‘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
‘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
‘Leading Sly and the Family Stone, he helped redefine the landscape of pop, funk and rock in the late 1960s and early ’70s.…’ Joe Coscarelli via The New York Times
1970. Seated, from left: Greg Errico, Sly Stone and Larry Graham. Standing, from left: Cynthia Robinson, Freddie Stone, Rose Stone and Jerry Martini.
‘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.
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
‘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
Those of you with more common family names, or with appreciable extended families, may have a hard time seeing the point of this post. But, as I’ve noted before, there are very very few Gelwans. I have always wondered, or you might even say obsessed about, how/if those people with the Gelwan surname I do find are related to me. I have very little in the way of extended family; I envy those who do and thirst for deeper family connection, especially so that my children might come to feel embedded in a broader web. It becomes poignant each year around the holidays, which I imagine you all celebrate with enormous extended family gatherings while we have the four of us around the dinner table.
I subscribe to a Google alert for new ‘Gelwan’ references on the web, and once received a link to this page (gendrevo.ru). Alas, the page is now gone from the web. It appeared to me to be from a Russian genealogy site in which survivors post remembrance pages for their relatives who died in the Holocaust. On my paternal side, the generation of immigrants were my grandparents, in the early 20th century; my father’s older siblings and he were born in the U.S. between 1910-1915. I have always assumed that Gelwan was an Ellis Island anglicization of something else and thus that researching my family’s roots would become squirrelly because the family name of anyone related to me might not have precisely the same pronunciation or spelling. As the part of the world from which my ancestors emigrated shifted back and forth between Slavic and Germanic dominance, between Cyrillic and Roman alphabets, so too did the rendering of family names. I would have to pursue the Gelvans, the Gelmans, and even the Hellmans and who knows what else for relatives. [I may have made this up, but I think I learned somewhere along the way that we are actually distantly related to the Hellman’s mayonnaise family…]
The flip side of that coin is of course that literal ‘Gelwans’ might not be related to me. For example, I found through Googling traces of a Deborah Gelwan who was in the public relations industry in Sao Paulo, Brazil who is referred to on the web. Deborah now lives in Orlando FL and runs a couple of businesses. Maybe I’ll get to see her someday.
When I was a child, a Brazilian tourist with the last name Gelwan, possibly from the same family as Deborah, arrived on our doorstep, having looked up Gelwan in the phonebooks on arriving in New York City. It appears that my parents and the visitor determined that it was unlikely we were related (although I cannot imagine how they did this, as my parents spoke no Portugese and rumor has it this visitor spoke no English). Deborah and I are now Facebook friends but we have not established a family relationship. And there are traces of other Gelwans in Brazil as well. I would at least love to figure out if these South American Gelwans descended from Eastern European immigrants. I am aware that eastern European Jews did go to South America in the diasporas, but I am not sure about Brazil per se.
Similarly, I have reached out to Gelwans in Lebanon — a Claude Gelwan was there but apparently now lives in France — and Iraq but I doubt we are related. It appears to me that Gelwan is a transliteration of a first name, not a family name, in Iraq.
I have discovered several other Gelwans in the New York area where I grew up. Interestingly enough I have long been aware of two brothers, physicians as I am: Jeffrey Gelwan, a gastroenterologist and Mark Gelwan, an ophthalmologist. In years past we spoke by phone but cannot establish a common background. I assumed that it might merely be an accident that we share our name, that Gelwan might be a final common pathway of anglicization from diverse unrelated family names in eastern Europe.
Similarly, there is a pharmacist in Brooklyn named Steven Gelwan, who never answered an email from me. Maya Gambarin-Gelwan, I think Steven’s spouse, is yet another New York area physician, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, with a number of scholarly publications. Never heard from her either. There is a Rebecca Gelwan (my late mother’s name by marriage) who studies, or studied, law in Pennsylvania and posts alot of photos and videos of her new baby (congratulations on the newest Gelwan!) but, again, I can’t figure that we are direct relatives. Along with my brother, that’s two Gelwan attorneys. Elise Gelwan, I learn, graduated from medical school at the University of Connecticut. Yet another physician Gelwan! There is a Sam or Sami Gelwan (I think they are the same person) in the New York area as well. If I mention all these names in this post, they may get hits when people vanity-search themselves, and they may get in touch, I hope.
LinkedIn, from which I resigned long ago, has thirteen ‘Gelwan’ profiles, including some of the aforementioned but also a Brazilian photographer Jacob Gelwan, and a Miriam Gelwan in Argentina. A Samantha Gelwan is/was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington. A Mohammed Gelwan is an engineer in Egypt.
From time to time I see passenger manifests listing Gelwans who disembarked at Ellis Island in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. I have found the arrival records of my grandfather’s two sisters and alot of other mysterious Gelwans. But where do I go from there? Some 19th century records show Gelwans emigrating from Ireland to Manitoba, but I cannot find Canadian Gelwans today.
I was told that my family originated in Riga, Latvia. Given that, I’ve written to Vladimir, or Wladimir, Gelwan, who I learned was the principal dancer in the Latvian National Ballet and who now runs a ballet school in Berlin, suggesting that we may be related, but have never gotten a reply back. I have seen a picture of Vladimir Gelwan on the web and can even imagine a certain family resemblance, although he’s certainly got the dancer’s grace that I do not. I’m determined to try and drop in on him when next in Berlin. [Do I have any readers in or near Berlin?]
What is it, by the way, with these nonresponses? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but a message from afar suggesting the writer might be my relative, with such a rare name, would immediately pique my interest and would surely get a response. Do you think recipients might have worried that my messages represented some kind of con? I don’t want anything from them except connectedness. Is that the problem right there?
Given the waves of upheaval that repeatedly washed over eastern Europe in the 20th century, with ever-changing political hegemony over various regions, large scale displacement of populations, the Holocaust, the destruction of records, the changing of names, etc., conventional genealogical research is not possible. It is not as if there is an established family tree, with records waiting around for the taking, as is the case for many families with western European origins. My father’s older brother, now deceased, once returned to eastern Europe to try to find some of our roots. Despite a reputation for being extremely resourceful, he apparently had no success at all. Lamentably, I cannot find any notes from his research; otherwise I (acknowledged as someone with no lack of resourcefulness myself!) might pick up the trail where he left off, despite the passage of time having added fifty further years of obfuscation.
It has been a little (not much) easier to find information about my mother’s ancestors. She herself, as a young child, emigrated with her family in the 1920’s from Eastern Europe. Several years ago, my son and I visited the small out-of-the-way town of her origin looking for indications of her family, armed with notes from a maternal uncle of mine who had made a similar trip decades before and retracing his steps. Unfortunately (probably because they were a Jewish family), the town hall and the burial grounds held no traces; the Nazis had razed the Jewish cemetery. I discovered when I visited the site that my uncle had been the one to fund the reassembly of the smashed fragments of gravestones into a monument there. There were no Jews left but a non-Jew who lived adjacent to the site of the burial ground kept the key, tended the grounds and let Jewish visitors into the site to see the monument.
My son and I did see the house where my mother had been born; eerily, we had by coincidence parked our rental car right in front of it when we had entered the town center.
We learned that, because of their persecution, the entire family hid from the authorities behind a falsified family name for several generations. Interestingly, that was the same name as a boss of mine, whose family I knew originated from the same region. Instead of being intrigued when I mentioned my discovery to him when I returned from my Eastern European trip, he scoffed. (I think he was appalled at the possibility that we were related.)
I am on Ancestry.com (here is a link to what I know so far of my family tree) and Ancestry keeps notifying me that they’ve discovered someone who is probably a third or fourth cousin. None of the family trees I’ve been directed to seem to intermesh so far. (I wonder how many third or fourth cousins a person has, on average…)
If you have a complicated heritage that will not be easy to trace on a geneology research site, my advice is to embark on a project of tracking down and documenting what you can, as soon as you can. It only disappears over time. Your children and their children may appreciate it if information about their mysterious family origins might one day help them find their place in the world in the face of the increasing rootlessness of modern life.
Perhaps one day someone googling their family name will be linked to this post and wonder how they might be related to Eliot Gelwan. Hurry up, Google, crawl this post and index it!
‘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‘s Benjamin Wallace reports on the world of extreme privacy consultants — people who help clients vanish from the digital landscape.
The piece focuses on Alec Harris, CEO of HavenX, whose own privacy measures include 191 virtual debit cards, multiple phone numbers, a house purchased through a trust, even fake dog toys in the yard to throw off would-be intruders.
Harris learned many of these techniques from Michael Bazzell, a former cop who became the guru of digital disappearance before mysteriously vanishing himself. Bazzell’s approach to privacy was so thorough he’d remove license plates at night and hide backup data in hollow nickels behind electrical plates in friends’ homes.
But the article reveals the costs of this lifestyle — both financial (tens of thousands per month for some clients — “strong privacy is a luxury good” ) and psychological (the constant “cognitive overhead” of maintaining multiple identities).…’ Ellsworth Toohey 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
Health may be more complicated than a label, a new book argues. Maybe: test and diagnose less.
‘[W]e should … be careful about doling out diagnoses, says Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan, an Irish neurologist and the author of a new book, The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession With Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker.
In her book, O’Sullivan argues that our eagerness to diagnose, preemptively screen, and otherwise push these new tools to their limits is creating problems that deserve to be taken more seriously. She describes mutually reinforcing trends — the patient’s insistence on certainty and the doctor’s desire to avoid being blamed for missing something — that are driving clinical practice toward overdiagnosis. The phenomenon is even leading to more instances of doctors diagnosing certain cancers by 50 percent or more, due to the availability of new imaging tech that can detect even minuscule traces of abnormal cells.
Overdiagnosis can cause real harm. And so O’Sullivan advocates for “slow medicine,” in which doctors and patients take time to develop a relationship, monitor symptoms, and take a great deal of care before naming a condition — an approach that may sound quaint in an era of rapid-testing but something she says is actually more in tune with the reality that diagnosis is partly an art.…’ Dylan Scott via Vox
‘The president delivered a campaign-style speech to West Point cadets, touting his election “mandate” and how it “gives us the right to do what we want”…’ Naomi Lachance via Rolling Stone
‘Reading, a skill easily taken for granted, is difficult—all the more so when reading literature that wields language as a medium for art. In the wake of Richards’ revelations, scholars in Britain and the United States developed a technique to address our failures. Eventually that technique took the name “close reading,” and it remains the principal methodology of literary studies.
Close reading is untimely. It bristles against today’s universities, which treat students as customers to please and as future workers to train rather than as people in pursuit of human flourishing. Jeff Bezos’ empire—Amazon; Goodreads; Kindle Direct Publishing, which dominates the perfervid world of self-publishing—encourages readers to “talk about a book as if it were just another thing, like a dish, or a product like an electronic device.” Social media compels us to attend to what we’re seeing for as long as it takes to scroll by. Every day, AI produces more of the words we come across, making it hard—maybe impossible—to care about reading them. I’m sure there were college courses this semester where students completed their work with AI and professors graded it with AI, cutting humans from the loop. It’s easy to see why close reading, which demands patience, openness to others, and slow, careful thought, is having a moment among academics.
In January, literary critic John Guillory, emeritus faculty at NYU, well known in the small world of literary studies, published a slim volume, On Close Reading, accompanied by an exhaustive annotated bibliography compiled by Rhodes College professor Scott Newstok that demonstrated that more people are writing about close reading now than ever. Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth has garnered disproportionate attention, occasioning roundtables, special sections of journals, and many reviews. Much more, including a volume I co-edited, is forthcoming. After a spell of taking it for granted, academics are rediscovering the quiet excitement of close reading, a relief from the overheated corporate pablum routinely suffocating us.…’ via Defector
‘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
‘[Corporate jargon] has evolved into a whole dictionary of phrases that mean pretty much nothing, but it does pad the conversation out. We are inundated with corporate jargon that is designed to be vague and noncommittal, often as a way to give plausible deniability or else cover the fact that your supervisor just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Master a good amount of corporate jargon, and you can talk for hours and still not say anything useful.
Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky explains how this language evolved from regular workplace talk, and why it is so frustrating whether you understand it or not.…’ Rommel Santor via Neatorama
‘On Tuesday, the US government put eight men — only one a South Sudanese citizen — on a deportation flight to South Sudan, an unstable country in East Africa that is on the verge of civil war, with minimal notice and no chance to speak with a lawyer. Their exact location is now unclear.
A court order from April, issued by the same federal judge, Brian Murphy, blocked the Tr*mp administration from deporting immigrants to countries not their own without due process because of the possibility they could face violence or death there.…’ Cameron Peters via Vox
‘Joe Biden lost it before he even won the presidency.
This is the most notable revelation in Original Sin, a new book-length exposé of the Biden White House by Axios’ Alex Thompson and CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Thompson and Tapper mostly fill in the details of a story we already knew: Biden’s cognition declined sharply over his final two years in office, and his core advisers schemed to disguise this reality from donors, Democratic officials, and the public.
But the authors also vindicate those who believed that Biden was already in rough shape before he ever won the presidency. Their book suggests that the former president’s cognitive decline began after the tragic death of his son Beau from brain cancer in 2015. By December 2019, Biden was having difficulty remembering the name of his top adviser Mike Donilon, whom he’d worked with for 38 years, and conducting coherent conversations with voters over Zoom.
Original Sin is a sad book, made all the sadder by this week’s news that Biden has metastatic prostate cancer. It is also an infuriating read that illuminates the selfishness and self-delusions that led an unwell octogenarian to run for a second presidential term — and a team of sycophantic advisers to conceal his condition from the public (and possibly, even from himself).…’ Eric Levitz via Vox
‘An increasingly authoritarian United States might see the return of violent revolutionaries like the 1970s Weather Underground, warns Jukka Savolainen, a professor of sociology at Wayne State University. This was a group of young, well-educated, upper-middle-class Americans who bombed government buildings to protest the Vietnam War…
Most people will seek change through peaceful activism, but Savolainen warns that “societies that exile their intellectuals risk turning them into revolutionaries.”…’ Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘UnitedHealth, the health insurer whose CEO was allegedly assassinated outside a hotel in New York City, secretly paid nursing homes not to transfer seriously ill patients to hospitals. The Guardian reports that the cost-cutting plan “saved the company millions” at the cost of patients’ health.…’ Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing
‘How to lock down your finances and online accounts after a data breach spreads your information to the secret corners of the internet…’ By Nicole Nguyen via WSJ
… 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
A fascinating essay by a philosopher of language stretching our minds toward inconceivably different modes of communication we might encounter in alien intelligence.
— via Nikhil Mahantis, a philosopher specialising in language and Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University in Sweden, in Aeon Essays
‘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
‘Musk’s time within the government has seemingly expired, and some Republicans couldn’t be happier.
“He’s finished, done, gone,” one GOP official, who was granted anonymity by Politico to talk trash, said of Musk. “He polls terrible. People hate him.”
That operative and others like him are already dancing on the unelected billionaire’s grave.
As the magazine found in a social media analysis, Musk is now persona non grata for Republicans.
After a big spike in late January of Musk-related content from accounts linked to the Trump administration, mentions of the billionaire have steadily fallen as the backlash against his politicking began in earnest. By April, he was only being mentioned twice a day — and by the time this month began, that number had dropped to one.…’ Noor Al-Sibai via Futurism
‘You might not be aware of it, but you have little mites living at the base of your eyelashes. They live off of dead skin cells. As such they generally don’t inflict any damage, and might have slightly beneficial effects. Most people don’t even know that they exist—which is part of the point I was trying to make. The mites, for their part, don’t know that humans exist. They just “know” that food, in the form of dead skin, just magically shows up in their environment all the time. All they have to do is eat it and continue living their best lives as eyelash mites. Presumably all of this came about as the end result of millions of years’ natural selection. The ancestors of these eyelash mites must have been independent organisms at some point in the distant past. Now the mites and the humans have found a modus vivendi that works so well for both of them that neither is even aware of the other’s existence. If AIs are all they’re cracked up to be by their most fervent believers, this seems like a possible model for where humans might end up: not just subsisting, but thriving, on byproducts produced and discarded in microscopic quantities as part of the routine operations of infinitely smarter and more powerful AIs.…’ Neal Stephenson via Graphomane
‘Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel and other far-right MAGA Republicans are calling for an investigation of former FBI Director James Comey in response to an Instagram post that depicted seashells in the sand forming the numbers “8647.”
The slang expression “eight-six” means to “remove” or “eject,” and Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States. Noem, in a May 15 post on X, formerly Twitter, claimed that Comey was promoting violence against President Trump.
Noem tweeted, “Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump. DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
But Noem’s critics are reminding her that the term “eight-six” doesn’t automatically have a violent connotation. When restaurant workers, for example, say that they need to “eight-six” an order, it means cancel the order. Or a bar might “eighty-six” a customer who has had too much to drink.
Liberal firebrand and former MSNBC host Keith Olberman, in response to Noem’s tweet, posted, “Listen, you lying witch, he didn’t call for assassinating anyone. Since you murdered your daughter’s dog maybe you ought to S— about this.”…’ Alex Henderson via Alternet
Psychedelic compounds, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), can promote the growth of atrophied cortical neurons, which is relevant to the treatment of numerous brain conditions. However, their hallucinogenic properties have limited their adoption as medicines and preclude their use in certain patient populations, such as those with schizophrenia or a family history of psychosis. By transposing only two atoms, we have created JRT, an exceptionally potent analogue of LSD with lower hallucinogenic potential, improved pharmacological selectivity, and the ability to produce a wide range of therapeutic effects. Our work highlights the potential of rationally designed, nonhallucinogenic analogues of psychedelics for treating diseases where the use of psychedelics is contraindicated…’ Jeremy Tuck et al via PNAS
‘As scientists use machine learning to decode the sounds of whales, dogs, and dolphins, opinions vary on how best to deploy the technology.…’ Isaac Schultz via Gizmodo
‘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
‘On May 8, political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt published an op-ed in the New York Times reminding readers that most modern authoritarian leaders are elected. They maintain their power by using the power of the government—arrests, tax audits, defamation suits, politically targeted investigations, and so on—to punish and silence their opponents. They either buy or bully the media and civil society until opposing voices cave to their power.
Levitsky, Way, and Ziblatt call this system “competitive authoritarianism.” A country that has fallen to it still holds elections, but the party in power has so weighted the system in its favor that it’s virtually impossible for it to lose.
The way to tell if the United States has crossed the line from democracy to competitive authoritarianism, the political scientists explain, is to see if people feel safe opposing those in power. Can they safely protest? Publish criticism of the government? Support opposition candidates? Or does taking a stand against those in power lead to punishment either by the government or by government supporters?
Looking at the many ways the Trump administration has been harassing critics, law firms, universities, judges, and media stations, they conclude that “America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism.” …’ Heather Cox Richardson
‘Here is how proponents describe the alleged phenomenon:
“Brainspotting makes use of this natural phenomenon through its use of relevant eye positions. This helps the Brainspotting therapist locate, focus, process and release a wide range of emotionally and bodily-based conditions. Brainspotting is also a brain-based tool to support the therapy relationship. We believe that Brainspotting taps into and harnesses the body’s natural self-scanning, self-healing ability. When a Brainspot is stimulated, the deep brain appears to reflexively signal the therapist that the source of the problem has been found.”
This is all complete and utter neurological rubbish from beginning to end, but let’s break it down. The idea is that trauma (not necessarily traumatic memories, but “trauma” in the abstract sense) is somehow located in specific spots in the deep brain, such as the brainstem. This is an extraordinary claim, and it is coupled with another equally extraordinary claim – that where your eyes physically look also maps to specific subcortical locations. These overlapping maps can then be used to locate the “trauma”.
Of course these maps do not exist. There is no neuroanatomical correlate to either component of the core principles of brainspotting. The anatomy of eye movements is fairly well understood, and does not correlate in any way with this core notion of brainspotting.…’ Steven Novella via Science-Based Medicine
Martian Night Sky Seen Turning Green in a Stunning First
‘An aurora gently glowing in wavelengths visible to the human eye has been captured on Mars for the first time – and a robot was the only one to see it live.
On 18 March 2024, as the night sky over Jezero Crater turned a faint, luminous green, the Perseverance rover sat ready with its eyes peeled. What it recorded opens new ways to study Mars. Although Mars is known to have auroras of various kinds, all the others we’ve seen have been in invisible hues of ultraviolet.…’ Michelle Starr via ScienceAlert
‘As part of the red-carpet treatment, Saudi officials arranged for a fully operational mobile McDonald’s unit to accompany President Trump during his stay.…’ Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic
‘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
He doesn’t know his olive oil from his elbow. He uses an embarrassing espresso machine. And his utility knife is either insanely expensive or insanely cheap. via Financial Times
‘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
‘Schumer also called on [Attorney General Pam Bondi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Bondi) to testify before Congress and answer a number of questions related to the potential gift.…’ Rebecca Shabad and Frank Thorp V via NBC
Related: How corrupt is Tr*mp’s acceptance of $400 million Qatari jet?
‘Presidents can’t keep gifts that are worth more than $480 unless they buy them. This plane costs about $400 million.…’ Abdallah Fayyad via Vox
RFK Jr and grandkids celebrated Mother’s day with a swim in a sewage-filled creek
‘Vaccine denialism and now just simple reckless disregard for National Park Service warnings to stay out of the water. RFK Jr has some belief he and his progeny are immune to these things, and I hope for the kid’s sake he isn’t proven wrong this time. Sounds like an awful place to swim.…’ Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing
‘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
‘The causes of this divide are complex and have been endlessly discussed. There’s social media and the existence of “manosphere” content creators like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, who promote right-wing parties and ideas. Additionally, widespread isolation, especially for the youth, means that social media now has an outsized impact, leading to a distorted public sphere where preferences are distorted by biased algorithms. There is, of course, a gendered backlash aspect: Women have made notable advances in the public sphere over the last five years, and Trump has capitalized on anxieties about such gains, as well as longer-simmering grievances and tensions, to advance his reactionary agenda.
But while much of the debate has centered on electoral strategy, social issues like transgender rights or Me Too, and chastising activists for their unproductive work, the truth is somewhat more nuanced. Younger men are more conservative on some issues, but men’s and women’s differing votes don’t seem to be based on policy differences: Surveys of American voters point to men and women largely agreeing on which issues they find most important, and they mostly seem to trust the same parties on each of those issues.
The best way to understand the growing gender divide isn’t the culture war. It’s how the economy has shifted over the past half-century.…’ Maia Mindel via Vox
‘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
‘Tr*mp seems to know little, and he has grown increasingly incoherent and rambling, often wholly detached from reality.…’
For example, this, in response to a question about border security:
“I built hundreds of miles of wall, and then (Biden) didn’t want to, and we had another, an extra hundred miles that I could have put up because I ordered it as extra. I completed the wall, what I was doing, but we have, I wanted to build additional because it was working so well. Rex Hippie via USA Today
His administration is great at breaking things — but it’s failing in its bigger goal.
‘There is an established playbook for turning a democracy into an authoritarian state, used in countries ranging from India to Hungary. It requires a leader to:
Remove formal limits on their own powers.
Compromise independent power centers such as the press and courts.
Win compliance with the new regime from social elites and the mass public.
Tr*mp has attempted all of these things. He has taken actions, like unilaterally declaring an end to birthright citizenship, that clearly violate the Constitution. He has targeted alternative power centers, launching an investigation into a Democratic fundraising platform and threatening the press. He has imposed sanctions on prominent law firms and universities in a bid to force compliance, and he has sold it all to the public as evidence he’s getting things done.
Yet in each arena, Tr*mp is facing effective and mounting pushback. He is routinely losing in court. He is failing to silence the media. And he is losing support among the elite as his poll numbers plummet…’ Zack Beauchamp via Vox
‘If you receive a text from a number you don’t know, don’t respond, as doing so validates your phone number. Even if you don’t engage in this exchange any further, you may be targeted again in the future (and by different unfamiliar numbers).
You also don’t need to try to find out who they are or whether you know them—if someone actually needs to reach you, they are likely to follow up with multiple messages or calls beyond a single “Hey, how are you?” And as with any scam, be wary of communication that provokes an emotional response or a sense of urgency.
You should mark wrong number messages as spam in your messaging app. In Messages on iOS, tap the Report Junk link that appears at the bottom of messages from unknown senders, then hit Delete > Report Junk. If you haven’t opened the message yet, you can also swipe left and tap the Trash icon > Delete and Report Junk. (Note that you can’t report a message if you’ve replied to it, which is another reason not to do so.)
On Android, you can block and report conversations in Google Messages: tap and hold, then tap Block > Report spam > OK. If you’ve already opened the conversation, hit More options > Details > Block & report spam > OK.
You can also forward spam messages to 7726, which helps wireless companies identify and block scams.…’ Emily Long via Lifehacker
Tr*mp underwater in most policy areas, including immigration
Buffoon-in-chief
‘A New York Times poll finds Donald Tr*mp achieving a record low rating for a president 100 days into their administration, with 42% of respondents approving of the job he’s doing and 54% disapproving. Moreover, he’s underwater in every policy area they cared to chart, including the one that’s supposedly his strongest: immigration.…’ via Boing Boing
‘…(O)ver the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trmp spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.
This pattern becomes impossible to unsee once you start looking for it. …’ via Techdirt
Donald Trump believes he’s invincible. But the cracks are beginning to show.
‘We’ve both covered Trump long enough to know that his first word is rarely his final one. So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don’t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. “Who’s calling?” he asked….’ via The Atlantic
‘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
‘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
‘(As) detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers says that it may be giving off a signal. So they want to build a new type of detector they liken to a “cosmic car radio,” that could listen to what the dark matter is saying and perhaps crack its mysteries.
Such a device would “tune in” to the frequency of axions, hypothetical particles that have emerged as one of the leading candidates for what dark matter is.
“We can now build a dark matter detector that is essentially a cosmic car radio, tuning into the frequencies of the wider galaxy until we find the axion,” said King’s College London researcher and coauthor David Marsh in a statement.
Axions are thought to be extremely light and only weakly interact with normal matter, which makes detecting them extremely difficult.
The proposed detector would use a special material to generate “axion quasiparticles,” (AQ) that according to the team could allow scientists to detect axions within the next 15 years…’ Victor Tangermann via Futurism
‘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
“COULD THERE BE A FILAMENT OF MEMORY THAT PERSISTS THROUGH THIS BIOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION?”
‘Art can outlast the artist — but what about their artistic impulses?
A new art installation project in Australia, titled “Revivification,” raises this question with a very literal interpretation of “impulse”: using his DNA, the team behind the project have performed a quasi-resurrection of the late experimental American composer Alvin Lucier, creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals.
“Revivification is an attempt to shine light on the sometimes dark possibilities of extending a person’s presence beyond the seemed finality of death,” the team, comprising three artists and a neuroscientist, told the Art Newspaper.
At the center of the piece is an “in-vitro brain,” grown from blood that Lucier, who passed away in 2021, donated in the final years of his life. Housed in a plinth, it’s grown on top of an electrode mesh that connects it to twenty large brass plates placed around the room. Visitors can listen as the brain fires off electrical pulses that trigger a transducer and a mallet behind each plate, striking them to produce sound.…’ Frank Landymore via Futurism
Sort of latest equivalent of ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’
‘In 2016, I accidentally became a bit character in UK history.
I had bumbled my way onto a British reality show called Come Dine with Me, where four strangers take turns hosting, attending, and rating each other’s dinner parties, and the person with the highest score at the end of the week wins an extremely modest £1,000. Usually, the show is low-stakes—its version of “drama” is when someone sticks a whole whisk in their mouth. It’s the kind of trashy, easy-viewing TV you might watch while you’re recovering from having your appendix removed.…’ via Experimental History
‘An international team of researchers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) launched the ROV SuBastion, which captured the first confirmed live sighting of the elusive colossal squid at 600 meters down in the midnight zone of the Atlantic Ocean near the South Sandwich Islands. This is the first confirmed live observation of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, at depth in its natural habitat. Pilots filmed the young cephalopod at about 600m near the South Sandwich Islands as the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle SuBastian descended…’ Lori Dorin via Laughing Squid
Three cases of the rare and fatal brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) have emerged in Hood River County, Oregon—a statistically improbable cluster in a population of just 23,000, given the disease’s global incidence of one to two cases per million and only 350 cases annually in the U.S. Reported over the past eight months, one case is confirmed and two are probable; two individuals have died, and test results are pending for the third. CJD is caused by misfolded prion proteins that create sponge-like holes in the brain, leading to rapid neurological decline with symptoms such as confusion, hallucinations, and loss of coordination. Diagnosis typically involves microscopic examination of brain tissue. Health officials are investigating potential links between the cases while maintaining family privacy.
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (also known as prion diseases) such as CJD can be transmitted by exposure to contaminated brain tissue, corneal grafts, pituitary growth hormone, or improperly sterilized electrodes or surgical instruments that have come in contact with infected tissue. It can also appear spontaneously from a mutation to the gene encoding the major prion protein. Humans can contract the disease from eating food from animals infected with their own versions of prion disease, e.g. bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”), scrapie in sheep, or CWD (chronic wasting disease) in deer and elk. Prions cannot be transmitted by air, water, or casual touching. Kristine de Leon via Oregon Live
The Monday press conference with Bukele reveals how Tr*mp would like to rule… and why he may not be able to do so
Donald Trmp’s press conference with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele revealed a shared authoritarian mindset, especially in their dismissive handling of a court order involving a deported migrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Bukele, a strongman who openly defies legal limits, contrasts with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who subtly dismantles democracy under a legal guise. Trmp appears to be blending both approaches—Bukele’s overt force and Orbán’s legal manipulation—but lacks the discipline and context that made them effective in their countries. This unstable mix may provoke public resistance and ultimately help preserve American democracy. Zack Beauchamp via Vox
“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
Donald Tr*mp and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele
‘Donald Trump didn’t seem to realize he was on camera when he told the president of El Salvador to make more prisons, this time for Americans. “Home-growns are next,” Trump told Nayib Bukele, who visited him in the Oval Office today. “You gotta build about five more places,” Trump added, before describing the El Salvador prison now housing the Venezuelans he deported (without due process) as “not big enough.”…’ via Boing Boing
‘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‘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
‘If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Tr*mp as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.
Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them, Janus Rose writes…’ Janus Rose via 404 media
‘Researchers have found that the amount of microplastics in our brains is rising at an alarming rate.
As The Guardian reports, scientists examined postmortem brain tissue from dozens of human bodies between 1997 and 2024. They found that the concentration of microplastics increased consistently over that time period, with a particularly dramatic surge over the last eight years.
As detailed in a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, a team led by University of New Mexico toxicologist and professor of pharmaceutical sciences Matthew Campen concluded that the average brain now contains the equivalent of one plastic spoon, or seven grams, worth of plastic. And it’s not just the brain. Scientists also found significant concentrations of microplastics in the liver and kidney.…’ via Neoscope
‘Why do some ideas spread like wildfire, while others resist being seen — despite their importance? A new book by Nadia Asparouhova explores the emerging phenomenon of antimemetics. Published by the Dark Forest Collective. …’ via Metalabel
‘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
‘In 2017, historian Timothy Snyder wrote the concise book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. A historian of fascism (then at Yale, now at U. Toronto), Snyder wanted to offer Americans a useful guide for resisting the country’s drift towards authoritarianism. It was handy then and even handier now–especially as the feds bear down on different institutions undergirding American civil society. Law firms, universities, corporations, media outlets–they’re all getting squeezed, and many have already violated the first of Snyder’s 20 lessons: “Do not obey in advance.” Above, you can hear actor John Lithgow read a condensed version of Snyder’s lessons. You can order a copy of his book online, or explore here a related video series that Snyder produced a few years back. Find a cheat sheet below.
Another of my favorite singers, both eccentric and inspirational, dies at 83
Mr. Hurley in performance in 1994. He recorded about 30 albums but remained somewhat under the radar for his entire career.
‘Michael Hurley, a singer and songwriter whose music — an idiosyncratic kind of folk mixed with a variety of other styles — made him a revered elder to younger artists like Cat Power, Devendra Banhart and the band Yo La Tengo, died on April 1 in Portland, Ore. He was 83. Mr. Hurley’s family announced the death but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Hurley was visibly ill during his final shows — two on March 28 and 29 in Knoxville, Tenn., as part of the Big Ears Festival, and the third on March 31 in Asheville, N.C. — before flying back to Portland, said Regina Greene, the booking agent for his Southeast shows. Mr. Hurley stopped breathing on the ride to his home in rural Brownsmead, Ore.,…’
‘…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*
‘Guess which special birthday boy is getting his own four-mile-long tank parade that is going to cost many, many millions of your tax dollars?
As reported in Washington City Paper, Generalissimo Tr*mp, fresh off his recent Pentagon purge of anyone who might say no to him, is finally getting the military parade he’s been demanding ever since watching France do it in 2017.…’ Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘AI animator Hoog created an old-school style PSA that warns of the dangers of robotic quadruped dogs, their ability to carry weapons and other accoutrements, how they move autonomously as a pack, how to protect yourself from them, and how to disable these robotic dogs from attacking you and those you love. …’ via Laughing Squid
‘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
If you needed help envisioning how marvelous and strange the universe can be. Via YouTube
Donald Trump believes he’s invincible. But the cracks are beginning to show.
‘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
