Would You Like Some Brain Damage With Your Stove?

A new study has shown that increased levels of wood burning have resulted in increased lead emissions.

Wood heating is reintroducing lead into the air of local communities and homes, a systematic investigation by academics has found.

Overwhelming evidence of lead’s neurotoxicity meant the metal was banned as an additive in petrol more than 25 years ago. The research by academics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst began by analysing samples of particle pollution from five suburban and rural towns in the north-east US. They looked for tiny particles of potassium that are given off when wood is burned and also particles containing lead.

Samples from seven winters revealed associations between potassium and lead. When there were more wood burning particles in a daily sample, there was more lead in the air, with clear straight-line relationships in four of the five towns.

Prof Richard Peltier, the senior author of the research, said: “For the most part, wood burning produces significant amounts of particle air pollution, and a small but measurable fraction of this is a powerful neurotoxicant.”

The association with potassium means that the issue is NOT people burning painted lumber, it is coming from the wood itself.

Do Not F%$# With Corvidae

In case you are wondering, this is not a crow taking a ride on a Bald Eagle, it is a crow going Medieval on a Bald Eagle that got too close to its nest.

………

Now comes another strange incident out of Seabeck, Washington, where California-based photographer Phoo Chan captured a sequence of photos showing a crow alight on the back of an eagle in midair.

According to a biologist who specializes in crow behavior, the bird was likely in the middle of a territorial attack when it landed briefly on the eagle's back, National Geographic reports. Even the presence of a larger bird provokes a defensive reaction. In this case, the crow got closer than smaller birds typically do and settled in for the ride. 

That is unbelievably badass. 

Elections Matter

Zorhan Mamdani has recovered more than $9 million from Amazon for violating environmental regulations.

Before this, Amazon ignored the fines for leaving their trucks idling.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, New York City Department of Finance (DOF) Commissioner Richard Lee, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia today announced that the City has successfully recovered more than $9 million from Amazon after the company’s delivery vehicles accrued fines due to idling violations.

“Amazon is worth $2 trillion. Yet, it did not deign to pay the millions of dollars it racked up in unpaid fines as its’ trucks illegally polluted our air and forced New Yorkers to breathe in their exhaust. We are going to collect every dollar they owe the people of this city,” said Mayor Mamdani. “These laws exist for a reason: cleaner air, healthier communities, and a city where corporations are held to the same standard as everyone else. Today we are making clear that no company – no matter how large or powerful – is above the law.”

“As part of the Mayor’s directive to ensure fairness, collaboration, and accountability in our agency’s service to New Yorkers, the Department of Finance is committed to collecting debts owed to the City and supporting enforcement efforts that protect New Yorkers’ quality of life,” said DOF Commissioner Richard Lee. “The successful collection effort led by DOF Deputy Commissioner Annette Hill and her team, demonstrates the effectiveness of this administration working collaboratively with companies to ensure compliance, holding entities accountable for meeting their financial obligations to the City, and assisting companies like Amazon to prevent accumulating debt.”

“I applaud Mayor Mamdani and the Department of Finance for securing more than $9 million in illegal idling fines from Amazon, which has long been among the top worst idling offenders in the city,” said DEP Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia. “Through the Citizens Air Complaint Program, New Yorkers can report idling with a video upload — helping us cut air pollution and improve quality of life.”

Earlier this year, at Mayor Mamdani’s direction, DOF’s Collections Unit launched a targeted effort to address the huge number of unpaid idling summonses connected to vehicles operating within Amazon’s delivery network. Since then, the Collections Unit has worked collaboratively with Amazon.com, Inc. and its contracted transportation vendors to recover the outstanding debt.

The enforcement effort focused on idling violations associated with vehicles operating through Amazon Logistics, which relies on a network of third-party transportation contractors. As a result of these efforts, DOF collected $6.88 million in ECB judgment violations and an additional $2.15 million in pre-judgment ECB violations.

New York City’s anti-idling laws are designed to reduce harmful air pollution, improve public health and combat climate change. Under City law, most vehicles may not idle for longer than three minutes while parked, standing, or stopped.

New Yorkers can report idling vehicles anonymously through 311, by filing a complaint online, or by participating in DEP’s Citizens Air Complaint Program. The Citizens Air Complaint Program has seen a 1,700 percent increase in submissions since it launched in 2009. So far in 2026, it has received 62,680 complaints — putting the program on track for its biggest year yet. Idling violations may also be issued directly by DEP inspectors. For more information about New York City’s idling laws and enforcement is available through NYC Department of Environmental Protection.

This may not be a big thing, but it is a significant thing.

Making rich lawbreakers pay is important. 

OK, There Are Lizard People

I expect him to eat live guinea pigs in private


Something dead there


See the TV Series "V" for Reference So, the Wall Street Journal just put out an exclusive, saying that The Philippines has aggreed to hand over a few thousand acres to the United States as a part of the US "Pax Silica" initiative.

It turs out that the WSJ is wrong.  There is no agreement, perhaps because the deal proposed is more one-sided than the notorious pre-WWII foreign concessions in China.

The deal is proposed/being negotiated by Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg, a "Senior advisor to Alex Karp Palantir."

The details are: 

• The US will take control of 4,000 acres in the Philippines.
• A lease renewable for 99 years and a rent of $0.00
• The area will have diplomatic immunity.
• The area will operate under us "Common Law". (Whatever the f%$# that is.)

It appears that Helberg misled the authors of the story, because Philippine officials have categorically denied that anything resembling this deal has been agreed to.

This is not a surprise. 

Unlike in the US, the memories of colonialism are still very much remembered in Far East societies. (Somewhere between ¼ and 1½ million civilian deaths as a result of US actions during the Philippine Insurrection)

Philippine officials on May 18 pushed back against reports that a planned United States-backed industrial hub on the main island of Luzon would operate under American laws or grant diplomatic immunity to US personnel.

The clarification came during the visit by US Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment Jacob Helberg to New Clark City, where he joined Philippine officials in unveiling a marker for the proposed 1,620ha Pax Silica industrial hub under the Luzon Economic Corridor initiative announced in April.

Mr Joshua Bingcang, president and chief executive of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), said the Philippines had rejected US proposals that would place the project beyond local jurisdiction.

“That’s their request, but we did not agree to that,” Mr Bingcang told the media when asked about a Wall Street Journal report on April 17 claiming the hub would operate under US laws and enjoy diplomatic protections.

“There will be no special arrangement accorded to the US,” he added.

Mr Bingcang said the project would instead fall under the Special Economic Zone Act, which governs investment incentives and operations in Philippine economic zones, as well as BCDA law that oversees the conversion and development of former US military bases into investment and commercial hubs.

I'm not primarily writing about this.  I'm writing about Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg.

Look at him.  He's a f%$#ing lizard person.  There is no humanity behind those eyes.

Not This Sh%$ Again

It looks like Donald Trump is attempting to seize control of Greenland again. (archive.is link)

This time, it looks like Trump is trying to get something like the Platt Amendment, which left Cuba with sovereignty in name only for nearly 40 years.

To quote Howard Chaykin, "Damn, and a rerun too." 

 

You Mess With the Bull, You Get the Horns

2 Years ago, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast laid off about 20% of their staff.

Now they are begging their employees not to unionize.

Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, has a problem—no, not its cancelled video games. Its workers would like to unionise, and I'm just starting to get the sense that it really doesn't want that to happen. Just a smidge. A tiny inkling.

Late last month, WoTC employees from the Magic: The Gathering Arena team announced their intention to form a union, giving the company until May 1 to recognise it voluntarily. Neither Hasbro nor Wizards of the Coast did so.

The motion to form a union now proceeds to a vote via the National Labor Relations Board, which would allow the union to form whether Hasbro/WoTC like it or not. In order to dissuade the union from forming, Wizards of the Coast has, workers claim, resorted to daily emails and scare tactics.

They have hired union busters as well, Fisher Phillips, and are almost certainly targeting labor organizers among their employees.

As an FYI, it doesn't help that the layoffs were largely indiscriminate, hitting some of WOTC's most successful projects. 

This is F%$#ing Insane

I can understand how people looking for ways to deal with anthropogenic climate change will game out scenarios. 

It makes sense for people to simulate outlandish approaches to this problem.

Still, the suggestion that the Bering Strait be dammed is f%$#ing nuts.

First, notwithstanding their simulations, we do not know what this would actually do.

Second, this would be a decades long project, if just because of the geopolitical and diplomatic implications of such an action.

Third, this would cause the extinction of dozens, if not hundreds of species. 

Abstract

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the present-day climate and could potentially collapse under sufficient freshwater or CO₂ forcing. While the effect of the Bering Strait on AMOC stability has been well studied, it is unknown whether a constructed closure of this Strait can prevent an AMOC collapse under climate change. Here, we show in an Earth system Model of Intermediate Complexity that an artificial closure of the Strait can extend the safe carbon budget of the AMOC, provided that the AMOC is strong enough at the closure time. Specifically, an equilibrium AMOC under a sufficiently low additional freshwater flux has an increased safe carbon budget given a timely closure of the Strait, while for higher freshwater fluxes (and corresponding weaker AMOC), a closure reduces this budget. This indicates that constructing this closure could be a feasible climate intervention strategy to prevent an AMOC collapse.

Also, doing this at the wrong time would accelerate an AMOC collapse.  

You know what might address more quickly and more effectively?  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Stephen Colbert Must Be Ecstatic About His

For those of you who are not aware, comedian Stephen Colbert is a devout Catholic.

Also, it could be argued that he is the biggest Tolkien/Lord of the Rings geek ever. 

I can only imagine the glee he must have felt when Pope Leo XIV released an encyclical on artificial intelligence that quoted Gandalf

………

In sounding this call to both disarm and to build, Leo turns to “twentieth-century Catholic author” JRR Tolkien. Though he can’t quite bring himself to say that he’s quoting Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, that’s exactly what’s happening.

(The encyclical says only that the quote comes from “the words of a protagonist in one of [Tolkien’s] novels.” Though Pope Francis previously spoke of Tolkien’s work, this appears to be the first time that Tolkien has ever been quoted in the highest levels of the church’s official doctrinal publications.)

Gandalf says, in what is very much a theme of the entire Lord of the Rings:

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

The moral and local action envisioned here, along with Tolkien’s suspicion of the dehumanizing effects of technology, clearly appealed to Leo.

 

Quote of the Day

To Call Paxton Ethically Challenged Is to Call Jeffrey Dahmer Suffering from an Eating Disorder

—US Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), on the myriad of unethical actions taken by current Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton over the decades

I am not giving Tillis the benefit of the doubt here.

I think that his outrage is almost entirely about the fact that members of his private club , the US Senate, are being knocked off in primaries.

Still the characterization is both true and evocative. 

I Wish That I Lived in a First World Nation like Mexico

Do you know what Mexico has that we in the USA do not now? 

They are getting universal healthcare.

Lucky bastards.

At her morning press conference on April 7, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the credencialización process, or enrollment, for Mexico’s new universal health care service was set to begin. The goal, she explained, was unambiguous: “By the time we leave office, any Mexican will be able to go to any public health institution and receive care for any condition.”

To be phased in over the next four years, the reforms represent, in her words, “a historic step.” And if successful, indeed they will be. But in a fragmented health landscape where the Holy Grail of genuinely universal coverage has proved elusive, how will Sheinbaum’s ambitious rollout work?

The key to the answer lies in the name itself: it will be a national health service, not a system. Broadly speaking, Mexico’s current public system is divided into four main areas: The Mexican Social Security Institute (or IMSS, for its Spanish acronym) is for salaried, private sector workers; the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers (or ISSSTE) is for their counterparts in the public sector; workers at the state oil company PEMEX have their own system; and the IMSS-Bienestar (Spanish for “well-being”), established by Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) administration, for those who do not qualify for the others, namely contract workers and the 33 million or so laboring in the informal sector. (An effort somewhat hampered by the fact that, in a dynamic roughly equivalent to the Obama-era expansion of Medicaid, a minority of states with right-wing governors have refused to opt in.)

………

Here’s how it will work. In 2026, all citizens will be given their credencial, or health ID card, which will also serve as an official means of identification. The card, which will gradually replace the health booklets currently in use, will be linked to an app containing each individual’s medical records, appointments, and available services. In 2027, portability will begin for an initial set of services: universal emergency care (currently patients are stabilized at the hospital of arrival before being transferred to a hospital in their system); high-risk pregnancies and other obstetric emergencies; heart attacks and strokes; breast cancer; universal vaccination; and basic consultations such as flu, diarrhea, and preventive care.

Patients will not only receive care at any health center but will also have the option of remaining there for the duration of care, eliminating situations where forced transferals lead to truncated treatments. Then, in 2028, portability of care will be extended to chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension; cross-institution specialist consultations and hospitalizations; and the ability to fill prescriptions at any institution.

Great.  Not tell Donald Trump to f%$# off.

Extra credit if you hire Peter Capaldi to tell Donald Trump to f%$# off. 

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Why do we have the f%$#ing Wall Street Journal covering metaphorical war between Diet Coke and Coke Zero drinkers?

Even for the culture desk, this is mindbogglingly stupid. 

For decades, Diet Coke has been a durable pop culture icon, as much a symbol of boardroom swashbuckling as high fashion society. Its buzzy 1980s origins featured endorsements from celebrities including Paula Abdul, Whitney Houston and Demi Moore. More recently, limited-edition Diet Coke cans were released to coincide with “The Devil Wears Prada” sequel.

The soda is also beloved across generations. It has been given the mantle of “fridge cigarette” by a Gen Z cohort who, according to Cosmopolitan, want to “blow off steam without the actual fumes” and is repped by quintessential baby boomers, including Bill Gates in a TikTok he posted of himself re-creating Warren Buffett’s recipe for Dusty Diet Coke. (That’s a bizarro mix of the soda, vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and malted milk powder.)

Even the magic button that summons Diet Cokes to the Oval Office reappeared on the Resolute Desk last January, much to the irritation of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

All of this soft-drink soft power belies an uneasy truth for Diet Coke fanatics. The diet soda sweeping the nation is actually the beverage’s own sibling, Coke Zero Sugar—part of a zero-sugar soda boom that accounted for 52% of growth in soft drink sales last year, according to the market research firm Circana. Sales of Diet Coke, by comparison, have been, well, pretty flat since the soda peaked in popularity in 2006.

As Coke Zero gets bigger, and threatens to dethrone “DC” as the most important diet soda property in the Coca-Cola extended universe, the feud between Diet Coke fans and Coke Zero drinkers is getting pretty fizzy.  

If I actually gave a f%$# about the drinks, I would go Tab on their asses, but what bothers me is the journalistic malpractice. 

Quote of the Day

I have been a professional tech journalist for nearly 15 years, and before today, I cannot think of a single time when a Bing search result was more valuable than the Google equivalent. There really is a first time for everything!

Techcrunch reporter Russell Brandom on the discovery that a Google search on the word, "Disregard," will not return the definition of the word.

If this is not end stage enshittification, I do not know what is.

Earlier this week, Google rolled out a completely new Search experience, foregrounding AI summaries and kicking the traditional “10 blue links” far down the page. But the sheer scale of Google Search means there are lots of edge cases that the company doesn’t seem to have considered.

For instance, this is what you’ll now get if you type the word “disregard” into Google Search.

Bing, in contrast delivers the definition as the first link.

This is real end of the world sh%$. 

I Did Not Think That it Was Possible

I have had no personal or professional encounters with Linus Torvalds, but I am aware of his "Take no crap attitude, which rivals that of the much memed Honey Badger.

When he says that he will, "Start being more hard-nosed," regarding pulls from the Linux kernel, my first reaction was disbelief.

This is NOT a man known for suffering fools gladly. 

Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds has signaled he’ll push back when he receives irrelevant pull requests, after complaining that developers are making badly timed and trivial submissions, sometimes after using AI to review code.

Torvalds foreshadowed changes in his weekly state of the kernel update, which on Sunday announced the release of a fifth release candidate for version 7.1 of the Linux kernel.

“To the surprise of absolutely nobody by now, rc5 is pretty big. Quite a bit bigger than rc5's have traditionally been,” Torvalds wrote, before revealing “I'm not entirely happy about it - most of this is totally trivial stuff to random drivers, which obviously makes it all less scary, but at the same time I'm really not convinced the churn is worth it at rc5 time.”

The Linux kernel development cycle usually sees Torvalds open a two-week window during which contributors submit code they hope will make it into the next release. Seven release candidates (rc1-7) follow, with each supposed to represent a step towards delivering a stable update. Revised code always arrives during that process. But high volumes of new contributions to rc5 add complexity at a time work on the new kernel is usually close to completion.

this boggles the mind.

Bottled Cider Today

About 4½ liters.  A bit sugar and champagne yeast was added to make it sparkling.

It's a bit sour, likely from it sitting on top of the dead yeast for too long. I procrastinated on bottling.

It should improve in the bottle, and perhaps become a bit more sherry like, in the next few months. 

Quote of the Day

This Is the Most Soul-Sucking, Despicable, and Scandalous Transaction Ever Conducted by a Head of State Not Named Borgia

—Charlie Pierce on the newest Trump slush fund.

Mr. Pierce, please report to the white courtesy phone.  You have a call from Leopold II of Belgium.

That being said, I appreciate the sentiment, as well as the wonderfully evocative prose. 

 

The Charges Were Bullsh%$

2 Weeks ago, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed felony conspiracy charges against the "Broadview Six".

It appears that the prosecutors were f%$#ing around, and found out:

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the felony conspiracy count against the remaining defendants in the “Broadview Six” case, further winnowing a politically charged prosecution that is now down to misdemeanor counts of impeding an immigration agent.

“Congratulations, you all are no longer charged with felonies,” U.S. District Judge April Perry told the four defendants in granting a motion from prosecutors to dismiss the lone conspiracy charge in the indictment.

The decision comes days after defense attorneys accused the U.S. attorney’s office of reneging on a promise to dismiss the charge, deciding instead to wait until after trial — which prosecutors said was the “usual” protocol for the office.

Attorney Christopher Parente, who represents Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, took it a step further, suggesting the delay in dismissing the charge was part of a “shell game” to avoid having to turn over unredacted grand jury transcripts to the judge.

Surprise, it was a part of a shell game by the prosecutors.  They were trying to cover up their own misconduct before the grand jury.

What misconduct?  Funny you should ask.

The unraveling of the politically charged “Broadview Six” case against Operation Midway Blitz protesters began earlier this week when a federal judge agreed to look at unredacted grand jury transcripts to “see if there is anything suspicious” about portions that had been mysteriously removed by the U.S. attorney’s office.

………

Before two separate grand juries last year, a federal prosecutor repeatedly stepped over the line, including “vouching” about the strength of the evidence, telling panel members who disagreed with the prosecution’s theory of the case that they could just leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a grand juror outside the proceedings, according to a series of bombshell revelations in court Thursday.

The first grand jury refused to return an indictment, leading to a second panel being convened, the transcript showed. That time, several grand jurors “made comments” and walked out of the proceedings. The testimony of the agent ended abruptly, and they had to start anew the next day to get the indictment.

“Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made,” Perry told the assembled parties, according to the transcript. “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

Perry also said there was a “potential” for “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack of candor to the court,” the transcript showed.

The stunning developments led U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to announce in court that he was dismissing all remaining counts in the case, which had been scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday.

These were the misdemeanor charges that were not dismissed 2 weeks ago. 

I'm thinking that a formal bar complaint is in order here. 

It Was Always a Scam

Given that most of their engagement was AstroTurf, and most of their funding came via the Koch brothers and their ilk. it is no surprise that Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire are imploding.

They are a classic example of, "The Bezzle," which is generally defined as the interval between when someone has been cheated out of money, and when they realize that this is the case.

The conservative media company Daily Wire was once a star of the MAGA digital universe, dominating social media feeds and podcast apps with a blend of “anti-woke” commentary, viral Facebook posts and culture-war stunts.

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the company co-founded by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.

But the company now faces sweeping layoffs and heavy skepticism over its online future, with some critics — including former employees, such as Candace Owens — arguing its relevance to the right has irrevocably collapsed.

Its YouTube channel’s subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the 16 months since the start of 2025, according to data from the analytics firm Social Blade. And in an analysis of 20 conservative news sites, the Daily Wire has consistently ranked among the biggest year-over-year traffic losers since last summer, according to estimates from the market intelligence firm Similarweb that were compiled by the media newsletter TheRighting. In March, the website’s traffic was half of what it was the year before.

Here is hoping that Shapiro ends up washing dishes for a living. 

 

Snark of the day

It's not a specific line, it's the entire video about the complete vacuity of the SpaceX IPO.

Patrick Boyle is both amusing and infuriating here.

Back in the days when we-actually enforced stock fraud laws, Elon would be in jail.

The Cruelty is the Purpose

So now Trump will be requiring green-card applications be made in the applicants country of origin.

This means that they have to fly to that country, make the application, and face the prospect of being denied reentry into the United States at the border.

This will cost more, and do nothing to address illegal immigration, but it will hurt people, so it gives Steven Miller an erection.

The Trump administration Friday announced it would require most foreigners seeking green cards to apply from outside the United States, a shift in long-standing practice that immigration lawyers said could affect hundreds of thousands of people who file applications each year while living in America on temporary visas.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services described the changes in a six-page policy memo as a return to the original intent of federal immigration law. The guidelines instruct foreign visitors to apply for a permanent status through U.S. State Department consulate offices in their home countries “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose,” USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in a statement. “Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”

Certain visa holders can apply to “adjust” their statuses by petitioning for permanent legal residency, also known as a green card. The United States authorizes more than 1 million green cards each year, of which more than half of the applicants are already living in the country, according to federal data. The new guidelines come as President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict legal immigration pathways to the country.

We really need to prosecute all of these rat-f%$#s when the worm turns.

Tulsi Gabbard Takes the Exit Ramp - The Atlantic

Musical Accompaniment We have just learned that Tulsi Gabbard has resigned as the Director of National Intelligence, in a late announcement on a Friday.

She is claiming that she is doing so because her husband has bone cancer, but I do think that there was a bit of a push.

That being said, this is close as, "To spend more time with their family," ever gets to being true in Washington, DC.

It’s a measure of Donald Trump’s low regard for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as its soon-to-be former occupant, that while the commander in chief was making final preparations to invade Venezuela and kidnap its president, Tulsi Gabbard was posting photos of herself from a beach in Hawaii.

Gabbard, who informed Trump of her resignation today, spent 15 months as the director of national intelligence—on paper, at least. By law, the DNI is supposed to serve as the president’s chief intelligence adviser. Gabbard never was, and many of her stances were at odds with administration actions. Trump was contemptuous of even her modest efforts to speak truth to power. In the spring of 2025, when Gabbard testified to the intelligence community’s consensus view that Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon,” Trump replied, “I don’t care what she said.” Gabbard has long opposed U.S. military intervention in Iran and did not publicly come out in support of Trump’s decision to go to war. One of her top lieutenants quit in protest of the war.

In her resignation letter, Gabbard told Trump that she would step down on June 30, having recently learned that her husband, Abraham Williams, has a rare type of bone cancer. “Abraham has been my rock throughout our eleven years of marriage,” Gabbard wrote. People who know the couple have told me that they are exceptionally close; Williams, a video producer and cinematographer, has filmed Gabbard throughout her time in public service, including when she took a trip to Syria to meet the dictator Bashar al-Assad while serving as a Democratic member of Congress. Contrary to the Washington cliché, there’s every reason to think that Gabbard really does want to spend more time with her family. But the Iran war likely made leaving an easier choice.

You can read the rest of the Trump Kremlinology at the link, but the nickel tour is, "Selling your soul for proximity to power."

 

Linkage

• OpenAI Accused of Handing Over Your Intimate Personal Information to Meta and Google (Futurism) We've always known that Altman and his ilk were the scum of the earth.
• What Physical ‘Life Force’ Turns Biology’s Wheels? (Quanta Magazine) The wheel exists in nature, in the flagella of tiny single cell organisms.
• The Polarization Discourse Is Bad Faith Bullshit (Everything is Horrible) Money quote, "Anti-polarization masks a preference for fascist policies."
• People Who Are Blind from Birth Never Develop Schizophrenia. This Could Transform Treatment (ZME Science) The basic theory is one of sensory overload being a contributing factor, and blindness from birth avoids that.
• Why are some people mosquito magnets? Clues are emerging (Phys.org) Different body chemistries.  I am one of the lucky one, my eldest brother, and my eldest child, are not.
• Fisker went bankrupt and owners built open source car company from the ashes (Electrek) One of the things they neglect to mention here is that if the creditors were to invoke the DMCA, this could all be shut down.
• Your ISP Is Watching You. Here's How a VPN Can Help  (PC Magazine) Honestly, I think that we need to do more than hide, we should actively attempt to poison the data.(see below)
•  So Those Water Vapors on Europa Might Not Actually Be a Thing (Gizmodo) It might be a statistical anomaly. 
• U.S. employers spend more than $1.5 billion annually on union avoidance (Economic Policy Institute) Much of that money goes to illegal tactics.  Frog march the executives lout of their offices in handcuffs.

Going on offense would be a good thing:

This is Actual Bond Villain Sh%$

According to conservative influencer and billionaire f%$#er Ashley St. Clair, Elon Musk bragged to her about 10,000 space lasers onboard Starlink satellites that he could use as an anomaly in the matrix.

First, Elon is f%$#ing nuts.

Second, Elon is f%$#ing nuts.

Third, he constitutes a clear and present danger to society.

………

In a new 18-minute long TikTok video, former conservative influencer and mother of one of Elon Musk’s children Ashley St. Clair shared private conversations she allegedly held with the billionaire about the 2024 US election — and the details are bonkers, even by Musk’s unhinged standards.

According to St. Clair, Musk once told her that he had “10,000 lasers in space, referring to his [Starlink] satellites.” These, per the influencer, were Musk’s “anomaly in the matrix,” seemingly meaning he viewed them as a kind of card up his sleeve to be unleashed at the right moment during the course of the US presidential election.

“He says this is not a piece they’ll see on the chess board,” St. Clair continued. “I straight up tell him, ‘I would ask more but I really don’t want to be deposed,’ to which he says ‘very wise.'”

You may recall that a billionaire with space lasers was actually the plot of a Bond movie.

We Now Know Why the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) Refused to Publish the 2024 Autopsy Report

It has finally been published, and the report created by a friend of the DNC Chairman is not just lame and studiously obtuse, it also appears to be AI generated slop.

There never really an autopsy report, just make-work for an incompetent overpaid crony.

The Democratic party has belatedly published a postmortem on its disastrous 2024 election defeat, after an initial decision to withhold the document triggered an angry backlash.

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), released the report – which fails to mention Gaza or Joe Biden’s age – accompanied by an apology to party members angered by his initial decision to keep the analysis of Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump and defeat in both houses of Congress under wraps.

Martin had initially declined to publish the report, authored by a veteran Democratic strategist, Paul Rivera. He cited a need to focus on this year’s midterm elections and avoid re-opening old wounds.

The decision backfired, leading to a crisis of confidence in Martin’s leadership among senior Democrats and accusations that he was keeping the findings secret.

The report focuses on key demographics that Harris lost – including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states – and compares her performance to other Democrats in key state races, such as North Carolina governor Josh Stein.

While I do think that Josh Stein had a good electoral strategy, "Have a Black Nazi who frequents porn forums and self identifies as a perv to run against," is not an easily repeatable campaign. 

Headline of the Day

Court To DOGE Bros: Asking ChatGPT ‘Yo, Is This DEI?’ Is Not Proper Legal Process & Also A First Amendment Violation

—Techdirt

We really do live in the stupidest timeline. 

This is the lamest case of letting ChatGPT doing your homework ever. 

Legal Eagle Completely Loses His Sh%$

IMHO, he is completely justified in doing so.

Devin Stone is profoundly unamused by the Trump slush fund, and I am surprised that he did not turn green and grow 8 feet tall.

Start With, "He Burnt a Cross Next to a Police Station as a Young Adult"

Charles Murray is a racist hypocrite dirt-bag, but for some reason, whenever writes, people thing that he is wise.

Whether it is The Bell Curve, wherein he used fudged data and statistics to "Show" that blacks were genetically inferior, or his latest screed, saying that the Electoral College is a core founding structure of the Republic, he's a complete wanker.

When I came across William Hogeland devastating take-down of Murray's latest, I noticed an omission, he neglected to note that Murray is also a cross burning racist, something that he has never apologized for.  (He claims that he did not know what a cross burning meant.  Bullsh%$.)

I highly recommend that you read the essay, but Murray's past should be the lede on any article about him.

About Someone Banned This Crap

Minnesota has just passed a law banning prediction markets. (Utah seems likely to follow

About f%$#ing time.  This is a profoundly wasteful, corrupt, and unproductive activity.

Of course, because it is a corrupt activity, and one of Trump's sons is on the payroll of the two largest players in the space, Polymarket and Kalshi, so the Trump administration promptly sued to prevent the law from going into effect.

The Trump administration yesterday sued Minnesota in an attempt to block the first state law that prohibits prediction markets.

While other states imposed restrictions on prediction markets, Minnesota banned them outright in a law signed by Gov. Tim Walz on Monday. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a lawsuit against the state, saying that Minnesota’s “new legislation represents the most aggressive move by a state to shut down CFTC-regulated markets and undermine the federal regulatory regime set up by Congress more than 50 years ago.”

………

The Minnesota law makes it a felony to create, operate, or advertise a prediction market. The CFTC asked the court for preliminary and permanent injunctions to prohibit Minnesota from enforcing the law, which is scheduled to take effect on August 1. The case was filed in US District Court for the District of Minnesota.

………

The Minnesota law defines a prediction market as “a system that allows consumers to place a wager on the future outcome of a specified event that is not determined or affected by the performance of the parties to the contract.” The law’s specified events include but are not limited to sports games, wars, mass shootings, acts of terrorism, elections, court cases, deaths or assassinations, weather conditions, and pop culture events such as awards or release dates.

That last bit sounds an awful lot like the Marine Insurance Act of 1746, which was an unalloyed good.

Shut them down. 

Because They Do Not Want To

I give you the cartoon of the day: (click to embiggen)

Link

True as turnips, this is. 

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

There is an upside to rising gas prices, increased use of mass transit.

This should not be a surprise, but in the land of pedestrian killing SUVs, it is a bit surprising.

Higher gas prices are bringing some Americans back to public transit.

The increase in ridership comes as the war in Iran has disrupted oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing the national average price of gasoline beyond $4.50 per gallon. In California, drivers are paying more than $6.15 per gallon on average.

Rising fuel prices have historically pushed at least some Americans toward buses and trains, particularly commuter rail. But experts caution that decades of car-oriented development and inconsistent transit funding still leave most people with few practical alternatives to driving.

For those reasons, ridership is rising most sharply in places with robust transit systems and steep fuel prices.

There are a whole host of societal ills that are tied to America's pathological obsession with cars.

Thould this change, it would be a good thing. 

OK, This is Beyond Comically Corrupt

So, Donald Trumps pet lawyer has announced an $1,776,000,000.00 "settlement" in the case of an IRS contractor leaking Trump's tax returns.

That money goes to a slush fund that they are calling an fund to reimburse "victims of weaponization and lawfare."

The Justice Department announced on Monday that it was setting up a new $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who it said were victims of “weaponization and lawfare,” a group that will almost certainly be made up of President Trump’s political allies.

The creation of the fund came in exchange for Mr. Trump’s dropping his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, as well as two administrative claims he had made against the federal government that he currently controls.

The Justice Department said Mr. Trump would not himself receive money from the fund. But it did not provide many other details about how it would operate or who could be eligible for compensation. That fueled criticism that the money was a “slush fund” that Mr. Trump would use to pay supporters who have faced federal investigations and convictions, including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

You know, that is pretty f%$#ing corrupt ……… But wait, there's more.

The "settlement" also includes provisions ending all audits of Trump and his Spawn by the IRS.

The Justice Department has granted President Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability.

The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion compensation fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.

The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.

The provision invited immediate criticism as tax experts raised the possibility that it was illegal. 

POSSIBLY illegal? 

Meanwhile, some House Democrats are working on a discharge petition to force a vote on this fund.

It would be nice if they could, but I'm not expecting much. 

I Just Had a Highly Mixed Day

First, it looks like I have a job offer, at about 35% more than my last (somewhat underpaid) position.

Second, I got rear-ended by a Semi Truck.  It was in a merge in a traffic jam, and no one was hurt, and the car is drivable, but fuck.

 

A Side of Stock Fraud

Is anyone surprised that Donald Trump has been lauding various companies that he bought stock in?

In some cases, he bought the stock literally minutes before he pumped it up. 

Also, he has steered government business to companies he was already invested in.

So, stock fraud, front running, and insider trading.  (No wonder Wall Street loves him) 

Donald Trump’s Wall Street side hustle is starting to look like a full-time job.

During the first three months of 2026, the billionaire president pocketed tens of millions of dollars through 3,700 investment trades involving companies with direct ties to his administration.


“This is an insane amount of trades,” Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, told Bloomberg, which first obtained the 79-year-old president’s financial disclosures.

Overall, Trump disclosed at least $220 million in financial transactions earlier this year, including trades in securities tied to major U.S. companies.

………

At the same time, Trump is not the only one who has profited from his presidency. The Trump clan—including Melania and Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner—was worth a staggering $10 billion in September, the last time Forbes estimated the family’s individual net worths, double their collective wealth in 2024. Trump himself had his most lucrative year yet: Forbes reported in September that he added $3 billion to his assets.

Here's an idea for the first post-Trump Attorney General, make Donald Trump poor.

I Know Who Not to Endorse

Nancy Pelosi is not running for reelection, and I know very little about her successor, but I do know who I would recommend that any of my reader(s) in her Bay Area district NOT vote for, Connie Chan.

I know this because Nancy "Insider Trading" Pelosi has endorsed her in the primary. 

Anyone endorsed by the former House Speaker can be reasonably assumed to be of like mind to Pelosi, and more of the same is a f%$#ing disaster.

Nancy Pelosi on Monday endorsed Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, in the race to succeed her as the city’s representative in Congress, calling her the candidate who “stands above the rest”.

Pelosi, the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, will retire at the end of her term and had not yet weighed in on the contested primary for the San Francisco district she has held for nearly 40 years. But as early mail-in ballots trickle in ahead of the 2 June primary, Pelosi declared Chan the “leader best prepared to carry forward the fight for San Francisco in the Congress”.

………

Pelosi’s endorsement comes as polling shows Chan in a tight contest to advance to the November general election in a field that includes Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator known for championing legislation to ramp up housing production and enshrining LGBTQ+ rights, and Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech executive who served as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first chief of staff and has been an outspoken critic of Pelosi and the Democratic party leadership. Ocasio-Cortez has declined to endorse anyone in the race.

Several recent surveys show Chan effectively tied with Chakrabarti for second place, behind Wiener. Under California’s primary system, the top two contenders will advance to the November general election, regardless of party.

Unfortunately, They Both Could Not Lose

Rather unsurprisingly, Sam Altman prevailed over Elon "I don't read the fine print" Musk in the latter's lawsuit against OpenAI.

The ruling was pretty narrow, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ waited to file until after the statute of limitations had expired, but my guess is that if that had not been the case, he still would have lost, because incompetent, narcissistic, and erratic justified showing his ass to the door anyway.

A jury ruled in favor of Sam Altman in the culmination of a long and bitter legal battle that pitted the richest person in the world against a leader of the AI boom.

The federal jury in Oakland, California, found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup.

The verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer’s claims that Altman “stole a charity” through his leadership of OpenAI. It also provides the AI firm with a clear path ahead to pursue going public later this year at about a $1tn valuation.

The jury’s finding is a non-binding, advisory verdict that left Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers with ultimate power to issue her own ruling in the case. Gonzalez Rogers immediately said that she would agree with the jury’s decision and dismissed Musk’s claims.

Sam Altman is lucky that he was facing off against one of the few human beings on earth more loathsome than himself.

Headline of the Day

You Can't Build Useful Alliances With Fascists, Dumbass

—Karl Bode, on fundamental stupidity of not punching Nazis in the face.

I think that his subhed says it all, "I hope we all now understand that forging strategic policy partnerships with fascists is like trying to develop an intimate relationship with a running chainsaw."

Read the rest.  It's kind of hard to summarize. 

Gee, Ya Think

Hoocoodanode that cuts to the USDA safety program would result in more instances of tainted food?

Could Upton Sinclear please pick up the white courtesy phone? 

The number of complaints filed about the safety of meat, poultry and egg products jumped nearly 40% last year, from 1,443 to 2,016, according to a new federal report.

The report comes a year after the Trump administration approved some of the most sweeping staffing cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in recent memory.

Between January and June of last year, USDA reduced its workforce by 18%. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the agency responsible for placing inspectors in slaughterhouses and processing plants, lost about 9% of its staff.

It's almost as if meat packers are nut universally businesses run by executives with sterling character.

Linkage

• Neanderthals drilled cavities to treat a toothache 59,000 years ago (Ars Technica) They seem more like this every day.
• What Makes a Great Bookshop? (Culture Dump) Nice read, if a bit subjective.
• The Strip Mall Where Clarence Thomas Hides His Wife's Money (Glass Empires) The subhed, "A consulting firm in a Virginia strip mall. A justice who votes on the firm's clients. A marriage that has run the same kickback for thirty years. Her name is Ginni Thomas," says it all.
• Charles Schulz Franklin Peanuts Harriet Glickman (Boing Boing) A nice history about how Franklin came to join peanuts.
• Yacht-wrecking young Orcas ‘not afraid of anything’ after being abandoned by relatives, say experts (The Independent) Short version, following a population drop of the community, adolescent Killer Whales were left without guidance and became delinquents. 
• This Ridiculously Simple Trick Might Stop Gulls From Nabbing Your Lunch (Gizmodo) It's googly eyes stuck on your food box.
• Combined Antibiotic and Herbicide Pollution Accelerates the Horizontal Transfer of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Coastal Microbial Communities (bioRxiv) The more we learn about agricultural chemicals, the worse the seem.

This song was recorded in 1993. It seems almost prophetic:

DoJ is Taking a Bribe

In response to Indian fraudster Gautam Adani hiring a friend of Donald Trump as his lawyer, the Department of Justice will be dropping criminal charges against the Indian financier.

This is corrupt as hell.

When the Justice Department indicted India’s richest man in the final weeks of the Biden administration, prosecutors described an “elaborate” bribery scheme involving “corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.”

Now, according to several people with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department is planning to drop the charges altogether.

The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Mr. Giuffra’s efforts on Mr. Adani’s behalf culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Giuffra ticked through about 100 slides outlining why prosecutors lacked basic evidence, as well as the jurisdiction even to bring the case, one of the people said.

Another slide also made an unusual offer: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.

As part of the same meeting, Mr. Giuffra sought to resolve a parallel civil case against Mr. Adani brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a separate investigation by the Treasury Department. The S.E.C. announced its settlement with Mr. Adani late Thursday; the Treasury Department could unveil its own deal in coming days.

Although prosecutors later told Mr. Giuffra that the $10 billion investment would play no role in the resolution of the criminal case, his offer received a favorable response from at least one senior Justice Department official at the meeting, according to the people familiar with the meeting.

 These folks need to be disbarred and prosecuted.

The Underground Employee Culture

The response of Amazon and Facebook employees to mandates to aggressively use artificial "intelligence" have been to actively sabotage that effort by creating junk usage metrics.

This is not a surprise.

Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently.

The Seattle-based group had started to widely deploy its in-house “MeshClaw” product in recent weeks, allowing employees to create AI agents that can connect to workplace software and carry out tasks on a user’s behalf, according to three people familiar with the matter. 

Some employees said colleagues were using the software to automate additional, unnecessary AI activity to increase their consumption of tokens — units of data processed by models.

………

“There is just so much pressure to use these tools,” one Amazon employee told the FT. “Some people are just using MeshClaw to maximise their token usage.” 

Amazon has told employees that the AI token statistics would not be used in performance evaluations. But several staff members said they believed managers were monitoring the data.

………

Meta employees have similarly engaged in so-called tokenmaxxing to improve their standing on internal leader boards.  

………

More than three dozen Amazon employees worked on the in-house tool, according to internal documents. One recent memo describing the bot said: “It dreams overnight to consolidate what it learned, monitors your deployments while you’re in meetings and triages your email before you wake up.” 

Multiple Amazon employees said they were concerned about the security risks of an AI tool that was granted permission to act on a user’s behalf. This risks situations where the agent may make errors or undertake unintended actions.

“The default security posture terrifies me,” one employee said. “I’m not about to let it go off and just do its own thing.”

Don't commit anything sensitive to any of these companies. 

Bad Day st the Office

There was a midair collision at an air show in Idaho.

Two F/A-18G Growlers collided, but all 4 pilots ejected safely.

Two E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft collided during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show in Mountain Home Idaho on Sunday, in a mishap captured in dramatic videos. The four crew members of the aircraft, from Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129‘s NAS Whidbey Island-based Growler Airshow Team, were able to eject right after the collision and are being evaluated by medical personnel, according to media reports. The incident took place two miles northwest of the base, according to the 366th Fighter Wing’s Facebook page. The Growler Airshow Team puts on two-jet displays.

Video of the incident showed the one of the Growlers close in on the other from behind and then collide, striking the lead aircraft’s rear with its nose from above. They then became entangled together, nose up, and then down, before tumbling to the ground. Four small explosions from ejection seats blasting out of the falling Growlers can be seen before the parachutes of the four crew members opened up. The Growlers hit the ground, exploding into a ball of flames, followed by the crew members floating down in their parachutes.

The latest report is that the pilots are being checked out, but it appears that there have been only minor injuries.