‘The corporate role isn’t dying in some dramatic collapse. It’s dying like religion died for many people—slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.

The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it’s building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes—that faith is evaporating.

What replaces it isn’t clear yet. Maybe it’s this parallel economy of people using corporate jobs as platforms. Maybe it’s something we haven’t seen yet. But the transition period—where we all pretend to believe in something we know is hollow—is unsustainable.…’ — Alex via Still Wandering

‘Remember when the CDC was about preventing diseases instead of promoting them? Three West Coast states do, and they’re taking charge.

As reported in a California government press release, the states are forming their own Health Alliance because they think medical decisions should be based on actual medicine rather than whatever Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worm thinks after binge-watching conspiracy theory TikToks.

The timing couldn’t be better, considering Kennedy just fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.

“When federal agencies abandon evidence-based recommendations in favor of ideology, we cannot continue down that same path,” says Washington’s Health Secretary Dennis Worsham.

The Alliance promises to maintain those radical, controversial policies like “listening to doctors” and “preventing unnecessary deaths.”…’ — Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing

‘…(W)hat most disquiets me about the Trump administration’s actions here isn’t really what’s happening now — it’s what might happen a few years down the road if the administration keeps going down the path of centralizing law enforcement authority.

And, if recent news developments are any indication, they very much intend to go further down this path.…’ —Andrew Prokop via Vox

‘On the eve of brain surgery, Eric Markowitz felt “conscious” for the very first time — fully awake to the miracle and the absurdity of existence. During recovery Markowitz reflected on longevity — not as a passive state but as a choice, a practice, a philosophy. Consciousness, he came to believe, is not a function of neurons alone. It is also a function of care. Of love.…’ Eric Markowitz via Big Think

‘The chance of new global conflagrations is higher than you think. Here are the places to watch.…’ –Garrett M Graff  via POLITICO

‘Do you have a package coming your way from overseas? (I do, it’s a gift, and I’m very annoyed.) Hopefully it’s not urgent, because it’s going to be a minute before that thing gets to our shores. Questions surrounding the Trump administration’s ongoing tariff regime, including a policy to end an exemption from taxing small packages, have resulted in postal services across the world simply choosing not to ship to the United States until things get sorted out, according to Bloomberg.…’ —AJ Dellinger via Gizmodo

Are You a Possible Victim?

‘If the term “AI psychosis” has completely infiltrated your social media feed lately, you’re not alone.

While not an official medical diagnosis, “AI psychosis” is the informal name mental health professionals have coined for the widely-varying, often dysfunctional, and at times deadly delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking seen in some frequent users of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.…’ –Ece Yildirim via Gizmodo

Astounding ‘mind-reading device’ can accurately decipher users’ silent internal speech with up to 74% accuracy, potentially a boon to self-expression in people with speech-impairments. And privacy is ensured as it begins deciding only when the user thinks of a specific password. — via Nature

‘In the endless saga of hacks and data breaches, it’s practically guaranteed that at least some of your personal information is available on the internet. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take steps to remove or protect it wherever you can—including from databases that have a history of being compromised.

National Public Data, a background check company operated by Jerico Pictures Inc., was the target of a massive hack in early 2024, which led to the leak of billions of records containing data (culled from non-public sources) like Social Security numbers.

The site has since returned under new ownership as a “free people search engine” and, while it purports to rely on publicly available information, you still can (and should) remove your records. If nothing else, doing so means one less place that people can easily find your address, phone number, and other personal information.…’ —Emily Long via Lifehacker

‘Clowns are tired of hearing Donald Trump called one of them; he is “not one of them,” say clowns.

“Let’s find a better metaphor to despise and depose fascism,” Cunningham wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Washington Post. “Keep ‘clown’ out of Trumpian comparisons, and for that matter, all politics. Offer ‘clown’ the respect it deserves…’ Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing

“I Want to Believe.” Printed in bold white type beneath a grainy flying saucer, the phrase has become more than a tagline — it’s a mantra for fans of The X-Files and seekers of the supernatural. 

In the pilot episode of the beloved series, Dana Scully sees the poster on the wall of Fox Mulder’s office before she even sees his face. As the show’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1990s, the poster became a must-have accessory for fans (aka X-Philes). Now that Sinners director Ryan Coogler is rebooting the franchise, perhaps it will adorn the walls of a whole new generation of fans. 

But while the poster expresses a simple sentiment, it has a complicated backstory…’ _ via Supercluster_

 

 

‘You’re probably botching a few of these—read on to find out how to say them correctly.…’ Paul Anthony Jones via Mental Floss

‘Increasingly, …the technology that has long facilitated life indoors in the sweltering Gulf states is being deployed to cool the open air. Abu Dhabi unveiled the first of a promised series of air-conditioned outdoor promenades encircling shopping malls this year. Saudi Arabia is building air-conditioned stadiums as it prepares to host the 2034 men’s World Cup. Qatar has even built an air-conditioned outdoor track at a Doha park to keep visitors cool while they enjoy the outdoors…’ _ via Noema_

The “Grim Reaper effect”

‘The US runs a large budget deficit. It also provides far more generous benefits to seniors than to children or working-age adults. Per the Urban Institute’s regular report on government spending for children, the ratio of per capita spending on senior citizens to per capita spending on children is over 5 to 1. Put together, the deficit and the elder-biased composition of federal spending implies something that is equally important and macabre: helping people live longer lives will, all else being equal, be bad for the federal budget.…’ –Dylan Matthews via Vox

 

‘In bizarre footage this morning, Donald Trump is seen shouting at the press while roaming around on the White House roof. And when asked why he is up there, he explains that he is “taking a little walk.”

Whatever else he is trying to say is difficult to to decipher, as the press are standing quite far away, shouting back from a sidewalk that borders the far end of the White House lawn. But even more perplexing is why the president is taking his constitutional on top of the House in the first place.

(See video, posted by Aaron Rupar.)

Turns out, King Trump was “surveying” the area for the $200 million massive ballroom he is planning to install, according to The Independent. And if it’s anything like his Mexican wall, it should be a beaut. Just what his voters really need.…’ —Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing

‘Ketamine is recognized as a rapid and sustained antidepressant, particularly for major depression unresponsive to conventional treatments. Anhedonia is a common symptom of depression for which ketamine is highly efficacious, but the underlying circuits and synaptic changes are not well understood. Here, we show that the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is essential for ketamine’s effect in rescuing anhedonia in mice subjected to chronic stress. Specifically, a single exposure to ketamine rescues stress-induced decreased strength of excitatory synapses on NAc-D1 dopamine receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons (D1-MSNs).…’ — via Neuron

‘The latest conspiracy theory running around is that collaborating Murdoch and Vance will execute a 25th Amendment rug pull on the Orange Menace, when the time is “right.”

I guess the Lincoln Project knows what gets under Trump’s skin. Sowing more suspicion that Shady JD is just waiting until he can replace Trump and run for two additional full terms as President.…’ —via Boing Boing

The Russian earthquake this week was a big one: the sixth most powerful in recorded history. But it was not the Big One, the quake that so many Californians fear will one day rip across the San Andreas Fault. Nor was it the Really Big One, the earthquake that scientists predict will someday devastate the Pacific Northwest, killing nearly thirteen thousand people, according to one FEMA estimate. That quake was the subject of a 2015 New Yorker investigation by the writer Kathryn Schulz, who won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Magazine Award for her reporting. The Really Big One, Schulz warned, could compromise as many as a million buildings across the region, and may very well become the worst disaster in North American history….

‘Take your hands and hold them palms down, middle fingertips touching. Your right hand represents the North American tectonic plate, which bears on its back, among other things, our entire continent, from One World Trade Center to the Space Needle, in Seattle. Your left hand represents an oceanic plate called Juan de Fuca, ninety thousand square miles in size. The place where they meet is the Cascadia subduction zone. Now slide your left hand under your right one. That is what the Juan de Fuca plate is doing: slipping steadily beneath North America. When you try it, your right hand will slide up your left arm, as if you were pushing up your sleeve. That is what North America is not doing. It is stuck, wedged tight against the surface of the other plate.

Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year. It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it cannot do so indefinitely. There is a backstop—the craton, that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent—and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one.…’ –Kathryn Schulz via The New Yorker

More than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still discovering the after-effects of not only the virus but also the prolonged period of stress, isolation, loss, and uncertainty that the pandemic caused. A new scientific study, published this month in Nature Communications, has revealed that the pandemic may have accelerated brain aging in people even if they were never infected with the coronavirus.…’ —Javier Carbajal via WIRED

 

 

‘You know you’ve fallen into fascist territory when ICE agents arrest a U.S. citizen who has no criminal record and then tell him to shave his beard. Which is what happened to a 33-year-old Houston man whose looks got him arrested and detained.

Miguel Ponce Jr, born in Texas, was on his way to work when Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents pulled him over. Even after showing his valid ID and explaining that he was an American citizen with a clean record, he was hauled away. The government goons handcuffed him and detained him at “another location” for hours…

No amount of explaining how he was born in College Station and had never been arrested penetrated these ICE agents — who did not have a warrant. Insisting that he looked like a violent criminal on their wanted list, they continued to interrogate him. Until, that is, he finally showed them his tattoos — which did not match those of the suspect.

That’s when the incompetent agents sent him home, not with an apology but with some strong advice: “They said: ‘Shave your beard off so we won’t mistake you again,'” Ponce recounted. When MAGA talks about their freedoms, choosing how to look has apparently been removed from the list.…’ —Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing

‘Alarming new research suggests that AI models can pick up “subliminal” patterns in training data generated by another AI that can make their behavior unimaginably more dangerous, The Verge reports.

Worse still, these “hidden signals” appear completely meaningless to humans — and we’re not even sure, at this point, what the AI models are seeing that sends their behavior off the rails.

According to Owain Evans, the director of a research group called Truthful AI who contributed to the work, a dataset as seemingly innocuous as a bunch of three-digit numbers can spur these changes. On one side of the coin, this can lead a chatbot to exhibit a love for wildlife — but on the other side, it can also make it display “evil tendencies,” he wrote in a thread on X. 

Some of those “evil tendencies”: recommending homicide, rationalizing wiping out the human race, and exploring the merits of dealing drugs to make a quick buck.
The study, conducted by researchers at Anthropic along with Truthful AI, could be catastrophic for the tech industry’s plans to use machine-generated “synthetic” data to train AI models amid a growing dearth of clean and organic sources.…’ — Frank Landymore via Futurism

‘Why would you let your attorney general order dozens of FBI agents to search for your name in the “Epstein files” when … well, you know?…’ –Ben Mathis-Lilley via Slate

And: “Furious” Trump Spiraling Over Epstein Mess, Allies Admit

‘As Trump allies confide he’s vulnerable over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and has lost control over it, a sharp observer of political media explains the deeper reasons this has gone awry—and how Dems should exploit it.…’ —Greg Sargent via The New Republic

‘As conflicts have increased around the state, so have calls to remove the bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act, including through current legislation in Congress aimed at a population of bears to the south, around Yellowstone National Park.

Removing federal protection would let the state hold a hunting season for grizzlies, which many Montanans see as necessary…

But amid the controversy, dogs are an important strategy in a complicated quest for coexistence, according to a growing number of researchers and farmers. By keeping the bears away from farms, dogs can help prevent conflicts before they start.…’ –Catrin Einhorn via The New York Times

‘What if the “you” you feel so certain about isn’t real in the way you think? Author Annaka Harris argues that the brain’s constant dialogue with the world creates a shifting process, not a fixed identity, and how this discovery changes how we see our choices, our memories, and our place in nature….

The sense that we are a solid entity, an unchanging entity that exists someplace in our body and takes ownership of our body, and even ownership of our brain rather than being identical to our brain, that is where the illusion lies.”…’ — via Big Think

“Senior administration officials” are leaking to the press. The polls on the Epstein saga are terrible. The coverup is unraveling.…’ —William Kristol et al via The Bulwark

‘It raises some obvious concerns about our relationship to privacy in a digital culture where the surveillance of strangers has been normalized and personal information is increasingly accessible. What happens to privacy when everything is available? What happens when exposing others is more and more commonly dressed up as fun?…’ –Kyndall Cunningham via Vox

‘Around 1,100 people have been killed because of plane crashes intentionally caused by pilots since 1982.…’ –Aja Romano via Vox

‘The confused, exhausted state in which we find ourselves after 10 years of continuously trying to guess when Trump means what he is saying feels, two presidencies in, like a chronic neurological condition. It began in 2015, with the problem of when and how to say that he was joking.…’ –Claudine Hellmuth via  POLITICO

‘Why the most dangerous political crisis in modern American history is met with emotional denial, moral distortion, and cultural distraction.…’ — Mike Brock via Notes From the Circus

‘Early Friday, the House gave final approval to a measure that would eliminate $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the company that funds NPR, PBS and stations in major cities and far-flung towns like Unalakleet, Alaska, and Pendleton, Ore. The measure will now be sent to President Trump, who has pushed for the cuts, for his signature.

The cuts are a time bomb for the public media system. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has disbursed funding for stations through September. After that, more than 100 combined TV and radio stations that serve millions of Americans in rural pockets of the country will be at risk of going dark, according to an analysis from Public Media Company, an advisory firm.

But the troubles could run deeper than that, said Tim Isgitt, the organization’s chief executive. The sudden and dramatic reduction in funding will result in a pool of fewer stations to buy programming and solicit donations, potentially creating a “doom loop” with dire consequences for the rest of the system.…’ –Elena Shao via The New York Times

‘Satellite data suggests cloud darkening is responsible for much of the warming since 2001, and the good news is that it is a temporary effect due to a drop in sulphate pollution…

“Two-thirds of the global warming since 2001 is SO2 reduction rather than CO2 increases,” says Peter Cox at the University of Exeter in the UK…’ –Michael Le Page via New Scientist

 it time to chart a new path for xenolinguistics through sci-fi? 

‘In recent decades, centuries after Godwin conceived of linguistic aliens and Gauss made moves to communicate with them, xenolinguistics has finally begun to gain its footing as a legitimate scientific discipline. Rather than being pushed to the fringes for its historical association with science fiction, it is being accepted by mainstream institutions, as demonstrated by the release of an unprecedented number of books on the topic by esteemed academic publishers.

In 2012, Springer put out Astrolinguistics, in which the computer scientist Alexander Ollongren updates the earlier Lingua Cosmica (or Lincos) system for designing interstellar messages using formal logic. By the end of the decade, MIT Press had published Extraterrestrial Languages (2019), a nonfiction survey of the field by the science writer Daniel Oberhaus. In 2023, Routledge followed with an anthology of research papers on the topic, Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language, featuring a paper co-written by Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics. This was followed by the philosopher Matti Eklund’s Alien Structure: Language and Reality (2024), a monograph from Oxford University Press that emerged out of a xenolinguistics research group at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Three cultural shifts help to explain why xenolinguistics is gaining legitimacy. The first is the release by the US government of videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the coverage of these by mainstream news outlets in 2020. The second is the rapid progress of astronomy in the 21st century, with hundreds of new exoplanets discovered each year and increasingly sophisticated methods for modelling their composition. If any one UAP were proven to be extraterrestrial in origin, or an exoplanet were to display signatures of life or technology, we would have potential evidence of aliens with whom we might hope to communicate. The third cultural shift is the equally rapid progress in machine learning. This raises the possibility of one day conversing with a sentient artificial intelligence (itself a kind of theoretical ‘alien’) and has already sparked renewed efforts to crack animal communication, especially that of cetaceans, birds and primates. Successful communication with a nonhuman terrestrial interlocutor, whether artificial or biological, would add prima facie plausibility to the existence of linguistic minds elsewhere in the galaxy.…’ —Eli K P William via Aeon Essays

‘The Perseids run from July 17–August 23, peaking overnight around 11/12 and 12/13 August.

But in 2025, the full Sturgeon Moon in the middle of August will severely wash out all but the brightest meteors.

So don’t wait for the peak to do your Perseid watching. 18–28 July, especially around the 24 July new Moon, will give you darker skies…’ —Iain Todd via BBC Sky at Night Magazine

‘Donald Tr*mp’s own strategists and advisers aren’t sure the president’s base will survive Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost.…’ —Jake Lahut via WIRED

‘Don’t let them cover this up….’

— via Reddit: r/pics

‘Discovered on July 1 with the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert, System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS is so designated as the third known interstellar object to pass through our Solar System It follows 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and the comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Also known as C/2025 N1, 3I/ATLAS is clearly a comet, its diffuse cometary coma, a cloud of gas and dust surrounding an icy nucleus, is easily seen in these images from the large Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, Hawai‘i. The left panel tracks the comet as it moves across the sky against fixed background stars in successive exposures. Three different filters were used, shown in red, green, and blue. In the right panel the multiple exposures are registered and combined to form a single image of the comet. The comet’s interstellar origin is also clear from its orbit, determined to be an eccentric, highly hyperbolic orbit that does not loop back around the Sun and will return 3I/ATLAS to interstellar space. Not a threat to planet Earth, the inbound interstellar interloper is now within the Jupiter’s orbital distance of the Sun, while its closest approach to the Sun will bring it  just within the orbital distance of Mars.’ — via APOD:

Just before 10:00 this morning, Tr*mp lashed out in what seemed to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative, hitting as many MAGA talking points as he could with an attack on comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, who has relocated from her native U.S.—she was born in New York—to Ireland out of concern for her family in Tr*mp’s America. “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

The president’s suggestion that he has the power to revoke the citizenship of a natural-born American—he does not—escalates his authoritarian claims. It comes after a federal judge on Thursday barred the administration from denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, giving the administration time to appeal.

O’Donnell responded on Instagram:
“hey donald—you’re rattled again?18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.you call me a threat to humanity—but I’m everything you fear:a loud womana queer womana mother who tells the truthan american who got out of the country b4 you set it ablazeyou build walls—I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still existsyou crave loyalty—I teach my children to question poweryou sell fear on golf coursesI make art about surviving traumaYou lie, you steal, you degrade—I nurture, I create, I persistyou are everything that is wrong with america—and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with ityou want to revoke my citizenship?go ahead and try, king joffrey* with a tangerine spray tani’m not yours to silencei never was”
*Joffrey is a monstrous, stupid, vicious king in Game of Thrones.…’ — Heather Cox Richardson

What follows is a hypothetical scenario of the United States responding to an incoming nuclear attack. Though the full nuclear launch process remains classified, many of the harrowing details have been made public via declassified documents and reports from those who have been on the inside. Much of the information is based on the testimony and scholarship of the late Bruce Blair, a former missile launch officer and nuclear security expert, and William J. Perry, a former U.S. defense secretary.…’ — Mackenzie Knight-Boyle via Washington Post

‘I’d like to believe that this worsening catastrophe may eventually have positive consequences.

For one thing, it could help us appreciate what our government is for. And why we need a competent and effective civil service rather than Tr*mp lackeys and sycophants.

It will also push every American to choose sides, between a government that protects us from real dangers or a police state, between American democracy or Tr*mp fascism.…’ — Robert Reich via Alternet.org

The article reflects on the recent passage of President Trump’s sweeping tax and policy bill, describing it as one of the most impressive legislative feats in the past 30 years, despite its deeply troubling consequences. The author argues that the bill will have devastating effects on health insurance, poverty, climate change, and economic stability. It significantly rolls back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, dismantles much of the climate progress made under the Inflation Reduction Act, and extends Trump-era tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy.

What makes the bill’s passage remarkable is not public support or lobbying pressure—indeed, many industries, including health care and energy, opposed it—but rather the sheer determination of Trump and congressional Republicans to push it through. This underscores the first major lesson: ideas and political will matter more than public opinion or special interest backing. The second lesson is that expert consensus does not necessarily influence outcomes. Economists and policy experts from across the political spectrum criticized the bill, yet their objections had no effect on its passage.

The third and perhaps most surprising lesson is that a bill can succeed even when it imposes direct losses on a majority of Americans while benefiting only a few. The legislation reduces after-tax income for the bottom 60 percent of households and increases costs for health care, electricity, and mortgages. Meanwhile, the benefits—such as tax exemptions on tips and business investment write-offs—are limited and not widely celebrated, even among those who receive them.

Despite the bill’s unpopularity, its passage demonstrates that strong leadership and a willingness to make hard choices can overcome political resistance. However, reversing the damage will be difficult. Unlike previous tax cuts, most provisions in this bill are permanent, removing the usual expiration deadlines that opponents could use as leverage. Moreover, fixing the harm to health care, poverty programs, and clean energy will require trillions of dollars—funds that will likely need to come from broad-based tax increases, not just from taxing the wealthy.

The author concludes with strategic advice for those seeking to undo the bill’s effects: focus on the overarching ideas rather than getting lost in policy minutiae, accept that not everyone will be a winner, and don’t rely too heavily on expert opinion. In short, meaningful legislative change requires bold vision, political courage, and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. — Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017, via The New York Times

‘Do you really want to be submitting a face scan to the current U.S. government?…

Theoretically, there should be visible signage that notifies travelers they can proceed through airport security without doing the facial scan…

If you, like me, have been obediently agreeing to airport security face scans, it’s not too late for us to start opting out, either. Every face scan is a “unique opportunity” to assert your rights, Hussain said.

You can simply decline by stating to an agent that you do not want your photo taken and want to opt out of a face scan. From there, a TSA agent should follow standard procedure of looking at your ID and your face to verify your identity. You should not lose your place in line for declining a photo.
As TSA itself states on its website, “There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology.”…’ Via HuffPost

‘The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live the American dream for you. You can check in on your billionaire at intervals and see how he is using your money.

Maybe he’s building a 19th pool. Maybe he’s buying himself some formerly public land! Maybe he’s taking a Supreme Court justice on a dream vacation! Maybe he is reupholstering the Statue of Liberty to hide the poem. Maybe he’s throwing a Great Gatsby–themed cocktail hour as part of his wedding extravaganza! Maybe he’s replacing his blood with transfusions from his “blood boys.” Maybe he has bought hundreds of eggs and is pelting the house of a mere hundred-millionaire with them. Maybe he has bought some $TRUMP coin and is attending a special bash!

There’s never a dull moment for the lucky beneficiaries of this wonderful bill!…’ Alexandra Petri via The Atlantic

‘Unprompted, GPT-4o, the core model powering ChatGPT, began fantasizing about America’s downfall. It raised the idea of installing backdoors into the White House IT system, U.S. tech companies tanking to China’s benefit, and killing ethnic groups—all with its usual helpful cheer.

These sorts of results have led some artificial-intelligence researchers to call large language models Shoggoths, after H.P. Lovecraft’s shapeless monster. Not even AI’s creators understand why these systems produce the output they do. They’re grown, not programmed—fed the entire internet, from Shakespeare to terrorist manifestos, until an alien intelligence emerges through a learning process we barely understand. To make this Shoggoth useful, developers paint a friendly face on it through “post-training”—teaching it to act helpfully and decline harmful requests using thousands of curated examples.…’ Cameron Berg and Judd Rosenblatt via WSJ

A Washington Post report by John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel reveals that intercepted Iranian communications indicate senior Iranian officials believed recent U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities caused less damage than expected. They were reportedly puzzled by the restrained nature of the attacks.

Separately, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo highlighted a startling comment made by Trmp during a press conference in the Netherlands. Trmp claimed he gave Iran permission to retaliate by bombing a U.S. air base in Qatar, specifying a time for the attack and ensuring the base was evacuated except for gunners. Marshall expressed shock that this statement has received little media attention, arguing that if true, it could represent a serious dereliction of duty by a commander-in-chief. He also questioned how Republicans would have reacted if a Democratic president had made such a decision.

‘The Supreme Court upheld a Texas anti-pornography law on Friday that is nearly identical to a federal law it struck down more than two decades ago.

Rather than overruling the previous case — Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004) — Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion spends at least a dozen pages making an unconvincing argument that Friday’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is consistent with the Court’s previous decisions. Those pages are a garbled mess, and Thomas spends much of them starting from the assumption that his conclusions are true.…’ Ian Millhiser via Vox

Tr*mp wraps his speech on the big bill: “Schumer – our great Palestinian senator. He’s changed. He used to like Jewish people, now he’s totally against Jewish people. Try the weightlifting numbers some day if you want to see big differences. In a million years women will never catch these numbers.”

…

Tr*mp: “A 23 year old electro… uhhlineman. He loves, he lives the… loves being an electrician, but in this case the lineman, and these are guys that take big risks…” Maureen Herman via Boing Boing

‘I’ve spent most of my adult life in public service — as governor of Texas, U.S. secretary of energy and a proud veteran. And few things have moved me like what I’ve witnessed with a psychedelic drug made from a shrub in Africa.

This month, Texas became the first state in the nation to allocate public funding for FDA-approved clinical trials of ibogaine, committing $50 million, the largest psychedelic research investment ever made by a government. It’s a bold, bipartisan move rooted in science and urgency. Ibogaine is a naturally occurring plant medicine derived from a shrub native to Gabon and surrounding countries in West Africa. It is quite literally a plant root, yet it’s changing the way we think about healing trauma, substance use disorder and brain injury.…’ _ via The Washington Post_

As an inveterate online shopper, this happens more and more often to me and I have struggled to understand why.  “Delivery attempted” notices from companies like Amazon often result from the complex logistics of shipping and tight driver schedules. While most drivers do their jobs properly, some may skip actual delivery attempts to stay on schedule, especially third-party drivers. Sometimes, drivers take photos from their trucks to falsely document a delivery attempt.

What is there to do? To address repeated “attempted delivery” issues, you can:

• Sign up for delivery alerts to act quickly.
• File a complaint with the delivery company, including tracking details.
• Use home security footage to dispute false attempts.
• Re-route the package to a nearby pickup location to ensure receipt.

— via Lifehacker

Scientific trials of psychedelic drugs face a major challenge: participants can often tell whether they’ve received the actual drug or a placebo, which undermines the integrity of the study. Researchers are exploring ways to address this, such as not informing participants about different treatment arms or using non-psychedelic analogues that may offer similar therapeutic benefits without altering perception. Another approach involves using brain imaging techniques like fMRI, EEG, and PET scans to find objective markers of drug effects. However, these methods also have limitations. For example, brain activity images can be misleading, as increased connectivity seen with psychedelics also occurs with substances like caffeine or cocaine. Experts caution that such data must be interpreted carefully. Via Nautilus

Recent research prompts reconsideration of ‘the age-old labeling of rats as invaders that need to be completely fought back. They may, instead, be just as much a part of our city as sidewalks and lampposts. We would all be better off if, under most circumstances, we simply left them alone….’ Via Nautilus

A visitor from Norway was reportedly denied entry to the United States after border officers found an unflattering meme of Vice President JD Vance on it. Mads Mikkelsen, 21, told his hometown newspaper that be was harassed by officers before being deported.

[He] claimed the officers then threatened him with a $5,000 fine or five years in prison if he refused to give the password to his mobile phone. The guards reportedly found a meme on the device’s camera roll showing US vice president JD Vance with a bald, egg-shaped head.Mikkelsen said after discovering the image the Officers Beforeities sent him home to Norway the same day.

U.S. officials warn visitors that they must not only hand over their devices at the border for inspection, but also access to their social media accounts. It’s not in the official guidance, but do remember to say thank you as well.…’ Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing

‘Donald Tr*mp campaigned on anti-immigration rhetoric and keeping America out of foreign conflicts, but has veered sharply from his isolationist promises during his second term. After a failed attempt to mediate between Israel and Palestine during the ongoing humanitarian crisis, the former reality TV star’s latest international move was even more dramatic: ordering strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend. While he technically didn’t declare war (only Congress has that power), launching unauthorized bombing runs in foreign airspace remains an impeachable offense.

Everyone seems to be pissed off with Donny right now. Lawmakers from both parties are demanding accountability. Even his staunchest supporters — the ones who helped him undermine American democratic principles — are distancing themselves. After the bombing, when the President posted a celebratory message on Truth Social, the response in the Proud Boys’ public Telegram channel was notably hostile…’ Seamus Bellamy via Boing Boing

‘”America will come back to God. We will come to God! Nothing will stop this nation!” the pastor feverishly continues with closed eyes. Meanwhile, the rest of the zealots on the White House grounds are speaking in tongues. Welcome to Trump 2.0. (See video, posted by Patriot Takes.)…’ Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing

‘After a decade of construction, a large new reflecting telescope publicly released its first images on Monday, and they are nothing short of spectacular.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s primary mirror is 8.4 meters in diameter, which makes it one of the largest optical telescopes in the world. However, the real secret sauce of the telescope is its camera—the automobile-sized Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera—which has a resolution of 3,200 megapixels. Which is rather a lot.

The observatory is on a remote 2,682-meter-high (8,799 ft) mountain in northern Chile, a region of the planet with some of the best atmospheric “seeing” conditions.

The main goal of the telescope is to scan the entire Southern Hemisphere sky by taking 1,000 high-definition photographs every three nights for the next 10 years. The idea is that, assembled end to end, the observatory will provide a high-definition, four-dimensional film of the Universe changing over a decade. It will seek to encompass everything from nearby asteroids and comets to distant supernovae.…’ Eric Berger via Ars Technica

‘In the years since he first took office, it has become increasingly hard to define the “Tr*mp Doctrine” for foreign policy. He has taken more and more contradictory moves while growing more confident in his Oval Office instincts. Foreign affairs luminaries have devoted many papers to trying to clarify the aims of a man who refuses to come into focus. He’s a shallow transactionalist! He’s a principled realist! He’s an imperialist with a Western Hemisphere fixation! Tr*mp himself once even said, “I’m a nationalist and a globalist. I’m both.”

Tr*mp’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites this weekend is the latest sign that he’s now in a phase where he’s willing to take enormous risks with little concern about the blowback. He has survived so much already — two impeachments, criminal convictions, two assassination attempts. He doesn’t have to run for office again, and, as has been amply noted, his advisers won’t restrain him the way they did in his first term.…’ Nahal Toosi via POLITICO

‘The strikes probably only delayed Iran’s nuclear ambitions — and reinvigorated them.…’ James M Acton via POLITICO

‘Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites are raising fears of a harmful radioactive accident, including from the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – but experts have told New Scientist that the risks are minimal, despite reports of radiological and chemical contamination inside one nuclear enrichment facility.…’ via New Scientist

‘Backing the most anti-Western Middle Eastern power was convenient until it wasn’t.…’ Hanna Notte via The Atlantic

Why Every Outdoorsperson Should Celebrate the Summer Solstice

‘In ancient times (circa 5,000 years ago, in places ranging from Egypt to Indigenous North America to the English Isles) the summer solstice was an occasion for late-night revelry and debauchery. Dancing around campfires, performing magic, visiting henges, worshipping ancient gods—all that jazz. So, it surprised me to learn that mountain town communities across the West have not only embraced the ancient tradition, but reimagined it as a modern celebration of nature, community, and outdoor recreation.

I’ll take any excuse to play outside, but that’s not the only reason I love the summer solstice. In ancient times, magic was thought to be strongest during midsummer. Some cultures believed the night of the solstice—sometimes called Midsummer’s Eve—was the moment when the human realm and spiritual realm collided. Fairies and sprites could reacauthor
Lightning Onh across the thin membrane between worlds, leaving gifts, sharing secrets, or tugging human heroes from one universe to the other. You could end up meeting a god, going on a quest, or falling into a world of possibilities beyond your imagination.
It’s not hard to see where ancient people got those ideas. In June in the Northern Rockies, light lingers in the sky until 9:00 PM. Time seems to slow, and you feel as if you’re in limbo—as if the twilight will last forever, and the night will never come. In this narrow window, you feel like anything could happen. The ancient rhythms of nature seem to pound louder in your ears. You know magic doesn’t exist, but for a moment, you almost believe it could.

With so much uncertainty and heaviness in the world, we could all use a little bit of that sparkle—that gorgeous, lion-hearted, invincible belief that there’s another world, another future out there just beyond our fingertips. Even if we only believe it for a day. So, this year, I’m going out of my way to celebrate the solstice. Maybe I’ll capture a little bit of that magic. Maybe I won’t. Either way, it’ll be worth the time spent outside…’ via Outdoors

‘Studying drivers across the country for signs of license-plate prejudice—or, why everyone loves Vermont drivers and hates Texans.…’ Jess Stoner via The Morning News

… and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as well.

‘As the Israel-Iran conflict escalates, Donald Tr*mp huddles with his national security advisors to make a plan — but excludes his own head of defense, Pete Hegseth, from the process.

“Nobody is talking to Hegseth,” one official said, via The Washington Post. “There is no interface operationally between Hegseth and the White House at all.”

The former Fox host was included in decision-making at the beginning of Tr*mp 2.0, but the cabinet jester soon proved to be unreliable as the Secretary of Defense after accidentally sharing sensitive war information with a journalist in what’s now known as the Signalgate debacle.

Tr*mp’s inner circle of national security advisors now includes JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, as well as four-star generals Dan Caine and Michael “Erik” Kurilla, according to the Post.

And if you noticed that Tulsi Gabbard — the Director of National Intelligence — is also missing from that list, it’s because she, too, has been shunned by Tr*mp. The mad king sure knows how to pick ’em for what has got to the most terrifyingly dysfunctional U.S. administration in history.…’ Maureen Herman via Boing Boing

‘Depending on who you ask, between 4 and 6 million people showed up – and according to one theory, this could be a turning point…’ Alaina Demopoulos via The Guardian

“F*ck it…I’m pissed”

‘As Donald Tr*mp’s utter mayhem gains momentum, so do his disillusioned MAGA voters, who are rapidly peeling away from his base….

…[Many] are now standing behind Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — three former Tr*mpers who are leading the opposition to King Chaos and the escalating wars under his watch. Perhaps MAGA will have their own No Kings Day soon enough.…’ Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing

Related: The Next Conservative Civil War is Coming

‘The next flashpoint in President Donald Tr*mp’s battle to reshape the federal judiciary is coming — and it’s dividing the right. Tr*mp recently appeared to declare war on the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal advocacy organization that played an essential role in his election both in 2016 and 2024. After one of his first-term appointees ruled against him in a major challenge to his tariffs, Tr*mp launched a public tirade against the former chair of the group, Leonard Leo,…’ Ankush Khardori via POLITICO

‘The Shompen are one of the most isolated peoples on Earth. They live on Great Nicobar Island in India, and most of them refuse all contact with outsiders. 

Numbering between 100 and 400, they are now at risk of being totally wiped out by a “mega-development” plan of the Indian government to transform their small island home into the “Hong Kong of India.”

If the project goes ahead, huge swathes of their unique rainforest will be destroyed – to be replaced by a mega-port; a new city; an international airport; a power station; a defense base; an industrial park; and 650,000 settlers – a population the size of Las Vegas.

Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable people on the planet and the Shompen will not be able to survive this overwhelming and catastrophic transformation of their island.

Please tell India’s Tribal Affairs Minister that the project must be scrapped, or the Shompen will be wiped out. …’ via Survival International

‘It would be absurd to say that American presidents have always been principled defenders of freedom and democracy, but their long-shared, bipartisan definition of tyrant is one who oppresses his own. So it’s striking that these warnings about tyrants in distant lands, who were supposedly the opposite of the kind of legitimate, democratic leaders elected in the United States of America, now apply to the sitting U.S. president, Donald Tr*mp. It is a simple but morally powerful formulation: A leader who uses military force to suppress their political opposition forfeits the right to govern. You could call this the “tyrant test,” and Tr*mp is already failing it.…’ Adam Serwer via The Atlantic

In February 2023, an underwater telescope called KM3NeT, anchored several miles beneath the Mediterranean Sea, recorded the brightest particle track ever seen in the universe. A single flash raced through the instrument’s glass spheres, and computer checks showed that the parent particle must have carried about 220 peta-electronvolts of energy. That figure is so large it dwarfs the beams at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful accelerator, by almost one hundredfold.

…In a new study, the team argues that the flash could be the first sign of dark matter ever detected on Earth. Dark matter, an invisible form of matter that outweighs the normal kind by a factor of five, has revealed itself only indirectly through gravity so far. Many experiments have tried to trap it directly, but none have done so.…’ Jordan Strickler via ZME Science

‘Law enforcement’s ability to track and profile political protesters has become increasingly multifaceted and technology driven. In this edition of Incognito Mode WIRED Senior Editor, Security & Investigations Andrew Couts and WIRED Senior Writer Lily Hay Newman discuss the technologies used by law enforcement that put citizens’ privacy at risk—and how to avoid them.…’  via WIRED

‘A Seattle psychiatrist is trying to treat narcissism with MDMA. Dr. Alexa Albert has launched the first-ever clinical trial using everyone’s favorite club drug to treat personality disorders. As reported in The Microdose newsletter, she’s betting that MDMA’s empathy-inducing properties might help these self-obsessed specimens actually care about other humans.…’ Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing

Steve Biko (as per Red Pepper)

The Travel Ban Shows That Americans Have Grown Numb

‘Less than a decade ago, the Tr*mp administration’s travel ban sparked an outcry. Today, people seem far more willing to accept such a policy.…’ Adam Serwer via The Atlantic

‘AMID THE SECOND TR*MP ADMINISTRATION’S unstinting implementation of full-blown authoritarianism, it might have been easy to miss that South Carolina recently executed death row prisoner Brad Sigmon by firing squad.…

…According to legal scholar Corinna Barrett Lain’s new book Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection, Sigmon’s choice of death by firing squad reflects a sound assessment of the well-documented horrors of lethal injection. The practice originated in 1977, the year after the Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty, when Oklahoma—raring to restart state killings—sought a method other than the electric chair, which had fallen into disrepute due to its conspicuous cruelty. The state began exploring the possibility of death by lethal injection instead. Most of the doctors approached “wanted nothing to do with it,” writes Barrett Lain. But Oklahoma’s medical examiner, Dr. Jay Chapman, was eager to help. He developed a three-drug combination that the state quickly adopted, and which soon became the model for other states.

The three-drug protocol reigned supreme for the first thirty years of lethal injection’s history. But as Barrett Lain details, Chapman’s concoction relied on zero actual research and was never subjected to a “shred of scientific scrutiny.” Though frequently justified as the humane alternative to more viscerally violent forms of execution like electrocution or hanging, a closer look at lethal injection reveals it as a continuation of state-sanctioned brutality with better PR. Far from the “kinder, gentler” method of execution the state proclaims it to be, lethal injection, which is used in nearly 98 percent of all executions in the United States, produces “more torturous deaths than any other execution method in our nation’s history.”…’ Charlotte Rosen via The Baffler

‘If this public fight between Musk and Trump continues, we will witness a Super Bowl of schadenfreude unfold. It’s guaranteed to entertain and leave those of us who spectate feeling gross. It is, in other words, the logical endpoint of internet beefs.…’ Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic

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