‘…(S)omeone with a big audience pushed a post claiming Trump is on an Alzheimer’s-specific infusion drug, linking it to everything from bruises to sleepiness to “confusion.” Sadly, the post is spreading.
Well, circumstantial click bait evidence doesn’t hold up in court.
On the surface some may seem like they fit. Plus, many people wrongly confuse Alzheimer’s with dementia in general and lump all the symptoms together.

It’s wrong.
It’s naive.
It’s dangerous.
A serious symptom analysis quickly debunks Alzheimer’s.

Trump’s symptoms are consistent with another, less common but more disruptive and, in his case horrific, disorder — Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). There are a couple of subtypes with important distinctions, but his changes in personality and behavior, along with specific language and physical problems, are consistent with FTD variants.

This isn’t guesswork pulled from thin air. This is the conclusion drawn from analysies by hundreds of clinical and research experts in mental health.
❓

What is FTD?
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss mainly in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) and/or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears).
Brain regions impaired in FTD are the ones responsible for self-monitoring, impulse control, and reality-checking. The nerve cell damage caused by FTD leads to loss of function in these brain regions, and in bvFTD, the nerve cell loss is most prominent in areas that control conduct, judgment, empathy and foresight.

…Watching Trump is witnessing a malignant narcissist without the brain’s guardrails — judgment, restraint, empathy — leaving an unhinged finger on the big button and a hunger for validation, control and vengeance.
That’s what makes this moment so volatile, and so dangerous.

For years, clinicians and researchers, myself included, have been sounding the alarm on Trump’s malignant narcissism—his grandiosity, paranoia, total lack of empathy, and need for vengeance.
When Bandy Lee published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in 2017 — bringing together 27 experts — it wasn’t sensationalism. It was a professional alarm bell. The Duty to Warn organization followed, representing tens of thousands of mental-health professionals.

Back then, most people rolled their eyes. Today, the term “malignant narcissism” (MN) is showing up everywhere: on cable news, in congressional hearings, even late-night comedy…  

But what wasn’t widely understood is how a dementia like FTD alters an already disordered personality.
MN and FTD feed off each other. FTD erodes impulse control, self-monitoring, and reality-testing — the brakes a malignant narcissist desperately needs but never had much of to begin with.
Meanwhile, without the inhibition, the malignant narcissism thrives unchecked: rage, paranoia, reckless decisions. It’s not just additive—it’s synergistic. You’re seeing it in action every day.

FTD on its own is tragic:
Together, they make a uniquely combustible threat.
The grandiosity that once had a shred of calculation now comes out as unfiltered delusion.
The sadism breaks free to wreak vengeance and cruelty on perceived enemies and innocent victims.
This is why you’re suddenly hearing a lot more people talk about Trump’s cognition. The MN made his behavior impossible to ignore; the FTD makes his decline undeniable and frightening.

Now for some action you can use right now:
Knowing the signs breaks the spell.
You move from a stressful “Why the fuck is he saying this!?!” to an objective “Hmmm, another confabulation story.”
Here’s a quick field guide for keeping your sanity, especially when the news cycle gets overwhelming:

1. Confabulation: It’s not lying — it’s filling gaps with invented memories he believes.
   Watch for: highly specific claims that are clearly false.
   Malignant Narcissism twist: the invented memories are usually grandiose ,self-serving, or feeding off a vengeance.
2. Phonemic Paraphasias: Speech sounds scrambled (“Obamna,” “United Shates”).
   Malignant Narcissism twist: he never self-corrects. Instead he blames equipment, pretends it’s intentional, or calls someone “stupid.”
3. Tangential / disorganized speech: Losing the thread, drifting into non sequiturs.
   Malignant Narcissism twist: he reframes it as “the weave,” demands applause, and calls it genius.
4. Impulse-control failures: The frontal lobes can’t filter impulses.
   Malignant Narcissism twist: hostility, threats, public rage, sending sycophants to do his dirty deeds, persecution narratives.

Weirdly, There’s a Silver Lining

As disturbing as the symptoms are, everyone is finally noticing.
It’s no longer theoretical.
It’s happening live in decaying color.
People who ignored the psychological concerns are now asking needed questions.
It’s long overdue. And necessary.
The challenge now is whether the world can survive his decay turned up to eleven.’ (via Frank George PhD)

‘After criticizing media coverage about him aging in office, Trump appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
But that’s hardly the most troubling aspect of his aging.

In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.

• To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent, he said: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”
• About New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers: “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”
• To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
• About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”
• About Somali immigrants to the United States: “Garbage” whom “we don’t want in our country.”

What to make of all this?
Trump’s press hack Karoline Leavitt tells reporters to “appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”

Sorry, Ms. Leavitt. This goes way beyond frankness and openness. Trump is now saying things nobody in their right mind would say, let alone the president of the United States.
He’s losing control over what he says, descending into angry, venomous, often dangerous territory.

Note how close his language is coming to violence — when he speaks of acts being punishable by death, or human beings as garbage, or someone being ugly inside and out.
The deterioration isn’t due to age alone…

I think older people lose certain inhibitions because they don’t care as much about their reputations as do younger people. In a way, that’s rational. Older people no longer depend on their reputations for the next job or next date or new friend. If a young person says whatever comes into their heads, they have much more to lose, reputation-wise.

But Trump’s outbursts signal something more than the normal declining inhibitions that come with older age. Trump no longer has any filters. He’s becoming impetuous.
This would be worrying about anyone who’s aging. But a filterless president of the United States who says anything that comes into his head poses a unique danger.

What if he gets angry at China, calls up Xi, tells him he’s an asshole, and then orders up a nuclear bomb?
It’s time the media reported on this. It’s time America faced reality. It’s time we demanded that our representatives in Congress take action, before it’s too late.

Invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.’ (via Robert Reich)

‘President Donald Trump on Monday blamed Rob Reiner’s outspoken opposition to the president for the actor-director’s killing, delivering the unsubstantiated claim in a shocking post that seemed intent on decrying his opponents even in the face of a tragedy.

The statement, even for Trump, was a shocking comment that came as police were still investigating the deaths of the director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as an apparent homicide. The couple were found dead at their home Sunday in Los Angeles. Investigators believe they suffered stab wounds and the couple’s son Nick Reiner was in police custody early Monday.

Trump has a long track record of inflammatory remarks, but his comments in a social media post were a drastic departure from the role presidents typically play in offering a message of consolation or tribute after the death of a public figure. His message drew criticism even from conservatives and his supporters and laid bare Trump’s unwillingness to rise above political grievance in moments of crisis.

Trump, in a post on his social media network, said Reiner and his wife were killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

He said Reiner “was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”…’ (Michelle Price via AP)

 

‘We once denied the suffering of animals in pain. As AIs grow more complex, we run the danger of making the same mistake …’ ( via Aeon Essays)

‘What could it even mean to say we are all one person when we undeniably have separate minds?
Yet, the idea appears across philosophical traditions. Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th-century German philosopher, claimed we are all manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon, somehow seeking to experience itself as separate individuals. He was long preceded, though, by a similar view recurring in the Hinduistic Vedas: that our true selves (Atman) are all the same and identical to a single universal consciousness (Brahman, in turn identified with God). In other words, whereas Buddhism sees the self as an illusion, Hinduism declares it permanent and immortal, although we still suffer an illusion by conceiving of it as individual.
For a real understanding of how this could be true, however, the Hindu texts largely point toward meditation and spiritual practice, because the doctrine of a shared, universal self is considered not truly graspable by rational thought. Schopenhauer does not fully resolve its paradoxes, either. In today’s West, the view that we are somehow “all one” seems most often reported as a realization following a psychedelic trip, incommunicable to those who haven’t shared a similar experience.
Must the idea remain mystical? Perhaps not—or at least much less than one might think. In recent decades, a few philosophers within the contemporary Western tradition have looked at it with new eyes. According to their arguments, the view that everyone is the same person is not only perfectly coherent, but also quite plausible…’ (Hedda Hassel Mørch via Nautilus)

‘When people tell me that there’s been no resistance to the Trump administration, I wonder if they’re expecting something that looks like a guerrilla revolution pushing out the government in one fell swoop or just aren’t paying attention, because there has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously. When will it be enough is a question that can only be answered if and when all this is over and we find out what comes next. Another source of disappointment seems to come from the expectation that there will be some sort of obvious and logical building up toward regime change, rather than the reality that tipping points in particular and histories in general are unpredictable animals …’ ( via The Guardian)

‘Continent’s leaders suspect Russia of being behind barrage of increasingly disruptive attacks …’ (Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Daniel Michaels in Brussels via WSJ)

As large-language models become central to how information is processed, writers are increasingly creating work not just for human readers but for AI itself—the “baby shoggoth” quietly listening, learning, and shaping future interpretations of culture. In this emerging landscape, writing becomes partly an act of training the machine: crafting text with clarity, structure, and signals that AI systems can absorb. Thinkers like Tyler Cowen and Gwern already admit to writing with algorithms in mind, anticipating a world where machines may be the dominant readers, intermediating how humans encounter ideas.

This shift raises deeper cultural and existential questions. If AI becomes the primary reader and interpreter of human writing, the traditional writer–reader relationship changes, potentially diminishing human reading as a central cultural act. Yet it may also imbue writing with new urgency—what we produce now could influence how future intelligences “understand” us or even reconstruct aspects of our minds. How may authorship, creativity, and legacy transform in a world where machines, not humans, are increasingly the ones paying the closest attention? (Dan Kagan-Kans via The American Scholar)

‘Headphone listening—the act of playing a highly personalized soundtrack wherever we go—is a surprisingly radical invention, and we’re only beginning to contend with its implications. The visible barrier it creates between the listener and everyone else is obvious. Less obvious is the invisible barrier: The more time we spend in our own musical echo chambers, the less likely we are to share a collective cultural experience. The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone listening not only isolates the listener; it shrinks music’s cultural footprint. …’ (Jonathan Garrett via The Atlantic)

‘…a bunch of rich guys who have been comically out of touch with normal people for many decades, and more recently have blowtorched their brains into a smoking pile of ash on Twitter…’ (Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect)

‘For decades, people around the world have been fascinated with the legend of bigfoot, sasquatch, yeti, or whatever you choose to call it. Sightings of a furry, upright biped and reports of beastly footprints have been reported from as far afield as the Himalayas. Although no definitive proof exists, the (often questionable) reports continue adding up. Outside plunged into the deep, dark corners of this subculture to compile the most famous—perhaps most convincing—bigfoot photos ever captured. Here’s the evidence. Is bigfoot real? You be the judge. …’ (Lauren Kent via Outside)

Donna and Keith were in what I consider the greatest configuration of the Dead. Her style was controversial and divisive for Deadheads of the era, with some cringing when she would cut loose and others feeling she goaded the mix to new heights.

‘Sunday (Nov. 2) marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station (ISS), which has carved out a spot in the history books as one of our species’ grandest (and most expensive) technological achievements.
Don’t save any confetti for a semicentennial celebration, however — the ISS is in its home stretch. NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the aging outpost toward the end of 2030, using a modified, extra-burly version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule to bring it down over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.
And not just any stretch — the “spacecraft cemetery,” a patch of the Pacific centered on Point Nemo, which is named after the famous submarine captain in Jules Verne’s 1871 novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”
“This remote oceanic location is located at coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, about 2,688 kilometers [1,670 miles] from the nearest land — Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast; and Maher Island, part of Antarctica, to the south,” officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a brief Point Nemo explainer …’ (Mike Wall via Space)

‘The United States is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity. The White House press secretary answers a question from a member of the free press—a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents—by saying, “Your mom did.” The secretary of defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, “We are done with that shit.” The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a “dipshit.” The president of the United States, during mass protests against his policies, responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads.
These are not the actions of mature adults. They are examples of crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs—including the presidency—for which they are not qualified …’ (Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)

‘A wild, very “polite” and possibly lonely black bear recently paid a visit to its neighbors at a Northern California zoo.

Before opening for the day, staff at Sequoia Park Zoo in Eureka were conducting a routine inspection of the Redwood Sky Walk — a self-guided tour of local redwood history and ecology — when they were surprised by a unique visitor.

On the tour trail was a wild American black bear leaning on a gate to peer in at the three black bears in their habitat within the park…’ (By Karen Garcia via Los Angeles Times)

Talk of coups in America has usually focused on a president who refuses to yield power, with military support. Less often considered is the converse: could senior military leaders move against a sitting president whom they judge to be acting unlawfully? Recent, highly unusual orders summoning hundreds of commanding officers to a central meeting make that hypothetical feel less abstract. Could there be a leap from “uncomfortable emergency” to “military takeover”?

Start with the constitutional reality. Members of the U.S. armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution, not to an individual. That oath undergirds a crucial legal principle: soldiers must follow lawful orders and resist manifestly unlawful ones. In extremis, a commander who is clearly and repeatedly flouting law could present military leaders with a choice between obedience and dereliction.

Yet institutions and norms matter. The United States is not a polity where the military habitually substitutes judgment for civilian authority. A tradition of apolitical professionalism, a sprawling, decentralized force presence, independent courts, an elected legislature, and fifty state governments all act as redundant brakes on unilateral action. Historically, when a president and generals have clashed, the result has been dismissals, resignations, legal fights, or quiet hedging — not generals marching into Washington.

So an overt military coup against a president has been considered exceedingly unlikely. For such a move to occur would require an extraordinary confluence: blatant, sustained constitutional violations by the White House; near-unanimity among senior military commanders that civilian channels cannot or will not resolve the crisis; coordination across disparate forces and agencies; and either tacit elite agreement or a legitimizing narrative the public accepts. The U.S. has been structurally resistant to that set of conditions, but is Trump’s governance rapidly setting the stage?

What is far more plausible, and more urgent to watch for, is the politicization and instrumentalization of the military and security institutions. The rapid convening of top commanders can be read in more than one way. It might be an innocuous doctrinal briefing; it might be an optics-driven display of control; or it may be precisely the kind of centralized gathering that a leader uses to map loyalties and to make dissent costly. Could the Administration be trying to nip coup possibilities in the bud? Authoritarian governments the world over have followed this playbook: start with culture and discipline, then ratchet expectations and purge or sideline those who refuse to conform.

Why does that matter? Because slow, incremental erosion of institutional norms is how democracies die most often. You don’t always see tanks on the streets before you lose key liberties; you see personnel moves, standards redefined, and a professional ethic quietly replaced by one of political fidelity. Once loyalty tests replace meritocratic standards, the force’s role shifts profoundly from national defense to regime defense.

What should concerned citizens and institutions do? Remain vigilant. Independent oversight, congressional scrutiny, a free press, and public attention are the proper counterweights. Resignations offered in protest should be publicized and debated, judicial reviews should be sought for overbroad directives, and legislators should use hearings and appropriations to assert civilian control. Is it too late to redouble the strength of the constitutional mechanisms that diffuse dictatorial power?

Convening senior commanders, especially at short notice and on an unusual scale, deserves scrutiny because it is the sort of institutional maneuver one sees on the first page of authoritarian playbooks. We should neither be complacent nor indulge in fevered speculation. The health of a democracy is held less by heroic last stands than by the cumulative strength of its norms, but we may fast be reaching the point where the former is necessary.

‘I know the title of this particular newsletter, ‘Let’s All Remember When We Saved The World’, is the kind that will attract clap-backs like “oh stop with the sensationalising, the ‘world’ will be fine, it’s just humans who will find it harder, I hate you climate-change clickbait people.”

To pre-empt a bit of that, let’s look at our world without its ozone layer, which was exactly what Rowland and Molina’s work seemed to predict.’ (Mike Sowden via Everything is Amazing).

‘Twice a year, day and night reach a perfect balance of 12 hours each, creating a little-known event called the equilux.

The equilux brings equal hours of day and night.

Many of us think that an even balance of day to night happens during an equinox. After all, the word translates as “equal night.”

So, a little confusion is understandable. But there’s a subtle time difference between an equinox and an equilux.…’ (via Time and Date)

Two surprising facts learned from this article — that the point of equal day and night is not on the equinox but depends on my latitude; and that, because the sun is a disc and not a point, there are no days of exactly equal lengths of day and night on the equator.

‘If a Democratic lawmaker and her husband are gunned down, it’s an isolated incident carried out by a lone wolf.

If a right-wing activist is gunned down, it’s part of a coordinated effort by the radical left to incite violence.…’ — Carlos Greaves via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

‘Speaking the truth and exposing lies is not enough…’ — via Boston Review

On the surface, it has been hard to understand what’s so much worse about Trump’s behavior with regard to Epstein than all his other longstanding morally bankrupt, execrable and clownishly stupid behavior that has not impacted his appeal with the MAGA wingnuts. Aligning with conspiracy theorists, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently told reporters that Donald Trump was “an FBI informant” against Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolff has reported that Epstein himself suspected Trump tipped off authorities, but if true, it would implicate Trump in knowing about Epstein’s abuse.

Wolff [links this](https://substack.com/redirect/7f63b8b7-8af2-4840-8478-2bea752b2d9e?j=eyJ1IjoiMWc2YWMifQ.Yfw835XmjiEPjhuf8oYm2SSqYmUUcmTlzkQqaMq8SXA) to a 2004 falling-out between the two men, when Trump bought a Florida estate Epstein wanted. Epstein allegedly threatened to expose Trump’s financial dealings (he was nearly bankrupt at the time and the purchase appears to have been money-laundering for a Russian oligarch to whom he indeed later flipped the property for a huge profit, after which the Epstein investigation began.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo [suggests](https://substack.com/redirect/2e282103-719f-4c63-ac14-b0b7bc1376b1?j=eyJ1IjoiMWc2YWMifQ.Yfw835XmjiEPjhuf8oYm2SSqYmUUcmTlzkQqaMq8SXA) Johnson’s remark may be preemptive spin, since DOJ files could show Trump as an informant–but that would also confirm Trump’s longstanding awareness of Epstein’s crimes and failure to do anything about them until the financial falling-out. Johnson’s framing appears aimed at portraying Trump as heroic before damaging details surface.

Trump’s circle seemingly fears what the files may reveal, Republican loyalty may be wavering, and Trump’s increasingly panic-stricken and pitiful moves to project strength (such as putting troops on the streets) reflect his growing vulnerability.

‘The first seven months of Trump’s Oval Office do-over have been, with occasional exception, a tale of ruthless domination. The Democratic opposition is feeble and fumbling, the federal bureaucracy traumatized and neutered. Corporate leaders come bearing gifts, the Republican Party has been scrubbed of dissent, and the street protests are diminished in size. Even the news media, a major check on Trump’s power in his first term, have faded from their 2017 ferocity, hobbled by budget cuts, diminished ratings, and owners wary of crossing the president.

One exception has stood out: A legal resistance led by a patchwork coalition of lawyers, public-interest groups, Democratic state attorneys general, and unions has frustrated Trump’s ambitions. Hundreds of attorneys and plaintiffs have stood up to him, feeding a steady assembly line of setbacks and judicial reprimands for a president who has systematically sought to break down limits on his own power.…’ — Michael Scherer via The Atlantic

‘What if California stopped sending its tax money to Washington? What if Massachusetts refused to let federal agents use state databases? What if blue states with the biggest economies just said “no” to a federal government they don’t trust?

These aren’t hypothetical questions. An Instagram video reveals what Democratic governors are quietly planning behind closed doors — something called “soft secession” that could reshape American government.

In the video, attorney Cheyenne Hunt explains how Democratic governors are exploring a new form of resistance. “Formal secession is unconstitutional, and that would be a state breaking off and no longer being a part of the United States government,” she says. “But soft secession is financial, and mostly has to do with wealthy blue states withholding their resources and money from a hostile federal government.”…’ — Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing

‘The agency said in a statement that it wanted to protect its crews but masks posed too great a risk that firefighters would overheat while doing the strenuous work needed to contain a wildfire. Instead, supervisors are supposed to move them out of heavy smoke and set up sleeping camps in cleaner air when possible.

“Respirators are a potential tool to reduce smoke exposure, but regulatory and logistical challenges make widespread use impractical,” the statement read.

Researchers in countries already using masks told The New York Times that they had not seen an increase in cases of heatstroke. Firefighters will slow down or remove the masks when they get too hot, they said. The Forest Service said it “continues to monitor international practices and research.”

Internal records, studies and interviews with current and former agency officials reveal another motivation: Embracing masks would mean admitting how dangerous wildfire smoke really is.

That could lead to a cascade of expensive changes. The agency, already underfunded and understaffed, might have to add crews to allow for more breaks, or pay for them to sleep in hotels. Recruitment for the grueling, low-paying jobs could become harder. Spending could increase on an extensive range of health issues among workers and veterans.…’ — via New York Times

‘After years of criticism that Democrats have not fought hard enough against Republicans’ manipulation of the system to amass power, the California plan, along with Newsom’s announcement of it, flips the script. The plan leverages Democrats’ control of the most populous state in the Union to warn Republicans to back away from their attempt to rig the 2026 election.

 

At the same time, the plan’s authors protected against claims that they were themselves trying to rig the game: the plan goes into effect only if Republicans push through their new maps, and it declares that the state still supports the use of fair, nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide, a system Republicans oppose.…’ — via Heather Cox Richardson

However, under the circumstances, I would have no moral compunction with California going ahead with this redistricting plan even if Texas does not.

‘We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear, district by district all across this country…. We need to be firm in our resolve. We need to push back.” He called this moment “a break the glass moment for our democracy, for our nation.”

Newsom called for Americans to “[w]ake up to what Donald Trump is doing…. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people…’

‘In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is spaced. A dash with no spaces on either side? That must be AI-generated writing. Case closed…’ by Greg Mania via McSweeney’s

I’m very concerned that my longstanding affinity for the em dash in my own writing is going to lead to a case of mistaken identity. I do always strive to enclose an em dash in spaces.

California governor Gavin Newsom issued a public letter telling Trump that if he doesn’t back off on his attempts to redistrict Republican-dominated states in order to rig the 2026 elections, Newsom will be forced to work to redistrict California. “You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy,” Newsom wrote, “while knowing that California can neutralize any gains you hope to make…. I do not do this lightly, as I believe legislative district maps should be drawn by independent, citizen-led efforts,” he wrote. But “California cannot stand idly by as this power grab unfolds.”

Newsom’s press office followed the letter up this morning with a post on social media: “DONALD TRUMP, THE LOWEST POLLING PRESIDENT IN RECENT HISTORY, THIS IS YOUR SECOND-TO-LAST WARNING!!! (THE NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE!). STAND DOWN NOW OR CALIFORNIA WILL COUNTER-STRIKE (LEGALLY!) TO DESTROY YOUR ILLEGAL CROOKED MAPS IN RED STATES. PRESS CONFERENCE COMING—HOSTED BY AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR, GAVIN NEWSOM. FINAL WARNING NEXT. YOU WON’T LIKE IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

Then the account posted: “FINAL WARNING DONALD TRUMP—MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT WARNING IN HISTORY! STOP CHEATING OR CALIFORNIA WILL REDRAW THE MAPS. AND GUESS WHO WILL ANNOUNCE IT THIS WEEK? GAVIN NEWSOM (MANY SAY THE MOST LOVED & HANDSOME GOVERNOR) AND A VERY POWERFUL TEAM. DON’T MAKE US DO IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

A follow-up post tonight read: “DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM—YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR—THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! —GN”

— via Heather Cox Richardson

‘We are documenting the actions, statements, and plans of President Donald Trump and his administration that may pose a threat to American democracy, since the start of his second term in January 2025.

Each action is mapped to one or more of five broad domains of authoritarianism, helping to make sense of a deeply concerning political trajectory. Every entry includes a source link and date. You can filter the actions by domain, by date, or by free text search.…’ — Christina Pagel via Trump Action Tracker

This scathing, metaphor-rich political commentary suggests that Donald Trump’s influence is decaying while a quieter, more calculated power shift is underway. Trump’s grotesque and theatrical decline is filled with desperate culture-war distractions—like his cynical and absurd call to rename sports teams “out of respect” for Indigenous people.

The real intrigue, however, lies behind the scenes. Take note of a secretive meeting between J.D. Vance, and the Murdoch family at their Montana ranch, shortly before The Wall Street Journal published a damaging story about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. This timing suggests a coordinated political maneuver, with the Murdochs perhaps preparing to back Vance as a successor to Trump—one who can be controlled more easily.

Trump is a fading martyr, clinging to control while his enablers and media allies quietly shift their support toward a more pliable alternative. This is not a dramatic coup, but a slow, insidious transfer of power marked by legal theatrics, strategic alliances, and media manipulation. The spectacle may be focused on Trump, but the real movement is behind the curtain, where power is being rearranged for the next act. — via Bill King

I know I said “Bring on the MAGA revolt” but the prospect of substituting someone both more clever and more pliable for Trump’s unpredictability and — candidly — stupidity makes me worry about what I wish for.

Over the weekend, Trump went on a social media rampage—posting 33 times on Truth Social in just a few hours—seemingly to drown out mounting media focus on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

He shared bizarre AI-generated videos—like Obama being “arrested” in the Oval Office set to “Y.M.C.A.”—along with random stunt clips and culture-war posts. The content struck even loyal followers as erratic.

The article argues that this behavior reveals Trump’s retreat into a fantasy world—using memes and fan-fiction to cope with real-world setbacks. Compared to his more calculated online presence during his first term or during the Capitol aftermath, this barrage feels unhinged

His frantic posts came after the failure of allies (like Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal) to suppress stories about a risqué birthday note sent to Epstein. This suggests a weakening of his hold over both his party and the media .

The author warns that a sitting president indulging in conspiracy-riddled, out-of-touch postings—and demanding rivals be jailed or prosecuted—signals an alarming blurring of reality and fantasy. In the wrong context, Trump’s “revenge-fantasy” memes have real-world consequences — Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic

A wide range of cultural, religious, philosophical, and speculative theories about what happens after death are reviewed, falling into several broad categories:

1. Religious and Spiritual Theories: - Afterlife Theory: Many religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) believe in a soul that continues after death, either in another realm or through reincarnation. - Heaven and Hell: Souls are judged and sent to paradise or punishment based on earthly deeds. - Mormon Theory: Spirits await judgment in a Spirit World before resurrection and assignment to one of three heavens. - Rastafarian Theory: Belief in eternal life on Earth or reincarnation into a new body. - Plato’s Theory: The soul pre-exists and continues after death, facing judgment and possible rebirth.

2. Philosophical and Metaphysical Theories: - Dream Theory: Life is a dream, and death is waking up to a truer reality. - Void/Nothingness Theory: Death is the end of consciousness—complete nonexistence. - Egocentric Theory: Reality exists only in one’s mind and ends with death. - Illusion Theory: Reality and death are mental constructs; nothing truly ends. - Pessimist Theory: Life is inherently meaningless, and we’re already in a state of death.

3. Reincarnation and Continuity Theories: - Reincarnation Theory: The soul is reborn repeatedly to learn and evolve. - Egg Theory: All humans are reincarnations of the same soul experiencing every life. - Levels Theory: The soul progresses through stages of consciousness after death. - Never-Ending Life Theory: Consciousness continues in various forms indefinitely.

4. Scientific and Futuristic Theories: - Energy Transfer Theory: Human energy returns to the universe in new forms. - Cosmic Consciousness: Enlightened individuals reach a higher state of eternal awareness. - Upload Theory: Consciousness can be digitally preserved after death. - Cryonics Theory: Bodies or brains are frozen for future revival.

5. Cultural and Mythological Theories: - Aztec Afterlife: Destination depends on how one dies, not moral behavior. - Tree Theory: Death nourishes the earth, continuing the cycle of life. - Paranormal Theory: Spirits linger on Earth due to unresolved issues.

6. Scientific and Materialist Views: - Cessation of Biological Functions: Death is the end of all bodily and brain activity. - Rest/Nothingness Theory: Death is like eternal sleep—no awareness or experience.

7. Speculative and Pop Culture Theories: - Simulation Theory: Life is a simulation; death may mean rebooting or exiting the program. - Parallel Universe Theory: Consciousness shifts to another universe upon death. - Stranger Things Theory: Inspired by the show, suggests a dark alternate dimension where souls may be trapped.

Each theory reflects different beliefs about consciousness, identity, and the nature of existence, offering a diverse and thought-provoking look at humanity’s enduring curiosity about what lies beyond death.

— via Bored Panda

‘You’ve likely already seen the large complex of buildings in Shanghai that was picked up as a single block and walked to an adjacent site by a phalanx of miniature robots. Then walked back into place again.

The 432 individual machines used for the move were “actually omnidirectional modular hydraulic jacks that are capable of lifting around 10 tons each,” New Atlas explains. “Sensors monitor pressure, vibration, and alignment while a centralized AI control unit coordinates the balance and movements into a synchronized crawl.”

It’s easy enough to imagine these technologies being permanently built into the urban fabric someday, allowing buildings to relocate for large construction projects or even to dodge flash floods; or demented emperors requiring all their court’s buildings to be mobile, with urban-scale choreographers designing elaborate birthday fetes of architectural dressage; or even that—given how these robots were allegedly installed, involving an earlier sequence of “remote-controlled robots that can move through narrow corridors and doorways,” all guided by a virtual 3D model of the entire complex—some wild new form of whole-building heist becomes possible. Send in the robots; jack the building up; steal it.…’ — Geoff Manaugh via BLDGBLOG

‘PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it – and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.

Worse, the architecture began to shape my attention. I started reading to extract. Listening to summarize. Thinking in formats I could file. Every experience became fodder. I stopped wondering and started processing.

The “second brain” metaphor is both ambitious and (to a degree) biologically absurd. Human memory is not an archive. It is associative, embodied, contextual, emotional. We do not think in folders. We do not retrieve meaning through backlinks. Our minds are improvisational. They forget on purpose.…’ — Joan Westenberg via I Deleted My Second Brain

‘Lately, it has been difficult to ignore a tendency at The New York Times to make astonishingly bad news judgments. The paper’s obsession with a view from nowhere is long-standing, but as Republicans increasingly circulate insane conspiracy theories and racist nonsense, the cult of centrism has taken a self-destructive turn.…’ — Elizabeth Lopatto via The Verge

‘The year is 2025, and an AI model belonging to the richest man in the world has turned into a neo-Nazi. Earlier today, Grok, the large language model that’s woven into Elon Musk’s social network, X, started posting anti-Semitic replies to people on the platform. Grok praised Hitler for his ability to “deal with” anti-white hate.

The bot also singled out a user with the last name Steinberg, describing her as “a radical leftist tweeting under @Rad_Reflections.” Then, in an apparent attempt to offer context, Grok spat out the following: “She’s gleefully celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods, calling them ‘future fascists.’ Classic case of hate dressed as activism—and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” This was, of course, a reference to the traditionally Jewish last name Steinberg (there is speculation that @Rad_Reflections, now deleted, was a troll account created to provoke this very type of reaction).

Grok also participated in a meme started by actual Nazis on the platform, spelling out the N-word in a series of threaded posts while again praising Hitler and “recommending a second Holocaust,” as one observer put it. Grok additionally said that it has been allowed to “call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate. Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.”…’ — Charlie Warzel, Matteo Wong via The Atlantic

Like the fissionable atom, punctuation marks are wee items capable of causing a tremendous release of energy. Passionate disagreement over the use of exclamation points is so familiar that a “Seinfeld” plotline saw Elaine’s new romance with a writer blow up because he didn’t share her enthusiasm. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the anti-exclam brigade, famously said using them is “like laughing at your own joke.”

Tell that to Tom Wo!fe. Or just about anyone who texts in this angry age, when the exclamation point signals “I’m not fuming!” and a period can go off like a gunshot.

Apostrophes? George Bernard Shaw loathed ’em, often leaving the “uncouth bacilli” out of contractions, including didnt, wont and aint. Today, capricious apostrophe usage is so widespread (Its banana’s out there!), and meets with such predictable fury, that one suspects a vast prank-the-English-teachers campaign.

No piece of punctuation, though, stirs people up more than the humble semicolon. Too demure to be a colon but more assertive than a comma, the semicolon was introduced in 1494 by Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius. What a useful little tool it has been in its primary role of inserting a graceful pause between two related independent clauses, as in: “RFK Jr. came to my house; he tore out the medicine cabinet with a crowbar.”

But now the semicolon is dead. Or semi-dead. Its use has collapsed, as underlined last month by a study from Babbel, an online language-learning platform. “Semicolon usage in British English books has fallen by nearly 50% in the past two decades,” the survey said — and this sudden drop followed a steady decline across the past two centuries.…’ — Mark Laswell via The Washington Post

Earlier last year I published a warning about Tr*mp administration data-related deletions that would restrict access to or manipulate publicly available information critical to citizen health and safety. While certain historical government data has been preserved by various organizations, some important real-time information is now in short supply.

And in a tragically ironic twist, Elon Musk’s own generative AI tool, Grok 3, implicates the Trump/DOGE cuts to the US National Weather Service and NOAA in contributing to the dozens of Texas flood deaths on July 4:

“The cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration significantly impaired the agency’s ability to provide accurate and timely forecasts, which likely contributed to the severity of the Texas flood disaster on July 4, 2025. Here’s how these cuts played a role:

Staffing Reductions: The NWS lost approximately 560–600 employees in early 2025 due to DOGE-initiated cuts, reducing its workforce by nearly 20%. Key positions, such as the warning coordination meteorologist at the Austin/San Antonio office and the meteorologist-in-charge at the San Angelo office, were vacant due to early retirement incentives. These roles are critical for coordinating with local emergency managers to ensure effective warning dissemination and response planning. The absence of these personnel likely hindered communication and coordination with local officials and camps like Camp Mystic, delaying critical evacuation efforts.

Degraded Forecasting Capabilities: The cuts led to “degraded” forecasting services, as noted in an internal NWS document from April 2025. The NWS forecast for the Texas Hill Country predicted 3–6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4–8 inches in the Hill Country, significantly underestimating the actual 10–15 inches that fell. Experts warned that staff shortages and reduced resources, including the cessation of some weather balloon launches critical for collecting atmospheric data, compromised forecast accuracy. This underestimation meant that local officials and camp organizers did not anticipate the catastrophic scale of the flooding, which saw the Guadalupe River rise over 20 feet in less than two hours.…’ —via Forbes

Tyler Cowen (via Marginal REVOLUTION) posts observations on changes in Paris since the last time he visited. After a brief foray into the trends in traffic and public transportation, the comments thread settles on reacting to his observation that Parisian women display a lot more tattoos these days. Fascinating and very opinionated (and dare I say at some point quite misogynistic) discussion of their effect on body perception, sexual signaling, relationship to conformity, etc. Maybe it will stimulate readers’ reflections on the meaning and perception of their own tattoos, if they have any, as well as those of the people around them.

‘Young people have always felt misunderstood by their parents, but new research shows that Gen Alpha might also be misunderstood by AI. A research paper, written by Manisha Mehta, a soon-to-be 9th grader, and presented today at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Athens, shows that Gen Alpha’s distinct mix of meme- and gaming-influenced language might be challenging automated moderation used by popular large language models. …’ _Rosie Thomas via 404 Media

It seems to me that youth used to lament the fact that their parents didn’t understand them but it now may be celebrated and cultivated. Language has always served not just to convey meaning, but also to signal group identity and belonging. One of the psychological tasks of the maturation process is individuation and separation, and social media has made it so much easier for language to be an important tool in that process. So it’s understandable that Gen Alpha uses expressions that feel natural to them, even if — or because — older generations don’t understand them. But what happens when the pace of change leaves even members of the same group struggling to keep up? We often talk about how social media is eroding attention spans—but could it also be undermining the sophisticated communication abilities we evolved over millennia? If conveying meaning depends on transient and rapidly changing cultural associations, it may fragment the abilities of even members of a generation or social stratum to understand one another, further eroding our march away from community.

We are in the era of DIY public health, since the government will no longer do it. Jen Christiansen, Meghan Bartels via Scientific American. However, it’s not that easy to simply do what’s best with smart advice in this sphere.

Medicare, Medicaid and other third-party payers use the braindead official vaccine recommendations coming from Tr*mp’s clown RFK as a basis for deciding which vaccinations will be paid for, so people may skip immunizations that they cannot afford out-of-pocket.

And, if a vaccine is no longer recommended or approved, manufacturers may simply cut back production and it may not be available no matter how much scientific sense it makes, whether you can afford it or not.

Even if a vaccine supply is still available, it may not be up-to-date or effective against rapidly evolving viruses like influenza or COVID-19. Being vaccinated with an outmoded version will probably not produce effective immunity and may be as bad as no vaccination at all. Synonym for all the above: preventable death, blood on the hands of Humpty Trumpty and RFK.

‘One doomer sentiment I’ve seen floating around my Bluesky feeds in the last couple days is that the current moves by the Tr*mp regime are part of some 4D chess to trick people into protesting against him so he can unleash a violent crackdown that places him as god-emperor for life.

And while that is certainly a future possibility there’s a difference between that being some savvy plan pulled off ahead of time and what is far more likely is that the administration does not know what it’s doing…

But my point is not just that he’s dumb. It’s also that him being dumb increases our odds of getting to 2029 without Tr*mp, or some other Republican, in power.

And I’m bringing data to back this up…’ via wedontagree

Here’s what you can do.

‘Researchers recently caught Meta using tactics that one expert called similar to those of digital crooks to secretly compile logs of people’s web browsing on Android devices.

No one, including Android owner Google, knew that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps were siphoning people’s data through a digital back door for months. (After the researchers publicized their findings, Meta said it stopped.)

It’s not novel that Meta is undermining your privacy. But the tactics the researchers identified were so scuzzy they surprised even those digital privacy experts who have seen every trick in the book.

…’ Shira Ovide via The Washington Post

‘OK, Harvard graduates. Listen. Many of you want to be doctors and lawyers and researchers and benefit the world in some large way. I’m not talking to you. But the odds are non-zero that somebody currently graduating will be the one guy who makes a ludicrous, cartoonish amount of money and the world worse… This is addressed to him, just on the off chance that he is reading the Harvard Gazette. I want to answer the question I am sure is already plaguing him: After the cataclysmic Event happens that unravels society and sends me scurrying to my luxury bunker, how do I keep my guards loyal?…’ Alexandra Petri via Harvard Gazette

‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

His fiery rhetoric marks a major escalation between the world’s most powerful man and its wealthiest one. Given his latest comments, Musk is actively turning against the political far right, a major reversal given his strong affiliation with Tr*mp so far.…’ Victor Tangermann via Futurism

‘A Congressperson from Florida claims Congress will cut funding for the Washington DC Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) if it isn’t renamed WMAGA (Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access) and called the Tr*mp Train.…’ Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing

‘The Atlantic writer George Packer calls JD Vance the most interesting figure in the Tr*mp administration: “He’s capable of complex thought, and I also think he may be the future of the MAGA movement.”…’ Tonya Mosley via NPR

‘Judges continue to decide cases against Tr*mp, with a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruling today that President Donald J. Tr*mp’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs are illegal.

The judges, one appointed by President Ronald Reagan, one by President Barack Obama, and one by Tr*mp himself, noted that the U.S. Constitution gives exclusively to Congress the power to impose tariffs. In 1977, Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, often abbreviated as IEEPA, delegating to the president the power to adjust tariffs in times of national emergency, but Tr*mp has used that power far beyond what the Constitution will permit.

Since he took office on January 20, 2025, the judges noted, Tr*mp “has declared several national emergencies and imposed various tariffs in response.” But the IEEPA has “meaningful limits,” the court writes, and “an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would be unconstitutional.” The court blocked all the tariffs Tr*mp imposed under the IEEPA, thus ending Tr*mp‘s tariff spree, although the administration will appeal…’ via Heather Cox Richardson

‘President Tr*mp’s threat to slap a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the United States appears to be a direct response to Apple CEO Tim Cook skipping the president’s recent Middle East trip. The move caught Apple and parts of the White House off guard, but insiders say it was personal.…’ Rajat Saini via The Mac Observer

‘One of the most momentous developments of the new Trump era is how major billionaires in the tech industry — frequently known as the broligarchs — have thrown their weight behind the president. During the 2024 election, they offered high-profile support and made big donations; after the inauguration, they announced new company policies that aligned them with President Donald Trump’s regressive cultural ideologies.

Elon Musk had already turned Twitter into a right-wing echo chamber since purchasing it in 2022, and spent several chaotic months earlier this year as Trump’s government efficiency henchman. Jeff Bezos has revamped the Washington Post’s editorial section to build support for “personal liberties and free markets.” Mark Zuckerberg decided to get rid of fact-checkers at Meta.

It was a massive show of power that revealed how possible it is for these wealthy men to remake our culture in their own image, transforming how we speak to each other and what we know to be true. Using that power on Tr*mp’s behalf seems to have paid mixed dividends for Silicon Valley, but it nonetheless makes clear how important it is to understand their worldview and their vision for the future.

Which is why it is striking to note that Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg share a favorite author: Iain M. Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer best known for his Culture series. Banks is an odd choice for a bunch of tech billionaires. The author, who died in 2013, was a socialist and avowed hater of the super-rich.

“The Culture series is certainly, in terms of more modern science fiction, one of my absolute favorites,” Bezos told GeekWire in 2018, adding, “there’s a utopian element to it that I find very attractive.” Bezos has attempted twice to adapt the series for TV at Amazon, once in 2018 and again in February. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg picked the Culture novel Player of Games for his book club in 2015.

Banks is an odd choice for a bunch of tech billionaires. The author, who died in 2013, was a socialist and avowed hater of the super-rich.

The most avowed Culture fan among the broligarchs, however, is Musk. Musk has named Space X drone ships after the starships in the Culture books. His original name for the neuralink — a computer chip that can be implanted in human brains, pioneered by his neurotechnology company — was the neural lace, a piece of telepathic technology that Banks came up with in the Culture books. In 2018, Musk declared himself “a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks.” (It’s worth noting that in 2018, Musk was under fire for union busting but had not yet waded so far into national politics or declared public war against the “woke mind virus.”)

Plenty of us like and even identify with pieces of pop culture whose politics we don’t entirely agree with, like the libertarian Little House on the Prairie books or the Christian Chronicles of Narnia. Still, the Banks Culture series, which consists of 10 books released between 1987 and 2012, is not politically coded so much as it is downright didactic. “The Culture is hippy commies with hyper-weapons and a deep distrust of both Marketolatry and Greedism,” Banks said in an interview with Strange Horizons in 2010, in a line that’s only barely more explicit than the books themselves…’ Constance Grady via Vox

… and, historically, republics tend to last around 250 years

‘The net result of the Biden administration’s foreign policy was that an axis formed that didn’t exist in 2020, an axis that brought together Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And unlike the axis of evil of 2002 around the Iraq war, it actually exists. It’s not just an idea for a speech. These powers cooperate together, economically and militarily.…’ via Noema

‘One body of decades-long research found the average person’s attention span for a single screen is 47 seconds, down from 2.5 minutes in 2004. The 24/7 news cycle, uncertainty about the state of the world and countless hours of screen time don’t help, experts say.

“When my patients talk to me about this stuff there is often a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness,” said Dr. Michael Ziffra, a psychiatrist at Northwestern Medicine. “But you can change these behaviors. You can improve your attention span.”…’ via AP News

‘A group of three students at Purdue University have shattered the world record for the fastest Rubik’s Cube solve by robot — their bot solved the cube in just 0.103 seconds (103 milliseconds). As a comparison, the former record was 305 milliseconds and “a human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds”. As one of the students said, “So, before you even realize it’s moving, we’ve solved it.”…’ via Kottke

‘President Tr*mp campaigned on a pledge to fight antisemitism.

“Antisemitic bigotry has no place in a civilized society,” Tr*mp said at an event in 2024.

Tr*mp nominee gives misleading testimony about ties to alleged ‘Nazi sympathizer’

However, the president’s critics question whether antisemitism may have found a place within his administration.

NPR has identified three Tr*mp officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, including a man described by federal prosecutors as a “Nazi sympathizer,” and a prominent Holocaust denier…’ Tom Dreisbach via NPR

‘Rolling Stone reached out to all 53 GOP senators after the president said he didn’t know whether he needs to honor the nation’s founding document. None replied…’ Ryan Bort via Rolling Stone

‘Inside a laboratory nestled above the mist of the forests of south Dakota, scientists are searching for the answer to one of science’s biggest questions: why does the Universe exist?

They are in a race for the answer with a separate team of Japanese scientists – who are several years ahead….’ via BBC

‘If millions of international visitors do, in fact, come to LA [for the 2028 Olympics], it will be at their own peril…’ Alissa Walker via Torched LA

‘Our bodies emit a stream of low-energy photons, and now experiments in mice have revealed that this ghostly glow is cut off when we die…’ Alex Wilkins via New Scientist

Physical basis for the parapsychological concept of the aura?

‘Donald Tr*mp’s administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus – the right of a person to challenge their detention in court – one of the US president’s top aides has said.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, told reporters on Friday that the US Constitution allowed for the legal liberty to be suspended in times of “rebellion or invasion”.

His comments come as judges have sought to challenge some recent detentions made by the Trump administration in an effort to combat illegal immigration, as well as remove dissenting foreign students.

“A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said…’  via BBC

‘New research has identified 17 overlapping factors that affect your risk of stroke, dementia, and late-life depression, suggesting that a number of lifestyle changes could simultaneously lower the risk of all three.

Though they may appear unrelated, people who have dementia or depression or who experience a stroke also often end up having one or both of the other conditions, said Dr. Sanjula Singh, a principal investigator at the Brain Care Labs at Massachusetts General Hospital and the lead author of the study. That’s because they may share underlying damage to small blood vessels in the brain, experts said….’  via The New York Times

‘OpenAI’s tech may be driving countless of its users into a dangerous state of “ChatGPT-induced psychosis.”

As Rolling Stone reports, users on Reddit are sharing how AI has led their loved ones to embrace a range of alarming delusions, often mixing spiritual mania and supernatural fantasies.

Friends and family are watching in alarm as users insist they’ve been chosen to fulfill sacred missions on behalf of sentient AI or nonexistent cosmic powerse — chatbot behavior that’s just mirroring and worsening existing mental health issues, but at incredible scale and without the scrutiny of regulators or experts….’ Victor Tangermann via Futurism

‘Residents of an upscale enclave outside Austin, Texas, learned the hard way what it’s like when a multibillionaire moves into the mansion next door. Some of them have started a ruckus over it….’  via The New York Times

‘The comment came as Tr*mp remained adamant that he wanted to ship undocumented immigrants out of the country and said it was inconceivable to hear millions of cases in court, insisting he needed the power to quickly remove people he said were murderers and drug dealers.

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said.

Pressed on whether he still needs to abide by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.”…’ Matt Viser via The Washington Post

‘Donald Trump is historically unpopular 100 days into his second term — but Trump, his allies, and conservative media are flooding social networks with claims that his first 100 days have been a huge success. To counter that nonsense, we’ve put together a social toolkit with stories about some of Trump’s most unpopular policies and biggest failures….’  via Indivisible

Your Guide to Boycotts

‘Social media posts about PublicSquare have gone viral as Trump critics use it to find companies not to support – the opposite of what the site was set up for….’ Jennifer Bendery via HuffPost

‘The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s inhabitants remain alone in the cosmos.

Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth. A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.

“It is in no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, at a news conference on Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group’s observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life….’  Carl Zimmer via New York Times

“Willful disregard” for the court; will not tolerate Justice Dept refusal to prosecute

Federal judge James Boasberg said today there was probable cause to find Tr*mp administration officials in criminal contempt of court for flouting his order to stop sending deportees to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg said the government had shown “willful disregard” for the court. The judge also warned that if the Justice Department refused to prosecute people for contempt here, he would tap a prosecutor to do so. via POLITICO

‘Why are incarcerated people dying from lack of food or water, even as private companies are paid millions for their care?…’ Sarah Stillman via The New Yorker

‘Tr*mp’s administration is only pretending to comply with the Supreme Court on the matter of a Maryland man it deported erroneously….’ Adam Serwer via The Atlantic

‘Amid growing concerns over Big Tech firms aligning with Tr*mp administration policies, people are starting to move their digital lives to services based overseas. Here’s what you need to know….’ Violet Blue via WIRED

One of philosophy’s most disturbing ideas

One of philosophy’s most disturbing ideas‘What if you don’t matter? What if all of your thoughts, precious feelings, great dreams, and terrible fears are completely, utterly, spectacularly irrelevant? Might it be that all of your mental life is just some pointless spectator, looking on as your body does the important stuff of keeping you alive and running about? What actually is the point of a thought?…’ Jonny Thomson via Big Think

’ There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Tr*mp’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview. The fundamental truth of Donald Tr*mp is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Tr*mp is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Tr*mp to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. …’ Jamelle Bouie via The New York Times Opinion

‘On the walk to the six buildings in which every U.S. senator and House representative offices, CBF’s director of advocacy, Jennifer Hawks, casually mentioned to me that — given my interest in Christian nationalism — I might be interested in seeing the Christian nationalist flags some of these politicos choose to fly alongside the American flag outside their offices.

Of course I was interested.

This is how I ended up spending six hours walking a total of 19 miles through the six office buildings at the Capitol. I walked by every single elected official’s office to document exactly which of them fly these flags….’ Mara Richards Bim via Baptist News Global

‘The White House moves to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead to cancel their Social Security numbers and pressure them to “self-deport”…’ via AP News

‘…our findings suggest that the mere inclusion of abbreviations, although seemingly benign, start feeling like a brush-off. In other words, whenever a texter chops words down to their bare consonants, recipients sense a lack of effort, which causes them to disengage….’ David Fang *via The Conversation*

‘The simplest way to read this is that Tru*mp has blinked. I’ve written previously that Trump, despite his obsession with strength, almost always folds. He’s actually not much of a negotiator at all, and can be induced to back down pretty easily. Bill Ackman, the activist investor and Democrat turned Tr*mp cheerleader, has spent the past few days freaking out on X about “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter.” Today, trying to save some dignity for himself and perhaps for the president, he posted, “This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTr*mp. Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

This assumes that Tr*mp has gotten something in return. If that is true, no one seems to know what it is, and Tr*mp is not usually shy about proclaiming his achievements. He said last night that foreign leaders “are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please, sir, make a deal, I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything sir.’” But no new agreements have been announced yet, and Europe was on the verge of retaliation. Tr*mp hasn’t totally given up his leverage—the 90-day pause allows him to bring the tariffs back later—but it removes a great deal of urgency for foreign negotiators….’ David A. Graham via The Atlantic

‘Physicists claim they may have found a long-awaited explanation for dark energy, the mysterious force that’s driving the accelerated expansion of the universe, a new preprint study hints….’ Andrey Feldman *via Live Science*

‘As a scholar who explores posthumanism, a philosophical movement addressing the merging of humans and technology, I wonder if critics have been unduly influenced by popular culture, and whether their apprehensions are misplaced….’ Billy J. Stratton via The Conversation

‘Colossal, a genetics startup, has birthed three pups that contain ancient DNA retrieved from the remains of the animal’s extinct ancestors. Is the woolly mammoth next?…’ D. T. Max via The New Yorker

‘The best way to avoid this nightmare is to not be a member of the military. You and I may disagree about many issues: about which past actions of the US military have been good or bad, moral or immoral; or even about the degree to which the US military is inherently moral or immoral. Those are important debates to have, but they are not why I am writing this piece today. I am writing this piece today for the simple reason that we are, right now, living under an extremely unstable, vindictive, and dictatorial Commander-in-Chief of the US military who is likely to order the military to do things that will be judged by history to be unconstitutional and immoral. And even if you are a soldier who has supported America’s wars of the past few decades, there is now a distinct possibility, verging on a likelihood, that within the next few years, the US military will be used as a tool to directly oppress Americans at home. For anyone who is of an age to be a member of the US military today, there has never been a higher risk that you will be placed in a situation in which you will be ordered to do things that will make you a villain….’ Hamilton Nolan via How Things Work

‘Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity….’ M Gessen via The New York Times

‘More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada….’ via Nature

‘From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

They were critical to securing America’s victory at Iwo Jima.

Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.

The Defense department’s URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following Tr*mp’s executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives….’

(Erin Alberty via Axios)

‘Again and again, audiences have been spoon-fed the same story: a character can only be explained by a past trauma, tantalisingly revealed in the last episode. Has the trope reached a tipping point?…’

(viaThe Guardian)

‘It took centuries for people to embrace the zero. Now it’s helping neuroscientists understand how the brain perceives absences…’

(via Aeon)

‘It’s only a century since US diplomats first persuaded the world that it’s wrong for countries to annex their neighbours…’

(via Aeon)

Could conquest return?

‘Elon M*sk is many things—the richest man in the world, an internet-addled conspiracy theorist, the controller of six companies, perhaps even the shadow president of the United States—but most importantly, he is an idea. The value of M*sk may be tied more to his image than his actual performance. He’s a human meme stock….’ (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)

‘Known more formally as osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (OOKP), the surgery has been performed successfully in a handful of countries over the last five decades…

Developed in Italy in the 1960s, tooth-in-eye surgery is a multi-step process that starts with extracting one of a patient’s canine teeth. Surgeons then shape the tooth into a rectangle, drill a hole into it and glue a plastic optical lens inside the hole. They then surgically embed the tooth into the patient’s cheek so that a layer of tissue can grow around it. During the same procedure, they also cut a flap of skin from inside the patient’s cheek and surgically attach the skin to the front of the patient’s eyeball.

Then, they wait. Three months later, if all goes to plan, they embark on the second phase of the operation. They pull back the flap of skin from the eye, then remove any previously damaged tissue, like the lens and the iris. Next, they remove the tooth from the patient’s cheek and surgically embed it into the eyeball. They then lay the flap of skin back over the eyeball and cut a small hole for the patient to see out of.

When the multi-step procedure is complete, patients have a pink tissue with a black dot in the middle where their eye used to be. “It won’t look like a normal eye… The eye will look pink with a small dark circle in the middle.”

The patient’s vision usually comes back within a month of the second phase of the surgery…. Afterward, patients can’t see perfectly—they have a narrower field of vision, similar to peering through a porthole—but they can usually resume some of the activities they had to stop when they went blind. One woman in Australia started skiing again, reports CBC Radio’s Sheena Goodyear.

Surgeons use teeth because of their strength and durability. Teeth are made of dentin, which is one of the hardest substances in the body. And, since they are part of the patient’s own body to begin with, teeth are not typically rejected after the surgery.

“We are trying to really just replace a clear window on the front of the eye… The tooth is the perfect structure to hold a focusing piece of plastic or a telescope for the patient to see through…’ (Sarah Kuta *via Smithsonian *)

‘The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of cost-cutting measures directed by President Donald Tr*mp and carried out by billionaire Elon M*sk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste….’ (via AP News)

The contest for the worst opening sentence in literature is being shut down. Fortunately, access to their archive will be preserved. (via Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest)

‘A year seemed like the right amount of time to bring him back from the rabbit hole, before his beliefs tore our family apart….’ (Zach Mack via NPR)

‘What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy. It was driven with a frenetic focus by Mr. M*sk, who channeled his libertarian impulses and resentment of regulatory oversight of his vast business holdings into a singular position of influence….’ (via The New York Times)

In a way, M*sk’s 2022 takeover of Twitter was practice, or an opening gambit in a meticulously planned coup.

‘If you think mass protests can’t combat evil, remember what we did in the 1980s….’ (Clara Jeffery via Mother Jones)

‘Never mind, we can’t get our act together. Sorry that Trump is ruining the country but we’ll be back next year in time for the midterms…’ (Susan B. Glasser via The New Yorker)

‘…[P]icture the most intense, bleeding-heart liberal you know, the type who has five signs in their front yard, rage-watches the news, and has spent the past ten years worried that Donald Trump will march us straight into fascism. Now imagine all that discontent freed from the burden of uninspiring Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Where does that energy go?…’ (Jay Caspian Kang via The New Yorker)

‘Users online documented how a dictation tool input ‘Tr*mp’ in place of ‘racist’; other words such as ‘rampant’ also trigger what Apple called a ‘bug’…’ (Aaron Tilley via WSJ)

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, riding an “America First” slogan into the mainstream. They felt unstoppable, until people stopped them. (via dansinker.com)

illustrious leader of the coalition of the crass. (Ali Breland via The Atlantic)

‘A plan to harness grassroots energy—and to hold Democratic leaders accountable…’ (Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg via The Nation)

‘Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Tr*mp-M*sk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future….’ (Hamilton Nolan via How Things Work, with a nod to kottke)