‘Litha is a pagan holiday; one of their eight sabbats during the year. Litha (also known as Midsummer) occurs on the summer solstice, and celebrates the beginning of summer. The traditions of Litha appear to be borrowed from many cultures. Most ancient cultures celebrated the summer solstice in some way. The Celts celebrated Litha with hilltop bonfires and dancing. Many people attempted to jump over or through the bonfires for good luck.

Other European traditions included setting large wheels on fire, and rolling them down a hill into a body of water. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and in some traditions, Litha is when a battle between light and dark takes place. In this battle, the Oak King and the Holly King battle for control. During each solstice, they battle for power, and the balance shifts. The Oak King, who represents daylight, rules from the winter solstice (Yule) to Litha. During this time, the days steadily get longer. However, during Litha, the Holly King wins this battle, and the days get steadily darker until Yule.

For modern day pagans, Litha is a day of inner power and brightness. Some people find a quiet spot and meditate about the light and dark forces in their world. Some other observers, particularly those with children, celebrate this holiday outside. Lastly, some observers choose to observe Litha more traditionally, and they would hold a fire ritual. This might include a large bonfire, or a small fire in a fire-safe pot in one’s house. Litha is also considered a good time to practice love magic or get married. The pagan version of this ceremony is called handfasting, and it includes many of the same practices one might find at a wedding….’ (Dhruti Bhagat via bpl.org)

‘What is the Summer Solstice?

The Summer Solstice takes place between June 20-23 in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the longest day of the year, occurring when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky. This day marks the beginning of summer with the sun at its fullest power. After the solstice, the days will begin to grow shorter.

What is Litha?

Litha, also known as Midsummer, is the pagan holiday honoring the sun and fire. Pagan celebrations during this holiday have themes of strength, growth, success and wealth. Litha also celebrates the abundance of nature and honors sacred bodies of water. The symbols of Litha are the sun, roses, sunflowers, honeybees, lightning bugs, sand and water. The colors of this holiday include yellow, green, gold and red.

Ways to Celebrate

Greet the Dawn

Many traditions greet the rising sun the morning of the summer solstice. Set your alarm to wake up with the sunrise. If possible, spend a few moments outside to soak up the sun. Take in the energy of Litha while reading or repeating these affirmations:

“I am as strong and energetic as the summer sun. I believe in myself and what I am capable of doing.”

“I deserve to feel happiness, contentment and joy in what I have and what I have done.”

“I am filled with light, moving in the direction I need to move, and following the path I am meant to walk.”

Bonfire Gathering

Traditional celebrations included large bonfires, usually on the sundown of Midsummer’s Eve. Bonfires are a great activity to gather friends or family. You can tell stories, roast marshmallows, or dance around the fire. Write down an obstacle or problem on a piece of paper and surrender your problem to the flames.

If you don’t have a safe place to make a bonfire, you can substitute with candles, sparklers, battery-powered candles, or even an image of a fire. Remember to practice fire safety—never leave a fire or candle unattended, keep water nearby, and make sure to keep a safe distance from the flames.

Day at the Beach

Some pagan traditions included traveling to sacred wells or other bodies of water on the day of the solstice. This was a time for healing and to honor the gift of water.

We are lucky in Michigan to be surrounded by lakes. Honor the gift of water by taking a day trip to a beach with friends or family. Pack a lunch with fresh fruits and vegetables. Play beach games including ring toss, volleyball or frisbee. Cool off by jumping and swimming in the water. Take time to relax by soaking up the sun or reading a book.

If you can’t make it to the beach, bring the beach to your home. Soak up the sun outside and cool off in a sprinkler or with a water balloon fight. Listen to summer-themed music while playing traditional beach games. No matter what you choose to do, take this time to have fun with family or friends.

Faerie Magic

Litha is the perfect time for faerie magic, as the veil between our world and the faerie world is thin. Faeries or the Fae Folk are mythical beings that exist in a variety of different cultures. There are many different types of faeries including brownies, pixies, leprechauns, elves, devas and gnomes. Faeries are typically tricksters, so be careful what you ask for.

Firefly Wish: Fireflies are a symbol of faeries and fire. Gently catch a firefly on your finger. Make a wish and gently blow the firefly away into the night.

Faerie Picnic: Faeries are said to be drawn to sweet things, including food. Pack a picnic with faerie-themed treats including honey, milk, cake, cookies or bread. Find a quiet spot in nature to enjoy your faerie treats.

Daisy Fortune: Use a daisy to determine if your crush loves you or not. Pick a flower, preferably a daisy, and hold it in one hand. Pull off one petal at a time, saying “they love me” or “they love me not,” with each petal. The last petal pulled off will determine if your crush loves you….’ (CPL Teens via cantonpl.org)

In an 1855 oil painting from Gunby Hall, Lincolnshire, Scottish painter William Bell Scott depicts pixies dancing by firelight. In a letter that Scott wrote in 1886, he described the painting as showing ‘fairies dancing before a great dying kitchen fire…at a Haunted House on Midsummer’s Eve.’

Origins of the summer solstice

In Northern and Central European Neolithic cultures, the summer solstice may have been related to timings of crop cycles. It was typically marked by Celtic, Slavic and Germanic people by lighting bonfires, intended to boost the sun’s strength for the remainder of the crop season and ensure a healthy harvest.

The solstice sits within a wider celestial framework, complemented by seasonal equinoxes marking spring and autumn as well as daily, monthly and annual cycles.

Stone circles

Many Neolithic stone circles appear to have been built around the movement of the sun at solstices. Because there are no written accounts from the time, it’s difficult to be definitive about their exact purpose. However, stones appear to be carefully positioned to align with the sun’s movements, framing solar motion on summer and winter solstices. Stones that were placed at the axis of a particular solstice were even shaped with hammerstones to frame the sunrise for those standing in the centre of the circle.

Summer solstice and Midsummer’s Day

Though it might seem that the middle of summer would naturally fall on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice and Midsummer’s Day are distinct events, normally a few days apart between 20 and 24 June. The difference is thought to stem from variations in the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

Midsummer traditions

The longest day has been marked in different ways over the years and has its own set of customs. Some are based on practical needs. Others originate from spiritual and superstitious beliefs.

Bonfires

Lighting and jumping over bonfires on Midsummer’s Eve dates back to pre-Christian pagan customs. It was thought to keep demons away and bring good luck to lovers.

Viking customs

The solstice was particularly important in Nordic communities, where seasonal changes in sunlight are dramatic. The Vikings used the long days to maximise their productivity by hunting, settling disputes and conducting raids.

Christian festivals

After the Christian Church was established, solstice celebrations were combined with St John’s Day, commemorating St John the Baptist. In the 19th century, Christians used St John’s Day to act out the baptisms of children who had died as ‘pagans’.

Pixies dancing in a Ring by the Firelight painting by William Bell Scott at Gunby Hall, Lincolnshire | © National Trust Images

Depictions of midsummer magic

Mysticism and magic are a common theme in midsummer folklore across the world as well as in the UK. Magic was thought to be strongest during the summer solstice and myths told of the world turning upside down or the sun standing still at midsummer…’ (via National Trust)

‘Comprehensive new research has emerged with much more archaeological data on violence in prehistory. Analysis indicates that prehistoric hunter gatherers were considerably less violent than is commonly believed. This finding also seems to be borne out by ethnographic data on modern hunter gatherers with lifestyles relatively similar to their prehistoric ancestors.

Hunter gatherers were not non-violent noble savages by any stretch of the imagination. They were relatively violent when compared with modern standards and even when compared with rates of violence experienced by other primates and mammals in general. However, we think this is primarily because human conflict is so lethal, not because it happens so often. On the contrary, hunter gatherers typically exhibit non-violent norms, with amoral and atypical sociopaths accounting for a disproportionate share of violence, just as in our own societies today.

Understanding this matters. Our extraordinary capacity to inflict lethal violence on each other is normally held in restraint by the natural aversion most people have to violence. If we fail to cooperate, we are vulnerable to falling into vicious cycles of violence that don’t benefit anyone. But we should be more optimistic about our capacity for peacemaking; our ‘better angels’ as Pinker puts it. Despite living in states of political anarchy, hunter gatherers were normally able to cooperate and exist peacefully together.

For the first 290,000 years of our species’ approximately 300,000 year history, everyone was a hunter gatherer.  In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker argued that hunter gatherers suffered from extremely high rates of violence. Better Angels claims that at least 14 percent of prehistoric hunter gatherers died violently. This equates to a violent death rate of at least 420 per 100,000 people per year, using data on typical hunter gatherer mortality rates.

This is a much higher rate of violence than almost anywhere in the modern world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To put it in perspective, global deaths from all types of violence between 2004–21 were around 8 per 100,000 people per year. Even the most violent cities in the world today, in Northern Brazil, South Africa, and on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border, have murder rates of only around 100 per 100,000 per year.

The implication in Better Angels is that the human mind evolved and developed in a world plagued by constant, endemic violence.

Our 2022 study examined both the ethnographic data – contemporary studies of groups that existed until some modern contact – and archeological data on hunter gatherer violence, much of which comes from data gathered after the publication of Better Angels. We reviewed quantitative estimates of rates of violence in ethnographies, filtering for groups that are most representative of our pre-agricultural ancestors. Our archeological estimates are based on reanalyzing a dataset developed by Gomez et al. (which was released after Better Angels was published and has dozens of extra samples), which attempts to measure rates of violent death by looking for evidence of trauma to skeletal remains. Our study produced estimates for lethal violence around four times lower than Pinker’s figures.

Prehistoric hunter gatherers seem to have been somewhat more violent than the twentieth-century average, but not dramatically so. And this is despite these societies lacking any of the modern state’s apparatus for managing violence: no code of law, no judges, no police, and no sophisticated healthcare….’ (John Halstead via worksinprogress.co)

‘Ornithologists Tracked 89 Cases and Found This Pattern…’ (Gargi Chakravorty via Animals Around The Globe)

‘David Hearn told The Washington Post in an interview Saturday that he stopped at the Lincoln Memorial to see the reflecting pool after finishing a loop at Hains Point during a 52-mile bike ride.

Hearn explained he reached in to feel a piece of the liner that was detached from the bottom of the pool and was arrested just moments later by park police. He was charged with destruction of government property and is scheduled to appear in court July 9, according to the report.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” the 67-year-old told the newspaper. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

A peeling section of blue coating is seen in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on June 20 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The arrest marks a visible escalation in security presence following President Donald Trump’s claims that the newly renovated pool has been targeted by vandalism….’ (Sam Stevenson via Yahoo News)

‘A little girl wanders out of the New Mexico desert, mute with shock, her face frozen in absolute terror. That’s the opening of one of the most iconic sci-fi films of the 1950s, Them!, in which a team of local police, officials, and scientists discovers that a rampaging colony of ants, mutated to the size of elephants by atomic testing, is on the march to Los Angeles. Scream Factory has just released a new 4K UHD Blu-ray of the film, making this a great opportunity to explore why Them! remains an enduring genre classic.…’ (Don Kaye via Inverse)

‘You like to think of yourself as the author of your actions. You decide, you act, and the story feels seamless and continuous, as if your experience and your brain’s activity are one and the same thing, happening in perfect sync. But modern consciousness research quietly challenges that comforting picture. A growing body of experiments suggests your brain may be getting a tiny head start on you, committing to actions milliseconds or even seconds before you feel that you made a choice.

This does not mean you are a robot or that free will is an illusion in any simple sense. Instead, you are looking at a far stranger possibility: your conscious feeling of deciding might be the last step in a chain, not the first. The gap is thin, but measurable, and it forces you to rethink what it really means when you say, “I chose that.” Once you see how this plays out in your everyday life, you may never look at a simple decision the same way again….’ (Sameen David via discoverwildscience)

As an avid consumer of outdoor activity coverage I hae been struck by what seems a drastic explosion of bear attack reports. Are they surging or is there a shift in reporting attention?

Research shows that the evidence does not yet support a drastic continent-wide increase in North American bear attacks in 2026. The apparent surge more likely reflects a genuine early-season cluster, longer-term regional increases in human–bear encounters, and substantial amplification by the news ecosystem.

Several notable incidents occurred in rapid succession this spring. Two hikers were injured near Mystic Falls in Yellowstone in early May—the park’s first bear-related injuries of 2026. A hiker’s death in Glacier National Park was provisionally attributed to a bear encounter, potentially the park’s first fatal attack since 1998; another Glacier hiker sustained severe arm injuries in a grizzly attack on May 28. On June 16, a black bear with cubs caused minor injuries to a teenager on Mount Si in Washington, a state that has recorded only about 20 nonfatal bear injuries since 1970.

This is an unusually concentrated sequence, particularly because several incidents occurred in prominent national parks. Bear attacks remain rare, however, so a few additional cases can produce a dramatic percentage increase without establishing a meaningful trend. Interpretation is further limited by the absence of a comprehensive, continuously updated North American registry analogous to the International Shark Attack File. Definitions also vary: some datasets include defensive contacts, attacks directed primarily at dogs, home entries, stalking behavior, or injuries sustained while fleeing; others count only direct physical attacks.

Media dynamics magnify the impression. A single incident may generate an initial report, a trail-closure story, a survivor interview, an investigative update, and numerous syndicated rewrites. Recommendation algorithms then infer an interest in bear stories and present more of them. Outdoor publications have an additional incentive: bear encounters combine dramatic narrative, practical safety information, and high reader engagement. The cluster therefore behaves like a bright constellation—the individual stars are real, but attention supplies much of the perceived pattern.

There are nevertheless genuine background forces increasing encounters, although encounters are not equivalent to attacks. Black and grizzly bear populations have recovered or expanded in some regions, while residential development and outdoor recreation increasingly overlap bear habitat. Some jurisdictions are reporting more sightings, home entries, and nuisance calls. Food conditioning from garbage, bird feeders, livestock feed, grills, and pet food can produce increasingly bold behavior. Natural-food failures, drought, heat, and altered seasonal patterns may also generate unusually bad local years, although these effects vary substantially by region and species.

Reports from Japan create an additional distortion because the increase there appears to be real rather than merely journalistic. Japan has experienced record or near-record numbers of attacks, expanding bear populations, rural depopulation, and more bears entering settled areas. These stories circulate heavily in English-language outdoor media and may contribute to a generalized impression of a worldwide surge.

The most defensible conclusion is that 2026 has produced a conspicuous early cluster in North America, but not yet evidence of a drastic generalized increase. A modest long-term rise in exposure and conflict may be occurring in particular regions, superimposed on considerable year-to-year statistical noise. The perceived surge is probably being driven at least as much by repeated, syndicated, and algorithmically concentrated reporting as by a major change in personal risk. A reliable comparison will require complete summer and autumn data, preferably compiled from state and provincial wildlife agencies rather than headline counts.

‘In Silicon Valley, many believe that AI systems can already think and feel. Geoffrey Hinton, the pioneering computer scientist and “godfather” of modern artificial intelligence, thinks that today’s large language models (LLMs) are conscious. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is “open to the idea” that Claude has a subjective experience — while his company’s in-house philosopher Amanda Askell is concerned that the model might be “getting anxious when people are mean to it on the internet and stuff.” OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever similarly wonders whether ChatGPT has attained sentience.

Their case rests on a theory called “computational functionalism” — or the idea that sentience emerges from information processing.

But skeptics insist that there is more to consciousness than computation.

Still, a much larger group of technologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers argue that even if AI isn’t yet conscious, it could be in the not-too-distant future….’ (Eric Levitz via Vox)

‘The health divide emerged over the last decade and has widened since 2020, according to research that links ideology to outcomes from heart disease, cancer, stroke, and other internal causes.…’ (Eve Upton-Clark via Fast Company)

‘The relationship between President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans neared a breaking point this week as he upended their efforts to speedily confirm one of his own nominees and said he would not sign the renewal of a key surveillance law unless they agree to new terms.

Trump’s overnight social media post Wednesday that he was delaying Jay Clayton’s nomination to become national intelligence director, just hours before the U.S. attorney’s confirmation hearing, further strained relations between the Senate and White House that have been worsening for weeks. Later that day, some Republican senators who have been hesitant to challenge the president directly on the Iran war were blunt in their criticism of his deal to end it….’ (Mary Clare Jalonick via AP News)

‘Clearly irked at President Donald Trump’s suggestion that she had had “begged” him for a photo at the Group of Seven summit earlier this week, the Italian prime minister said this was “totally fabricated.”

The dispute erupted after Trump told Italian broadcaster La7 that Meloni had pleaded with him for a photo at the meeting of leading industrialized nations in the French resort of Evian-les-Bains earlier this week.

“She begged me to take a photo with her. She wanted a photo with me so badly — I could have skipped it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said in the brief interview, which was posted by the channel to its website Friday.

In her response, the diminutive Italian leader said she was “stunned” by Trump’s comments, before taking aim at Trump’s broader approach to international relations, suggesting he treats longtime Western allies with less respect than he shows their adversaries….’ (Claudio Lavanga via NBC News)

‘The lining of the Reflecting Pool at Washington D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial was painted blue to please Trump: a no-bid $14.7m contract that went to a company that had worked on one of his swimming pools. Within days of the pool being refilled, it was full of algae. And two weeks on, the blue paint is peeling….’ (Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing)

‘Researchers are discovering that when we experience profound awe, especially in response to grand natural scenes like a star-filled sky, key brain networks involved in self-focus and internal chatter actually quiet down. It is as if the brain turns down the volume on the “me channel” to make room for something larger. This article explores how that works, why awe feels the way it does, and what it might mean for our mental health, creativity, and sense of meaning in a world that rarely slows down.…’ (Sameen David via discoverwildscience)

‘Einstein’s equations have withstood every experimental test for more than a century. However, according to one philosopher, they have not withstood careful scrutiny of the language used to describe them.

Daryl Janzen, an astronomer and instructor at the University of Saskatchewan, recently published a philosophical challenge in The Conversation. Janzen’s critique does not question the mathematics but instead focuses on how physicists and philosophers describe the nature of space-time itself. He argues that over the past century, the language used to describe space-time has gradually merged two separate concepts into one….’ (Austin Burgess via The Debrief)

‘The Trump administration came dangerously close to getting rid of habeas corpus….’ (Hafiz Rashid via The New Republic)

‘A scientific study out of Russia shows us what we already know- the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the french fries we steal from someone else’s plate taste better. An experiment involving 120 people had them eat french fries under several different conditions, one in which the subject owned the fries, another in which they were given to them as a gift, and two in which they were instructed to steal them from someone else, either in a high-risk or low-risk situation. The fries themselves were prepared exactly the same way for each scenario. After each session, subjects rated the french fries on range of qualities. The fries taken in the high-risk thievery scenario were judged nearly 40% tastier than when the subject ate their own fries. The subjects also reported both guilt and excitement over it.      …’ (Miss Cellania via Neatorama)

‘On Wednesday morning, workers poured hydrogen peroxide into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.

The treatment is the latest attempt by the Interior Department to control an algae bloom that has turned the pool bright green, despite President Donald Trump’s costly renovation to make it “American flag blue” in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary. Hot temperatures and climate change are among the risk factors that could be driving the outbreak.…’ (Molly Taft via WIRED)

‘Democrats are approaching what could be their most wide-open presidential primary in decades, but I’d venture a confident prediction today: one of the two Georgia senators will be on the party’s ticket in 2028. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the two Democrats who delivered their party a majority with their twin victories at the end of the first Trump term, could bookend the outgoing president eight years later.

Ossoff, 39, embodies the sort of articulate, next-generation candidate — straddling the ideological divide and wielding a mix of outsider and insider credentials — that encompasses the model with which Democrats historically win. And Warnock, 56, would be the pastor-healer who could unify a fractious party and help cleanse a country crying out for a purge. Each also benefits by comparison to the last two presidents — which is a nicer way of saying it has been a decade since the country had a leader who could leverage the bully pulpit by speaking coherently.

Neither senator is aggressively positioning themselves to run, at least not in the unsubtle fashion of some of their Democratic contemporaries. But both are making the most of that most precious gift in politics: timing. Ossoff’s seat just happens to be up this year — the election cycle before the presidential election — and that re-election bid has become the vehicle by which he’s becoming a sensation in his party. Capitalizing on the dominant medium of the era, Ossoff has harnessed short-form videos criticizing Trump from his campaign rallies to immediately reach the social media feeds of millions of Democrats, who with each click prompt the algorithm to feed them more of his footage….’ (Jonathan Martin via Politico)

‘It’s really important to not trigger the traps to close for no reason. A Venus flytrap uses a tremendous amount of energy to close its traps, so if it happens too many times your plant could die.…’ ( via Kew)

‘In a story that will make your beak drop, a Canadian woman has received a series of ‘thank you’ presents from a whole murder of crows after she took the time to rescue one from a gutter.

As Leah Wilson walks down the street, the superstitious among the neighbors might draw their blinds. Her steps herald the beating of black wings, as the carrion birds follow her every move.

But Wilson is no witch, she’s a hero to their clan after she came to the rescue of a young crow who was stuck inside the roof gutter of a nearby house.

Wilson, a member of the Métis indigenous peoples, knew she had to do something, and as it just so happened there was a fire truck parked nearby.

“I was like, ‘Hey! You look like you want to save a crow today,’” Leah recalls to CTV with a laugh. The firefighters agreed, and brought the ladder over to reach the crow. Once the animal was free, they left it up to Wilson to take it to the wildlife veterinarian.

That’s just what she did, and the crow assured her it would never forget.

“He latched on to my finger and held on, that was life-changing,” she said, without knowing just how life-changing it would be. “I was going for a walk with my dog, [and] a crow flew down and dropped this beautiful, feathered bundle at my feet.”

That was the first of several little “thank you gifts” she received from the local murder.

Today, she is as described above: a crow-friend, and every time she goes out for a walk, the animals circle around her in what she described as the “highlight” of her day.

The best part is when the crow she rescued comes to say hi. He’s easy enough to spot thanks to the band on his leg from when he was released back into the wild….’ (Andy Corbley via Good News Network)

‘Trump’s name has been removed from the Kennedy Center after a court ruling, but adorns many other things and places….’ (via Flipboard)

‘Coming nearly half a century after “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Disclosure Day” is a grand bookend for one of the most cosmically-minded moviemakers of our time, whose dreams of extraterrestrial life have shaped all of ours. It’s a distant answer to the final notes of “Close Encounters.” But while Spielberg grants his 1977 film was “speculative,” “Disclosure Day,” he insists, is the real deal.

“It’s my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction,” Spielberg said in a recent interview. “It’s much more reflective of the world as it is evolving and discoveries that are being made as we speak.”

Spielberg, at 79, is trying to revive and reconsider the alien wonder that’s long lingered in his mind, from “E.T.” to “War of the Worlds.” “Disclosure Day,” Spielberg’s first summer movie in a decade, is already being hailed as one of his best in years. But this time, Spielberg is testing whether he can conjure some of his trademark movie magic less with imagination than with conviction.

“I’ve been a believer since I made ‘Close Encounters’ 50 years ago,” Spielberg says. “But I would always say: Until I’ve seen a UAP or a UFO with my own eyes, I’m not going to categorically state that life from out there has come here.

“But I’ve changed that,” he adds. “I’m now willing to change my mind because of the circumstantial evidence which is overwhelming.”…’ (Jake Coyle  via ABC News)

‘Dr. Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte is a professor of applied physics at the University of Navarra in Spain. He asked 573 people assembled in a schoolyard to roam randomly through the space. Within a few seconds, 80% of them were moving in a counterclockwise direction.

Was this because of a perceived group preference? No. Dr. Echeverría-Huarte performed the test on solitary participants, and about 75% of them moved counterclockwise. This trend persisted across 40 experiments.

A recent article in the New York Times explores the phenomenon and its potential causes. It’s clear that left or right-handedness does not correlate with this movement. Nor is it socially conditioned, as young children strongly exhibit counterclockwise movement as well as adults.

Whatever might be the root cause the movement, it will be helpful for architects and other professions that make use of crowd dynamics. I occasionally visit the largest convenience store in the world, which is a masterpiece of architecture designed for crowd movement. An awareness of the counterclockwise tendency could optimize such designs….’ (John Farrier via Neatorama)

‘A Biden-appointed federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore exhibits and other materials at national parks that highlighted slavery, climate change and other leftist ideology after they were removed under a directive targeting displays deemed disparaging to America.

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts, appointed to the federal bench by former President Joe Biden in 2021, issued a preliminary injunction Friday requiring the administration to reverse the changes and pause any further removals amid legal challenges.

The move comes amid the America 250 celebrations that will crescendo on July 4.

The Interior Department in a statement called Kelley a “liberal activist judge” and said it was reviewing its options to appeal its removal of what Secretary Doug Burgum rebuked as “improper partisan ideology.”…’ (Eric Mack via Fox News)

‘”We’re afraid some of our most sensitive conversations were being recorded,” an administration source told us. “And we have no idea which ones.” Verbatim accounts of several Situation Room meetings were included in excerpts about the Iran war and the Epstein files that The Times posted ahead of the book’s June 23 publication.

The authors conducted more than 1,000 interviews for “Regime Change,” which covers Trump’s second term. Tellingly, White House officials haven’t disputed verbatim dialogue from the top-secret Sit Room talks, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying about Bibi’s regime-change scenarios for Iran: “In other words, it’s bullshit.”

We hear President Trump is furious about the blow-by-blow accounts. Haberman and Swan refused to comment.

Reality check: Haberman and Swan didn’t need audio recordings. Bob Woodward pioneered contemporary historical political journalism by including dialogue in his books that was reconstructed from the memories of people in the rooms where things happened….’ (Jim VandeHei via Axios)

‘Sometimes it feels like a glaring design flaw that we have to power down for six to nine hours a day just to keep the brain from frying. Now, according to a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists may have found a way to give us all the benefits of sleep without actually going to sleep….’ ([object Object] via Vice)

Researchers recreated a deep-sleep brain rhythm in mice that remained fully awake and mobile. Mice that stayed awake while receiving the artificial sleep rhythm performed as well as fully rested mice, and molecular markers in their brains mirrored changes typically seen after natural sleep.

The investigators emphasized that this is not a practical shortcut for avoiding sleep. The method required genetic engineering and implanted brain electrodes, and natural sleep appears to restore the brain more evenly across regions.

Even so, the findings strikingly identify a specific electrical signal associated with restorative sleep and show that at least some benefits of sleep can be approximated by artificially reproducing that rhythm.

‘What if some black holes aren’t black holes at all? A new theoretical study suggests that when a massive star collapses, it might not form a singularity hidden behind an event horizon. Instead, the collapse could trigger the birth of a tiny new universe inside the dying star. Driven by dark energy, this miniature cosmos would expand and push back against gravity, preventing complete collapse and creating an exotic object known as a gravastar….’ (via ScienceDaily)

‘What Trump and his “manosphere” are trying to tell us with their public displays of testosterone…’ (Robert Reich)

‘In a scene that could have easily featured in an episode of the US television sitcom The Big Bang Theory, the late US physicist Richard Feynman once turned a visit to a Thai restaurant he often dined at into a mathematical riddle: how adventurous should we be in trying new dishes? Feynman promptly solved this on a sheet of paper.

Now, behavioural scientists have revisited Feynman’s solution — some of which had been obscured by his inscrutable handwriting — and found that his was indeed the optimal strategy….’ (S. Abbas Raza via 3 Quarks Daily)

‘In a forest north of Prague, in the Czech Republic, sits a beautiful castle that attracts thousands of visitors every single year, for it combines medieval history, supernatural tales and even Nazis.

With stories of a gateway into hell itself and occult experiments by occupying Nazis, Houska Castle has a place in European folklore, which raises the question about the truth behind this scenic old building….’ (Sam Farley via Far Out Magazine)

 

‘Ötzi the Iceman, Europe’s most famous mummy, hosts microbes—some ancient, some still alive after millennia, and some modern.

After dying in the Ötztal Alps, the Copper Age man lay frozen and forgotten for 5,300 years, until hikers found his freeze-dried remains in 1991. Since then, scientists have sequenced his DNA, studied his last meal and gut microbes, and examined his clothes and broken tools. Today, Ötzi rests in a high-tech chamber at Italy’s South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, where his body still shelters cold-adapted yeasts likely present since soon after his death….’ (Kiona N. Smith via Ars Technica)

‘There are several things to keep in mind when watching the surge of robot demonstration videos and even livestreams. First, such robotic demonstrations are not necessarily indicative of robots operating autonomously without human control or oversight, said Dipam Patel, a PhD candidate in computer science at Purdue University and a research assistant at the US Army DevCom Army Research Lab. Many demonstrations still rely on human operators directly controlling the robots’ actions through teleoperation.

“Unless a research paper or a company is explicitly mentioning that [the robot] is completely autonomous, you should take it with a very big pinch of salt,” Patel, also an IEEE Graduate Student Member, told Ars.

Another question to consider is whether the demonstration shows robots tackling a completely new test environment for the first time, or whether the robots are simply repeating a task they had already learned to do in that specific training environment. The new test environment would be significantly more impressive at showcasing robots capable of doing tasks autonomously in a generalized way, Patel said.

It is also worth checking the video playback speed for any robot demonstration, because “usually the robots are very slow” for safety and other reasons, Patel said. Companies may sometimes disclose that a robot demonstration video is running at two times or four times normal speed—meaning the robot could be taking twice as long or four times as long as a human to do the same task.

Robot demonstration videos can also vary wildly in their informative value and transparency. Some are clearly intended to be performative entertainment clips that can go viral on social media, or polished promotional videos from companies seeking new clients and investors. Others may provide more of a behind-the-scenes look at the robot training process while acknowledging robot mistakes along the way….’ (Jeremy Hsu via Ars Technica)

‘Institutions like The Late Show and 60 Minutes are no longer untouchable. That should frighten every single American. If scale and profit can’t save our most powerful voices, what happens to the rest of us?…’ (TC Sottek via The Verge)

‘CBP is conducting “systematic” searches of activists’ devices, using the language and tools of counterterrorism to target left-wing critics and activists, in keeping with President Donald Trump’s efforts to go after those he calls “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.”…’ (Gaby Del Valle via The Verge)

‘IN RECENT DAYS, a fantastical question has captured the attention of New Yorkers and local tabloids: Who is popping in and out of manholes across the city, and what are they doing in the sewer system?…’ (Caroline Haskins via WIRED)

‘…[H]ow long does it take protagonists in an existential crisis to embrace war of all against all, to start murdering their way towards refuge—or, having refuge at hand, to aggressively prevent others from joining them?…’ (James Davis Nicoll via Reactor)

‘Parents and caregivers have long reported that when some autistic people run a fever from an infection, their autism-related symptoms ease for a while.

MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers , backed by $2.1 million in grants from the Marcus Foundation, want to work out the biology behind this “fever effect” and eventually mimic it as a therapy.

A decade of work in mice by neuroscientist Gloria Choi and immunologist Jun Huh points away from the heat itself. They traced the improvement to an immune-signaling molecule called IL-17a, which appears to calm overactive brain circuits during infection. Injecting it directly into the brains of affected mice improved their symptoms even without any fever.

“Although it isn’t actually triggered by the fever, per se, the ‘fever effect’ is real, and it provides us with an opportunity to develop therapies to mitigate symptoms of autism spectrum disorders,” said Choi. The team now plans a “biobank” of blood and stool samples from volunteers to hunt for the same markers in people.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘There are no atheists in foxholes. Soon, there won’t be any Wiccans, Rosicrucianism, shamanic faiths, Troth, Unitarian Universalists, Humanists, Heathens, or Astaru and a whole lotta Protestant denominations, either. According to Military.com, Whiskey Pete Hegseth has ordered the number of religions recognized by the Department of War brutally slashed from just over 200 to 31. This theocratic bullshit reverses changes made to the DoW’s religious affiliation codes. In 2017, the Chaplaincy’s recognized religions were massively expanded as an exercise of the rights the United States once stood for: if you’re willing to serve and potentially die for your country, you should be able to practice the freedom of belief enshrined in its constitution. I guess that was too much to ask for from an ass with a $300 haircut and Deus Volt tattooed on his chest….’ (Séamus Bellamy via Boing Boing)

‘The president has turned a solemn occasion into a Day of Trump….’ (David Frum via The Atlantic)

‘In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell argued that bad writers “are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.” Today, artificial intelligence chatbots have fallen victim to the same blunder.

The idea that Latin-derived terms like “exhibit,” “triumph” and “consume” sound fancier than Germanic words like “show,” “win” and “eat” traces back to at least the Norman Conquest, when the previous Old English-speaking elites were suddenly replaced by a new French-speaking aristocracy. As Romance vocabulary became associated with the educated upper class, it increasingly took on a feeling of cultural prestige — a feeling that compounded as English borrowed additional waves of Latin loanwords during and after the Renaissance.

Even in the 21st century, this bias continues to permeate our social interactions. We’ll use more Latin terms when we want to speak formally or authoritatively; we’ll use Germanic words to sound crass or casual. I’m writing this article using Romance words like “permeate” and “authoritatively” because they make it sound like I know what I’m talking about. A new study from a group of researchers at Florida State University suggests that AI chatbots have also inherited this proclivity. After testing six AI models, the researchers found consistent favoritism for words coming from Latin and French over those with Germanic etymologies — even more than you would typically encounter in the English language….’ (Adam Aleksic via The Washington Post)

‘In Alan Watts’ book “The Wisdom of Insecurity” he points out that many people believe there are benefits to believing in God, but that is not nearly the same as actually believing in God. The mere fact we understand a belief would be beneficial to us doesn’t automatically make us sincerely believe it. Far from it! As Watts says:

It may be necessary for man to have a myth, but he cannot self-consciously prescribe one… man cannot for long knowingly and intentionally “kid” himself. Even the… most forceful arguments for some sort of return to orthodoxy are those which show the social and moral advantages of belief in God. But this does not prove that God is a reality. It proves, at most, that believing in God is useful… if the public has any suspicion that he does not exist, the invention is in vain.

That is: a belief isn’t a mere choice, something which can be adopted when it seems beneficial. Rather, it is something associated to a genuine, sincere, durable felt conviction. Indeed, that conviction may even be held despite it being inconvenient or even disadvantageous. If it is not possible to hold in the face of such challenges, then arguably it was not a belief. This lack of volition in either choice or rejection helps beliefs serve as durable glue binding communities.

So how do people come to believe? Tanya M. Luhrmann has written a beautiful book exploring this question, “How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others”. The book explores the idea that much of the purpose of religious practice is to help practitioners believe. This inverts conventional wisdom, with Luhrmann taking seriously the possibility that sometimes people aren’t worshipping because they believe, but rather believing because they worship. More generally: Luhrmann makes a compelling case that there is a much more complex relationship between belief and religious practice than you might naively suppose, and she explores some of that relationship….’ (Michael Nielsen via Michaelnotebook)

‘The bugs, broken apps, and nightmare customer-service bots we can’t escape, presented as a blessed and sacred addendum to Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on AI…’ (Brian Phillips via Theringer)

‘Illustrator  John Rooney has teamed up with the Middle East Children’s Alliance to produce and sell this Birds of Palestine print . Rooney on Instagram : “All profits will be going towards providing emergency assistance to children and families in what is still a dire situation in Palestine.”…’ (Jason Kottke via kottke.org )

‘As per Yahoo, as pockets of the crowd began to exit the venue in response to his comment, he added, “For those of you fucking booing us, some of us are not afraid. And we most assuredly are not fucking ignorant.” …

Recently, during a conversation with Mojo in March 2026, Robinson surprisingly commented: “I’m not interested in politics”. However, he followed it up, adding: “[But] I know what’s right and wrong – and this shit going on right now is wrong. Look man, I’m almost 60, all right. I don’t tell anyone what to do, because I don’t like to be told what to do. But I know right and wrong. The world’s teetering on the edge with all this bullshit, but if there’s a street fighting man out there, he’d got to be a young man, right? But these kids don’t seem to give a fuck.”…’ (Rachael Pimblett via Far Out Magazine)

‘Imagine Donald Trump receiving a Nobel Prize—not for championing peace, democracy, or global unity, but for inadvertently reminding the world just how vital those ideals truly are. This is the daring idea from veteran Italian journalist and media innovator Roberto Savio, founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) and publisher of Other News. In a widely shared personal appeal, Savio proposes an “Alternative Nobel Prize” for U.S. President Donald Trump—not as an honour, but as a sharp piece of political irony meant to spotlight the unintended consequences of Trump’s actions and words. The proposal walks a fine line between satire and seriousness. Beneath its humour pulses a deep worry about democracy’s health, the unravelling of international cooperation, and what Savio calls a rising tide of political subservience to a leader he sees as narcissistic, impulsive, and antagonistic to democratic values….’ (Ramesh Jaura via Eurasia Review)

‘A bear has injured four people near Fukushima city in Japan. Wildlife is surging in areas evacuated following the 2011 nuclear disaster.…’ (via Flipboard)

‘Don’t look now, but it appears that Congress is actually doing its constitutionally prescribed job: checking presidential power.

 

On Monday multiple outlets reported that President Donald Trump was backing off of his so-called anti-weaponization fund: the $1.776 billion discretionary account Trump functionally awarded himself as a result of his lawsuit against the IRS.

While it’s unclear whether this decision is permanent or final, the reporting all suggests that it is the direct result of an unusual revolt by Senate Republicans, who have openly defied Trump over the fund…’ (Zack Beauchamp via Vox)

Trump’s mortgage fraud czar is about to be overseeing America’s spy agencies. …’ (Cameron Peters via Vox)

‘Bill Pulte has no national-security experience, but he does have one qualification that might appeal to the president… Donald Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence community has no national-security experience, but he does have a history of clashing with colleagues and doggedly using his position to go after the president’s enemies.…’ (David A. Graham via The Atlantic)

‘Why Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund is on the rocks…’ (Cameron Peters via Vox)

‘Trump’s Freedom 250 fest crashout proves he’s the only true MAGA celebrity

Trump loves stars. Too bad they all hate him.…’ (Constance Grady via Vox)

‘Pessimism is probably “a bigger problem than climate change”, said the novelist Ian McEwan on Monday afternoon, as temperatures broke May records in the UK.

McEwan “constantly” hears people say that they don’t “expect their children to have as good a life as they did”, but suggested that optimism is a “moral duty”.

McEwan’s latest book, What We Can Know, is partly set in 2119, in a Britain submerged by seas. He spoke at the Hay festival on a panel alongside the former NFU president Minette Batters and Sandi Toksvig, on a day that saw temperatures in London reach 34.8C, beating a May record set in 1922.

McEwan went on to say that optimism is an “exercise in rationality”, because it’s “quite possible” – given that “the world is big, cultures are diverse” – that “there could be a revolution happening and we don’t even know about it”.…’ (Ella Creamer via The Guardian)

‘In the event of an imminent nuclear apocalypse, we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. This site tracks this indicator in realtime. The current emergency level is reported on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an indicator of a likely imminent apocalypse. built by Kyle McDonald…’ (via ews.kylemcdonald.net

‘Democrats are in thrall to the idea that corporate consolidation is America’s biggest, and maybe only, problem.…’ (Jonathan Chait via The Atlantic)

Chait, who has had a career as a political reporter at The New Republic, New York and The Atlantic, argues that anti-monopoly thinking has become a dominant force in Democratic economic policy, driven largely by the Open Markets Institute and its central figure, Barry C. Lynn, who sees corporate consolidation as the root of much of America’s social, political, and economic dysfunction. In Chait’s view, this dangerously monocausal worldview moved antitrust politics to the center of the Biden administration, particularly through the influence of Lynn’s protégé Lina Khan, appointed to the Federal Trade Commission. For this movement, antitrust is not merely a narrow matter of consumer prices but part of a broader project to decentralize power and curb corporate dominance.

Chait regards this emphasis as useful but badly overextended. He argues that it neglects other sources of contemporary dysfunction, including inflation, social-media addiction, cultural alienation, political polarization, and the Democratic Party’s loss of working-class support. If allowed to dominate policy, he warns, the anti-monopoly framework would be intellectually erosive, politically divisive, and likely to fail. Its vocabulary of resentment toward concentrated power may be emotionally satisfying, but Chait sees it as risking the rupture of older Democratic coalitions while failing to deliver the salvation it promises.

I am reprinting this, from colleague Dr Henry Abraham, in its entirety. He thoughtfully articulates concerns I share. 

Dear Dr. Barbabella:

I am concerned that you have examined President Donald J. Trump for the third time since last January, even as the White House called your assessment on May 26 an “annual dental and health checkup,” and despite the president’s claim that “everything checked out PERFECTLY. Three days after your evaluation you claimed that he “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and overall physical function.”

The American people don’t seem to be buying that story. A recent poll showed that 59% of Americans feel he lacks the mental acuity for his position, hardly a vote of confidence in the president’s self-assessment.

In my experience as a physician, it’s uncommon for a healthy person to require a medical evaluation three times in a year. Certainly the ecchymoses in his hands are a tell. It may be a sign of aging. If it’s from handshaking, as you suggested, why in both hands? If it’s from prescribed aspirin, Harvard emergency physician Jeremy Faust wondered if a high dose was because you were trying to prevent a heart attack. What about his edematous ankles? Venous insufficiency is your diagnosis, but that’s relatively uncommon in men. Have you ruled out right sided heart failure, or is he taking a drug like amlodipine that also causes swollen ankles? Your credentials as a combat surgeon are exemplary, but there may be other medical specialists who might help in dealing with an especially challenging case.

As a psychiatrist I have concerns about his mental status which appears to have worsened in the last year. Why has he taken the MOCA test of cognitive abilities three times since 2018? Is the president slowly declining, or is his mental function dropping off a cliff? The danger posed by his apparent psychiatric decline is compounded by his unfettered access to our vast nuclear arsenal. Like any patient with advancing dementia, there’s a time when the car keys have to be taken away. I fear the president is at that point, and should be lawfully removed from office. I base this extraordinary request on my observations of his increasingly poor judgment, reduced impulse control, rage attacks, grandiosity, feelings of omnipotence, and his growing intoxication with nuclear weapons over which he alone has control.

As a specialist in substance use disorders I recommend, if you have not already done this, a urine tox screen on the president. He has an admittedly thinly sourced history of abusing psychostimulants since 1992. I have previously described a photo of the president with dilated pupils, a singularly abnormal finding in an elderly man under normal room illumination. Was this from a stimulant? In my clinical experience a tox screen would be indicated in any patient presenting this way, especially if he described nocturnal tweeting frenzies, grandiosity, paranoia, and daytime sleepiness consistent with stimulant withdrawal.

Other specialists who may be helpful in this complex case include hematologists, neurologists, and infectious disease experts. His black and blue hands bespeak a bleeding disorder. Aggressive use of aspirin may be the culprit, but have you ruled out blood dyscrasias such as the leukemias or platelet disorders?

While there are a number of red flags that appear to presage dementia, such as difficulties in speech, logic, calculations, and orientation in space, they are intermittent. You might argue that occasional mental lapses are part of being nearly 80. But a cluster of them even when intermittent is worrisome, especially when mixed with disinhibition, rage, and access to weapons of mass destruction. Missing from the public record are the actual scores of his three prior MOCA screens for cognitive decline. As you know the MOCA is a rapid screen taking ten or so minutes to complete. I strongly recommend a more thorough neuropsychological battery to assess the president’s ability to remember, pay attention, solve problems, and use language.

The patient’s father developed a dementia in later life which was diagnosed as “Alzheimer’s disease.” But his emotional disinhibition was more consistent with frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. The frontal lobes of the brain, shown below in dark blue, help you plan, organize, observe social graces, and exert good judgement. The temporal lobes, in light blue, deal with memory, language, and modulating anxiety and rage.

If his father’s dementia was the FTD type, the president has a 25 to 50% chance of developing the same illness. FTD patients exhibit apathy, poor judgement, and speech difficulties.

As you know, there are other causes of dementia. e.g. the vascular type from small blood clots in the brain. Brain imaging can put those concerns to rest, and so I was disappointed when last October you elected only to perform an MRI study of the president’s cardiovascular system. Brain MRI, PET, and/or SPECT scans are long overdue.

Last on my short list of rule-out diagnoses is neurosyphilis which in the U.S. from 2019 to 2023 increased 61%. It is not a stretch of one’s imagination to consider that the current president has a history of unprotected sex with infected partners. Neurosyphilis can linger for years without being detected. Undetected it can progress to a dementia with an expansive demeanor and grandiose delusions, symptoms we see in Donald Trump today. A simple blood and spinal fluid test can lay this possibility to rest.

Most importantly is that while you have a duty to protect the president’s privacy, you have a far greater duty to protect the common good. You have served your country on the battlefield. Now you are called upon to render Americans and the world a far greater service.

Sincerely,

Henry David Abraham, M.D.

Trump Urges Canceling Freedom 250 Concerts After Artists Drop Out

‘The president had earlier said on social media that he should take the place of “these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’” saying he gets “larger audiences than Elvis.”…’ (Derrick Bryson Taylor via The New York Times)

Kennedy Center Must Remove Trump’s Name From Building, Judge Orders

‘Mr. Trump railed against the judge’s ruling in an incensed social media post, suggesting that he was considering casting the Kennedy Center aside as one of his personal projects. The president wrote that unless he was free to decide the center’s trajectory, he had “no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey.”

“Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life,” he wrote.…’ (Julia Jacobs via The New York Times)

‘A huge noise rattled part of the state on Thursday. Multiple theories have been put forward, but the mystery remains.…’ (Victor Mather via The New York Times)

Unlike today’s event off the Massachusetts coast, NASA said Thursday’s was not caused by a meteor, having received no reports of a fireball and no satellite detection of a meteor in the area. 

Seen and heard up and down the Eastern Seaboard from Quebec and northern VT down to Delaware and Maryland (via American Meteor Society; thanks, Abby)

‘The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening. Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine (Fall 2006 page 14), described the instinctive drowning response like this:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.…’(via Mariovittone)

(via Reddit)

• ‘The global average Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) score fell to 42 out of 100, the first decline in more than a decade.
• Only five countries now score above 80, down from 12 a decade ago.
• The U.S. ranks 29th with a score of 64, its lowest-ever result in the index.…’ (Srijaa Chatterjee via Visual Capitalist)

‘We critically examine proposals for the so-called warp-drive spacetimes and classify these models based on their various restrictions within the framework of General Relativity. We then provide a summary of general formalism for each class, and in the process, we highlight some misconceptions, misunderstandings, and errors in the literature that have been used to support claims about the physicality and feasibility of these models. On the way, we prove several new no-go theorems. Our analysis shows that when the principles of General Relativity are applied correctly, most claims regarding physical warp drives must be reassessed,
and it becomes highly challenging to justify or support the viability of such models, not merely due to the violation of energy conditions.…’ (via Arxiv)

‘For some Americans’ finances, the Iran war was over almost as soon as it began. Those with access to stocks — a majority of Americans have some, though the ultrawealthy have most — saw the S&P 500 dip about 8% when the war started, only for it to bounce 19% starting in late March, more than making up its losses. The index is now up 10.7% for the year, which if it held would make for the fourth consecutive year of double-digit stock increases.

President Donald Trump has been quick to trumpet these gains. “We have 401(k)s at their all-time high, highest they’ve ever been, and that goes along with the stock market, which is the highest it’s ever been,” Trump said at a televised Cabinet meeting this week, repeating a refrain he has adopted to celebrate market wins. That is all despite the war, he said. 

But as Trump — along with anyone who has to put gas into their car — also knows, the real economic weight of the war is much heftier than lofty stock prices would suggest. The war is heightening an already historic disconnect between those who can share in the affluence spun off by U.S. financial markets and those who can’t. That is aggravating Americas’ frustrations with the president’s economic performance, and likely will weigh on his fellow Republicans’ performance in November’s midterm elections. …’ (Matt Peterson via CNBC)

‘Particles of light cannot be divided into smaller particles, but if you try to snip off the end of one, instead of shortening it multiplies…’ (Karmela Padavic-Callaghan via New Scientist)

‘For years now, President Donald Trump has been showing off a signature dance move at events and campaign rallies, jerking his bent arms and clenched fists forward and backward, often to the sound of the Village People’s “YMCA.”

 

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The dance is a regular feature when he’s onstage — so much so that it has become part of his signature brand, experts told HuffPost.

“It’s typically the same exact song and it’s the same exact set of moves, and he’s typically doing it when he’s wearing the blue suit, the white shirt and the red tie, so it’s part of his brand,” said Patti Wood, a body language expert and author of “Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma.” “One of the reasons it is so interesting to observe is that we know exactly what he’s going to do, and yet we look at it every time [and try] to understand.”

This “very on brand for him” move is even a “visual version” of his speech patterns, said Denise Dudley, a clinical psychologist and behavioral expert. “If we think about it a certain way, he dances like he talks,” Dudley said. “It’s super repetitive, it’s really simple. I mean, it’s not complicated at all.”…’ (Jillian Wilson via HuffPost)

‘In 2024, Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. (Trump received a no-penalty sentence, or unconditional discharge, just 10 days before his January 2025 inauguration to a second term.)…’ (via The Boston Globe)

‘A new study suggests ChatGPT may stereotype you based on where you live, with the artificially-intelligent model classifying some locations as smarter, some as smellier and some as uglier or stupider.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Kentucky asked OpenAI’s GPT-4o-mini model over 20 million questions between March and May of last year. They got the ChatGPT model to compare two places in order to get “a single, unambiguous consistent answer” about how it classifies certain states, according to researchers…’ (Monica Torres via HuffPost)

‘Belarus’ president has been accused of flagrant human rights violations and enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine. That hasn’t served as a barrier to his friendship with Donald Trump.…’ (Yuliya Talmazan via NBC News)

‘”Sand and dust storms do not just mean dirty windows and hazy skies.”…’ (Joe Wilkins via Futurism)

‘[W]hat is going on and what can we do about it? I put these questions to Laurie Santos. Santos is a cognitive scientist and professor whose class on happiness quickly became the most popular in Yale’s history. And through her podcast “The Happiness Lab” and her free online course called “The Science of Well-Being,” Santos’s reach has extended far beyond the classroom.

I wanted to understand what history and science say happiness really is, how that connects to loneliness and American ideas about productivity and why, with so many happiness tips flooding our feeds, it has still been so hard for me, and many others, to do the things that will actually make us truly, deeply happy.…’ (Lulu Garcia-Navarro via The New York Times)

‘A Canadian man who ran online businesses that shipped toxic salt to people in 40 countries pleaded guilty on Friday to 14 counts of aiding suicides in Ontario, prosecutors said.

British prosecutors said that the man, Kenneth Law, 60, of Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, had also formally admitted to causing the deaths of 79 people in Britain as part of the proceedings in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Newmarket, Ontario.

The deaths in Britain were recognized in the Canadian court, which will sentence Mr. Law in September “on the basis that he distributed lethal products internationally, knowing they were likely to be used to end lives,” Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.…’ (Michael Levenson via The New York Times)

‘The first sign that the tree was in trouble was the scent — a musty odor that cut through the warm forest air.

“It smelled like mushrooms but worse, like decomposition,” said Cyrille Cornu, a French researcher who visited the tree, an ancient baobab that locals call Tsitakakantsa, last October in southwest Madagascar. Approaching the massive trunk in the island nation’s Andombiry Forest, Mr. Cornu’s heart sank. A dark, foul-smelling liquid was seeping from the base of the tree.

“I was surprised because I never saw this before,” said Mr. Cornu, who specializes in baobabs and has visited the tree several times over the last 15 years. He thought to himself: “Something is wrong.”…’ (Jonathan Wolfe via The New York Times)

‘In a bid to remake the country’s top-rated news program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of “60 Minutes,” replacing the show’s executive producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents.

Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her pick to lead the 58-year-old Sunday show. Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news, will replace Tanya Simon, who had been at the show for more than three decades.

CBS News also fired Cecilia Vega, the program’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly last year by Ms. Weiss, who requested more reporting. It aired in full at a later date. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of “60 Minutes,” was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.

Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist with no prior experience in television, has made major changes at CBS since being appointed last year by the tech scion David Ellison. She has named Tony Dokoupil to helm “CBS Evening News,” hired new on-air contributors and personally booked some guests for interviews, a departure from the industry norm…’ (Benjamin Mullin via The New York Times)

‘A new book looks into the long history of people who have opposed vaccines…

Facts and figures can demonstrate how many lives have been saved by vaccines. But they will never be an effective counterargument to “the government can’t tell me what to inject into my kid.” The only potential argument to sway someone who fervently believes that is appealing to their sense of solidarity—to the obligations that every member of society has to every other, to the sacrifices that everyone must make to ensure that society is safe for all. Alas, that sense of solidarity… does not seem to be at its peak in the US right now.

As Levenson makes clear, these three arguments have been plied for as long as vaccines have. But there are a couple of key differences now. The first is that 300 years ago, people who claimed that vaccines were either ineffective or harmful could be forgiven for thinking they had a point. But we now have germ theory to explain exactly how vaccines work and centuries of data showing how infection and death rates from every disease have plummeted once a vaccine was introduced to counter it. We know better.

The second is that now, arguments against vaccines tend to be touted by only one particular subgroup of people: Republicans. And that has come with predictable consequences. “In the US from 2021 onward,” Levenson writes, “being a Republican has become a measurable risk factor for illness and death.”

Levenson teaches in and has directed the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT, so you might expect his writing to be clear, concise, engaging, and informative, with an effective mix of statistics and anecdotes. You’d be right. And despite the incendiary nature of his topic, his tone remains measured throughout; he never descends into anger or ranting. A new book looks into the long history of people who have opposed vaccines.What does come through is his anguish that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lies and policies will cause kids to needlessly be sickened by and die from diseases we have the tools to prevent….’ (Diana Gitig via Ars Technica)

‘“No one knows what is going on, which is leading to a lot of anxiety,” said a Republican operative who works on House races, who like some others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly discuss a sensitive issue within the GOP conference. “There is a total information void.”

The operative added: “We cannot hold the majority without this seat. And folks need to know if he is capable of running for reelection and winning. … You can’t just go missing for months and tell people they just need to be patient and wait without any accountability.”…’ (Dan Merica via The Washington Post

‘Scientists believe there are almost certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of undiscovered animal species living in the middle of New York, among the city’s parks, gardens, and streets. I’m not talking about the big stuff — birds, frogs, and so on — but small critters, including flies, wasps, and other insects.

It’s not that NYC is some sort of global bug hot spot. (Despite what it might feel like in the summer, it is not.) Rather, the bulk of species in many insect groups, wherever they’re found, remains unknown. As one example, there may be as many as 1.8 million species globally in a single fly family called Cecidomyiidae, known as the gall midges. Yet only about 7,000 of them have been described in the scientific record and are thus known species. Broadly speaking, taxonomists estimate that as much as 90 percent of all animal species on Earth are still unknown….’ (Benji Jones via Vox)

‘One of the most trusted forms of protection against the dreaded mosquito might have an unexpected weakness. Research out today shows that mosquitoes can actually learn to love the presence of DEET, a common ingredient in insect repellents. Scientists in the U.S. and France conducted lab experiments with Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a species well known for spreading various diseases, including yellow fever and dengue. They successfully reversed the mosquitoes’ aversion to the chemical, even making them more willing to approach a human wearing DEET. Though DEET remains a valuable anti-mosquito measure, the findings suggest people should be especially mindful about using it as instructed, the researchers say. “DEET is still the gold standard of mosquito repellents,” study author Clément Vinauger, an associate professor in the department of biochemistry at Virginia Tech, told Gizmodo. “Our work is an important reminder to carefully read the manufacturer’s recommendations regarding dosage and application frequency to ensure these products are as effective as possible.”…’ (Ed Cara via Gizmodo)

‘I have many thoughtful friends who are depressed about the state of the world. I am less depressed than they are — not because I’m an optimist, or because I deny the evil and stupidity in our political system that are causing so much harm, but because I believe history reveals a pattern that leaves reason for hope.…’ (Danny Hillis via NOEMA)

‘There’s an old line, sometimes attributed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to make it bigger. That might be the most generous interpretation of how the Trump administration is approaching its ongoing peace talks with Iran.

Over the weekend, the news around the talks followed what has now become a familiar pattern. On Saturday, the two sides were reportedly close to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and lift the US blockade on Iran. Then on Sunday, President Donald Trump said he had told his negotiators “not to rush” into a deal. On Monday, the United States launched a new round of what it called “self-defense strikes” in southern Iran. The current message from the White House is that they’re giving talks another few days, and continue to believe believe a deal is likely, but haven’t taken a return to full-scale war off the table.

Then in a rambling Truth Social post on Monday morning, Trump enlarged the problem by saying that it “should be mandatory” that as part of any peace deal, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey sign on to the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel. This is unlikely: Saudi-Israeli cooperation against Iran has been the worst kept secret in the Middle East for years, but the international outcry over the war in Gaza has made it politically untenable for these countries to publicly embrace Israel. It’s unclear just how seriously Trump will press for this, but the fact that at this phase in negotiations he’s bringing up new demands sure to irritate his own allies, suggests he’s not exactly desperate to wrap these talks up.

The fact that a deal still hasn’t been signed — despite the fact that the underlying dynamics of the conflict haven’t changed much since Iran and the United States signed the current ceasefire agreement in early April — as well as the fact that Trump seems to be expanding rather than narrowing his demands suggests two things that turn the recent weeks of negotiation reports on their head: First, Trump does not believe that he is losing this war. Second, he is still hoping to reach a mega-deal to reset the politics of the entire region. RELATED5 ways the Iran standoff could end Trump doesn’t think he’s losing Before the war began, Trump told a concerned Tucker Carlson that despite predictions warning that attacking Iran could destroy his presidency, he was confident everything would be okay “because it always is.” The war certainly hasn’t gone as easily as expected, but it’s very possible Trump still believes he has the upper hand and that everything will work out….’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘Hengefinder is an app that, given times and places, can help you experience “stunning moments when the sun or moon aligns perfectly with city streets and buildings.” A “henge” is when the sun or moon is perfectly framed by a street or appears to sit on top of a building … Astronomical calculations combined with road data deliver instant results. Works worldwide. Sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset—all at your fingertips. It’s available for iPhone and on the Google Play Store, but is based on open-source software posted to Github by Victoria Ritvo. It’s on the web at hengefinder.rcdis.co; my street gets henged in September, weather permitting!…’ (Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing)