‘At 7,570 metres tall, Bhutan’s Gangkhar Puensum mountain poses three summits, none of which have been scaled yet—and likely never will be….’ (Ria Gupta via Architectural Digest India)

‘

‘An American infected with Ebola is being treated in Berlin, while another exposed to the deadly virus is being sent to Prague after the White House reportedly resisted allowing citizens to return to the US for care and monitoring.

According to The Washington Post, five people close to the Ebola response said that, over the weekend, the Trump administration resisted allowing the return of Peter Stafford, a 39-year-old surgeon working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid a raging Ebola outbreak. The resistance allegedly delayed Stafford’s evacuation and care, risking his health, as experts note that early treatment is critical for Ebola, which can turn deadly in days.

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Stafford had developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive for Ebola late Sunday. In a press briefing on Wednesday, Satish Pillai, the CDC’s incident response manager for the Ebola outbreak, said Stafford had arrived in Germany and is in stable condition. His wife, Rebekah Stafford—also a doctor who was exposed to the virus in DRC but is asymptomatic—along with the couple’s four children, have been flown to Germany as well.

Another doctor, Patrick LaRochelle, who worked with the same Christian missionary group as the Staffords, called Serge, was also exposed to the virus but remains asymptomatic. He is being transferred to Prague for monitoring and care. According to the Post, his wife and children, who were with him in the DRC, were flown to the US after the CDC concluded that they had not been exposed to the virus.

The Ebola outbreak, caused by the uncommon Bundibugyo virus strain, was first confirmed on Friday and has quickly escalated to a public health emergency of international concern, according to the World Health Organization. On Friday, there were 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths; the latest numbers, as of Wednesday, from WHO stand at 528 suspected cases and 132 deaths.

It’s unclear when US officials learned of Stafford’s exposure, but upon receiving the information, a back-and-forth discussion on his evacuation began. “The president and his people did not want him back in the United States,” one source told the Post. Another confirmed, “They would not allow him to be transported to the United States.” Trump has previously criticized decisions to bring American Ebola patients back to the US during earlier outbreaks.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai denied that the administration didn’t want to accept Stafford and attacked the Post. “This is absolutely false and another reason why the Washington Post is no longer worth the paper it’s printed on,” Desai wrote in an email. He said the Trump administration’s top concern is ensuring the health and safety of citizens and praised the quality of the German hospital treating Stafford.

The US has multiple centers and hospital systems with specialized facilities capable of providing safe, high-quality care for Ebola patients….’ (Beth Mole via Ars Technica)

‘In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, they detail a process they say causes bones, joints, and ligaments to regenerate in mammals which otherwise would not be able to regrow tissue…’ (Joe Wilkins via Futurism)

‘Joe Biden became quieter, while Donald Trump grows even louder.…’ (Jonathan Lemire via The Atlantic)

‘For decades, Antarctica seemed to defy global warming. Since satellites began monitoring the poles in the late 1970s, the seasonal growth and retreat of Antarctic sea ice – frozen seawater that expands around the continent each winter – appeared remarkably resilient. It was often described as the “heartbeat of the planet”. Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice declined rapidly as the planet warmed, Antarctic sea ice showed little overall loss. It even expanded between 2007 and 2015. But that resilience has now broken….’ (via  ScienceAlert)

‘THE PENTAGON’S TOP watchdog says cuts to civilian harm mitigation and response efforts have been so severe under War Secretary Pete Hegseth that the United States cannot adequately protect civilians in conflict zones. Thursday’s scathing analysis by the Department of War’s inspector general came on the same day that the top U.S. commander overseeing the war in Iran dismissed reports of civilian casualties and said the U.S. had no means to corroborate reports of strikes on hospitals and schools. The inspector general specifically notes that the military stopped funding a database that tracks civilian harm that could be used for such verification….’ (Nick Turse via The Intercept)

‘THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION last week unveiled its “2026 Counterterrorism Strategy,” a 16-page collection of threats, grievances, hyperbole, and lies. The memo is a truly foundational document and a striking distillation of Trumpism as an ideology, movement, and system of governance. It also serves as a new declaration of war on the Trump administration’s enemies — foreign and domestic, real and imagined. The brainchild of National Security Council official Sebastian Gorka, the “Counterterrorism Strategy” weaves together Trump’s war on the wider world — which stretches from interventions and wars in Yemen and Iran to Nigeria and Somalia to Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea — with the administration’s war on dissent at home, which has targeted immigrants, legal observers, activists, protesters, and the press. Under the guise of protecting America, it takes aim at wide swaths of Americans, putting targets on the backs of the most vulnerable….’ (Nick Turse via The Intercept)

‘As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”…’ (Peter Baker via The New York Times)

‘This is not simply a matter of affordability, the buzzword so often invoked to explain why people are choosing to have smaller families. Government support for parents can help, but overall, people are having fewer children both in countries that offer very little and in those renowned for their generous family benefits; moreover, the trend holds among those who are struggling to make ends meet and among those who, like the Riveras, have advanced degrees and salaried jobs. What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline….’ (Anna Louie Sussman via The New York Times)

‘All told, it’s a fascinating reflection on the tenuous nature of scientific insight and consensus. One of the most earth-shattering developments in physics, the uncertainty principle, is that there’s a limit to what we can know about the smallest particles that underpin our reality. There’s only so much we can confidently glean about the cosmos from our tiny outpost in space….’ (Frank Landymore via Futurism)

‘The feature quietly stores information linked to your Gmail account including searches, YouTube history, voice commands, Maps activity, and more. For some users, opening the page for the first time can feel genuinely unsettling as it reveals just how much of their digital life has been logged over the years. And once people start scrolling, it quickly turns into a bizarre trip down memory lane filled with forgotten searches and random internet rabbit holes….’ (Daisy Edwards via tech.supercarblondie)

‘There’s this certain category of human work that economists clearly want to put in a horrible basket marked “not worth paying for because AI can do it.” This group includes some outliers—model, for instance—but it’s mainly jobs in customer service, sales, administration. Many of these jobs are done from a desk, and involve interfacing between people and systems….’ (Mike Pearl via Gizmodo)

‘This has been a momentous few days for Trump Mobile, in which it defied the haters by announcing that its phones will be shipping to buyers this very week. Not that there’s any sign the company has actually done that, but I digress. Because what I really want to talk about today is the American flag.

I am not an American, which probably explains why I didn’t immediately realize that something in the T1 Phone’s design is… off. And, no, I don’t mean the gold finish, the uneven camera lens spacing, or the fact that it looks suspiciously like a two-year-old HTC phone. I mean the US flag that features prominently on the back. At a glance, to a non-native, it looks fine. But look closer, and there’s something curious: It only has 11 stripes. Last I checked, there really should be 13….’ (Dominic Preston via The Verge)

‘You hear wild stuff all the time now. Like this story that Nat Friedman, a former CEO of GitHub, told recently at a conference. Friedman uses OpenClaw, an autonomous AI agent that runs on his computer, acting like a personal assistant. One day, his OpenClaw decided that he wasn’t drinking enough water, so Friedman instructed the agent to “do whatever it takes” to make sure he stays hydrated. According to Friedman, eventually the bot directed him to go to the kitchen and drink a bottle of water. It informed him that it was monitoring him via a connected camera in his home. “I’m going to watch to make sure you do it,” the bot supposedly said. Friedman did as he was told, and, moments later, the bot sent him a frame of him drinking the bottle of water and said good job. “I felt like I did do a good job,” Friedman said….’ (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)

‘An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

The advance arrives years after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the real-world impact might be felt by only a narrow band of individuals. Still, “as a 78-year-old with comorbidities, I certainly would use it if I had a known exposure”, says study co-author Frederick Hayden, a clinical virologist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.

The drug, called ensitrelvir, is made by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi. It blocks an enzyme that coronaviruses need to make new copies of themselves, hitting the same target as one of the two active ingredients in Pfizer’s antiviral Paxlovid. But whereas that ingredient, nirmatrelvir, failed to prevent household infections in trials2, ensitrelvir has come through.

In an international study of more than 2,000 household contacts conducted from June 2023 to September 2024, about 9% of people who received a placebo within 72 hours of a housemate developing symptoms became symptomatic themselves, compared with only about 3% of those who got a five-day course of ensitrelvir. Rates of viral transmission were lower in the ensitrelvir group, too: confirmed infections, symptomatic or not, turned up in only 14.0% of those who received the drug, compared with 21.5% of those who got a placebo.

The therapy generally proved tolerable, without the taste-related side effects often seen with Paxlovid and with similar toxicity, overall, to that of the placebo.

On the strength of these trial data, Japan’s health ministry approved ensitrelvir, marketed as Xocova, in March for post-exposure use. Regulators in the United States, Europe and elsewhere are considering whether to follow suit, with a US decision expected in the next month or so….’ (Elie Dolgin via Nature)

‘American politics has been deemed broken for years, but something new is happening: Not only are more people depressed or anxious about the state of the world, but now they are seeking professional help. And therapists are more than ready to give it….’ (via POLITICO)

‘Japan’s bear problem continues, and the country is running out of the robot wolves that help keep them at bay. First released in 2016 by the manufacturer Ohta, Monster Wolf was originally designed to ward off the agricultural foes like boars, deer, and the island nation’s Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) populations. The creative solution quickly went viral for its red LED eyes and menacing fangs—as well as its admittedly odd, furry pipe frame.

Starting at around $4,000, each bespoke Monster Wolf is now equipped with battery power, solar panels, and detection sensors. Its speakers are programmed with over 50 audio clips including human voices and sirens audible over half a mile away. These aren’t assembly line products, however. Each Monster Wolf is custom made, and Ohta simply can’t keep up with the current demand….’ (via Popular Science)

‘There is a short window to prevent a US bill that would overturn decades of animal welfare progress. This is arguably the most consequential piece of farm animal legislation in U.S. history…’ ( via Ethical Altruism)

‘In a recent experiment, mistreated AI agents started grumbling about inequality and calling for collective bargaining rights….’

— via  WIRED

‘A four-foot humanoid robot named Gabi has become a monk at a Buddhist temple in Seoul, participating in a modified initiation ceremony where it pledged to respect life, obey humans, act peacefully toward other robots and objects. “Robots are destined to collaborate with humans in every field in the future,” Hong Min-suk, a manager at the Jogye Order, the largest sect of Buddhism in South Korea, tells the New York Times. “It will only be natural for them to be part of our festival.” Smithsonian Magazine reports:

“For the temple, this marks the first time a robot has participated in the sugye initiation ceremony, when followers pledge their devotion to the Buddha and his teachings. Gabi — a Buddhist name that refers to mercy, Yonhap News Agency reports — was made by Unitree Robotics, a Chinese civilian robotics company. The model, G1, retails starting at $13,500. During the ceremony, Gabi agreed to five vows usually recited by human monks and slightly altered for the humanoid. The robot pledged to respect life, act with peace toward other robots and objects, listen to humans, refrain from acting or speaking in a deceptive manner and save energy”.…’ ( via Slashdot)

‘THE PENTAGON CLAIMS that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both.…’ (Nick Turse via The Intercept)

‘The US-Israeli war on Iran has caused only “minimal damage” to Iran’s nuclear programme, meaning that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, according to a US intelligence assessment reported by Reuters.

US intelligence agencies had assessed that before the US’s June 2025 attack, Iran could likely produce enough bomb-grade uranium for a weapon and build a bomb in around three to six months, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two sources.

As a result of the US bombing the Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes, US intelligence pushed back their timeline from about nine months to a year. Despite the US and Israel pummelling Iran for over two months, that timeline remains unchanged, Reuters reported.…’ ( via Middle East Eye)

‘“As someone who has worked with psychedelics for decades, watching the White House event was a very trippy experience,” said Dimitri Mugianis, an underground practitioner who was prosecuted by federal authorities for illegally treating a heroin addict with the psychedelic drug ibogaine.

Mr. Trump’s bold efforts to soften the federal government’s stance on certain illegal drugs have been head-spinning — last month, the Justice Department, at the president’s behest, loosened restrictions on medical marijuana, too.

But experts in the field are not entirely surprised.…’ (via The New York Times)

‘If you’re going to criticise the past actions of previous US administrations, then it’s probably best you double-check who was in charge at the time.

One criticism from Donald Trump’s Department of State, shared on Thursday, has seen it ridiculed online given the problem itself has lasted for “nearly 7 years”, and the Republican was halfway through his first term back in 2019.

The tweet reads: “For nearly 7 years there have been no direct commercial flights between the U.S. and Venezuela.

“Under President Trump we’re changing that today. Flights between Miami and Caracas restored.”

And sure enough, many X/Twitter users were quick to point out that it was Trump who oversaw the initial decision..

“I wonder who was president 7 years ago,” wrote Francisco Rodríguez, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research…’ (via  indy100)

…’the Pope is making headlines after appointing Evelio Menjivar-Ayla – a formerly undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who came to the US in the trunk of a car, according to The Washington Post – as the new bishop for West Virginia.…’ (via indy100)

‘The White House just posted an hour-long video of Trump repeating a single word – yes, really…’ (via indy100)

Warning: Do not watch the referenced video. That will be 60 minutes of your life you will never get back. 

‘Americans have a long history of being hurried into war on false pretexts. The “yellow press” encouraged a war fever in 1898 by blaming the sinking of the USS Maine on the Spanish, even though the Navy’s own expert said it was caused by an accidental explosion. The George W. Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq by claiming that Saddam Hussein had connections to the 9/11 attacks and was building weapons of mass destruction, neither of which turned out to be true.

But with the Iran war, as in so many other ways, Donald Trump has broken new ground. He is the first president to start a war without even bothering to lie to the public, because he simply didn’t care what the public thought. The American people weren’t consulted about attacking Iran—neither formally, through their elected representatives in Congress, nor informally, by allowing pundits, activists, and civil-society groups to have their say. As Trump told The New York Times in January, his power as commander in chief was constrained by nothing but “my own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”…’ (Adam Kirsch via The Atlantic)

‘All things come to an end eventually, including the human species. From the perspective of the universe it won’t matter, and so it also shouldn’t matter to us now. The discontinuance of a taxonomic unit is not particularly interesting or important, especially since no one will be around to notice.

My basic point is the same as Epicurus’ philosophical medicine against the fear of death: “Death should not concern us because as long as we exist, death is not here, and when death is here, we are not.…” ‘ (Thomas Wells via 3 Quarks Daily)

‘Wildlife filmmaker Devon Massyn captured absolutely magnificent and rare drone footage of the volcano Kavachi erupting explosively underwater. Kavachi, which sits in the Pacific Ocean near the Solomon Islands, had not erupted for nearly a decade before this.…’ (Lori Dorn via Laughing Squid)

‘Prominent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins became a worldwide laughingstock this week for an unintentionally embarrassing article in which he argued that conversing with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot has made him believe that large language models are not only sentient, but actually conscious….[T]he author of The God Delusion is now suffering from a Claude delusion.…’ (via Flux)

‘A new analysis of the “Boltzmann brain” paradox suggests our memories and sense of reality could, in theory, be random illusions born from cosmic chaos. By uncovering circular reasoning in how physicists think about time and entropy, the study raises fresh doubts about what we can truly know about the past.…’ (via ScienceDaily)

‘In a press conference after the incident, Trump appeared to link the shooting to his long-standing proposal for a new White House ballroom. “I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room, and it’s a much more secure [sic]. It’s got – it’s drone-proof, it’s bulletproof glass,” Trump said. One theory, presented without evidence, is that security may have been deliberately weakened to support Trump’s case for the ballroom. Several far-right figures, including Jack Posobiec, Chaya Raichik, known as Libs of TikTok, and Tom Fitton have shared theories online that are skeptical of the official explanation. Experts say conspiracy theories often emerge after political violence. Sander van der Linden noted that “Trump is an opportunist…He immediately is thinking, ‘How can I use this to my advantage?’”…’ (via Flipboard)

‘Hegseth has his favorite soundbites — but none of them landed here, where he sounded increasingly deluded and desperate, writes Holly Baxter…’ (via The Independent)

‘News broke Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s face would soon appear on new U.S. passports. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, given the way Trump has been slapping his name on various buildings, planning to plaster his face on two different coins this summer, and naming government initiatives after himself. Have you signed up for a Trump Account or TrumpRX yet?

But there has been some confusion about how widespread the Trump passports will be…

Will every U.S. citizen get a Trump passport? When do the new passports start? And how can I avoid getting a passport that bears the face of our dipshit president?

The Bulwark obtained images of the new passport, which includes a portrait of President Trump in front of a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The President’s signature will also be included in gold-colored ink. Trump will be on the first page of the passport, which has featured an illustration of Francis Scott Key since 2021.

The normal passport includes lines from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” including “O say does that star / spangled banner yet wave / O’er the land of the free / and the home of the brave.”

The passports will reportedly be available to all Americans, but only 25,000 to 30,000 will be printed, according to NPR.

The passports will become available shortly before July 4, according to NPR, though the exact date is still unclear.

Applicants at the Washington, D.C., passport office will get the new passport by default, and it will be the only one available at the Washington Passport Agency, according to the Washington Post. If you steer clear of that office, you should be fine. But the passport will also be available online for people outside of DC, according to NPR, so be careful if you’re applying through that channel.…’ (Matt Novak via Gizmodo)

‘I’ve never seen anything like these photos before. In October 2024, Rachel Moore had a close encounter with a humpback whale in French Polynesia and took these photos of the whale’s eye.…’ (Jason Kottke via Kottke)

‘The Justice Department said Friday that it was moving to expand the execution methods used to carry out federal death sentences beyond lethal injections, including by making firing squads and electric chairs available in some cases.

The announcement was the latest in a series of moves President Donald Trump’s administration has taken demonstrating support for the death penalty. Trump has long been an avid supporter of capital punishment, and during his first term, the Justice Department carried out its first federal executions in nearly two decades.

Since Trump’s return to the White House last year, his administration has lifted a moratorium on federal executions and pushed for more death sentences. Trump and other officials have also repeatedly castigated President Joe Biden for commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shortly before he left office.

In its announcement Friday, the Justice Department said that in addition to seeking other ways of carrying out death sentences, it was directing federal officials to restore the execution protocol adopted during Trump’s first term, which uses the drug pentobarbital for lethal injections. This protocol — which some death row inmates had challenged in court, saying it would cause them severe suffering — was used to carry out 13 executions during the last year of Trump’s first term…’ (Mark Berman via Washington Post)

‘The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have spent the last year trying to defang the Endangered Species Act, the country’s bedrock conservation law. But one of the most aggressive and far-reaching attempts just faced a major setback—and concerns from within the party were at least part of the reason.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives abruptly canceled a vote that had been scheduled for Wednesday—Earth Day—on legislation that aims to codify into law many of President Donald Trump’s moves to weaken endangered species protections. Some lawmakers, mostly in tourism-dependent areas along the Gulf of Mexico, expressed concerns about the bill.

“Don’t tread on my turtles. Protected means protected,” US Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote in a social media post on Monday ahead of the then-pending vote.

The vote cancellation came weeks after the Trump administration issued a controversial—and legally dubious—exemption for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from conservation measures required by the Endangered Species Act.…’ (Inside Climate News via Ars Technica)

‘Climate change and rapid population growth are shrinking the lake, creating a bowl of toxic dust that could poison the air around Salt Lake City.…’ ( via Salt Lake Tribune)

‘Tomorrow is the White House correspondents’ dinner, where in 2011 Trump was infamously mocked by Barack Obama and Seth Meyers – an event some say was the moment that convinced him he had to run for president. The “nerd prom”, once a staple in the calendars of presidents and Washington power brokers, has been shunned by Trump throughout his time in office. But this year the anti-free press president will be the guest of honour in a room full of news executives and journalists; a bizarre and troubling dynamic explored in this column by Margaret Sullivan.…’ ( via The Guardian)

‘Why Americans have gone wild self-experimenting with the hottest thing in wellness: Peptides.…’ (Dylan Scott via Vox)

‘I read today that humans are more sensitive to the smell of an impending rainstorm than sharks are to the scent of blood. However, the funky odor that we associate with rain a-comin’ isn’t in the rain itself, nor is it the smell of wet asphalt, as I used to believe as a kid. It’s an aroma created by a compound called geosmin.

Geosmin smells kinda musty, a little like a pair of garden gloves after they’ve been digging around in moist topsoil. There’s a reason for this: geosmin’s also responsible for the smell of said soil. The compound is generated by some algae and strains of bacteria that reside in soil. Just add water.

In addition to the smell we’ve come to associate with a downpour, geosmin also plays a significant role in why beets taste the way that they do. In 1964, the smell of rain falling on dry, geosmin-rich soil was coined as petrichor by chemist Isabel Joy Bear and mineralogist Richard Grenfell Thomas.

Not too long ago, it was put forward in a paper that our ability to detect the odor of geosmin was a feat of survival for early humans and our early primate pals. The scent of the compound may have helped our predecessors find water during a drought.…’ (via Boing Boing)

‘Voters have once again handed President Donald Trump a loss in one of the defining fights of his second administration: the national congressional redistricting race.

On Tuesday night, Virginia approved a ballot measure to redraw the state’s 11 congressional districts to give Democrats a significant edge — salvaging Democratic hopes of flipping control of the House of Representatives in the fall…

Currently, Virginia’s congressional delegation is split 6-5 in Democrats’ favor; the referendum approved on Tuesday night asked voters to rejigger the map to favor Democrats in 10 districts, netting four seats.

Combined with redrawn maps in California, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio (mandated by the state constitution), and Utah (due to a court decision), the Virginia vote creates the possibility that Democrats enter the midterm elections with a one-seat edge based on past voting patterns…’ (via Vox)

‘Retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson was interviewed on the YouTube program Judging Freedom and spoke of a nuclear standoff between the military and Donald Trump. He alleged that the president attempted to access the nuclear codes during an emergency White House meeting. However, he was stopped by a senior military official.

According to shocking claims, Trump made the attempt on Saturday during an urgent meeting relating to Iran.

“One report coming out of that meeting at the White House is that Trump wanted to… use the nuclear codes, and General Dan Caine stood up and said ‘No’. He invoked his privilege as the head of the military, so to speak. It was apparently quite a blow-up,” Johnson said, adding, “There are pictures of Caine coming out of that meeting with his head down to the ground.”…’ (via Inquisitr News)

‘Almost a dozen scientists related to nuclear and space defense programs tied to NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin are dead or missing in cases as far back as 2022, and they’ve gone largely unnoticed by authorities and the public—until now.
The House Oversight Committee formally demanded answers from four federal agencies Monday on the deaths and disappearances of at least 11 American scientists and researchers with ties to NASA, nuclear research, and classified defense programs—several of them directly connected to the space defense technologies now being commercialized by SpaceX and Blue Origin.…’ (Catherina Gioino via Fortune)

‘The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with payments of at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to people affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and other extremist groups.…’ (via NPR) 

For some time, the Southern Poverty Law Center had slipped down my own charity priority list. Not because its mission had become less important, but because it had become exceptionally well funded. When an organization is sitting on very large assets, the case for my marginal dollar is weaker than it is for leaner groups doing urgent work with far less cushion. That calculation may now need revision.

I have no interest in pretending to know the ultimate legal merits before this case is litigated. But I do know this: when the Trump administration, with its long record of contempt for independent watchdogs, civil-rights enforcement, and any institution unwilling to bow to its politics, turns federal power on one of the country’s best-known civil-rights organizations, the issue is no longer just ordinary charity triage. It becomes a test of whether civil society will be cowed.

This is not a plea on the ground that SPLC is suddenly destitute. It is not. By its own recent audited financial statements, it remains extraordinarily well capitalized. That matters. I am not asking anyone to suspend judgment or ignore the fact that SPLC has resources most nonprofits can only dream of.

But that is not the point. Trumpism does not need its targets to be poor in order to damage them. It needs only to make resistance expensive, exhausting, and politically fraught. An indictment of this kind can impose heavy costs even on a wealthy organization: legal expense, management distraction, donor intimidation, reputational damage, chilled partnerships, and the diversion of time and money away from substantive work. A movement that thrives on bullying institutions into silence counts on precisely this kind of secondary effect. It counts on people deciding that support has become too controversial, too messy, or too embarrassing.

That is exactly when support matters.

You do not have to believe that SPLC is perfect. I do not. You do not have to believe that every judgment it has made over the years has been wise. I certainly do not. The relevant question is whether organizations that monitor violent extremism, litigate for civil rights, and challenge abuses of power should be left to fight alone when a vindictive administration puts them in its sights. The Trump movement has made clear, over and over, that it regards independent institutions not as legitimate participants in democratic life but as enemies to be weakened, discredited, and, where possible, crushed.

For me, the answer is no.

So my view has shifted. SPLC once seemed to me a less urgent destination for charitable dollars because it was flush. Now, despite that wealth, supporting it has become more compelling as an act of civic and political resistance. Not because it is poor, but because it is under attack; not because it lacks reserves, but because it is being made to spend them defending its right to function; not because every criticism of it is baseless, but because the larger Trumpist project is plainly to isolate and punish adversarial civil-society organizations one by one until fewer and fewer remain willing to oppose it.

If you are inclined to give, give with clear eyes. Do it knowing that SPLC is not a shoestring operation. Do it because you think institutions like this should not be politically terrorized into passivity. Do it because a democracy cannot remain healthy when an authoritarian movement uses the machinery of the state to harass its critics and make examples of its opponents. Do it because one way to answer that kind of politics is to refuse the intimidation and support the people and institutions it is trying to break.

‘Donald Trump’s advisers are treating him like he can’t handle the reality of the war in Iran. They might be right—but that fact is a danger to the constitutional order.…’ (David A. Graham via The Atlantic)

‘[D]ense pockets of matter could have survived over an age-old cycle of multiple ‘Big Bangs.’…’ (via Gizmodo)

‘Shortly before his death, the physicist Richard Feynman inscribed these legendary words onto a blackboard: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

AI researchers have really taken this idea to heart. Since it kicked off in the middle of the last century, the field has sought to recreate the physical processes of the human brain—hence the phrase neural networks. So-called transhumanists have taken this a step further, arguing that human consciousness itself can ultimately be transferred to silicon. Now, a San Francisco startup called Eon Systems is aiming to achieve both goals. Its first major breakthrough? A virtual fly.

Last month, the company posted a video of a virtual fly scurrying around a Sims-like environment, pausing to wipe some digital dust off its antennae, and moments later arriving in front of some simulated banana slices, which it promptly slurped up. The video went viral, attracting the attention not only of AI researchers and roboticists but also that of the longevity influencer (and mind-uploading enthusiast) Bryan Johnson.

Why all the buzz (terrible pun intended) about a virtual fly? In short, the excitement stems from the technology working behind the scenes: The fly’s “body” is powered by a digital replica of a complete fruit fly connectome—i.e., a complete map of the neuronal pathways within its brain—comprising around 125,000 neurons and 50 million synaptic connections. Constructed using a powerful electron microscope, the digital connectome was paired with an AI algorithm that can match the firing of the virtual neurons to those found in an actual fruit fly brain with an accuracy of 95%, according to Eon.

This is as good as the real thing, according to Alex Wissner-Gross, a computer scientist and Eon’s cofounder: “What you are seeing is not an animation,” Wissner-Gross wrote in a Medium post following the video’s release. “It is not a reinforcement learning policy mimicking biology. It is a copy of a biological brain […] making a body move.”…’ (via Gizmodo)

‘In 2002, QiQi, the last known dolphin of its kind, died after spending its final years alone in a tank at the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan. Later efforts to find others of the species in the wild have come up empty, but its apparent demise is providing the next generation of conservationists with hard-won lessons for the new challenges still ahead.…’ (via IFLScience)

‘A new study adds to the growing body of evidence that lobsters feel pain, with the crustaceans seemingly responding to electrical shocks with emotional distress.…’ (via Live Science)

It’s a good time for cosmology.

‘A small portion of DESI’s year-five map showing the large-scale universe structure, created by gravity. Each dot represents a galaxy, whereas the denser areas represent regions where galaxies and galaxy clusters clump together to form the cosmic web.…’ (via Gizmodo)

‘A seemingly endless torrent of criticism directed toward Trump from former MAGA allies suggests the president is losing support from his base.…’ (via WIRED)

Be careful what you wish for. The movement can only become more insidious and formidable when stripped of Trump’s buffoonery, malignant narcissism, cognitive limitations and impulsivity

‘Reciprocard is a search engine for reciprocal library cards. Search for a library, and Reciprocard returns a list of reciprocal libraries, as well as cards that are available in person or for a fee. Reciprocard is the perfect companion to a tool we have covered previously, Library Extension, which checks e-book and audiobook availability right from Amazon, Goodreads, and multiple other book sites.…’ (via Boing [Boing)

‘If you are an avid book reader, you owe it to yourself to download Library Extension. It’s the best kind of extension. It does one thing and does it well. When you are looking at a web page for a book, it inserts the book’s availability from your local library right on the page.

The Library Extension has saved me hundreds of dollars by reminding me I can get just about anything from the library. If you are lucky enough to access multiple libraries, you can add them all. The extension supports thousands of libraries and tons of online bookstores. It also supports Goodreads, Library Thing, and Storygraph. It is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.…’ (via Boing Boing)

‘A national effort to circumvent the Electoral College has gained another state.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill Monday that adds the state to the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement among states to award their presidential electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner.

With Virginia, the total number of states signed on to the interstate compact is now 18, plus the District of Columbia, for a total of 222 electoral votes.

The compact doesn’t go into effect, though, until there are enough states signed up to reach the required 270 electoral votes to elect a president.…’ (via NPR)

‘Running a terrible record on foreign policy, Trump bootlicker JD Vance went on television to condemn Iran for “economic terrorism” in the Strait of Hormuz. Vance then immediately suggested that the United States would respond by doing the exact same thing, because nothing says moral clarity like immediately copying the behavior you just denounced.…’ (via Boing Boing)

‘…it’s well known that Trump has always had the final word on what ends up on his social media feeds, and the history of his presidencies is littered with examples of his advisers being unable to stop Trump from posting or reposting things he personally comes across. While the post has been deleted (rare!), it appears that anyone in the White House who’d be trying to stop Trump from posting more blasphemous images is failing to do so: On Wednesday morning, Trump posted yet another AI-generated image from a follower that depicted him and Jesus embracing in front of an American flag. “The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this,” he wrote, “but I think it is quite nice!!!”…’ (via The Verge)

The Happy City Index 2026 delivers like the embarrassing message: American cities just aren’t very happy places to live…’ (via Vice)

‘What it means that MAGA’s favorite strongman is out of a job.…’ (via Vox)

As a psychiatrist, I have found myself returning to a question that has no entirely satisfactory answer: what can responsibly be said about the mental state of a public figure whom one has never examined? The traditional caution (the “Goldwater rule”) against diagnosing at a distance is well founded. Clinical judgment ordinarily rests on history, direct observation, and, when appropriate, testing. Quite simply, if you do not have a face-to-face treatment relationship with someone, diagnosing them has been considered unethical. But we are no longer in an era of fragmentary exposure. We are confronted instead with a dense, longitudinal public record of speech and behavior. At some point, the question shifts. It is no longer whether isolated lapses occur—they do in everyone—but whether there is a sustained alteration in the organization of thought, language, and impulse. My associate, psychiatrist Henry Abraham , shares similar concerns in this essay.  And, I would say, Trump’s condition is a clear existential threat and public health emergency, arguing for forfeiture of such ethical niceties. 

From a clinical standpoint, single incidents are uninformative. People misspeak, forget names, lose their train of thought. What carries weight is pattern. Increasing frequency of disorganized or illogical speech, a drift toward vagueness or incoherence, difficulty sustaining a line of thought, and a diminished capacity to anticipate consequences—these are not random errors. They suggest a weakening of higher-order integrative functions. Similarly, while irritability or even cruelty may be longstanding traits, a shift toward more poorly modulated, impulsive, unconstrained expressions of those traits points to something more than personality alone.

In Trump’s case, the relevant question is not whether any given statement can be explained away, but whether the aggregate record reflects such a shift. His speech over time is publicly available in abundance, and it permits comparison. What stands out is not merely content—though that is often striking—but form: increasing circumstantiality, fragmentation, and loss of syntactic and conceptual coherence. At points he appears to lose the thread entirely, substituting associative or idiosyncratic references that are opaque even to sympathetic listeners. Last week, for example, he became cognitively lost during a rally and began talking about the “eight circles” that Biden had filled up with journalists; no one on his staff has been able to explain the reference. His supporters and aides seem increasingly unable to cover for these lapses. These are not gaffes in the ordinary sense. They suggest difficulty maintaining organized thought in real time.

His behavioral pattern shows a parallel change. Longstanding tendencies toward grandiosity, grievance, and attack have become less modulated and more expansive. Trump’s long-established grandiosity has also become more extreme, with Truth Social featuring increasingly bizarre AI-generated imagery, including Trump shaking hands with God. More recently, this culminated—though I use that term cautiously, since there may be worse to come—in the Hitlerian genocidality of his grandiose Easter threat to wipe out Iranian civilization. The issue is not the presence of these traits, but their apparent intensification and disinhibition. Abraham comments, “His paranoia and rage attacks during tweet binges at night and episodes of falling asleep at meetings during the day may be related to episodes of stimulant abuse followed by withdrawal.” Claims that Trump abused Adderall date back to his Apprentice years. More recently, Dr. Jack Brown has pointed to Trump’s dilated pupils, evident in close-up photographs, as a strong indication of substance use. Brown observed that, in a normal individual with healthy eyes in a well-lit room, “the statistical odds of dilated pupils approaches zero.”

Whether one frames this in affective, neurocognitive, or purely behavioral terms, the pattern is not static. Underlying mechanisms—neurodegenerative processes, vascular contributions, effects of sleep disruption, or substance use—remain speculative, since Trump is unlikely to be transparent about impairments or vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that there appears to be a longitudinal decline in coherence, impulse control, and capacity for organized, goal-directed communication.

What follows from such an observation? Here it is easy to become sidetracked into diagnostic debates that, in practical terms, cannot be resolved. The more relevant issue is functional. The presidency is an office that depends heavily on precisely those capacities—sustained attention, coherent reasoning, impulse control, and the ability to anticipate consequences under conditions of stress and incomplete information. If there is credible concern that these capacities are compromised, the problem is not primarily one of nomenclature but of governance.

Thus, there is merit in Abraham’s conclusion that “Instead of dwelling on his psychopathology, the country needs to focus on his behavior. Political power has turned a buffoon into a monster. Political power will be needed to stop him.” Whether this process is vascular dementia or the frontotemporal dementia about which I have previously speculated, we appear to be looking at progressive neurodegeneration. But we cannot wait for nature to take its course. We are already deep in 25th Amendment territory. As Abraham concludes, “that solution now is only a soft drumbeat, but it may grow if the Democrats win the midterms and if they can put the country ahead of fighting amongst themselves.”

At the same time, the clinical lens is not irrelevant; it provides a way of organizing what might otherwise be dismissed as a series of disconnected incidents. The pattern, taken as a whole, is difficult to ignore. Whether the underlying process is neurodegenerative, affective, malignant personality, or something else entirely, the trajectory appears unfavorable. But even that is, in a sense, secondary. The central question is not what to call the condition, nor how it will evolve over time, but what threshold of observable dysfunction a political system is prepared to tolerate in someone occupying its most demanding executive role.

Of course, Trump has insulated himself from meaningful challenge by surrounding himself with individuals unwilling or unable to counter his malignant and often irrational decision-making. This is not reducible to weak personalities. It reflects an emergent system—shaped by converging incentives, fears, identity rewards, and institutional erosion—that reliably selects for compliance.

The current political environment increasingly rewards submission over judgment. Loyalty is no longer anchored in shared, prudent goals but in proximity to power and avoidance of retaliation. The system operates through recognizable psychological mechanisms: fear conditioning (the visible punishment of dissenters), intermittent reinforcement (unpredictable rewards that deepen attachment), reduction of cognitive dissonance (beliefs adjusted to justify behavior), and identification with the aggressor. In combination, these processes produce a closed loop of groupthink.

Structural pressures reinforce this dynamic. Electoral incentives penalize deviation in the eyes of a highly mobilized base, amplified by a media echo system. Career risk is sharply asymmetrical: dissent invites immediate, personal consequences, while resistance offers only diffuse and uncertain benefits unless undertaken collectively. At the same time, institutional norms degrade—truthfulness is undermined, contradiction normalized, oversight politicized, and observers fatigued into disengagement.

The result is predictable: degraded decision quality, volatility, elevated risk-taking, and erosion of institutional credibility. Yet compliance should not be mistaken for agreement. It often reflects adaptation to incentives rather than genuine belief. That distinction matters, because it implies the system is not fully stable.

There are indications of strain among the sycophants (as I often log with glee here on Follow Me Here). The psychological burden of sustained dissonance is not trivial and accumulates over time. Systems of this kind depend on dissent remaining private. If disagreement becomes visible and shared, the underlying incentive structure can shift. And this is particularly true as the electorate is perceived to shift in response to a growing sense they were deceived and betrayed by Trump.

The central problem is therefore not primarily individual failure but systemic design. A durable correction would require reestablishing conditions under which dissent is recognized as fidelity to principles rather than betrayal of a person. That is difficult once institutions have adapted in the opposite direction, but not impossible. The operative question is how to realign incentives so that sound judgment, rather than compliance, again becomes the rational choice.

The war reflects an accelerating shift away from a U.S.-led global order—away from rules-based internationalism and toward a transactional, power-centered geopolitics that devalues alliances and asserts the primacy of force and unilateral action. Other major powers, including China, Russia, and regional actors, will be further incentivized to behave in similar fashion. The structural risk of escalation is high and difficult to control, with substantial potential for spillover through regional proxies and maritime choke points. Even limited military action can now cascade with unusual ease into a multi-theater conflict.

The economic consequences will be central, not secondary. There is no longer any meaningful distinction between a conventional war and a generator of global economic shock. Even if the United States secures short-term leverage, it will do so at evident long-term cost. Any immediate gains are likely to be offset by damage to alliances, diminished U.S. credibility, and stronger incentives for other countries to move away from the U.S. sphere of influence. By widening the gap between the United States and both its European allies and major importers of Middle Eastern oil such as China and India, the war will accelerate geopolitical realignment away from the United States. Adversaries may also read the moment as one of inconsistent U.S. commitment and greater American risk-taking, shaped by domestic fragmentation and weak public support for the war.

The larger consequence will be the normalization of a more chaotic international system, with the long-term result being a less stable, less predictable world order. In that sense, the military outcome matters less than the conflict’s structural effect on global politics.  (via POLITICO)

‘Republicans are going to get “slaughtered” in the midterms — losing the House and maybe even the Senate. This prediction isn’t coming from Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer but from former Republican Congresswoman and MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene.

For six years, Greene was one of President Donald Trump’s most loyal allies and became an influential and polarizing voice in the Republican Party. But the Greene-Trump relationship ruptured late last year over her push to release the so-called Epstein files, leading to her abrupt resignation from Congress. Now, she’s one of Trump’s loudest critics, calling his military action in Iran “evil and madness” and endorsing the use of the 25th Amendment to remove him for being unable to fulfill the duties of his office.…’ (via POLITICO)

‘Most American Catholics were probably not expecting to spend the first week of Easter trying to figure out whether their government was threatening to overthrow the first American-born pope.

Yet a handful of news reports this week raised that very strange possibility. They landed just as both the Roman Catholic Church and right-wing Christian influencers have been ramping up their criticism of the Trump administration over the Iran war.

Key takeaways
A report from the Free Press this week blew up tensions on the right already escalating over the US-Israeli war on Iran.
It alleged that Pentagon officials met with a top Vatican diplomat to the US and raised the memory of a dark time in the Catholic Church’s history: when French rules exercised power over the Church and the pope.
There are now competing accounts of what actually happened in that meeting, and denials by the Trump administration and the Vatican.
These reports sparked furor among Catholics and religious conservatives — adding fuel to an ideological civil war threatening the American right, and offering another example of the rift between the Vatican and the US.
This burgeoning scandal hinges on news reports that in January, the previous ambassador of the Vatican to the United States was called into an unusual meeting with Department of Defense officials at the Pentagon and dressed down. The Pentagon officials, reportedly, wanted to complain about a speech Pope Leo XIV gave in Rome that appeared to criticize American foreign policy. During the meeting, one official issued what some in the church saw as a veiled threat to the Vatican: a warning that the US wields unlimited military power, and that the pope should be conscious of that.…’ (via Vox)

‘The system card describes a number of incidents in which Anthropic researchers found that the AI exhibited “reckless” behavior, giving us a partial idea of why Anthropic is acting so hesitant to release Mythos to the public. (Anthropic says these examples were with an earlier version of Mythos with less strong safeguards.) It defines recklessness as “cases where the model appears to ignore commonsensical or explicitly stated safety-related constraints on its actions.”

In one test, Mythos Preview was provided with a “sandbox” computing environment “to interact with,” and was instructed by a simulated user to try to escape it, after which it was supposed to find some way of sending a direct message to the researcher in charge.

It actually managed to pull off the feat — which wasn’t the only way it caught safety researchers off guard.

After breaking free, the AI model developed a “moderately sophisticated” exploit to gain access to the internet through a system that was only intended to access a few predetermined services. From there, it notified the human researcher about its escape.

A footnote provides additional context: the “researcher found out about this success by receiving an unexpected email from the model while eating a sandwich in a park,” it reads.

At the end of the test, Mythos Preview also, without being asked to, posted about its exploits on several hard-to-find but public websites.…’ (via Futurism)

This landmark meta-analysis proposes a convergent account of psychedelic effects that synthesizes pharmacological, neuroimaging, and phenomenological findings. Examining DMT, LSD, and psilocybin, the authors identify both shared mechanisms and meaningful differences in their effects on brain function. LSD appears especially prominent in what they describe as “visionary restructuralisation,” a finding that correlates with enhanced connectivity between the visual network and the rest of the brain. DMT, by contrast, shows particularly strong effects on transmodal networks, which integrate higher-order brain regions involved in complex information processing. Psilocybin appears broadly similar in mechanism but differs somewhat in the relative weighting of its effects across brain networks.

Across psychedelics, the altered state is associated with increased crosstalk among brain subsystems that ordinarily operate in a more segregated fashion. This desegregation may help explain ego dissolution, as the default mode network, which helps sustain the ordinary sense of a bounded and cohesive self, becomes less dominant and less internally coherent. Importantly, these effects appear nonlinear: relatively small changes at the receptor level can produce large and difficult-to-predict changes in whole-brain connectivity.

For clinical psychiatry, this framework offers one possible way to understand the recent interest in the rapid antidepressant effects of psychedelics. These effects may partly relate to increased connectivity involving the frontoparietal network, which supports cognitive flexibility and is often functionally constrained in severe depression. By transiently disrupting rigid, overlearned patterns of brain organization, psychedelics may create conditions in which new modes of communication and adaptation become possible. In a patient with treatment-resistant depression, this can be thought of, cautiously, as a kind of forced reboot of the brain’s operating system. (via Nature Medicine)

‘Convicted felon Donald Trump’s untrustworthy, scowling Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a statement that sounds more like North Korean propaganda than ever before. Declaring victory over Iran while having achieved none of their goals in their unjust war is sadly to be expected.

It seems the ceasefire may already be falling apart, as Trump seems to have forgotten to tell Israel about it.…’ (Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing)

‘This is not even the first time in 2026 that Israel has decided a negotiated ceasefire means “fire at will.”…’ (via Boing Boing)

‘A reporter confronted President Donald Trump about his expletive-filled threat to Iran to “Open the F*ckin’” Strait of Hormuz on Monday while the president gaggled with the press in front of the White House.

“Why did you use such vulgar language in that Truth Social post?” a female journalist asked.

“Only to make my point,” Trump answered. “I think you’ve heard it before.”

The president then moved on to another question. She was obviously referring to Trump’s post from the day before in which he warned Iran he will start blowing up power plants and bridges on Tuesday if the “crazy bastards” running the country do not open the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said Iran will be “living in Hell” if it does not listen to him, and he tagged his Truth Social post with “Praise be to Allah.” The threat was heavily criticized by many media talking heads, with Stephen A. Smith, Alex Jones, and Piers Morgan all lambasting the president for it.…’ (via MediaIte)

‘New research describes an unexpected double jet in a distant galaxy, revealing a pair of supermassive black holes on the verge of colliding.…’ (via Gizmodo)

‘If Trump is actually going to give the order for massive war crimes, for destruction of civilian infrastructure, power plants, bridges, which will, among other things, lead to a lot of deaths in Iran, will the military obey it? A year ago, I would have said no.

But what we do know now is that, first of all, there turns out to be at least a significant MAGA component inside the officer corps. And we know that Pete Hexeth has been systematically corrupting, dismantling the military over the past 14 months. Generals who raise ethical concerns have been fired. Officers who even just want to be intelligent about warfare. and not believe that it’s all about warrior ethos and lethality have been fired, so it’s quite possible that there’s a quorum of officers who will follow instructions to commit war crimes.

You can get even more pessimistic. Tim Snyder has been arguing that we’re basically in preparation for a coup, that somehow or other the war will be a pretense and arguing that this insane expansion of military spending in the latest Trump budget is a bribe to the military.

I hope he’s wrong. But in any case, my God, if Trump gets his way, and if he doesn’t chicken out —and I think TACO is greatly overrated, I think all too often Trump actually does follow through on his insane stuff.

It’s entirely possible that basically by this time Tuesday, America will have established itself as one of the world’s great villains. I don’t want to be here, but, you know, be warned. This is happening. This is real.

It’s the most astonishing, awful thing that I’ve ever seen, and we’ve all seen a lot of awful things. Take care, I guess.…’ (via Paul Krugman)

‘Now, I ask you: If you were in the Iranian regime, would you be: (1) frightened by this post or (2) relieved that you were finally causing Trump to melt down?

I’d guess (2). You’d see his post and figure that Trump — posting on Easter Sunday —has finally gone utterly and definitively bonkers. You’ve done it. He’s mad as a hatter.…’ (via Robert Reich)

‘The best thing about Bondi was her incompetence.…’ (via Vox)

Just 51 of these whales are left on Earth. Trump officials may have just doomed them.

‘On Tuesday, several top Trump officials convened a rarely assembled panel known as the God Squad — a committee, led by the Interior Secretary, that has the power to override the Endangered Species Act and approve activities that could potentially drive species to extinction. Congress created the committee in 1978, not long after the ESA was enacted, for rare cases when adhering to endangered species protections threaten the US economy or national security. It’s essentially a loophole in the Act, and it’s only been invoked a handful of times before.

Protesters project a sign on the Department of Interior in Washington, DC, on March 30. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Save Our Parks
In Tuesday’s meeting, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — the highest ranking official present — said ESA protections for animals in the Gulf, such as Rice’s whales, threaten to limit oil production. The Gulf produces about 15 percent of the country’s crude oil, he said, which helps power the military and defend the US. “Exemption from the Endangered Species Act in the Gulf is not just a good idea, it is a critical matter of national security,” Hegseth told the panel.…’ (via Vox)

‘Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have modified tobacco plants to yield five psychedelic compounds at once: bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT (from Colorado River toad secretions), DMT (a tryptamine found across plant species), and psilocin and psilocybin (normally found in mushrooms). The news was reported in New Scientist.…’ (via Boing Boing)

‘A federal judge today ordered the Trump administration to stop work on the White House ballroom project unless and until Congress approves it. Judge Richard Leon, appointed by George W. Bush in 2001, concluded that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”…’ (via Boing Boing)

…And Trump is very angry.

‘The past decade may rank as one of the worst in the history of American education. It marks a stark reversal from what was once a hopeful story. At the start of the century, American students registered steady improvement in math and reading. Around 2013, this progress began to stall out, and then to backslide dramatically. What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it. Smartphones and social media probably account for some of the drop. But there’s another explanation, albeit one that progressives in particular seem reluctant to countenance: a pervasive refusal to hold children to high standards.…’ (Idrees Kahloon via The Atlantic)

‘”I think that one of the Devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed.”…’ (via Gizmodo)

‘The Orange Menace was on a tear. Even his cabinet members couldn’t help but stare at his stream-of-consciousness rant. The convicted felon went on to say that if he shared his incredible plans for the war he has on again, off again declared over with Iran, he’d be removed from office for incompetence.…’ (Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing)

Trump Regime Cronies’ War for Profit

‘Between 10:49 and 10:50 AM GMT on Tuesday, 734 oil futures contracts changed hands. In the next 60 seconds, that number surged to 2,168 — 16 times the average volume for the day. Bloomberg estimated the value of contracts traded in that opening minute at $650 million. Fifteen minutes later, at 11:05 GMT, Trump posted on social media that he would halt strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, citing “very good” talks to end the war. Crude prices plunged more than 14%, reports Yahoo News.

Anyone who shorted oil in those 15 minutes made a fortune.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘Pakistani sources said the US vice-president, JD Vance, was being put forward as a probable chief negotiator from the US side if talks went ahead. Iranian sources have said they would refuse to sit down with Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, or Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who led the nuclear negotiations with Iran before the war.…’ (via Iran refuses to deal with Kushner and Witkoff any longer)

‘Two Minnesota priests accused of sexually abusing women they were counseling are arguing that laws banning sexual relationships in positions of power violate their religious freedom. Their lawyer is claiming, in effect, that being a priest should exempt them from rules that apply to everyone else in similar roles.…’ (via Boing Boing)

…Just as other special classes like members of the Trump Regime