Leftovers

• [Old] Open Culture LLC ☛ R Crumb, the Father of Underground Comix, Takes Down Donald Trump in a NSFW 1989 Cartoon | Open Culture

  Crumb is to under­ground comix as Lao Tzu was to Tao­ism, but the fame Crumb achieved in the late 60s and ear­ly 70s did not pro­tect him from the 80s, “an awful decade” as he told the Observ­er. His aston­ish­ing cre­ative out­put nev­er flagged, but he hat­ed the cul­ture and strug­gled to make ends meet: [...]

• The Atlantic ☛ The Dark Weirdness of R. Crumb

  For the man who effectively invented underground comics in the 1960s, rubbing his readers’ faces in his sexual proclivities was always the point. If Crumb, now 81, was helpless against his own desires—and there he was on the page, quivering and sweating behind his thick glasses as he beheld one of his zaftig goddesses—he suspected that, somehow, everyone else was also helpless against theirs. His comix, as he renamed them, epitomized the hippie turn of the decade because he dove to the depths not just of his own subconscious, but of something collectively screwy, bringing up all the American muck.

  He was the anti–Norman Rockwell the culture was craving. But this was also the gamble of his art. Diving down like that, he risked derision—being called a sicko, a misogynist, a racist (all labels he indeed could not escape).

• Coalition for Networked Information ☛ In Memoriam: Clifford Lynch

  There are no plans for a public memorial service at this time; it was Lynch’s wish that memorial tributes and expressions of sympathy be made in the form of support for library technology, archiving, or preservation projects, such as the Internet Archive, EveryLibrary, or other similar organizations.

• Mockingbird ☛ Success and Its Discontents

  The word “recreation” itself means, if you follow the etymological bread crumbs, “create again.” If we go on, without rest — the word whispers — we slowly become whittled down versions of ourselves. Uncreated. It may be that we even, slowly, shirk off our usness, de-creating the very dirt and breath that makes us human. Other things begin to happen, as well, our smiles are cut away as joy is deemed useless by our own cruel inner clicking accountants. And because, in this way, none of us are ‘built different.’ We, needing to stop, but not seeing its efficiency, risk reducing rest to brief escapes — the insides of a pill or the false halo of a flat screen’s blue light. And as we stack coins or likes or accolades or replies or sales or shares we heap up things that hide us from ourselves. We may even become smaller, gollum-like, cravenly fusing to the soul-stunting object of our over-desire, a soul contortionist bending our bones and breath to fit neatly within the cells of a spreadsheet, or whatever else.

• Heliomass ☛ Three European Icons in Montreal

  Montrealers will be au fait with these some of the physical reminders of Europe which decorate downtown’s cityscape, and may even consider them as mostly there to attract tourists wanting the perfect selfie.

  But for those of you not so familiar with the city, here are three of those European icons all with in a short walk of each other.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Machina economicus

  The economics prize is a fake Nobel that was made up in 1968 by economists who were desperate to have their work recognized as an empirical science on par with, say, physics.

  Behavioral economics – the fastest moving and widest reaching econ subfield – consists primarily of researchers carefully checking to see whether people actually behave like homo economicus and concluding, "nope": [...]

• Jay Springett ☛ Marking the Occasion

  Each post sits within a web of references, tags, dates, and links—forming a layered geography of thought over time. It’s not a timeline, though it does have a feed. It’s not linear, like a newsletter archive. It’s a landscape you can traverse: sideways, diagonally, backwards. Stumble into a post from 2017 and find it speaking to something happening now, or as the author you can fall down a rabbit hole of old tags and finds a version of yourself you’d forgotten.

  The only person responsible for enshittifying this website is me. It’s the last place online where I can be self-determined and still find readers.

• Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Writing Is Redirecting Attention

  In a world where everything seems to spiral towards negativity, writing becomes more and more important. Writing yourself, mind you: writing that helps to better form and steer thoughts in your mind, cluster them, extract ideas, and persist pleasant personal experiences. Writing as a cure for negativity. Writing as a way to rescue your attention from increasingly dangerous capitalistic endeavours (screaming press, aggressive ads, toxic social media, …) and deliberately focus it on topics that genuinely interest you.

• Eliseo Martelli ☛ Notes from a week of presence

  Since I started browsing minifeed.net more frequently, I've found myself reading more and more articles and subscribing to more RSS feeds, this also makes me feel more connected to the indie web.

• Science

  • NBC ☛ One of the country's leading Alzheimer's projects is in jeopardy

    Universities are reeling. The Trump administration has executed a flurry of research grant terminations at large, private institutions like Johns Hopkins and Princeton University. In a recent court case against NIH, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the administration targeted cuts to grants about topics it disfavors like diversity, LGBTQ issues and gender identity.

    Among public universities, the University of Washington is one of the hardest hit, and researchers and students have said the fallout from the cuts has upended their careers and forced some to consider leaving the U.S.

  • Futurism ☛ Nobel-Winning Scientist Says His Researchers Are Fleeing the Country Because of Trump's Cruelty

    "There’s so many amazing people who want to come in, and we can’t take them," he told NBC. "The Nobel Prize was just a little blip. But things have gotten quite bleak."

    Trump's war on science in the US has sparked concerns over a major brain drain, with a Nature poll of more than 1,200 scientists finding that a startling 75 percent are now considering leaving the country.

• Career/Education

  • Vox ☛ The end of “college for all”

    Is college for everybody? According to Chelsea Waite, a senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the answer is no. And more students, parents, and educators are realizing it.

  • Robert Birming ☛ You gotta start somewhere

    And isn't that the truth of it all? Everyone begins their journey at some point. No one is born an expert, fully formed and ready to conquer the world.

  • The Newsprint ☛ The Sunday Edition — 04.13.25

    Don’t be the person who calls people unannounced. Send a text or an email ahead of time. Ask if the recipient has time to discuss a particular topic. This allows them to be prepared for your call, research the topic, and make the best use of everyone's time. They can also perform the research part whenever works best for them, ensuring they can do it efficiently. They can respond in a referenceable format.

    Yes, this is a generational issue. But an entire generation can be wrong about something.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Predatory journals even worse since “Get Me Off Your F*ck*ng Mailing List” was accepted for publication

    Vox points out that while this particular incident is "pretty hilarious," it points to bigger issues in academic and scientific publishing and the growth of "online-only, for-profit operations that take advantage of inexperienced researchers under pressure to publish their work in any outlet that seems superficially legitimate." These journals differ from legitimate journals because they don't conduct peer reviews—heck, some clearly don't even read the papers! These predatory journals also require payment from the author to be published, whereas legitimate journals don't.

  • The American Council on Science and Health ☛ The Dangers of Junk Science

    Behind the polished facade of peer-reviewed journals lurks a growing epidemic of junk science — propped up by predatory publishers, ignored conflicts of interest, and research so bad it refuses to die, even after retraction.

  • [Old] Retraction Watch ☛ Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers

    Ever curious which retracted papers have been most cited by other scientists? Below, we present the list of the 10 most highly cited retractions as of December 18, 2024. Readers will see some familiar entries, such as the infamous Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield that originally suggested a link between autism and childhood vaccines. You’ll note that some papers — including the #8 most cited paper — received more citations after they were retracted, which research has shown is an ongoing problem.

• Hardware

  • Wired ☛ Why It’s Impossible for Most Small Businesses to Manufacture in the US

    Walton can personally directly compare what it’s like to manufacture in China versus the US because his business takes orders from the US government, which is willing to pay a premium for goods produced locally. “Every consumer electronics manufacturer goes to China. I don’t even know how to feasibly make something like that at a price point that would make sense for me and my customers that aren’t the US government,” he says.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Social Security's trust fund could run out of money sooner than expected due to changes in taxes and benefits

    Under current law, when that trust fund is empty, Social Security can pay benefits only from dedicated tax revenues, which would, by that point, cover only about 79% of promised benefits. Another way to say this is that when that trust fund is depleted, the people who rely on Social Security for some or the bulk of their income would see a sudden 21% cut in their monthly checks in 2036.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Alabama House votes to make human cloning a felony

    HB 380, sponsored by Rep. Phillip Rigsby, R-Huntsville, makes it a Class C felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to engage in human cloning. Rigsby said during a brief debate on Wednesday that he is not aware of any human cloning happening in Alabama or the United States, but he said that is the direction science is going.

  • Greg Storey ☛ Kindness feels radical.

    Their story stopped me. Not because they were thanked, but because it was so rare—and so disorienting—that it elicitedan emotional response. It wasn’t just meaningful. It was a shock to the system. Kindness, once a baseline part of being human, now feels like an anomaly.

• Proprietary

  • Rich Trouton ☛ Accessing SSL certificate details in Safari 18.4 and later

    In Safari 18.3 and earlier on macOS, it’s been possible to access details about SSL certificates used by the websites being visited using the following process: [...]

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ China Sort of Admits to Being Behind Volt Typhoon - Schneier on Security

    The admission wasn’t explicit: [...]

  • Dark Reading ☛ Salt Typhoon: A Wake-up Call for Critical Infrastructure

    At least nine major US telecommunications companies, including Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, were affected. Sensitive systems, such as those used for lawful intercepts, were breached, exposing government communications and jeopardizing ongoing investigations. The attackers also accessed metadata for more than a million users, raising significant privacy and security concerns. Although specific financial losses have not been disclosed, the affected telecom companies collectively generate more than $334 billion in annual revenue, indicating the potential economic magnitude of the attack. These disruptions have not only strained public trust but also emphasized the vulnerabilities within critical infrastructure that adversaries can exploit.

  • [Old] University of Maryland Baltimore County ☛ What Is Salt Typhoon? A Security Expert Explains The Chinese Hackers And Their Attack On US Telecommunications Networks - UMBC: University Of Maryland, Baltimore County

    The complex cyberattack, carried out by a group of Chinese hackers dubbed Salt Typhoon, began as far back as 2022. Its purpose, according to U.S. officials, was to give Chinese operatives persistent access to telecommunications networks across the U.S. by compromising devices like routers and switches run by companies like AT&T, Verizon, Lumen and others.

  • [Old] US FCC ☛ Implications of Salt Typhoon Attack and FCC Response | Federal Communications Commission

    On December 4, 2024, a top U.S. security agency confirmed reports that foreign actors, state-sponsored by the People’s Republic of China, infiltrated at least eight U.S. communications companies, compromising sensitive systems and exposing vulnerabilities in critical telecommunications infrastructure. This was part of a massive espionage campaign that has affected dozens of countries.

  • Microsoft’s Controversial Recall AI Feature Begins Rollout, Privacy Concerns Remain

    Microsoft has started rolling out its controversial AI-powered tool for some users of its AI PCs and laptops.

    Copilot+ Recall was initially met with pushback from privacy experts and users who believed the feature could dangerously create a treasure trove of personal information for potential bad actors.

    The tech giant stripped some of Recall’s most controversial features last year as it claimed to work towards a release with “security and privacy in mind.”

  • Financial Express ☛ Tech layoffs in 2025 continue: Google, Microsoft, Meta and others slash jobs

    Tech Layoffs: According to data from Layoffs.fyi, more than 23,500 tech employees have lost their jobs this year across 93 companies.

  • Mansueto Ventures ☛ Amazon’s Reduction of Managerial Ranks Increases White-Collar Worries

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is stepping up plans to lower the ratio of mid-management executives to lower-level employees.

  • Game Industry Layoffs Amid Broader Economic Struggles

    The gaming sector witnessed significant workforce reductions throughout 2024. By June, layoffs had already surpassed the total number from the previous year, with over 10,000 developers losing their jobs. Major companies such as Microsoft and Sony were not immune, implementing substantial cuts across their gaming divisions. Microsoft, for instance, laid off approximately 650 employees in September 2024, following earlier reductions of 1,900 staff in January.

    The reasons behind these layoffs are multifaceted. The COVID-19 pandemic initially led to a surge in gaming as consumers sought entertainment during lockdowns. When the restrictions eased, there was a notable decline in consumer spending on games. This shift forced companies to reassess and restructure their operations.

  • Financial Post ☛ The dangers of performance-based layoffs

    Conscious of the potential stigma of being labelled in this way, affected employees took to LinkedIn to bemoan their former employer and bat for their reputation. Many insisted they were in fact high performers; some even shared lists of their previous positive evaluations as evidence.

  • HT Digital Streams Ltd ☛ People losing jobs in their 40s: CEO’s explanation draws mixed response

    Bombay Shaving Company CEO, Shantanu Deshpande, recently highlighted the growing pattern of people in their 40s “losing their jobs," and asked how the internet felt about it. While many netizens agreed with the CEO's views, others had mixed responses.

    “They aren’t losing jobs…. Companies are laying people off… correct language is important,” commented one user.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Stephen Hackett ☛ xAI Paying Far Less in Local Taxes Than Forecasted

      This news comes on the heels of environmental and community groups saying that xAI has increased its usage of gas turbines without permission.

    • Alberto Romero ☛ Google Is Winning on Every AI Front

      Anyway, to avoid turning this post into an over-stylized narrative—which I do more often than I’d like—I’m keeping it to bullet points. It hits harder that way. You’ll see what I mean when the list just... doesn’t end.

      Google and DeepMind fans: enjoy the long-overdue rebirth.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo writes his housing plan with ChatGPT

      Cuomo released his housing plan for New York City on Sunday. Most of the plan is political slop, though it’s the usual hand-crafted, artisanal kind of slop. But New York journalists’ collective Hell Gate gave the document a proper delve — and it looks like it was written using ChatGPT.

      The plan is 29 pages long. By page 28, it devolves into gibberish: [...]

    • Futurism ☛ Judge Goes Ballistic When Man Shows AI-Generated Video in Court

      Dewald was originally going to use a separate service called Tavus to create an AI avatar of his face, but ran out of time. (It's unclear whether Tavus and Pro Se Pro are in any way related).

    • Michigan Advance ☛ AI holds promise in scientific research, but can’t substitute for humans, experts say • Michigan Advance

      The federal government may be eyeing artificial intelligence to bridge a gap created by these cuts. In February, the U.S. Department of Energy’s national labs partnered with AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic for an “AI Jam Session,” a day for 1,000 scientists across various disciplines to test the companies’ AI models and share feedback. Some figures in Trump’s cabinet have suggested that artificial intelligence models may be a good substitute for human physicians.

      But scientists and builders of AI say it’s not that simple.

    • New Yorker ☛ How to Survive the A.I. Revolution

      Warnings about A.I.’s impact on employment have been amplified by studies predicting mass job displacement, including in white-collar fields once thought immune to automation. A widely cited McKinsey report, updated in 2024, estimates that technologies like generative A.I. “have the potential to automate work activities that absorb up to 70 percent of employees’ time today.” An earlier Goldman Sachs analysis projected that generative A.I. could put the equivalent of three hundred million full-time jobs at risk worldwide. One profession already seeing steep losses is computer programming, at which A.I. has proved especially adept; U.S.-government data indicate that more than a quarter of all programming jobs have disappeared in the past two years.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Crosswalks in Silicon Valley hacked to play satirical messages from Musk and Zuckerberg sound-a-likes

      A number of Silicon Valley crosswalks were hacked to sound like U.S. big-tech broligarchs, according to reports published by local media this weekend. Palo Alto Online reports that folks pressing crosswalk wait buttons in Redwood City, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto areas heard messages featuring Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg sound-a-likes. It isn’t just the voices that have been changed - instead of the possibly useful warnings about traffic, vocal caricatures of these famous tech leaders deliver messages laced with satire.

    • The Register UK ☛ What goes up must come down? AI datacenter spending inflates

      Rather more recently, Synergy Research Group said in January that mergers and acquisitions of datacenter businesses throughout 2024 swelled to record highs of $73 billion, and yet more investors are lining up for a piece of the action.

      Having lived through the early days of the [Internet] frenzy, Fabrice Coquio, senior veep at Digital Realty, which bills itself as the world's largest provider of cloud and carrier-neutral datacenter, colocation and interconnection services, is perhaps better placed than most to venture an opinion. Is there a bubble?

    • Security Week ☛ AI Hallucinations Create a New Software Supply Chain Threat

      The academics also warn that, while the risk of LLMs recommending malicious or typosquatted packages has been documented before, it was considered low, and that the concept of package hallucinations was not considered. With the rapid evolution of Gen-AI, the risks linked to its use have also escalated.

  • Social Control Media

    • Terence Eden ☛ You don’t need an API key to archive Twitter Data

      Apparently there's no need for IP laws any more, so here's a way to archive high-fidelity Twitter data without signing up for an expensive API key.

      This is perfect for academics wishing to preserve Tweets, journalists wanting to download evidence, or simply embedding content without leaking user data back to Twitter.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Bitdefender ☛ Medusa ransomware gang claims to have hacked NASCAR

      At the top of the page, Medusa has placed a countdown timer - whereafter it threatens to make the data stolen from NASCAR available to anybody on the internet. The countdown deadline can be extended at a cost of US $100,000 per day.

      In an attempt to verify its claim of having hacked NASCAR, Medusa has published screenshots of what it claims are internal documents - including some purporting to show the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of NASCAR employees and sponsors, as well as invoices, financial reports, and more.

• Security

  • Purism ☛ World Quantum Day: Embracing Post-Quantum Encryption for a Secure Future

    This looming threat has given rise to the concept of Q-Day—the moment when quantum computing becomes powerful enough to break current encryption standards. For governments, businesses, and individuals, the implications are profound. Data harvested today could be decrypted in the future, exposing sensitive information to malicious actors.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Why George Lucas buried the original cut of Star Wars

      But even so, the film still wasn’t Star Wars as 1977 audiences had seen it, so in 2010, a small band of fans – a rebel alliance, if you like – took matters into their own hands. Led by a Czech English teacher called Petr Harmáček, a group of largely self-taught tech-savvy amateurs began painstakingly restoring the original cuts of all three films, using footage from various sources, cleaning up the colours and animated special effects frame by frame.

      After thousands of man-hours, a restored version of the first film had been completed within a year; multiple revisions and fine-tunings of all three original trilogy entries have since followed. Harmáček, known online as Harmy, quit teaching four years after that and became a full-time VFX artist, working on blockbusters such as Wonder Woman and Blade Runner 2049.

      His so-called ‘Despecialised Editions’ look ravishing – ahem, so I hear – but their legal status is obviously contentious. Though Disney and Lucasfilm have never taken any action against Harmáček, exhibitors have apparently not been so lucky. Unconfirmed stories circulate of independent cinemas who tried to legally obtain the rights to screen a 1977 Star Wars print, only for Disney to catch wind and demand they show the latest Blu-ray version instead, on pain of future sanctions.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Today ☛ Will FTC antitrust trial force Mark Zuckerberg to sell Instagram and WhatsApp? Here's all we know

      There is no doubt that Meta is currently ruling the social media world. Starting with Facebook in 2004, CEO Mark Zuckerberg slowly took over other major social media platforms as well, including Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. While Meta invested significant resources in unifying its three platforms, the US watchdog argues that it was a calculated move to tighten its grip on the social media and messaging landscape. The bigger picture indicates that Meta is a monopoly that refuses any other player to enter the race. The current Federal Trade Commission (FTC) case is, in part, a response to these very concerns, as regulators seek to determine whether Meta’s consolidation efforts have crossed the line from innovation to monopolistic behaviour.

    • Wired ☛ Microsoft’s Recall AI Tool Is Making an Unwelcome Return

      Microsoft is hoping that the concessions requiring opt-in and the ability to pause Recall will help quell the collective revolt that broke out last year. It likely won’t for various reasons.

    • Ars Technica ☛ ChatGPT can now remember and reference all your previous chats

      This means ChatGPT will learn more about the user over time to personalize its responses, above and beyond just a handful of key facts.

      Some time ago, OpenAI added a feature called "Memory" that allowed a limited number of pieces of information to be retained and used for future responses. Users often had to specifically ask ChatGPT to remember something to trigger this, though it occasionally tried to guess at what it should remember, too. (When something was added to its memory, there was a message saying that its memory had been updated.)

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ DOGE [sic\’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data

      What’s going on now is not unconventional swashbuckling—it’s wild incompetence. Musk may have run plenty of tech companies, but building technology for government is an entirely different beast. If this administration doesn’t change its approach soon, American citizens are going to suffer far more than they probably realize.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Trump Revenge Tour Targets Cyber Leaders, Elections

    President Trump last week revoked security clearances for Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who was fired by Trump after declaring the 2020 election the most secure in U.S. history. The White House memo, which also suspended clearances for other security professionals at Krebs’s employer SentinelOne, comes as CISA is facing huge funding and staffing cuts.

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Chris Krebs, Government Censorship, the EFF, and Panicking Leftist Programmers

    Hell Toupée is taking action against the former head of CISA (Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency) for censoring Americans.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Law Firms Must Stand Up for Themselves

    On our firm’s official website, we say, “For more than 100 years, Jenner has stood firm and tirelessly advocated for our clients against all adversaries, including against unlawful government action. We once again go to court to do just that. To do otherwise would mean compromising our ability to zealously advocate for all of our clients and capitulating to unconstitutional government coercion, which is simply not in our DNA.” It gives me goose bumps when I read that, because it’s absolutely true. I’m so proud that our firm—leadership, partners, associates, and staff—is sticking together and doing the right thing.

  • Wired ☛ Gamaredon: The Turncoat Spies Relentlessly Hacking Ukraine

    For the past decade, this group of FSB hackers—including “traitor” Ukrainian intelligence officers—has used a grinding barrage of intrusion campaigns to make life hell for their former countrymen and cybersecurity defenders.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Repost: The Fraudulence of “Waste, Fraud and Abuse”

    This was my first Substack post after leaving the New York Times. Reposting now — new post coming in a few hours — because it holds up pretty well, although I underestimated the damage Musk would cause

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Islamist gangs are taking over Britain’s jails – and radicalising criminals

    Former inmates have spoken about a war in a number of prisons between Islamist gangs and rival groups involving acts of grotesque violence. The skirmishes are not as frequent now, but it’s not because authorities have seized back control. Instead it is said to be because the Islamist gangs have won the power battle, leading some to convert to their side and leaving others who will not increasingly fearful for their safety.

    “It’s a real problem, very complex and it won’t go away anytime soon,” says Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA).

    [...]

    Ryan says those offenders acted as a magnet to many of the Muslim prisoners at Belmarsh, who make up almost a-third of the prison’s population. “The terrorist prisoners were the ones that everyone wanted to congregate around,” he says.

    “A lot of people will look up at them, they look at them as a second prophet, as a God. In Belmarsh, they put them in with normal prisoners – guys convicted of drug offences, GBH, alongside a terrorist – this is where the issue stems from.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • US News And World Report ☛ The Literally Dozens of Times Donald Trump Has Praised Vladimir Putin

    Here are a few dozen times when Trump has praised, thanked, supported or excused Putin: [...]

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Lawsuit filed after Trump’s budget office shuts down public information about spending

    The case, as well as the one brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington last week, asks a federal judge to require OMB to restore the website that publicly shared the data for years.

    OMB Director Russ Vought told Congress late last month that the budget office would no longer publicly post apportionment information, writing in a letter that to do so would disclose “sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.”

  • Laura Fisher ☛ Toilet Paper Math

    So the only way to really compare is square footage, which they make hard to find in online listings. But I persevered, and here is the comparison for our favorite brand, Cottonelle.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Things Go Boom When You Attempt to Retcon the Economy

    I keep writing about how Trump keeps retconning what he is doing legally, attempting to alter his explanations for what he’s doing, legally, when a first legal theory runs into trouble. The Trump administration has tried to retcon: [...]

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Satellites underestimate power plant CO₂ emissions by 70%, study reveals

    A new study published in the Journal of Remote Sensing has revealed that current satellite systems underestimate total CO₂ emissions from U.S. thermal power plants by 70% (±12%).

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Official Says It's Okay to Destroy Endangered Species Because We Can Just Clone Them

    That's a pretty bold claim. And the thing about the "dire wolves" brought back from extinction is that they're not really dire wolves. They're modern gray wolves born from gene-edited embryos designed to imitate certain dire wolf traits. (In fact, some research suggests that the dire wolf isn't even an ancestor of the gray wolf, Science notes.)

    Colossal, which has also vowed to bring back the dodo, used the same trick to create "woolly mice" possessing fur that resembled the shaggy pelt of the wooly mammoth. DNA samples from the extinct creatures were used to identify the genes targeted in the edits, but no actual dire wolf or wooly mammoth genetic material was implanted into the modern analogs.

  • New Statesman ☛ The dark side of the Moomins

    Tove Jansson’s beloved stories, which turn 80 this year, are not cute: they are angry tales of apocalypse and breakdown.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Derek Kędziora ☛ Two hours faster

      The main reason you have to get to the airport so early is for the security theatre. If they stopped the nonsense with the shoes and upselling “faster” screening, and instead simply staffed the airport well enough to allow passengers to get through this in a few minutes, you’d save another hour.

    • The New Atlantis ☛ If the Reagan Airport crash was “waiting to happen,” why didn’t anyone stop it?

      The last of these costs is the most significant. No matter how much technical expertise and neutral proceduralism you throw at the problem, it simply runs against any large bureaucracy’s operational tides to surface concerns that could implicate its very legitimacy, its nature, its mandate to exist.

      In safety studies, normalized deviance is the pattern by which a system creeps from labeling specific behaviors “dangerous” to labeling them “abnormal but not yet a proven danger” to labeling them “well, I know, but we’ve been doing it this way all along” to labeling them “normal”: via Lincoln Murphy

      What is so curious about last week’s crash is that we had just had a 15-year period where no major U.S. airline suffered a fatal crash. It would have been hard for even the most optimistic observer in the 1960s or 1970s to have ever anticipated such a wild success — and the fact of it alone suggests that America’s air safety system remains one of the best examples in the world of addressing patterns like normalized deviance.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Zoo elephants protect their young as earthquake shakes San Diego

      “It was really neat to see them come together as a herd to protect the juvenile and then immediately try to survey their habitat,” she said. “Elephants have an incredible sense of hearing — they can feel sound through their feet — so you can see them pause after they all formed the alert circle to see if they could get any more information from the environment.”

    • Gannett ☛ Watch elephants form protective circle in San Diego after earthquake

      Video shared by the San Diego Zoo Safari Park shows elephants Ndlula, Umngani and Khosi circling youngsters Zuli and Mkhaya after the shaking disrupted a calm Monday morning. They stay huddled around the younger elephants for about four minutes before they broke the circle but still stayed nearby.

    • NBCUniversal Media LLC ☛ Elephants circle during earthquake at San Diego Zoo Safari Park – NBC 7 San Diego

      African Elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park instinctively created an "alert circle" during the earthquake.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Crows May Grasp Basic Geometry: Study Finds the Brainy Birds Can Tell the Difference Between Shapes

      In a paper published in the journal Science Advances last week, researchers report that carrion crows can recognize “geometric regularity,” meaning they may discern traits like length of sides, parallel lines, right angles and symmetry. In the study, they could tell the difference between shapes like stars, crescents and squares, as well as between squares and irregular figures with four sides.

    • James G ☛ Gardening, fruit and Nature with Sara and James

      Sara and James spent the evening reflecting on what gardening – and, by extension, Nature – means to both of them. From stories of gardening as a child to documenting the fruits commonly grown between Scotland and Slovenia and Croatia, we explore our connection to the places in which we live.

      Their discussion is published below.

• Finance

  • Follow The Money ☛ Bureau Brussels: EU Emissions Trading System at risk of money laundering

    Welcome to the newsletter of Follow the Money’s EU desk, with insights from our EU specialists, news from the Brussels bubble, and the latest on our investigations!

    This week: The EU’s emissions trading system shows signs of vulnerability to money laundering. Fertiliser giant Yara deepens its ties with EU policymakers. And Parliament continues to delay transparency reforms on MEPs’ expense allowances.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Brandon ☛ Stop Whining by Arnold Schwarzenegger

    Today, I wanted to share something, not written by me, but written by Arnold Schwarzenegger. My commentary wouldn’t add anything to this already well written piece, so I thought I just share it in its entirety.

    This column originated as part of today’s edition of The Pump newsletter, and I found it to be great timing for myself, and I think a lot of others can benefit from reading this as well. Please note, the column was not titled but I think Stop Whining fits.

  • Seth Godin ☛ How to win an argument with a toddler

    The toddler puts on a show of having an argument, but they are holding a tantrum in reserve. If they ‘win’ the argument, no tantrum is needed. If they lose, they can tell themselves that they tried but the other person deserved the tantrum because they didn’t listen.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Hindustan Times ☛ US TikTok users get bombarded with Chinese influencer videos mocking tariffs

      The flood of posts also reflects the increased effectiveness of Chinese creators to reach into the daily lives of ordinary Americans. TikTok’s algorithm, and its ability to influence what information millions of US users see, is one of the main driving forces behind US government efforts to force its Chinese owner ByteDance Ltd. to relinquish control of its international operations. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    • Meduza ☛ 'It’s all about raw, exaggerated emotion' How Russia's propaganda shows went from demonizing America to praising Trump without blinking

      — For more than a decade now, Russian propaganda has pushed the idea that America is Russia’s eternal enemy, and that U.S. policy is rooted in hatred and fear of our country. But the moment Trump said a few kind words about Putin, Russian TV suddenly forgot all about this existential standoff and started gushing over this “wonderful man” and the America that’s supposedly about to become great again. Were you surprised by this sudden shift?

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Concerns Mount Over Alleged Chinese Involvement in Death of Tibetan Leader

    According to HRW, there are allegations that the Vietnamese police, in coordination with China's Ministry of State Security, detained Humkar Dorje on March 25. He reportedly died four days later. While his monastery claimed he died from illness during a retreat, HRW suggests this statement may have been made under duress, given China's tight control over Tibetan religious institutions.​

  • Harvard University ☛ Harvard won’t comply with Trump administration’s demands

    “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message to the community. He added: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

  • Harvard University ☛ The Promise of American Higher Education - Harvard University President

    Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to “maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.” It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Harvard refuses to comply with Trump demands

    While Columbia University capitulated to President Donald Trump’s demands, Harvard’s defiance marks a major rebuke to his crackdown on higher education.

  • Harvard University ☛ Letter Sent to Harvard University by Harvard Corporation [PDF]

    The United States has invested in Harvard University’s operations because of the value to the country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence. But an investment is not an entitlement. It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights laws, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture.

    Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the University to its promise. We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.

  • British Comedy Guide ☛ The Cancellation Of Benny Hill

    In this no-holds-barred documentary, we delve into the past of one of Britain's most unlikely family entertainers - a man whose mere theme tune is enough to bring back memories for anyone of a certain age. We tell the story of his irresistible rise, his controversial reign as Britain's king of comedy, and his eventual downfall, when his incredibly expensive show was finally cancelled by ITV in the late 80s.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ joins legal effort to defend MBN and RFA following Trump executive order

    “The dismantling of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Asia, whose news outlets report on the reality of highly censored environments in the Middle East and Asia, is a betrayal of the U.S.’s historical commitment to press freedom,” said CPJ Chief Global Affairs Officer Gypsy Guillén Kaiser. “Attacks on the credibility of both outlets leave millions of people without reliable news sources, while endangering the intrepid reporters who report the facts.”

  • Press Gazette ☛ G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller speaks out after Quartz sale

    The sale of US newsbrand Quartz with the loss of nearly all its staff on 4 April has led some to accuse G/O Media of running a once widely-admired title into the ground.

    But G/O Media chief executive Jim Spanfeller has now hit back at those who have accused his company of turning Quartz into a “zombie brand” filled with “AI slop”.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Pro Publica ☛ Trump DOJ’s Freeze on Police Reform Work Raises Fears of More Abuse

    When news broke in January that the Trump Justice Department was freezing significant work on civil rights litigation, including police reform cases, attention immediately focused on two cities: Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky.

    Both places were on the cusp of entering court-enforced agreements to overhaul their police forces after high-profile police killings there sparked a nationwide reckoning over race and policing.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Grandparents Are Reaching Their Limit

    You could be forgiven, then, for thinking grandparents are shirking their duty. But the truth is quite the opposite: America is in an age of peak grandparenting—particularly grandmothering. A 2022 survey from Deseret News and Brigham Young University found that nearly 60 percent of grandmothers had provided child care for a grandkid, and more than 40 percent saw a grandchild in person at least weekly. A 2023 Harris poll found that more than 40 percent of working parents relied on their kids’ grandma for child care; nearly 70 percent of those parents said they might have lost their job without that grandmother’s help.

  • Wired ☛ A Cybersecurity Professor Disappeared Amid an FBI Search. His Family Is ‘Determined to Fight’

    Wang’s case has raised concerns among academics that a shuttered Department of Justice program called the China Initiative is being revived under the new Trump administration. The campaign, which was started during President Trump’s first term in office with the stated goal of combating economic espionage, was accused by critics of unfairly targeting Chinese-born researchers and other Asian-immigrant and Asian-American academic communities. The DOJ later abandoned the program under the Biden administration after it lost or withdrew a number of associated cases.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Trump Has Yet to Answer Lawmakers About ICE Detaining Americans

    Amid increasing reports that U.S. citizens have been caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet, a dozen members of Congress have written to the government with pointed questions. None has received a reply.

  • Boston Globe ☛ Homeland Security mistakenly tells Boston lawyer to self-deport

    Micheroni, who was born in Massachusetts, was confused. The message, titled, “Notification of Termination of Parole,” included no client name or case number.

    “It took me a couple of minutes to realize it was sent to me, instead of someone I represent,” Micheroni said.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg, serial witness, takes the hot seat again

  Zuckerberg on Monday again took the hot seat, this time as the marquee witness in the Federal Trade Commission's landmark lawsuit accusing Meta of breaking antitrust law. Regulators sued the company in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, saying it used a "buy-or-bury strategy" to maintain a monopoly in social media.

• The Washington Post ☛ Mark Zuckerberg tells court Meta faces broader competition than FTC says

  FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson sought to use Zuckerberg’s previous comments and company documents to show that Facebook prioritized helping users connect with people they knew. For instance, Matheson cited the company’s registration documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, where it states “people use Facebook to stay connected.”

• Nick Heer ☛ The U.S. Federal Trade Commission Takes on Meta – Pixel Envy

  This is going to be a fascinating trial. It seems clear based on evidence in emails, chats, and underhanded tactics that Instagram and WhatsApp were acquired to neutralize their competitive power. Yet we have no idea what the tech landscape of today would look like had both remained independent companies. Meta’s products still have competition from other social networks and, in theory, it must fight them for every user-minute and ad dollar. However, we know for certain Meta does not need to compete today against Instagram and WhatsApp.

• BBC ☛ Meta's antitrust trial could force Zuckerberg to sell Instagram

  "The [FTC's] argument is the acquisition of Instagram was a way of neutralising this rising competitive threat to Facebook," says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust law at Vanderbilt Law School.

  Ms Allensworth says Mr Zuckerberg's own words, including those from his emails, may offer the most convincing evidence at trial.

• CNN ☛ If Meta loses in antitrust case, it could be forced to break itself up by selling Instagram and WhatsApp

  The US government is advancing a blockbuster antitrust case, alleging that Mark Zuckerberg’s company illegally built a “social networking monopoly” through years of “anticompetitive conduct.”

• The Independent UK ☛ Meta faces historic antitrust trial that could force it to break off Instagram, WhatsApp

  Meta, the FTC argues, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg's strategy, "expressed in 2008: ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats."

• CNBC ☛ Meta faces the FTC as blockbuster antitrust trial kicks off

  "Acquiring these competitive threats has enabled Facebook to sustain its dominance—to the detriment of competition and users—not by competing on the merits, but by avoiding competition," the FTC said in a legal filing.

• Politico LLC ☛ Will Meta survive Judge Boasberg? The drama starts Monday.

  If the FTC successfully convinces U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (yes, that Boasberg) that Meta used its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp to lock in an illegal social media monopoly, the agency would next look to unwind Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s carefully assembled social media empire.

  That would break up a $1.4 trillion company — a process that hasn’t been attempted at such a scale since telephone monopoly AT&T was broken up 40 years ago, marking a historic pushback on excessive corporate power.

• France24 ☛ Landmark antitrust trial to challenge Meta's social media dominance

  As part of his lobbying efforts, Zuckerberg contributed to Trump's inauguration fund and overhauled content moderation policies. He also purchased a $23 million mansion in Washington in what was seen as a bid to spend more time close to the center of political power.

• Copyrights

  • The Register UK ☛ ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli-style images are no laughing matter

    Hayao Miyazaki, the artist and animator who co-founded Studio Ghibli and who still serves as its chairman, hasn't addressed this issue yet. But, in 2016, he called an automated animation tool "an insult to life itself," so I think we know where the elder statesman of fantasy animation stands.

    Mind you, there's nothing new about this kind of theft. Even back in 2022, the famous Dungeons and Dragons fantasy artist Greg Rutkowski reported that tens of thousands of AI-created takes on his art had appeared online. Things have only gotten much worse since then for artists.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Meta AI 'Piracy' Lawsuit: Publishers and Professors Challenge Fair Use Defense

    As Meta defends its AI training practices in court, major publishers and copyright law experts are weighing in against the company. An amicus brief from publishers highlights Meta's alleged reliance on pirated book archives including Anna's Archive and Z-Library. Separately, a brief from law professors argues that Meta's unauthorized copying to train Llama is an "undeniably commercial" use that provides no new transformative meaning and shouldn't qualify as fair use.