eliminated Measles in 2000. The Texas Outbreak Could Upend That

• China suggests Covid-19 originated in US in response to Trump allegation

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• New Study Raises Alarms About Plastics and Heart Disease. Here's What to Know

  • Common household plastics linked to heart disease

• Pneumatic propellers could replace diesel engines in ferry boats

• Solar panels between the tracks on an active railway line: a dreadful idea

• Does Thailand have a monkey labor problem?

• Mega-buildings are now slowing Earth's spin