Yeah, War is Bad, But

Sometimes it's tough to feel that way, particularly when things like an Iranian drone strike did significant damage to an Amazon Central Data Bahrain.

Not a fan or theocracies, but I am even less of a fan of kleptocratic monopolists like Amazon.

Iranian forces destroyed Amazon’s central data infrastructure in Bahrain, according to state-aligned media reports.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims to have targeted and destroyed the American tech giant’s infrastructure with cruise missiles in response to an American attack that allegedly destroyed an under-construction nuclear site in Southern Iran on Monday, according to reports from Iran’s Fars News Agency. Amazon has not yet confirmed damage to its infrastructure in the region, though Bahraini authorities have acknowledged that air raid sirens were activated on Tuesday and said they intercepted a wave of Iranian strikes, though officials have not reported what, if any, material damage was sustained at this time.

You know, Bezos also has a yacht. According to this website, it was just north of Vanatu 5 days ago.

Just Leave an Empty Lot

In an attempt to prevent Nazi pilgramages to Hitler's birth house, Austrian authorities have taken the house under eminent domain and turned it into a police station.

This is wrong.

They should have demolished the house and left a hole in the ground. 

Austria has opened a police station in the house where Adolf Hitler was born in the town of Braunau am Inn.

It follows years of controversy about what to do with the 17th-Century former inn, where Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born in April 1889.

The building has now been substantially refurbished and its facade changed, but it has been a huge headache for Austrian authorities, who want to prevent it from becoming a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage.

Hitler only lived in Salzburger Vorstadt 15 for a few weeks before his family moved to another address in Braunau. They left the town for good when he was three years old.

………

The opening ceremony for the police station, featuring police musicians playing a tuba and other brass instruments, was attended by Interior Minister Gerhard Karner and other local dignitaries.

Austria was taking "responsibility" for the "terrible legacy" of the past, said Karner. While deciding what to do with the building had not been easy, Karner believed the police station marked "a new chapter" for it.

 If you were not going to turn it into a hole into the ground, then turn it into a museum of the Ramani.

Headline of the Day

Penis Costume Protester Prevails in Court

—Courthouse News Service

Yeah, I know this is from April, I was doing some bloggy house cleaning, and came across it again.

One could call it a, ahem, hard case. But ultimately, an Alabama judge found, not hard enough.

Fairhope Municipal Judge Haymes Snedeker acquitted Renea Gamble Wednesday of all remaining misdemeanor charges stemming from her decision to wear a inflatable 7-foot penis costume at an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest in October 2025.

Gamble walked out of the courtroom after three hours of testimony cleared of any wrongdoing, but her attorney said her arrest was traumatizing and she may consider legal recourse.

Seriously, in a nation of truck nuts, how is this an arrestable offense? 

Speaking of Defamation Lawsuits

The Guardian has just had the defamation suit filed against it by United Healthcare dismissed.

The judge determined that the story that the paper reported, that UHC was bribing nursing homes to decrease transfers to hospitals, was true, and truth is always a defense against defamation. 

A state judge in Delaware has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against the Guardian by the UnitedHealth Group.

Delaware superior court judge Calvin Scott’s ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that the US’s largest health insurance conglomerate pursued against the Guardian in May 2025 over an investigation by the outlet which reported that UnitedHealth secretly made payments to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers for residents.

………

In a ruling issued on Monday, Scott granted the Guardian’s motion to dismiss. And he dismissed all six defamation claims in the lawsuit.

“The article’s reporting of the bonuses as ‘secret’ or made ‘secretly’ or ‘quietly,’ is substantially true,” Scott wrote in one part of the ruling.

In another part, he added that the Guardian “is not required to publish facts just because United would have preferred more favorable facts”.

Yeah, there's a reason that UHC is the most widely loathed health insurance company in America.

Pass the Popcorn

The BBC has secured an order requiring that Donald Trump provide detailed information about his businesses for his defamation lawsuit.

This is a no-brainer from a legal perspective.  In addition to the requirement that the statements be false (absence of malice for public figures), but it also requires a showing of harm.

In this case, in addition demonstrating harm to the delicate feelings of snowflake Trump, this means that Trump has to demonstrate real and measurable financial harms.

Donald Trump must divulge detailed financial information from his many businesses as part of his $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation, a federal judge ruled during a discovery hearing on Tuesday, according to news reports.

The ruling by US magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett could open a unique window into the hundreds of businesses owned by Trump’s family trust. It also highlights a potential drawback for Trump’s strategy of bludgeoning critical media with multibillion-dollar lawsuits.

Trump filed a defamation lawsuit late last year seeking $10bn in damages over a 2024 documentary called “Trump, A Second Chance,” which features a scene of the speech he made before his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. The scene splices lines together to make it appear that Trump directly urged his supporters to attack. The BBC apologized to Trump last year for the misleading edit, but has argued the president’s defamation claims have no merit.

………

Trump’s lawyers are also trying to dodge the forced release of his financial records by limiting the scope of the lawsuit. Alejandro Brito, a Trump lawyer, told Lett on Tuesday that he intends to amend the current complaint, according to Politico. The amended complaint will say the documentary only caused reputational damage, rather than undermining his businesses, making the financial disclosures unnecessary.

But for now, the BBC can move forward with requests for Trump’s financial records. The BBC aims to argue that Trump’s wealth skyrocketed since the documentary aired, contradicting the claim that the documentary undermined his businesses.

I am thinking that if the BBC gets this data and looks into it thoroughly, they should find some convincing data of self-dealing and bribery.

If they find such evidence, they should report on it. 

How About Adding a Few Zeros?

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch has been threatened with $1,000.00/day in fines for refusing to comply with an order for him to produce document for Journalist and Lawyer Katie Phang's lawsuit for a more complete release of the Epstein files.

Good.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is begging a federal judge to let him off the hook for a $1,000-a-day fine.

This fine is Blanche’s latest setback in a series of back-and-forths surrounding a lawsuit brought against him by journalist Katie Phang, who has accused the Department of Justice of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang sued the DOJ in April for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the law, which President Donald Trump reluctantly signed in November.

Despite the Justice Department’s repeated assertions that the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and subsequent release of files has been conducted with “an unprecedented commitment to transparency,” millions of files are still either missing or redacted.

In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Blanche to produce previously redacted materials from the Epstein files, including FBI notes from interviews with a woman alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was 13 years old, as well as email exchanges with Epstein regarding a “torture video” and the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.

Sullivan gave Blanche until July 2 to produce the materials. When the acting attorney general failed to do so, Phang suggested a daily $1,000 fine until he complied.

Fine him, and then go in and take the gold from his teeth. 

Mother's Little Helper, Cetacean Edition

An interesting behavior has been seen among Southern Right Whale cows, and it appears to be driven by parental angst.

Mother Right Whales have been seen swimming upside down, and while initially thought to be an indicator of distress, it appears that it is instead an attempt to cool down and get some, "Me time."

The sight of a huge whale floating upside-down might be worrisome. Is it sick or injured? According to a new study, probably not—the whale is likely a mom taking a well-deserved break from raising her calves.

Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) migrate extremely long distances—about 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers)—between western Australia and Antarctica. While following this long journey with overhead drones, researchers noticed that some of the whales would lie upside-down at or just above the ocean surface. Upon further investigation, the team concluded that, fortunately, the whales weren’t sick. Rather, this behavior appeared to be a whale mother resting, either to prevent overheating or to get some reprieve from feeding milk to her calves. The team published its results in a recent paper for Mammalian Biology.

………

Southern right whales lead an energy-intensive lifestyle. They’re known as capital breeders, which means the whales have separate locations for feeding and breeding. Earlier in the migration season, the whales swim over to Antarctica to feast on krill. Then they travel back to warmer breeding grounds on Australian coasts while relying on energy stored in their blubber, the team explained in The Conversation.

That calls for smart management of energy, as mothers’ body condition “declines as the season progresses while calf growth rate and energetic demands increase,” according to the paper. In that sense, resting upside-down would prevent calves from reaching their mother’s mammary slits, allowing the mom whale to get some well-deserved “beauty sleep,” as the researchers put it.

Whales seem more and more like us every day. 

Gnarly

So, Trump has resumed airstrikes on Iran, and Iran has retaliated, killing at least 2 American soldiers operating air defense units in Jordan, along with strikes on Kuwaiti desalination and power plant.

From a tactical perspective, it appears that the Iranians have better targeting capabilities, as they are hitting specific military targets for tactical advantage, while the US is blowing up bruidges and drinking water infrastructure.  

Meanwhile, it looks like the international fossil fuel markets are getting skittish, and may be going into full panic mode if the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz continue.

We've lost this war, and the sooner that this is acknowledged by the PTB, the better. 

It's Only 14 Days, But

I am heartened that federal district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has issued a 2 week injunction against the Paramont-Warner merger.

The only way this deal makes sense is through the extraction of monopoly rents, and they need those rents sooner rather than later.

With nepo-baby David Ellison's Paramount Skydance Corporation being largely dependent on his dad's Oracle wealth, and given that Oracle bonds are rapidly approaching junk bond status, any delay in the deal could both kill the deal and Paramount Skydance.

A federal judge on Monday ordered Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery to halt their $81bn merger for at least two weeks, allowing states that are challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court.

Twelve states, led by California, sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last week – alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers across the US.

The states’ top prosecutors called on Warner and Paramount to not close the transaction until after a court had time to “fully evaluate” their claims. And when the companies refused, they filed for a temporary restraining order – which is what district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted on Monday. That opens the door to a potential preliminary injunction that the states are also seeking to effectively block the deal.

………

The temporary restraining order granted on Monday halts the deal from progressing for at least 14 days, although the pause could be extended for up to 28 days. The court has set 3 August as a date for a hearing on the states’ preliminary injunction motion, although that schedule could also be pushed back.

This does not appear to be anything more than a delay to allow for evidence to be presented and evaluated, but 14 days is better than no days.

Linkage

• Elon Musk Is Charging Starlink Customers Gigantic Bogus Fees Because Its Network Is Being Crushed by "High Demand" (Futurism) This is probably because bandwidth is falling because of network congestion.  The tech is spectacularly ill suited for the urban areas where uptake is greatest.
• Tidal Says It Won’t Pay Royalties for AI-Generated Music (404 Media) Tidal is a small streamer, and this is lawful, because AI cannot hold copyright.
• Hey Dems! Swing Voters Want You To Tax The Rich And Get Them Medicare For All! Isn't That Nice? (Wonkette) Yep.  The "socialist policies" scare quoted by moderates in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are wildly popular.
• Solution to Feynman's reverse sprinkler puzzle also applies to "silly sprinklers" (Ars Technica) For all of you physics geeks out there.
• Archaeologists Unearth a 2,400-Year-Old Sanctuary for the Worship of Odysseus (New York Times) It's not clear if this was organic worship or a king declaring themselves a god.
• Lessons from a cat about to outlast yet another prime minister (The Economist) This is an article about Number 10's official mouser, Larry the Cat.  When the lede is about how the cat is a, "Self-serving and territorial little shit," you know that it's a stem winder.

In memoriam, Sam Neill

I Don't Give a F%$# About Soccer or the World Cup

But the news that Donald Trump was ferociously booed when he showed up at the World Cup finals makes me happy.

Spain may be the 2026 World Cup official winner, but the game actually had two losers, thanks to Donald Trump. During a brief appearance on the jumbotrons around New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, the crowd of Argentina and Spain fans booed the U.S. president, who is set to present the World Cup trophy itself to the winning team. The moment happened just after Jennifer Hudson performed the national anthem.

He was shown sitting in a box next to Melania Trump a few more times throughout the game.

This isn’t the first time Trump has been booed at a sporting event, and it certainly won’t be the last. Aside from UFC fights and stops on the PGA tour, most major sporting events have been hostile territory for Trump. 

 They hate him, they really hate him!

They Haz a Sad

It appears that forcing your staff to engage in legally unwinnable and unwinnable prosecutions against protesters results in an unhappy staff.

In Chicago, this means that there has been a rush for the exit at the US Attorney's office.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago is among the most prestigious in the country, known for winning ambitious cases against everyone from Al Capone to the former Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich.

But the Trump administration’s immigration sweep in Chicago last fall has left the office in crisis.

The office brought a wave of doomed cases that accused protesters and immigrants of assaulting federal officers. That accelerated an exodus of veteran prosecutors, some of whom felt they’d been wrongly pressured into pursuing the charges, former prosecutors said in interviews.

The heads of all seven sections of the Chicago office’s criminal division have left in the past year, as have many of their successors and deputies.

More than 100 former federal prosecutors from the office recently signed a letter criticizing Andrew S. Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, saying that “actions taken by leadership in the last year have tarnished the reputation” of the office.

I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit, ⃰ but it seems to me that these lawyers should just quit and file bar complaints against Boutros.

 

Yes, It's That Easy

I'm amused at just how obvious this proposal to limit the misuse of AI in the classroom is.

The short version is:

• Smaller class size.
• A lighter teaching load.
• More in person classes.
• More one to one interactions with instructors.
• Greater focus on in class performance.
• An administration that backs up their instructors.

I would note that that last point is rather unsurprising given that the writer is an instructor, but it does seem to me that more personal engagement of students would reduce cheating.

Everyone agrees it is happening. Below is a handy formula to limit unauthorized AI use in the classroom, for use by faculty, administrators, and legislators alike. Some of the key variables are controlled by the institution, some by the faculty. Everyone needs to work together. 

I use the term “unauthorized,” so “cheating” is whatever the faculty member declares to be unauthorized use, understanding that in the AI era, students are fluent in AI and will seek the most efficient way to fulfill course assignments. (Most of the misconduct data is pre-LLM and is not directly applicable to today’s technology but I am assuming the same patterns hold.) 

The hundreds of conversations I have had in the past year with faculty members across the country make clear that there is almost no agreement about what AI misconduct means. Some faculty members hold that any LLM use at all is cheating; others say “go ahead and use Claude or ChatGPT, but if I can prompt your paper into existence in under 10 minutes, you fail.”

My proposed rule is flexible by focusing on AI use that is “unauthorized” by the faculty member. The institutional role is ensuring that faculty can enforce their own line.

The formula

P = 1 − (S × L × M × C × A × κ)

P is the probability that a student will use AI in a way the instructor did not authorize. P runs from 0 to 1. Zero means it won’t happen. One means it will.

The six variables are the conditions of teaching. Each runs from 0 to 1. Multiply them. Subtract from 1. That’s P.

• S — class size

• L — teaching load

• M — modality

• C — one-to-one contact

• A — assessment design

• κ — institutional culture

A 1 means the condition is fully present. A 0.1 means it’s gone.

The basic concept, that personalized education provided by instructors who are available to observe and provide individual instructions to the students, is likely true.

Reducing it to an equation, particularly one this simple, seems to be a rather silly exercise in faux mathematics.

The Black Death and Things

I was aware that the Black Death (Yeresina Pestis) has been around a long time, but I was unaware that it had left its homeland in Manchuria before the Plague of Justinian from 541 to 549 C.E.

Well, we now have evidence of a lethal plague outbreak around Lake Baikal circa 3500 BCE,

This is thousands of years before Y. pestis was thought to be virulent, and over 2000 km (1200 miles) from the primary reservior for this disease.

3500 BCE is largely before the advent or agriculture and long trade routes, so this is kind of weird.

Siberia 5,500 years ago, leaving dozens dead in its wake—with DNA from Yersinia pestis bacteria still trapped inside their teeth.

University of Oxford ancient DNA researcher Ruairidh Macleod and his colleagues recently sequenced the telltale bacterial DNA in teeth from plague victims at four ancient cemeteries in the area around Russia’s Lake Baikal. The tragedy that befell these communities is now the earliest known plague outbreak, courtesy of the oldest strain of Y. pestis ever sequenced.

Unearthing a new backstory for the plague

Until recently, scientists who study the evolution of diseases have held two fairly solid ideas about the origins of plague, the disease caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria. It’s a scourge so awful that it has gone down in history as not just a plague but the plague. The first idea is that the earliest strains didn’t have the right genetic traits to be really lethal. And the second is that the plague first began menacing humans when the first farmers settled in densely packed towns alongside rats and domestic animals.

But the dead of Ust’-Ida I cemetery, near Lake Baikal, tell a very different story.

“Our findings demonstrate that the earliest known outbreaks of plague occurred in prehistoric hunter-gatherers centuries before infections are observed in Neolithic farmers,” wrote Macleod and his colleagues in their recent paper.

That challenges our previous assumption that plague spillover was a side effect of people taking up farming and settling in permanent villages and towns, living closer to each other and to an assortment of animals (and their fleas).

“Much of the accepted theory around epidemiology of disease in the past is that this kind of thing shouldn’t occur in hunter-gatherers because hunter-gatherers are constantly moving around the landscape because they’re in such small groups all the time,” said Macleod in a press conference. “The theory, at least, is that infectious disease can’t really take hold and devastate entire communities in this way.” 

So much for that theory.

Fascinating.

They Will Never See the Inside of a British Jail

Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate were arrested in Florida in response to an extradition request from the U.K. for rape and human trafficking.

I do not think that they will be extradited, at least not while Donald Trump in office.

Not only are they friends of the Trump friendly, particularly Barron Trump, but rape friendly obnoxious white dudes is Trump's base.

Andrew and Tristan Tate, prominent influencers in the so-called manosphere, were arrested by federal marshals in Miami on Saturday in connection with new criminal charges of rape and sex trafficking in England, U.S. and British law enforcement officials said.

Prosecutors in Britain said that they were seeking the brothers’ extradition.

The Tates, who have British and American citizenship, were detained “pending ongoing legal proceedings,” according to a statement from the police in Bedfordshire, a county north of London.

British prosecutors had previously charged the brothers with rape, human trafficking and sexual assault. The new charges stem from alleged offenses involving four women that took place between July 2010 and August 2017, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement on Sunday after the arrests.

British prosecutors said the new charges against Andrew Tate, 39, include seven counts of rape; three counts of sex trafficking; three counts of assault; and 19 more charges relating to sexual images of children and “extreme pornography.”

………

The brothers, who have cultivated a large following of young men by preaching brazen masculinity and have made a fortune from online pornography, have faced criminal investigations in three countries.

In Romania, where the Tates previously lived, prosecutors have been investigating allegations that they coerced dozens of women, including a 17-year-old girl, into pornography. They have also investigated Andrew Tate over allegations that he raped one of the women and had sex with a 15-year-old.

Romanian prosecutors had barred the brothers from leaving the country while investigations there continue, but last year they agreed to lift the travel restrictions. The move was the culmination of a yearslong effort by Andrew Tate to forge alliances with President Trump’s advisers and family members, a Times investigation found.

………

Since the travel restrictions against them in Romania were lifted, the brothers have resumed their jet-setting lifestyle, though they have not returned to Britain. Andrew Tate had been advertised as a co-host for a bare-knuckle boxing event on Saturday night in downtown Miami.

Their arrest on Saturday signaled active efforts by British authorities to extradite the brothers, even without a clear resolution to the cases in Romania.

The whole MAGA-sphere is made up of the worst people in the world.

"The Very Best People"

Rather unsurprisingly, it has been discovered that ICE Agent David Brouillette, who murdered Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine has a long history of domestic violence and mental illness.

This guy should never been allowed anywhere near any sort of law enforcement of security position. 

He shouldn't be a security guard, nor a meter maid, nor a bouncer at a bar.

The fatal shooting of an immigrant in Maine has renewed concerns about the Trump administration’s push to quickly hire officers for mass deportations, after a woman said her abusive ex-husband told her he was the officer who fired his gun.

Ashley Brouillette said her former spouse, David Brouillette, told her in a phone call that he is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday.

She identified him in video footage from the scene of the incident, which does not show the shooting itself, but does show two officers in the moments after.

David Brouillette also called his other ex-wife and told her the same thing, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy.

………

DHS conducted a massive drive to recruit 10,000 enforcement officers last year. In recent weeks, the agency has ramped up street arrests of alleged undocumented immigrants, aiming for as many as 2,000 a day. Ashley Brouillette said her ex-husband told her in November that he’d accepted a job with ICE.

Newly hired officers received a shortened training course. Those with prior law enforcement experience were often given an even more accelerated timeline.

………

A review of court files, employment records and interviews with people who have known Brouillette for many years indicate he had worked off and on in law enforcement. He has also had volatile personal relationships, with him and his two ex-wives accusing each other of abuse and neglect.

“If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes,” Lucinda Brouillette, David’s second ex-wife, said in a statement Saturday. “That belief is not based on speculation, but on my own lived experiences over many years.”

Ashley Brouillette said that on the same day her ex-husband told her he’d joined ICE, he left her a voicemail calling her a “disgusting, fat” expletive and saying that her throat should be slit. She shared the voicemail with The Washington Post.

……… 

Ashley Brouillette said her ex-husband was diagnosed with several mental health disorders as a young adult, and that his temperament and mental health issues worsened after joining the Army. The Post could not independently verify those claims. When he left the military, records show, he went on to work short stints in various law enforcement jobs, including as an officer at the Maine Department of Corrections from November 2015 to August 2016. 

So not surprised.  This sort of enshittification is a feature of the, "Very best people," that Trump hires.

OK, Now I Take Them Seriously

We have seen a number of people sounding the alarm for years about the People's Republic of China naval buildup.

Generally, I have been dismissive of such efforts.  I have generally seen their efforts being more directed to near deterrence and national prestige.

There is simply too much to be done in training, culture, infrastructure, and logistics for them to be a global naval power. 

Well, I just saw a data point that indicates that the PRC is getting serious, specifically the construction of an enormous at-sea replenishment ship. 

As the old saying goes, "Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics."

This is serious.

A very large and interesting-looking vessel is taking shape at a shipyard in southeastern China. What can be seen of it so far points strongly to it being the largest naval resupply ship anywhere in the world. A vessel like this would be valuable for supporting the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) growing blue water ambitions. It would be particularly important for enabling the PLAN’s conventionally-powered aircraft carriers, their air wings, and their escorts, to operate for sustained periods of time far from Chinese shores and friendly ports.

The ship is being built at a yard on Longxue Island, which is situated just southeast of the city of Guangzhou. A review of satellite imagery from Planet Labs indicates that it has been under construction since at least February. A subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) operates this facility. That firm is currently known as the CSSC Offshore and Marine Engineering Company (COMEC). It was previously called Guangzhou Shipyard International (GSI).

………

In recent years, the yard has become well known for the construction of unique and unusual vessels with clear military or at least dual-purpose applications. This includes what may be a one-of-a-kind ostensibly civilian ‘research carrier,’ jack-up barges designed to connect together to support amphibious operations, and a stealthy trimaran drone ship. Soviet-designed Zubr class heavy hovercraft, which China has built examples of domestically under license, are also regularly seen there. 

The ship being built on Longxue Island that is now drawing attention is approximately 885 feet (270 meters) long and is 121 feet (37 meters) across at its widest (also known as the beam), based on available satellite imagery. There is a superstructure at the bow end with clear wings for a large bridge and a mast on top. There is also a separate superstructure at the stern end with exhaust stacks situated in front of it. 

………

At-sea replenishment, in general, is a critical capability for any major navy that desires to conduct sustained blue water operations without having to rely on friendly ports. Even during peacetime in the broad expanses of the Pacific, port facilities of any kind, let alone ones capable of supporting large warships, can be few and far between and under direct threat. 

Funny, Innit?

While correlation is not causation, the correlation between the adoption of digital education technology with decreased student performance is rather striking.

In 1984, several U.S. states introduced mandatory seatbelt laws. Almost immediately, those states reported significant declines in traffic deaths and serious injuries - yet many observers dismissed these trends as coincidence.

Then more states adopted seatbelt laws. And each time they did, fatalities fell.

This is called staggered policy adoption, and it is one of the strongest natural tools social scientists have for identifying causal effects. When different jurisdictions implement the same policy at different times, and outcomes shift in alignment with those adoption dates rather than with a single calendar year, researchers gain strong evidence that the policy itself is driving the change.

Why does this matter?

Staggered EdTech Adoption

During my recent Senate testimony, I stated that when NAEP performance is aligned with state-level digital adoption, scores plateau and then decline.

I should note that in that testimony, I misspoke slightly - referring to ‘one-to-one’ deployment when the analysis, in fact, examines broader, statewide digital adoption. The distinction matters, and I want to be precise.

Since that testimony, I’ve received repeated requests to publish the underlying data. What follows is that analysis.

In the United States, education policy is largely controlled at the state level. As a result, digital infrastructure was not embedded into classrooms everywhere at once. Some states operationalized statewide digital testing and instructional systems earlier; others followed later.

When each state’s digital inflection year is aligned within a common event-time framework and mapped against NAEP performance, a striking empirical signal emerges.

For readers outside the United States, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative assessment of student learning. Often called ‘The Nation’s Report Card’, it tests 4th and 8th grade reading and mathematics every two years. Importantly, NAEP remains anchored to its original 1992 scoring scale, allowing genuine longitudinal comparison.

More Silly-Con Valley snake oil. 

I'm not a big fan of high stakes testing, and I do have my doubts as to the validity of the the accuracy of their measurements, but this data seems to be rather compelling.

Have Some North Korean Beer

I'm kind of surprised about the reports of high quality brews coming from Pyongyang.

Beer is the great unifier.

This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

It’s worth noting that Taco Bell identified the source before the FDA did, and promptly pulled it from their stores. The FDA didn’t even name the source until Taylor Farms outed themselves, and hasn’t issued a recall. Basically, Taco Bell is now a more reliable authority than the FDA.

[image or embed]

— Emily (@emilyrose.bsky.social) July 17, 2026 at 4:54 PM

Roll Tape!

The source of the ongoing Cyclospora outbreak now appears to have been located.

It appears that both the supplier, Taylor Farms de Mexico, and Taco Bell identified the source of the parasitic infection before the FDA did.

That is terrifying.

Topline

Taylor Farms said it would remove iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico out of the U.S. market, the company announced Friday, as federal investigators marked the produce company as the possible source of a cyclosporiasis outbreak that has possibly sickened nearly 7,000 people.

Key Facts

• Taylor Farms de Mexico is voluntarily pulling the iceberg lettuce, citing information from the Food and Drug Administration as the agency’s investigation has indicated a “specific independent farm” may be responsible for the outbreak.Taylor Farms noted that none of its popular salad kits contain iceberg lettuce.
• Taylor Farms supplies produce to major fast food and grocery chains such as Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Walmart and Trader Joe’s.
• Taco Bell said earlier this week it was removing ingredients like lettuce, cilantro, onion, pico de gallo and guacamole from its menus in the Detroit area

The level of ineptitued of the US public health establishment after just 18 months under Trump and RFK, Jr. is a complete mind f%$#.

 

Oh, Canada!

Smoke and Haze 

This picture was taken at about 6 pm Eastern Daylight Time today.

I can only imagine just how hellish this is north of the border. 

Just so you know, these fires are driven by anthropogenic climate change. 

If you need to outside, wear a mask. 

Deep Thought

Cyclospora cayetanensis is not funny at all.

Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears are hilarious.

Both have explosive diarrhea as their punch line. 

Wut?

There is insane, there is toxic narcissist, there is senile, and then there is Trump's endorsing Mike Lindell for Minnesota Governor.

This is literally beyond my capability to mock.

It’s been 11 years since Donald Trump burst onto the national political scene and began his takeover of the Republican Party. But his influence in Minnesota has rarely been tested.

Trump has never weighed in on a competitive primary for statewide office in Minnesota, choosing instead to make an endorsement when the dust had settled.

No longer. Trump waded into a three-way race for Minnesota governor on Wednesday and sided with his longtime friend Mike Lindell, boosting a political ally who has spread Trump’s false theory of a rigged 2020 election just as the president gears up to deliver a primetime address this week on the topic.

Yeah.  Whatever.

BTW, I am not watching Trump speak tonight.

There is not enough alcohol for that.

Now Indict Them

Federal law enforcement is finally sharing data from the Good and Pretti murders with Minnesota law enforcement.

Good.  No go forth and indict the bastards. 

Months of effort between Minnesota’s state and federal law enforcement agencies led the Justice Department to turn over a substantial amount of evidence from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Monday.

The evidence, which was exchanged with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) over the last two weeks without public acknowledgment by the federal government or Minnesota law enforcement officials, includes the SUV that Good was driving when she was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross. It also includes hard drives of federal evidence like body camera footage and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings.

At a news conference, Moriarty said the new information will allow state investigators to be more thorough in determining whether or not to charge federal agents with crimes in connection with the killings.

 

The Banality of Corruption

Have you heard the one about Trump's teleprompter operator made 6 figures insider trading on Kalshi?

No, this is not the introduction to a joke. This really happened.

Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator has been placed on administrative leave, the White House said on Thursday, after reports that he used his position to win $100,000 by placing bets on the president’s speeches using the online prediction market Kalshi.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president had been informed about the situation, which she described as “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace”.

Yeah, who does he think that he is?  Jared Kushner?

 

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And initial and continuing claims fell, but there are some other indicators of trouble ahead.

Applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week, suggesting the labor market remains stable.

Initial claims decreased by 8,000 to 208,000 in the week ended July 11, according to Labor Department Data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 217,000 applications.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, dropped to 1.81 million in the previous week, also lower than expected.

New filings have fallen back to historically subdued levels after spiking in May and early June. Meanwhile the jobless rate declined last month, adding to evidence that employers are generally holding onto their workers even though some sectors such as technology are shedding jobs

Meanwhile long term unemployment has become increasingly problematic.

By most key metrics, the U.S. labor market is in fine shape: the economy has added jobs for four straight months, much improved from late last year, and the unemployment rate has drifted down to 4.2%.

Yet nearly two million Americans have been locked out of the job market for at least half a year.

The long-term unemployed—people without work for 27 weeks or more, the longest period the Labor Department reports in each monthly jobs report—accounted for 27.3% of all unemployed people in June, up 4 percentage points from a year earlier.

That is hovering near the highest level since late 2021, when the labor market was recovering from the Covid-19 shock. This can be perilous, since the six-month mark is when many job seekers lose severance or unemployment benefits.

Also, we are seeing increasing signs of trouble in the housing market.

Pending home sales plunged by 5.4% in June from May, seasonally adjusted, to the lowest level for any June on record, down 0.3% from the abysmally low levels in June last year, down 36% from June 2021, 37% from June 2020, 34% from June 2019, 32% from June 2018, and down 20% from June 2011, during the Housing Bust, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. Its data only goes back to mid-2010.

This is now the fourth year that demand has been in the deep-freeze, amid the highest supply of existing single-family homes in 10 years and of existing condos in 14 years.

Pending home sales fell in all regions, with the index plunging by the most in the Midwest, plunging to record lows in the West, and plunging in the South to the lowest level for any June and the sixth-lowest for any month in the data’s history going back to mid-2010 (historic data via YCharts):

 I think that we are in for a world of hurt.

Make it So

In a bipartisan vote, The Wisconsin Elections Commission has referred Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ to the Brown County District Attorney for potential criminal prosecution for his vote buying efforts during the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections.

Here is hoping that he gets his flabby white ass nailed to the wall.

Elon Musk escaped consequences in 2024 after he handed out $1 million checks to swing state voters in highly publicized events intended to sway the presidential election. The richest person on Earth got away with the galling attempts at bribery after Pennsylvania dropped its case against him. But there’s still a chance Musk’s attempt at swinging a state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin with the same tactic could result in criminal charges.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has referred two complaints to the Brown County District Attorney’s office after it found Musk may have violated the law when he cut $1 million checks to voters in Wisconsin in 2025, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The commission made the referrals during a session on July 10 that was not open to the public, according to the Journal-Sentinel, with a final vote of 5-1. The referrals allege that there’s probable cause Musk violated state law “by making a social media post that offered one million dollars to individuals who voted in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court Election in order to induce them to vote in that election,” according to a copy of the motion seen by the newspaper.

Zero tolerance for vote fraud.  Send him to Gitmo and then deport him.

 

Meanwhile, in the Empire State

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has issued an order pausing data center projects.

I do not think that this will be permanent, Hochul is a corporate Dem, and she wants those campaign donations, but she is a pretty reliable political weather vane, which makes this a sort of, "Flaming Datum" of the current political climate.

Everyone hates data centers with a passion.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday paused incomplete state environmental permit applications for large datacenters while officials work out new rules, a process expected to take up to a year.

The order makes New York the first state to enact such a moratorium amid growing concerns over AI datacenters' impact on utility rates and public health.

“New York has always been at the forefront of innovation and change but we’ve also always guaranteed that New Yorkers benefit. As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochul said in a canned statement.

The order specifically targets large hyperscale datacenters capable of consuming at least 50 MW, subject to exemptions for manufacturing, research, education, and medical facilities. Prior to the AI boom, 50 megawatts would have been considered a large cloud campus.

I Am Not Sure That This Qualifies as News

So some researchers have determined that sometimes one cat will groom another bust to annoy that cat.

Given that cat grooming is a dominance play, and given the behavior of our cats relative to each other, Destructo will groom Meatball* when he wants her to go away, this has been common knowledge for about 3,000 years.

How about studying something really important, like why cats will suddenly stare intently at nothing for 15 minutes.

Seriously, what the f%$# are they seeing? 

Let’s just say cats have a reputation — of being standoffish, manipulative, maybe even jerks. Here’s more corroborating evidence: Scientists are beginning to think that even seemingly innocent cat behavior — grooming another cat — might not always be nice.

The licking can be a method of subtle torment, according to new research published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science.

Mutual grooming, called allogrooming, is widespread in the animal kingdom and found in primates, birds, horses and even insects. The grooming is typically focused on parts of the body that are difficult for an animal to reach on its own, like its back and neck, making the behavior an act of kindness that supports social bonding and wins friends.

Like primates that pick lice from each other’s backs, cats that lick each other have also been considered an indicator of social bonding. “So far, mutual grooming in cats has been categorized as affiliative, or ‘friendly,’ cat behavior,” said Noema Gajdos Kmecova, a cat behavioral scientist at Ghent University and an author of the new study.

Or so we thought.

Morgane Van Belle, another cat behavioral scientist at Ghent University and the study’s lead author, was observing her own cats, Fabio and Giovanni, interacting over a favorite napping spot in the sun and noticed something.

“I saw these weird grooming patterns in my own cats where I thought, This is not super friendly at all,” she said. “Sometimes one cat would lay on the blanket near the window and the other cat would come up and start licking it — but in an annoying way.” The interaction would induce the licked cat to get up and forfeit the sunny spot, she said.

To check whether this behavior was more widespread, Ms. Van Belle and her colleagues looked at 53 households across Europe with two or more cats. After telling the pet owners what to look for, the researchers had them submit videos of their cats’ interactions. The scientists then randomly selected a submission from each participant and used statistical analyses to tease apart the hidden nuance in cat-licking behavior. 

I will note that I am a bit jealous.  The idea of making a career out of observing cats sounds like paradise to me.

^*The names are not my fault. I firmly believe that one does not name a cat, one discovers a cat's name.

Sometimes the Good Ones Win

Case in point, E. Jean Carroll, who just got her $5.6 million for the first of her defamation suits against her rapist Donald Trump.

Now, how about that $83 million defamation award from the 2nd suit?

Writer E. Jean Carroll has received some $5.625 million in her sexual abuse and defamation case against President Trump — a payment that was delayed for years as Trump filed appeals in the civil case.

A federal jury in Manhattan awarded Carroll $5 million in damages in 2023, after finding Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her. The final payment includes three years' worth of interest.

………

In a 2019 memoir, Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996. After she leveled that charge, Trump denied the claim, said he'd never met Carroll, and described her as a liar motivated by ulterior goals. Carroll then filed a lawsuit against Trump accusing him of defamation.

I'm surprised. Paying his debts is not a common behavior for Trump.

Like Father, Like Daughter

I am referring to Bill Gates's daughter, Phoebe, who has founded a personal shopping and advertising website that appears to be little more than affiliate marketing hijacking and fraud.

Phia, an advertising startup co-founded by Phoebe Gates, daughter of billionaire Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, bills itself as a “personal shopping assistant” that helps users find the lowest prices on a broad range of clothes and fashion accessories.

Download the Phia tool onto a web browser, use it while shopping and — voila — the so-called extension can quickly find discount codes for products. Businesses like these, known in industry parlance as affiliate marketing programs, typically collect a commission from retailers that make the resulting sale.

But according to Ben Edelman, an independent researcher and consultant who studies affiliate marketing, as well as Capital One Shopping, which makes a competing browser extension, Phia claimed credit for online sales it didn’t actually drive, in violation of many digital platforms’ policies.

 ………………

Phia was launched by Phoebe Gates, 23, and friend Sophia Kianni in 2025. The company has raised a total of $43.5 million from investors including Notable Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures and a raft of celebrities like Sydney Sweeney, Khloe Kardashian and Hailey Bieber. Former Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is also an investor. Representatives for Notable, Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.  

 ………………

The app has garnered a lot of attention, in part because of its well-known co-founders. Both Gates and Kianni have been included on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 lists in recent years, and have touted the business’s data privacy. 

Ah yes, the 30 under 30 list, better known as the, "Forbes to fraud pipeline."

Another Nepo baby, though probably not as big a scumbag as her Epstein linked dad.   

This is Borgia Pope Sh%$

A particularly abusive order of the Catholic Church, the Congregation of Christian Brothers, have been found to be systematically transferring their assets to an ecclesiastic shell company to avoid having to pay victims.

These assets were transferred to, "Edmund Rice Education Australia," which has taken over their schools in recent years.

Just as an FYI, Edmund Rice was the founder of Congregation of Christian Brothers.

Funny, innit? 

Adam* pauses briefly, his voice catching slightly down the phone line. He’s contemplating how to describe the unprecedented new legal tactic the Christian Brothers Catholic order is deploying against him and hundreds of other abuse survivors.

“It’s not human,” he says. “It’s just not human.”

The Christian Brothers had an oversized role in the church’s industrial-scale abuse of children. A staggering 22% of its brothers were alleged perpetrators – the second highest rate of any Catholic order.

………

Now, the order is telling a court it is broke.

This week, the Christian Brothers applied for a court-ordered moratorium on all remaining civil cases lodged against it by survivors. If granted, it would permanently halt at least 200 civil claims.

This week, the Christian Brothers applied for a court-ordered moratorium on all remaining civil cases lodged against it by survivors. If granted, it would permanently halt at least 200 civil claims.

The order says it wants to instead sell its remaining property portfolio – 36 properties, worth about $216m – and divvy up the leftovers between a range of creditors, including survivors, using a scheme run by retired judges. It has already confirmed the sell-off will not provide enough cash for it to pay creditors all of what they are owed.

But a trove of church property records obtained by Guardian Australia tells another story – one that survivors have not been made aware of.

A Guardian investigation can reveal that the Christian Brothers has spent the last decade transferring large, multimillion-dollar property holdings for amounts of $1 to a separate Catholic church entity which is not part of the proposed sell-off scheme.

The beneficiary of the $1 property deals is Edmund Rice Education Australia, an independent organisation created in 2007 to assume control of schools previously associated with the Christian Brothers like Waverley College in Sydney, Trinity College in Perth and St Joseph’s Nudgee College in Brisbane.

I am not sufficiently proficient in Australian vernacular to properly describe this.  Perhaps my reader(s) could help me herem

Good News Everyone!

It appears that this years versions of glassholes (remember Google Glass?) no longer feel comfortable serrupticiously taping people.

Good.

Meta’s camera-equipped “AI Glasses” are so divisive that some adopters are now leaving their expensive smart glasses at home, as Engadget reports.

Influencers, mostly men, have been using the glasses to inconspicuously — and non-consensually — capture footage of themselves approaching women and attempting to hit on them, interactions they’ve then posted online for content. Some wearers have even attempted to extort victims of covert recordings for cash. That’s on top of serious allegations of alleged privacy breaches by Meta itself.

And then, of course, there’s the simple fact that a lot of people just really don’t like the idea of the world’s largest and most powerful social media giant, which has a history of misusing biometric information and other data, facilitating abuse and surveillance in this way — especially as Meta has taken highly controversial steps to infuse facial recognition capabilities into the tech.

The wearables have become so alienating that many people have taken to simply referring to the shades as “pervert glasses.”

Creeps don't want to be called out as creeps.

F%$# them. 

I Hope That This is Trolling

NEWS: A 10 foot tall participation trophy has been placed on the National Mall in honor of Donald Trump's "enthusiastic involvement" in the Iran war.

A group called Secret Handshake is taking credit. pic.twitter.com/EtagBVTEWH

— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) July 13, 2026

Because if the group erecting an, "Iran War Participation Trophy," for Donald Trump is serious, it provides yet more evidence that Idiocracy was a documentary.

If this is a troll, it is a truly master full troll. 

Since I am an optimist, and since a number of media sites, including the Washington Post, have reported that this was a brilliant bit of mockery, I'll just leave it at, "Well played, motherf%$#ers."

Speaking of the Ongoing War

Trump has announced that the cease fire has ended and that the United States will resume its blockade on Iran and charge a 20% fee on all ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

I'm not sure what the legal justification is for charging such a fee, and in announcing the blockade he is announcing a resumption of war against Iran.  (It's why Kennedy called the blockade of Cuba during the Missile Crisis an, "Embargo.")

The fee that President Trump wants to charge ships going through the Strait of Hormuz would significantly increase the cost of transporting oil and other products through the crucial waterway, shipping operators and logistics experts said.

On Monday, Mr. Trump said the United States would charge a 20 percent fee on all cargo shipped through the strait, as a way to recover the cost of providing military protection to vessels using the waterway.

……… 

Mr. Trump did not explain exactly how the 20 percent fee would be calculated.

But if it were charged on the value of the cargo, it could more than double the cost of shipping oil through the strait.

Scores of ships have gone through the strait with Iran’s permission, taking routes close to the Iranian coast. On Monday, Mr. Trump said he was reinstating a U.S. naval blockade of ships that use Iranian ports.

……… 

In late June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law.” 

He forgets the most important internal law, "We don't care, we don't have to, we are the United States of America mother f%$#ers."

Bummer of a Birthmark, Donnie

A Federal Reserve Governor has publicly stated that they are seriously looking at a rate hike.

I kind of think that the collapse of the cease fire with Iran, and the oil price spikes that have resulted, make this even more likely.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said policymakers may need to raise rates in the near term if underlying inflation continues to signal broad price pressures.

“If we get another hot reading on core inflation this week, then the FOMC will need to consider tightening monetary policy in the near term,” Waller said Monday, referring to the central bank’s rate-setting committee, in remarks prepared for an event in New York.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to release fresh data on consumer prices on Tuesday.

Waller emphasized the economy was in good shape, with the labor market appearing stable and consumer demand resilient. Still, he said, monetary policy was at a “crossroads” because of inflationary pressures driven by tariffs, energy prices and the build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

“No matter how you cut it, or what measure you want to use, inflation is up this year,” Waller said. “At this point, I am concerned about the elevated pace of core inflation.”

I'm a dove on inflation, not that counts for anything, but the fact that this probably has Donald Trump's head exploding amuses me.

The French Freddy Krueger Returns

I am referring, of course to Marine Le Pen who was cleared by a French appellate court to run for President of France in the next election.

It appears that French voters will have the opportunity to see the front-runner of the Presidential race wearing an ankle monitor.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

For a long time, Marine Le Pen believed she was untouchable. So certain was she of her political immortality that she had turned it into a worn-out joke: Nothing would ever stop her from running for office, "unless a truck runs over me." But since March 31, 2025, she was no longer laughing.

On that day, a court had set in motion the inexorable countdown of her political career. Convicted of embezzlement, heavily sentenced, and left disqualified from standing in elections, Le Pen caught a glimpse, for the first time, of her political "death." And while the "miracle" she was hoping for from the Paris Court of Appeal did not quite materialize on Tuesday, July 7, she decided to take her resurrection into her own hands. 

Convicted again for misappropriation of public funds, Le Pen benefited from greater leniency from the appellate judges – with her election ban reduced to the bare minimum – and confirmed that evening she would be running in the 2027 presidential election. No matter if her new appeal to the highest court is uncertain. Now, any potential setbacks will only serve to reinforce her narrative of a political "sacrifice." On her first campaign poster, celebrating a "renaissance," she poses with her arms outstretched, Christ-like.

More details on the electronic monitoring here.

It's fairly clear that she will make it to the runoff.  The only question is how many of Frances polity will support her if her opponent is someone like the left wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

I expect that there are quite a lot of potential Franz von Papen's out there., 

Cover Them Up With Trash Bags

After years of misuse by the police, a 30%+ error rate, and rising public protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has elected not to renew their contract with Flock cameras.

Good.  Now address the remaining problem, that Flock will not remove the cameras and will continue to spy on innocent citizens while they lobby for a new contract. 

The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday stopped working with a surveillance technology company over concerns about the data’s use, according to an LAPD official.

Flock Safety operates 138 pole-mounted cameras in Los Angeles, allowing authorities to track vehicles that have been reported stolen or are registered to known fugitives. It is one of a handful of vendors used by the city for automated license plate readers.

Flock has been criticized for sharing its data with state and federal officials. Advocacy groups worry that information could help President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

………

Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told several news outlets that the LAPD is seeking more protections around the information collected by the agency.

“The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,” said Gialamas.

He said the LAPD would stop using Flock “until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”

The LAPD signed a three-year agreement with Flock in July 2023 that was already set to expire Saturday.

………

Reports that Flock has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has led smaller cities across the country to end their relationships with the company.


In Northern California, the city of Mountain View turned off its 30 Flock cameras in February after officials announced that federal and state law enforcement agencies had accessed city data in violation of the city’s policies.

………

Inspector General Matthew Barragan recommended in the audit that the department suspend the deployment of any new automatic license plate readers, known as ALPRs, and the execution of new contracts.

Any new contracts should go through the Board of Police Commissioners, regardless of whether the agreement includes an exchange of funds, according to the report.


“Contracts or agreements shall establish enforceable requirements governing data security, privacy, access controls, retention and auditing to protect Department ALPR data and ensure accountability for its collection, use and disclosure,” the report said.

Even if one supports the indiscriminate use of ALPRs in US cities (I do not) Flock is a toxic bad actor whose business model is secrecy and back loaded bribery to public officials.

Linkage

• The Poop Emoji Got Gravity Right, Physicists Find (Gizmodo) From the department of too much free time.
• ‘No one believed it’: how a YouTube video accidentally proved Libya’s sand cat really does exist  (The Guardian) First evidence of its presence in Libya.
• Masochistic YouTuber Punishes Himself by Writing a First Person Shooter Entirely in COBOL (Gizmodo) I can't even.
• Detectorist finds 2,700-year-old Bronze Age sword in Poland (Notes from Poland) Metal detector guy hits the jackpot.
• Oldest Wine in the World Is Still Liquid Inside 2,000-Year-Old Roman Funeral Urn (ZME Science) I wonder how it would taste.
• Once Again, Trump Poisons Everything He Touches (The Cross Section) Trump's interference in the referee ruling at the World Cup.
• EU Funding Huge Project on the Origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls - Archaeology (Haaretz) Some of the scrolls are papyrus, and they are going to track down the provenance of those reeds.
• Something Weird Is Going on With the 66 Billion Trees China Planted in a Huge Wall (Futurism) The trees are working to prevent desert expansion, which was expected, and the trees are growing faster than anticipated, which was unexpected.

A pretty good summary of the cesspool known as Palantir.

A New Fusion Complication

One of the outputs from a fusion reaction is a f%$# tonne of neutrons, and as such, one could generate relatively large quantities of Pu239 and U233, which raises significant proliferation issues.

Billions of dollars in venture capital and state investments have recently been poured into efforts to finally make nuclear fusion a viable energy source—big bets that a futuristic leap is coming soon, despite decades of premature prognostications.

Plenty of hurdles remain, of course, from engineering a system that can safely contain the literal power of a burning Sun to ensuring that such a system would be stable enough, consistently enough, for 24/7 use as an energy utility. Now, a particle physicist at Virginia Tech and physicists at Princeton have added a new hurdle to this race to crack fusion: How do we prevent rogue actors from secretly using their fusion plant to stockpile a nuclear arsenal?

Patrick Huber at VT’s Center for Neutrino Physics and Robert Goldston at Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory zeroed in on this unintended consequence specifically for the case of deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion reactors. DT methods have shown great promise in U.S. government tests recently, tapping into a flow of energetic neutron particles created as its supply of hydrogen isotopes fuses into helium atoms. But those substantial neutron fluxes, Huber and Goldston noted, “could be used for covert production of fissile materials.”

“When operated in such a mode, a gigawatt scale fusion reactor could in principle produce tens of kilograms of plutonium or uranium-233 per week,” the researchers calculated in their new study, published Tuesday in the journal Physical Review Applied.

This is not a surprise actually, the neutron output of fusion reactions are generally used to generate Tritium for future use of the reactor.

Actually, non-break-even room temperature fusion reactions have been used as a neutron generator for years.  

You can buy them buy them from Fischer Scientific.