2025-06-28

Worthy

• Declaration of Independence: A Transcription (1776)

etc

• On the Limits of Realism

  this sort of ‘normative smuggling’ in realism is not remotely new: it is exactly how the very first instances of realist political thought are framed. The first expressions of IR realism are in Thucydides, where the Athenians – first at Corinth and then at Melos – make realist arguments expressly to get other states to do something, namely to acquiesce to Athenian Empire. The arguments in both cases are explicitly normative, that Athens did not act “contrary to the common practice of mankind” (expressed in realist dog-eat-dog terms) and so in the first case shouldn’t be punished with war by Sparta and in the latter case, that the Melians should submit to Athenian rule. In both cases, the Athenians are smuggling in a normative statement about what a state should do (in the former case, seemingly against interest!) into a description of what states supposedly always do.

  I should note that one of my persistent complaints against international relations study in political science in general is that political scientists often read Thucydides very shallowly, dipping in for the theory and out for the rest. But Thucydides’ reader would not have missed that it is always the Athenians who make the realist arguments and they lost both the arguments the war. When Thucydides has the Melians caution that the Athenians’ ‘realist’ ruthlessness would mean “your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon” the ancient Greek reader knows they are right, in a way that it often seems to me political science students seem to miss.

  And there’s a logical contradiction inherent in this sort of normative smuggling, which is that the smuggling is even necessary at all. After all, if states are mostly rational and largely pursue their own interests, loudly insisting that they should do so seems a bit pointless, doesn’t it? Using realism as a way to describe the world or to predict the actions of other states is consistent with the logical system, but using it to persuade other states – or your own state – seems to defeat the purpose. If you believe realism is true, your state and every other is going to act to maximize its power, regardless of what you do or say. If they can do otherwise than there must be some significant space for institutions, customs, morals, norms or simple mistakes and suddenly the air-tight logical framework of realism begins to break down.

  • I think he's building and burning straw men here; but its entertaining at the very least. "this is what realists believe" and why they shouldn't; but all $X are rarely $Y.

Horseshit

• Your Baby’s Favorite Toy Could Hint at Their Future IQ.

• The Negativity Bias or Why We're Wired for Doomsday News

• How I Lost My Career and Started Delivering Mail

• The Dawn of the Posthuman Age

  This doesn’t just mean people are having fewer kids; it means that because of past errors in estimating how many kids people had, there are now fewer people to have kids than we thought. Fernandez-Villaverde shows that this is true across nearly all developing countries. As a result of these mistakes, Fernandez-Villaverde thinks the world is already at replacement-level fertility. Furthermore, population projections are based on assumptions that fertility will bounce sharply back from its current lows, instead of continuing to fall.

• Falling birth rates don't have to be a crisis. Just look at Japan

• America's older population is growing as its younger cohort shrinks

• Please don't give my husband longer paternity leave

  The image of a father pushing a pram while mum catches up on sleep or sanity is a heart-warming one. Paternity leave sounds rather noble. It’s a time, you might think, of shared bonding and equal parenting. But the reality of paternity leave is very different. In a household where the man has a full array of opinions and a limited grasp of the laundry system, six months of paternity leave is not an act of support; it amounts to domestic invasion. It’s not that I’m against fathers bonding with their babies. Far from it. I’m all for help with bedtime stories, bath time, and nappy changes at 3 a.m. What unsettles me is the idea of my husband being in the house. All day. For months on end. Anyone who lived through lockdown with a furloughed spouse, or whose partner works from home, will understand that having your other half home all day does not always mean domesticated bliss.

  • Your family problems shouldn't be a reason to advocate for or against laws: Kick Dad out if you don't want him there.

• A lumberjack created more than 200 sculptures in Wisconsin's Northwoods

• Should You Use Nitrogen in Your Car Tires?

• Pill Promises to Give Your Dog More Years

• Blind spots on American cars are expanding

• The 'Enhanced Games' Is the Ultimate MAGA Athletic Competition

• Obeying orders dulls our sense of moral responsibility, brain scans reveal

• A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail

• Flight Forced on 8-Hour Detour After Missing Munich Airport Curfew by 10 Seconds

celebrity gossip

• Tech CEO Pays $400k to Conduct the Toronto Symphony

Obit

• Lalo Schifrin, Prolific Film Composer of 'Mission: Impossible' Theme, Dies at 93

Musk

• Peter Thiel: Elon Musk has given up on Mars

• Elon Musk's A.I. Company Faces Lawsuit over Gas-Burning Turbines

• Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day

• 7 People Now Have Elon Musk's Neuralink Brain Implant

• SpaceX's Starbase city officials silent on crane collapse

• Tesla has been ordered to stop "deceptive practices" about driving ability

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Bumper orders for Xiaomi's new SUV heighten threat to Tesla

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Windows' infamous 'blue screen of death' will soon turn black

  • Windows is getting rid of the Blue Screen of Death after 40 years

  • Back in black: Microsoft Blue Screen of Death is going dark

  • Microsoft is about to kill its Blue Screen of Death

  • Windows is getting rid of the Blue Screen of Death after 40 years

• Microsoft rolls out Windows changes to prevent another CrowdStrike meltdown

• Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings Are Held Every Day in Virtual Spaces

• Actively exploited vulnerability gives extraordinary control over server fleets - Ars Technica

  The vulnerability, carrying a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10, resides in the AMI MegaRAC, a widely used firmware package that allows large fleets of servers to be remotely accessed and managed even when power is unavailable or the operating system isn't functioning. These motherboard-attached microcontrollers, known as baseboard management controllers (BMCs), give extraordinary control over servers inside data centers.

• Comcast ditches data caps on new Internet plans to reverse customer losses

• 'The Social Network 2' in the Works, Aaron Sorkin Directing

• Android phones could soon warn you of "Stingrays" snooping on your communicatio

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta says it's winning the talent war with OpenAI

• OpenAI researcher who jumped ship to Meta says didn't get a $100M signing bonus

• Meta is offering multi-mn pay for AI researchers,but not $100M signing bonuses

• In Pursuit of Godlike Technology, Mark Zuckerberg Amps Up the A.I. Race

• Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors

• Facebook is starting to feed its AI with private, unpublished photos

• Big accounting firms fail to track AI impact on audit quality, says regulator

• PwC's AI Chief Says Firm Has Cut Prices as Tech Saves Staff Time

• Publishers facing existential threat from AI, Cloudflare CEO says

• Judge rejects Meta's claim that torrenting is “irrelevant” in AI copyright case

• AI-powered startup studio plans to launch 100k companies a year

• AI makes people dumber.

• OpenAI may prematurely declare AGI to cut ties with Microsoft

• Multiple Studies Now Suggest That AI Will Make Us Morons

• A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy

• Is Microsoft’s new Mu for you?

• The Monster Inside ChatGPT

• Tech companies are missing revenue as 97% of consumers use AI for free: report

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA tested a new SLS booster that may never fly, and the end of it blew off

• A rare asteroid flyby will happen soon; NASA may be left on the sidelines

• There's no international protocol on what to do if an asteroid strikes Earth

• NASA's been pulling out of major astronomy meetings

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Following fraud allegations, payments provider worldline shares drops 41%

• The Perilous Business of Importing Indian Mangoes to the U.S.

• Deep inside U.S. economy, more sticker prices start going up due to tariffs

• Microsoft Plans to Cut Thousands More Employees

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The Welfare Trap: How They Bought Your Obedience for $642 a Month

  human beings were not built for dependency. We were built to hunt, build, make, grow, fail, and try again. Struggle is where character is forged. Not in bureaucratic offices with bad lighting and long waits. When you remove that struggle—you remove the very muscle that lifts people out of poverty: drive. And don’t even get me started on the men. Welfare neutered entire generations. In some communities, the father is no longer a pillar but an optional accessory. Uncle Sam replaced him with a monthly deposit and some food stamps. The government became daddy—and daddy doesn’t like competition. No wonder masculinity is in crisis. You raise boys without purpose, strip them of responsibility, and then act surprised when they grow up directionless, angry, and easily manipulated. This isn’t compassion. This is control disguised as kindness. And the worst part? They call you heartless for pointing it out.

• The Icarian Gene: The Rise and Fall of the Expert Class

  The expert class lost the public when they replaced objectivity with orthodoxy. No matter how many experts claim that gender is a social myth, the public is not likely to dispense with reality. The rise and fall of the expert class is a story of the costs of arrogance and excess. Higher education has created a privileged class of social warriors who abandoned core principles of neutrality and objectivity in research. It is an Icarian generation of scholars who flew too close to the sun and fell to Earth in the eyes of the public.

• "Bucuz Trump" isn't a magic wand of ultimate power: Supreme Court affirms limits of lower courts jurisdictions

  • SCOTUS Quashes Federal District Courts’ Nationwide Injunctions, 6-3

  • US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

  • Supreme Court Limits Use of Nationwide Injunctions

  • Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship order

• US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

  • Supreme Court sides with Texas's age verification law for porn sites

  • US Supreme Court backs Texas online porn age-check law

• Supreme Court overturns 5th Circuit ruling that upended Universal Service Fund

  • Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to FCC Broadband Subsidy Program

Trump

• Mediator proposes $20 million settlement in Trump's CBS lawsuit, WSJ reports | Reuters

  • CBS Reiterates Claim That Trump's '60 Minutes' Lawsuit Is 'Meritless'

  CBS said Trump has not provided any evidence that the “60 Minutes” interview represents commercial speech. “Effectively conceding that their claims cannot survive if the Broadcasts are editorial speech subject to full First Amendment protections, Plaintiffs argue that the Broadcasts somehow became ‘commercial speech’ via a simple promotion for the Interview,” CBS said. “But they provide this Court with nothing that would support the conclusion that the Face the Nation and 60 Minutes Broadcasts — involving an interview of a presidential candidate about issues of utmost public concern — are anything but fully protected editorial speech, and they cite not a single case holding that news broadcasts (or promotions for such broadcasts) are commercial speech. Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected that argument. The First Amendment applies fully to the news reporting at issue and bars Plaintiffs’ claims.”

• Who Counts? Trump Poised To Try To Remove Noncitizens From Census.

Democrats

• Democratic establishment melts down over Mamdani's win in New York

  Establishment Democrats looking to recover from 2024's losses fear Mamdani could hurt the party's brand nationally — while young progressives believe his formula could spread beyond New York. On Wednesday, many Democratic lawmakers and officials either denounced Mamdani or notably declined to rally around him. Republicans — including President Trump — crowed about Democrats embracing a democratic socialist who has called for reduced police funding and sided with Palestinians in the Gaza war. The top two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both New Yorkers, declined to endorse Mamdani even as they applauded his victory.

• Chris Cuomo says Democratic Party ‘dead,’ after brother loses NY mayor primary to democrat-socialist.

• Jill Biden's 'work husband' Anthony Bernal snubs House Oversight probe of ex-president Biden's decline

  Top Biden aide Anthony Bernal is refusing to appear before a House Republican-led committee on Thursday to answer questions about the purported cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline while in office. Bernal, known as first lady Jill Biden’s “work husband” and a loyal member of the family’s inner circle, flouted an invitation to sit for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee after the Trump White House waived executive privilege for the testimony.

Left Angst

• RFK Jr.'s CDC panel ditches some flu shots based on anti-vaccine junk data

• Classified Report That Suggested Iranian Nuclear Program Still Intact Likely Relied on Faulty Info From Iranian Sources, Former Intel Officers Say

  The U.S. intelligence community deemed that initial assessment "low-confidence," a fact CNN omitted from its original piece, and based it solely on satellite imagery and intercepted communications—known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT—from Iranian officials. Shortly after the assessment leaked, Axios reported that communications intercepted by Israel "suggest Iranian military officials have been giving false situation reports to the country's political leadership—downplaying the extent of the damage." Such communications likely made their way into the DIA report, according to three former U.S. intelligence operatives, a current U.S. official, and other veteran national security insiders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon both on and off the record. Some of them referred to the DIA as the "discount intelligence agency." "It's basically messaging by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], messaging by Tehran," said Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer with U.S. Central Command who operated in the Middle East for nearly 30 years. "DIA is taking a SIGINT report from the National Security Agency ... and putting together an assessment to leak. I know it’s messaging, the Iranians know it’s messaging, and for some reason, NSA believes it’s actual f—ing intelligence."

  • CNN 'Stands Behind' Bertrand's Propaganda-Pushing Career

  “CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence,” the statement reads. “We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it. However, we do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest.”

• 'Graveyard of companies' Climate tech startups feeling the heat from Trump 2.0

• Notes on Epistemic Collapse

  For a long time I’ve been having difficulty making sense for myself of a lot of what is going on in the world around me. Recently I’ve found that a useful way of understanding some otherwise baffling things is as products of what is sometimes called “epistemic collapse”. By “epistemic collapse” I mean the collapse of a shared reality, caused by the loss of reliable sources for distinguishing what is true from what is false. Someone I’ve found to have a very insightful take on this is Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins. Some of his best explanations of the problem are at threads on his Bluesky feed, for example here and this recent one, which includes:

  The danger isn’t just that people believe lies. It’s that entire communities become locked into belief systems that can’t be challenged, where loyalty replaces evidence, and disagreement feels like betrayal. That doesn’t just distort truth, it breaks trust. When this happens at scale, it’s not just bad information, it’s a breakdown in how society makes decisions. We lose the ability to deliberate, to find common ground, to hold anyone accountable. That’s what disordered discourse really is, a collapse in collective reasoning.

  I find thinking in these terms helps to make sense of the bizarre and disturbing new political situation in the US and elsewhere, with a new form of Fascism on the march. Autocrats are coming to power on a wave of lies and the destruction of institutions that can provide the facts needed for a shared reality. Efforts to fight this by just coming up with better policy proposals are doomed, what is needed is some way to bring back reality to our information environment. Absent this, we’re looking at a future dominated by autocrats governing through lies and a system of client oligarchs who work with them. The US is now well on its way there.

  • Note that only "institutions can provide the facts needed for a shared reality." That's the religious faith this person doesn't even see they assume, even as they demand it of the world. Reality provides the facts which define our shared reality. They are available to all, regardless of the opinions the proper people manning the institutions have of them, or us.

• Univ of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure from Trump Administration

• Ex-Doge employee 'Big Balls' gets new Trump administration position

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• California EPA hazardous substances engineer arrested, charged with trying to support ISIS.

  A very different picture emerges about Akhtar, who remains listed as a hazardous substances engineer at the California Environmental Protection Agency, in the criminal complaint accusing him of trying to give money, guns and ammunition to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, and of threatening to kill Jews. The 33-year-old, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, is a 2023 graduate of the University of the Pacific, gave the money and weapons to an undercover law-enforcement officer he thought was an ISIS member in Iraq, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday. He faces up to 20 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

• Dozens of Illegal Aliens Working at Meat Processing Plant with Stolen IDs Screened with E-Verify | Judicial Watch

  A recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite enforcement operation at Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, Nebraska busted over 70 illegal aliens who were using stolen Social Security numbers and identities to unlawfully obtain wages, health benefits and employment authorization, according to the agency. The criminal identity theft scheme left “more than 100 real victims to face devastating financial, emotional and legal consequences,” ICE writes in its announcement of the operation. Incredibly, Glenn Valley Foods was reportedly 100% compliant with E-Verify, a costly government database launched nearly three decades ago that screens new employees using records from various agencies to confirm candidates are in the country legally. The web-based system claims to match information provided by new hires against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) records. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) operates it because the agency is responsible for administering the nation’s lawful immigration system.

  • ICE worksite enforcement operation uncovers widespread identity theft affecting more than 100 victims across the nation | ICE

• U.S. Charges 11 in Russia-Based Scheme to Bilk Medicare of $10.6B

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• British man charged by US with leading hacking scheme causing millions in damage

• Homeland Security warns of Iran-backed cyberattacks targeting US networks

• White House ends all trade talks with Canada over digital services tax

  • Trump Says U.S. Ending Trade Talks with Canada because of digital services taxes

World

• Apple reveals complex system of App Store fees to avoid E.U. fine of 500M euros

• Police identify seven as main suspects in Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry

• UK to buy F-35As that can't be refueled from RAF tankers

• New EU rules on digital accessibility to come into force

• Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features

• Crewless ship is defending Denmark's and NATO's waters

• Brazil Supreme Court rules digital platforms to be liable for users' posts

  = Brazil Supreme Court rules digital platforms are liable for users' posts

• World Bank: Fragile states falling further behind as conflicts grow get deadlier

• Canada's Digital Services Tax Stays in Place Despite G-7 Deal

China

• ASML launches science project in China to discover new talent in lithography

• China's New Army of Engineers

• China auto industry inflates sales by exporting new cars as 'used'

Health / Medicine

• GLP-1 medicine is causing fatal pancreatitis cases

• We're learning more about what weight-loss drugs do to the body

• People with Diabetes Are Cured in Small Trial of New Drug

• Why acetaminophen works: New discovery ends longstanding mystery

• Nestle says it will stop using artificial dyes in U.S. foods, beverages by mid-2026 - CBS News

• Is your gut microbiome a calorie 'super harvester'?

  The study found that people whose gut microbiomes produce a lot of methane are especially good at unlocking extra energy from a high-fiber diet. This may help explain why different individuals get different amounts of calories from food that makes it to the colon. The researchers note that high-fiber diets are not the villain here. People absorb more calories overall from a Western diet of processed foods, regardless of methane production. On a high-fiber diet, people absorb fewer calories overall—but the amount varies according to methane production.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Rates of successful conceptions according to COVID-19 vaccination status: Data from the Czech Republic

  Adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccination on human menstrual cycle characteristics have been observed, but limited data are available on the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination status and birth rates. Therefore, we used nationwide data from the Czech Republic to examine rates of successful conceptions (SCs), that is, conceptions leading to live births 9 months later, for women who were either vaccinated or unvaccinated against COVID-19 before SC. Summary monthly COVID-19 vaccination and birth data for women in the Czech Republic aged 18–39 years were retrieved for the period from January 2021 to December 2023. The numbers of SCs per month per 1000 women were calculated for preconception-vaccinated or unvaccinated women, respectively, as well as the number of SCs per month per 1000 women for all women aged 18–39 years. During the study period, there were approximately 1,300,000 women aged 18–39 years in the Czech Republic, and the proportion of COVID-19-vaccinated women increased from January 2021 until reaching a steady state of around 70% by the end of 2021. At least from June 2021, SCs per 1000 women were considerably lower for women who were vaccinated, compared to those that were unvaccinated, before SC. Furthermore, SC rates for the vaccinated group were much lower than expected based on their proportion of the total population. In the Czech Republic, SC rates were substantially lower for women vaccinated against COVID-19 before SC than for those who were not vaccinated. These hypothesis-generating and preliminary results call for further studies of the potential influence of COVID-19 vaccination on human fecundability and fertility.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Most of increase in natural disasters late 20th cty is due to improved reporting

• TVA urges power conservation as temperatures climb.

• Perilously close to the point of no return: Amazon rainforest's future

• The Plan to Re-Freeze the Arctic

• Pangolins in Nigeria may be hunted for food rather than illicit scales trade

• Polar scientist on Antarctic tipping points

• Environmental crimes are often hidden by 'flying money' laundering schemes

• 'Microbial Noah's Ark' ramps up to save Earth's invisible life forms

• Google's emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green

• Surprise snowfall blankets the driest desert: Atacama turns white