Leftovers

• Rebecca Solnit ☛ In the Dark Times Will There Also Be Singing?

  "In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer," George Orwell wrote in his essay "Why I Write" after the Second World War. To support his wife who took a government job in London during the war, he had left his beloved garden and rural life behind, and then taken a job with the BBC himself, during which he did little writing aside from scripts for the radio show he produced.

  Later in that 1946 essay, he declares, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another." He's arguing that all art is political, that in what we value and deplore, focus on and ignore, we articulate a set of values and priorities.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Propose That Entire Universes Can Form Inside Collapsing Stars

    Or maybe not, a pair of physicists are proposing. Instead, Goethe University physics researchers Daniel Jampolski and Luciano Rezzolla suggest in a new study published in the journal Physical Review D, the demise of a large star can lead to something even stranger: a tiny, nascent universe that’s loaded with dark energy pushing outward, preventing the star from collapsing entirely.

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Brain Might Predict Social Interactions Before They Happen : ScienceAlert

    The researchers suggest that their findings could help explain why some of us are more social than others, and further down the line, be used to inform support for people who have difficulty socializing.

    The burst of activity seen in some parts of the zebrafish brain suggests that there's some kind of mental build-up required for social interactions, and one that's possibly deeply embedded across species evolution.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Venus Flytraps Snap Their Traps Shut in Less Than a Second. Scientists Say They've Discovered How the Predatory Plants Are So Fast

    Researchers have suspected that softening cell walls might be behind Venus flytraps’ quick closure. But another leading hypothesis posits that the action might stem from the movement of water. In that proposal, water travels into cells in the outer surface, or epidermis, of the jaw-like leaves, causing them to swell and the trap to shut.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ This man with ALS is "the first power user" of a brain implant that lets him speak

    “There are 39 phonemes that make up all the sounds in the [American] English language,” says Nicholas Card, a neuroengineer at UC Davis and member of the team. Mapping neural activity related to producing each of those phonemes can allow the team to create a personalized speech decoder and software that can “speak” those words. “We first go from brain data to phonemes, and then from phonemes to words,” he says.

    They started using the device around a month after the surgery. The team got Harrell’s speech decoder working on the first day, says Card. On that day in August, Harrell used the device to speak with a 50-word vocabulary, and 99.6% of the words were as he’d intended. That vocabulary was later expanded to 125,000 words with 97.5% accuracy.

  • Dan MacKinlay ☛ Algorithmic collective action — The Dan MacKinlay stable of variably-well-consider’d enterprises

    Coalition game and collective action problems, played between people and algorithms.

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ Tianwen-2 low data rate telemetry

    Thomas Telkamp has shared with me an IQ recording of the Tianwen-2 telemetry downlink made with the Bochum 20 metre antenna on June 8. This is part of an ongoing effort led by Peter Gülzow, AMSAT-DL‘s president, for closely monitoring Tianwen-2’s operations. All the material I have used in previous posts about Tianwen-2 has come from these activities.

• Career/Education

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Digital platforms are making it more difficult to focus, read and even engage in democracy

    Oxford's 2024 Word of the Year, "brain rot," refers to the loss of intelligence or critical thinking skills due to the overconsumption of specific types of content, most often in the digital sphere. A Binghamton University doctoral student has published findings that help explain how the structural forces of large tech companies make it difficult to focus, read and even engage in democracy.

  • Jussi Pakkanen ☛ Beware of Star Trek managers, especially when bearing MBAs

    In "Kirk style" management the Big Boss tells his underlings what to do. If they try to give any sort of feedback, the Boss ignores everything and just repeats his original orders again and again until the other party yields. The only reason underlings ever resist The Vision is that they are lazy and it is the job of the manager to put them in their place. This seems like a bit from a comedy show, but I have unfortunately worked under bosses like this. Either you try to talk at least some sense into them, fail, get labeled as a "not team player", watch the project crash and get blamed for the failure, or you try to do the impossible task given to you, fail watch the project crash and get blamed for the failure.

  • Gigi ☛ Forgetting

    Life or death. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it. I think that’s what’s at the core of the issue that I’m facing. Each day that I spend functioning, or perhaps “grinding” as the kids might say these days, is a day I don’t spend creating. It’s a day I die a little death. And I don’t mean it in the French orgasm sense of “la petite mort.” I mean it in the sense of I wasn’t put on this earth to write another email, or review another spreadsheet.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Being your own boss doesn't always pay off: What 30 years of data reveal

    However, working for yourself does not reliably make people richer or happier. In our new study, we followed 12,686 individuals over three decades, from their late teens into their 50s, to see how self-employment actually played out over their working lives.

    The takeaway should give anyone weighing the leap pause. Simply being self-employed often left people no better off financially, and measurably less satisfied with life, than peers who kept a regular job. Whether the dream pays off comes down to how you do it, not whether you do it.

• Hardware

  • Cassidy Williams ☛ KeyCon 2026 recap

    I attended and spoke at KeyCon 2026! KeyCon is an annual mechanical keyboard convention in the United States. I’ve always wanted to go! It rotates locations every year, and this year it was in Chicago, so I had to attend on my home turf.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Ebola: Kenya's president defends US site amid protests

  • Futurism ☛ Massive Protests Erupt in the Streets of Kenya Due to the Trump Administration's Mysterious Ebola Facility

    The plan to construct the mysterious quarantine center in Nanyuki was first revealed by US officials in May. Crucially, it wasn’t revealed to the Kenyans who would be living next to it, but to the US media by secretary of state Marco Rubio. That outraged Kenyans, whose country has not yet faced any confirmed cases of Ebola, but whose government has largely bent to the will of US leaders in exchange for military equipment and police funding — even as Trump’s cuts to Kenyan health programs result in what analysts have called a man-made hunger crisis.

  • Reuters ☛ 'Blind spots' could hide full spread of Congo's Ebola outbreak, WHO suggests

    The ​WHO does not yet have projections ​for ⁠the size of the epidemic, Le Polain said, after the U.S. CDC said it could be on ⁠the ​same level as the 2014-2016 ​West Africa outbreak which caused more than 11,000 deaths.

  • Rohit Farmer ☛ FDA Approved, FDA Cleared, FDA Registered: What Do These Terms Actually Mean? – Rohit Farmer

    These phrases sound official. Some of them are meaningful. Some are incomplete. Some are used in ways that can mislead regular people.

    The most important thing to understand is this: [...]

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Atlantic ☛ Why AI Is Incorrigibly Didactic

      To see what’s distinctive about AI writing, you have to look deeper than quirks of spelling or syntax. Every writer has a style—a set of preferences and preoccupations that reveals how they experience the world. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were both masters of comedy, but the contrast between her ironic understatement and his histrionic exaggeration reflects profoundly different personalities and life experiences, in which class and gender played an important part.

    • The Conversation ☛ AI robots can go rogue – a researcher on how easily it happens

      But such flexibility creates an open-ended safety problem. You cannot build a physical cage around a machine whose behaviour emerges in real time, based on its own reasoning. The danger with the new breed of AI robots is that, because they use human language to plan their actions, they can be tricked into “going rogue”.

      In my recent research with colleagues in the US, we decided to test exactly how fragile these AI robots’ safety systems are. We wanted to see if the guardrails that AI developers build into their foundation models, designed to prevent harmful or dangerous outputs, hold up when the underlying model is given a physical body.

    • FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD AI-assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project launch

      The FreeBSD Foundation has launched its AI-assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project with the key goal of reducing the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in the FreeBSD source code.

      The 6-month project is being funded by a grant from the Alpha Omega project. The funds will be used to engage FreeBSD Security Team members under fixed-term contracts to find and patch vulnerabilities. The Security Team’s access to publicly available AI models and tokens will be provided free of charge. AI will be used for vulnerability discovery and analysis only, all patches will be manually created.

    • 404 Media ☛ It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests

      The fact that such small snippets of texts in even single comments can be used to ultimately trick LLMs raises questions about whether Reddit’s volunteer moderators or Wikipedia’s volunteer editors are going to be able to durably protect the communities they moderate and edit from AI manipulation over time.

    • Crazy Stupid Tech ☛ Transforming Healthcare: Abridge's AI Solutions and Impact

      Epic, the dominant electronic health record firm, said in February that it was adding AI scribe and charting features to its EHR systems. OpenEvidence, which has quickly become the chatbot for roughly half the doctors in the country, rolled out Visits nine months ago and seems to add features to that platform every quarter. Amazon just launched ConnectHealth. OpenAI jumped in last month with ChatGPT for Clinicians.

    • Crooked Timber ☛ One big grift

      The AI part of the business is barely even a joke. Not only is Grok an also-ran in the LLM stakes, but Musks’ promotion of racism, terrorist riots and sex crimes leaves him, and the company open to huge liability, at least in Europe, where Trump can’t protect him.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: AI and amateurism (15 Jun 2026)

      Of course, there's an obvious reason why the industry wants to focus on the potential for vibe coded software to replace production code. The AI bubble has burned up $1.4t to date, while bringing in mere tens of billions of dollars per year, even as its unit economics grow steadily worse:

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/04/ai-is-the-greatest-money-wasting-scheme-humanity-has-ever-i/

      To keep the bubble inflated, AI hucksters must promise massive economic returns to the technology. They want investors to believe that vibe code is about to replace working programmers, who are skilled, high-waged, high-demand workers. Their pitch is that for every million dollars' worth of programmers that an AI salesman and a boss conspire to fire, half a million dollars will go to the AI company whose bots shit out that vibe code.

    • Ars Technica ☛ Influential study touting ChatGPT in education retracted over red flags

      On April 22, 2026, Springer Nature posted a retracted article notice almost a year after initial publication. The journal publisher also stated that “the authors had not responded to correspondence regarding the retraction.”

      “The Editor has decided to retract this paper owing to concerns regarding discrepancies in the meta-analysis,” said the Springer Nature retraction note. “These issues ultimately undermine the confidence the Editor can place in the validity of the analysis and resulting conclusions.”

  • Social Control Media

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] Malaysia's social media ban for minors sparks privacy debate

    • Deseret Media ☛ Gen Zers are more risk-averse. Experts say it's ruining their dating lives

      The popularity of social media — where everyone posts their personal business online — has turned rejection into a public spectacle, beyond your friend group, school, community or neighborhood.

      However, dating and intimacy require taking some risks. That's scary and always has been. But the more Gen Z cocoons to "protect" themselves from outside factors the more they close themselves off to the possibility of connection — which is an antidote to the loneliness epidemic.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ The social media policy ratchet

      For more than a decade, UK governments have introduced successive child safety measures, responding to public concern about the availability of content that is either unsuitable or harmful to children, or due to harmful interactions ranging from bullying. Yet at each stage, the measures have delivered far less than was expected. Meanwhile, as online problems appear to escalate, the measures imposed seem more and more extreme, and even politicians admit that they’re likely to be less than fully effective. What is going on?

      This blog aims to be an in-depth analysis, using some analytical tools that you may not be familiar with. They should be reasonably intuitive, but take your time if you can, as I try to bring some new ways of looking at the Online Harms policy space, that government itself says it uses when dealing with complex policy problems.

    • New York Times ☛ UK Announces Social Media Ban for Children Under 16

      Mr. Starmer said the government would introduce the new regulations in Parliament before Christmas and bring a ban into force in early 2027. The measures will also include restrictions on game platforms and livestreaming apps, with more details expected to be announced next month.

    • SQ Magazine ☛ YouTube vs TikTok Statistics 2026: Users & Revenue

      YouTube reached approximately 2.85 billion monthly active users worldwide in 2026, per Alphabet’s earnings disclosure. TikTok reached approximately 1.59 billion monthly active users globally in 2026, with nearly one-third of its installed base using the app every day, per Sensor Tower. The contrast widens when revenue, creator payouts, and connected-TV viewing enter the frame, where YouTube’s broader format mix turns a user-count lead into a far larger commercial gap.

      The data below tracks both platforms across users, revenue, creators, engagement, advertising costs, and commerce.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Social Media Policy Is Evolving Beyond Age Limits

      Worse, by tying all-user policies on the one hand to an age gate on the other, I worry the outcome will be a compromise satisfying neither. Someone is currently supposed to be 13 or older to have an account with a social media service, both under Canadian law and in platforms’ terms of service agreements. Raising the floor to 16 is not the biggest issue one way or another. The real carrot is, therefore, weighing whether social media companies are willing to stop mandating their slot machine for feelings on every Canadian user in exchange for not having to verify their ages. Given the number of places already enforcing some age-gating and the development of infrastructure associated with that, I think many social media platforms will find it far easier to start carding people rather than changing their ways.

    • Ankur Sethi ☛ Nobody clicks your share buttons

      What do people do instead? They copy and paste URLs or use the share button in their browser.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Ransomware Preparedness Key, Warns NCSC Chief Horne

      According to Horne, ransomware attacks typically involve two forms of extortion. Attackers steal sensitive data and threaten to publish it, while also encrypting systems and demanding payment for decryption keys. He noted that paying criminals does not guarantee data will be deleted or systems fully restored.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Conti Ransomware Conspirator Pleads Guilty In U.S. Case

      According to court documents, the Conti ransomware group carried out attacks between 2020 and 2022, compromising computers and networks in 47 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 31 foreign countries.

    • Security Week ☛ Ransomware Attack Shuts Down Mills of Australia's Second-Largest Sugar Producer

      The cyberattack appears to have impacted operations at two of the mills, but the company announced on June 12 that it had “recommenced a limited manual crushing operation” at one mill to process cane harvested prior to the incident.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Hackaday ☛ Picking A CRC

      The other problem is that a checksum by itself doesn’t let you correct anything. You know the data is bad, but you don’t know why. If you think about it, the simplest checksum is a parity bit on a byte: odd parity is simply summing all the bits together. If the parity bit doesn’t match, you know the byte is bad, but you don’t know why. Any even number of errors goes undetected, but I am sure one-, three-, five-, or seven-bit errors will get caught.

    • Security Week ☛ Maine Disables Data Breach Portal Due to Fake Submissions

      The web service cataloged nearly 6,000 incidents reported since mid-2020 at the time of its takedown. The entries in the database in most cases listed the total number of affected individuals and provided important information on the impact and extent of a data breach.

      The fake data breach reports that triggered the shutdown targeted the online virtual world platform VRChat and the popular communication platform Discord.

    • The Record ☛ Maine closes data breach portal to the public after fake reports

      Maine is still allowing companies to report breaches, but won’t make the portal easily available to the public until after it completes an audit of its procedures to stop such incidents, according to a press release from the Maine attorney general’s office.

      Members of the public can contact the office to inquire about “existing reports” of breaches, the press release said.

    • Bitdefender ☛ Maine forced to take down data breach portal after fake notices filed with authorities

      The US state of Maine has taken its public data breach notification portal offline after someone submitted fraudulent breach disclosures impersonating two well-known technology companies.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Barents Observer ☛ Norwegian Customs extends Palantir contract despite growing scrutiny

      Norwegian Customs signed a contract with the American tech company Palantir Technologies in 2017. Palantir’s technology has been used to develop a new system, the TREFF-system, designed to streamline databases and add "tools that support processes for analysis, control, and intelligence." This system has been in use since 2021. The Norwegian Customs has since signed a new contract with the company, extending the agreement until 2030, with the option to extend it further to 2035, Filter Nyheter reported.

    • The Walrus ☛ Canada Joins Global Fight to Ban Teens from Social Media

      First, what the bill does. It applies to social media services, including livestreaming and user-uploaded adult content services, and to artificial intelligence chatbot services. It organizes obligations under three duties: a Duty to Act Responsibly, a Duty to Protect Children, and a Duty to Make Certain Content Inaccessible. It targets seven categories of harmful content, including content that sexually victimizes a child, content that induces a child to harm themselves, bullying content, incitement to violence, content that foments hatred, terrorist content, and intimate content shared without consent.

      The bill also creates a Digital Safety Commission of Canada to enforce the legislation through audits, compliance orders, and administrative monetary penalties. Platforms will have to submit publicly disclosed Digital Safety Plans, label synthetically generated content, and provide accredited researchers access to certain data.

    • Techdirt ☛ Opposition Mounts To Trump FCC Plan To Kill Burner Phone Anonymity, Ramp Up Surveillance

      But buried in the Trump FCC plan was another new effort we mentioned: one that involves cracking down on burner phones by forcing telecoms (the ones bone-grafted to our domestic surveillance operations) to dramatically scale up the information they collect from consumers.

      That’s… understandably raised concerns among privacy advocates and civil rights groups well aware that greater surveillance will be abused by the Trump administration and beyond. It also ignores that there’s often very good reasons why abuse victims, whistleblowers, journalists, refugees, and others might be seeking an anonymous prepaid burner phone, privacy advocate Eric Null told 404 media: [...]

    • Citizen Lab ☛ Spying Via Your Mobile Phone: Companies Can Locate Any Device at Any Time

      Hasso Plattner Institute and Citizen Lab doctoral fellow Swantje Lange spoke with Tagesspiegel about the Lab’s recent research on telecom surveillance campaigns. The report exposes how commercial surveillance vendors exploit vulnerabilities in the global telecom interconnect ecosystem to track targets.

    • Citizen Lab ☛ Bad Connection: Uncovering Global Telecom Exploitation by Covert Surveillance Actors

      Our findings highlight a systemic issue at the core of global telecommunications: operator infrastructure designed to enable seamless international connectivity is being leveraged to support covert surveillance operations that are difficult to monitor, attribute, and regulate. Despite repeated public reporting, this activity continues unabated and without consequence. The continued use of mobile networks, built on a close inter-operator trust model and relied upon by users worldwide, raises broader questions for national regulators, policymakers, and the telecom industry about accountability, oversight, and global security.

    • Papers Please ☛ California legislature removes REAL-ID compliance from Governor’s budget

      Some state legislators are still trying to find ways to put “guardrails” on California license and ID data that will protect it even after it is uploaded to the national database. But the more carefully they study the problem, the more they realize that nothing the state could do would prevent this data from being obtained by Federal or out-of-state law enforcement agencies, without the knowledge of the DMV or the Californians against whom it could be weaponized, once it is uploaded to AAMVA, an out-of-state nongovernmental entity.

      This is too important a decision to bury in the budget as an afterthought.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Starmer’s social media ban fails to address root causes of online harms

      “The government is on a policy failure ratchet, of policy failures that are followed by more and more censorship and surveillance measures that also fail, because safety is never delivered this way.

      Instead, over 16s in the UK will have to hand over identity documents or biometric data to unregulated age verification companies. The Government has completely failed to acknowledge the harms that could come from that. Children also have rights and the ban will harm their free expression and privacy rights.”

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ The FCC Wants to Eliminate Burner Phones

      A proposed FCC rule would kill burner phones: phones whose accounts are not attached to a particular person.

    • Michael Geist ☛ The Commission: How Bill C-34 Creates an Internet Super-Regulator That Will Touch the Lives of Millions of Canadians

      The proposed kids’ social media ban is capturing the headlines, but lost in the debate over Bill C-34 is that its most consequential element may be the creation and powers of the government agency the bill establishes to oversee the entire system. The Digital Safety Commission of Canada will be a super-regulator of the Internet, with greater influence over the daily lives of Canadians than perhaps any other regulator in the country. The breadth of its influence can’t be overstated: it will set the standards that millions of Canadians must satisfy to verify their age in order to use social media services. It will establish what platforms must do about harmful content, including the removal of certain material. It will determine whether the age-gating requirement may be lifted for any given service. It will both regulate the platforms and advocate for their users, dual roles that raise obvious fairness concerns. And it will exercise investigative and adjudicative powers, complete with penalties, hearings, and formal, law-enforcement-style investigations. Yet despite all those powers, it will not be bound by the rules of evidence, will be free to conduct its hearings in secret, and, at least in the beginning, will be capable of operating as a one-person body in which the Commission and its Chair are one and the same individual. The full scope of the new powers is illustrated in the infographic below.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Canada's Digital Super-Regulator: Bill C-36 Pushes Out the Privacy Commissioner and Hands Private Sector Privacy to an Overloaded Commission

      In the last act of an incredibly intense digital policy stretch, the government today tabled new private sector privacy legislation in the form of Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act. It is a big bill, and my initial take will be divided into two: this post will focus on the seismic shift the bill creates for privacy administration and enforcement, and a second post (hopefully tomorrow) will discuss the substantive changes and additions. I start with the enforcement side because the most consequential feature of C-36 is the question of who will administer the rules. The bill firmly cements the Digital Safety Commission as a new digital super-regulator in Canada, stripping the Privacy Commissioner of authority over private sector privacy law and handing it instead to the same five-member commission the government created a few days ago to police online harms. I believe the approach is unprecedented among peer countries and will have negative repercussions for Canada’s standing in the privacy world. Indeed, removing an Agent of Parliament from private-sector privacy enforcement after decades isn’t something you tuck into a lengthy bill, but rather requires extended public consultation and analysis on how best to ensure Canada has effective privacy enforcement. This is a stunning abrogation of good policy development and a poorly conceived vision of the breadth and importance of privacy.

    • Dan Q ☛ New social media restrictions

      Despite being parody, diamond geezer’s new age-gating – which e.g. asks for personal information but, obviously, doesn’t actually block access to the site – somehow perfectly straddles the line between “invasive” and “ineffective”… in exactly the same way that I expect the UK’s legal implementation will manage in a year or two.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Taiwan's Lai: Status quo is key to secure tech supply chains

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Legendary warrior women: The history of the Amazons

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Nigeria: How religious divides worsen conflict during drought

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] UK: Protest erupts over student murder

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] UK Royal Navy helicopter crash leaves 3 dead

  • The Scotsman ☛ Parent whose child witnessed beheading video welcomes social media ban

    Under the plans, under 16s will be banned from social media by spring 2027, with popular platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube among those affected.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Social media firms hit back as Starmer announces ban for under-16s in UK

    The plan, which goes further than the one enacted earlier this year in Australia, includes a ban on all the main social media platforms, with separate restrictions on online products such as gaming apps, including removing the option to chat to strangers.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ UK to ban social media for under-16s

    The ban will include Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms as well as YouTube but not messaging apps like WhatsApp. The move is popular, with polls finding 74% support, although the evidence for both the mental health impacts of social media and the efficacy of bans is disputed.

  • The Highland Times ☛ Social Media Ban for Under 16s Sparks Debate Over Online Safety - The Highland Times

    “Given children are likely to find ways around a ban, they will continue to be harmed unless tech companies are forced to implement changes to ensure their products are safe from the start.”

    The Scottish Greens have also criticised the proposal, arguing that it targets access rather than the systems that drive harmful content.

  • The Tyee ☛ Please Advise! Are You Happy Elon Musk Is the First Trillionaire?

    Elon Musk is the only human in history ever to ponder how to spend a trillion dollars, without subsequently waking to the sound of the bedside alarm. What do you suppose he is thinking? Dr. Steve knows. He is probably worried. Elon is concerned that all this money might affect his ability to starve, sicken and deprive the world's children.

    Obviously money is handy when it comes to helping people. But what if you despise humanity? What if your fondest hope is to make Nick Fuentes clap like a trained seal?

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Elon Musk Is the Election Cheat Harmeet Dhillon and Bill Essayli Claim to Be Hunting

    That is precisely the same thing Elon Musk did during the 2024 Federal election and 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Only Musk not only did it on a far, far bigger scale, he did so in a way that has him facing multiple ongoing lawsuits for fraud: [...]

  • Vox ☛ The security problem AI leaders actually agree on

    That means that gene synthesis companies are still a primary chokepoint for anyone trying to produce a novel genetic sequence. Mackelprang’s main concern is that aspiring bioterrorists might use AI to generate harmful genetic sequences that can evade current or future screening systems. “In the near term, I think the likelihood of these types of misuse are quite low. But when the potential consequences are severe and technologies continue to develop rapidly, we have a responsibility…to develop reasonable prevention and mitigation options,” she said.

  • El País ☛ Native Americans forced to prove their US citizenship to ICE

    Members of other tribes, such as the Navajo Nation — the largest tribal nation by land area and enrolled population — have been arrested by ICE, prompting reactions from Indigenous leaders and clashes with the Department of Homeland Security. The Oglala Sioux Tribe invoked its sovereignty to ban ICE from entering the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, as other tribes have done, and Navajo Nation President Buu Van Nygren responded to the arrest of tribe member Peter Yazzie in Phoenix by asking the council to fund the issuance of tribal ID cards, which had been paused due to lack of money.

    However, presenting those documents has not prevented people from being detained because ICE agents do not recognize them as proof of citizenship. “Under federal law, tribal IDs are considered federal identifications and must be accepted for federal purposes. The problem is that many Department of Homeland Security agents, including ICE officers, are not trained to understand what a tribal ID is or to recognize it as a valid form of federal identification,” Wright explains.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Finland Charges Russian Captain and Crew Member with Sabotaging Undersea Cables

    Finnish authorities on Monday charged the Russian captain and a senior crew member of a cargo ship suspected of severing two undersea telecommunications cables linking Finland and Estonia on New Year's Eve.

    The Fitburg, a cargo vessel traveling from Russia to Israel, was boarded by Finnish authorities on December 31 after it was suspected of intentionally dropping its anchor to damage communications infrastructure in the Gulf of Finland.

  • The Barents Observer ☛ Pechenga joins group of closed military towns

    However, Pechenga may not enjoy the social and economic benefits afforded to closed military towns. A list of ZATOs was approved by the government in 2001, and Pechenga is still not on it.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU, Ukraine start formal accession talks after Orban delay

    The talks had already started on a technical level despite the Hungarian obstruction.

    Hungary's new prime minister, Peter Magyar, recently announced that he had reached an agreement with Ukraine on measures to strengthen the rights of the ethnic Hungarian minorityin the country. Magyar had made such an agreement a condition for lifting Budapest's veto of Ukraine's EU accession talks.

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge Says Trump’s Attempt To Rewrite History At National Parks Is Illegal

    It’s the sort of thing dictators do. It’s the sort of thing novelists write about. It’s the sort of thing we Americans used to be able to criticize wholeheartedly because our country would never stoop so low as to rewrite history to please whoever was currently in power.

    We no longer have the high ground. But we might be able to start making our way back to the top of the hill. It’s not because Trump et al are getting better or smarter or simply a bit less hateful. It will be because the courts are doing what they’re supposed to be doing: slowing this budding fascist’s roll.

  • The Nation ☛ Separation of Church and State: America’s Best Idea

    Christian nationalists keep forgetting what the country’s founders kept writing down.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Non-Victory

    So what has been accomplished? Iran now is under the control of a more extremist regime than when Trump started this war. Oil prices are far higher, and will take some time to return to where they were before it began (if they ever do). Meanwhile, Trump has caused the United States to be more dependent on fossil fuels than we were prior to his inauguration for a second time, and the high oil prices brought on by his war has enriched Vladimir Putin’s regime.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Age of the Super A*sholes

    Musk paid a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected president, then ran Trump’s illegal and hugely destructive DOGE. Musk’s SpaceX has all the hallmarks of a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which insiders pocket the winnings and leave latecomers holding the bag.

    Both pride themselves on paying little or no taxes. Trump famously said that paying not paying federal income taxes "makes me smart." Musk paid zero taxes in 2018.

  • The Next Move ☛ Calling Out Trump’s Iran Surrender Is Not TDS

    Even as we await the text of an agreement, we can confidently judge: Any tactical victories in Iran are overshadowed by a massive strategic failure.

    How can we know this? We need only look back at the record.

  • Yle ☛ US homeschool lobby linked to missing Finnish family

    It now appears that the HSLDA has sought to promote its policy goals in Finland using the Karf family case as a vehicle. Cooperation with the family reportedly began several years before they went missing.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Scotsman ☛ The Cook Report investigative journalist Roger Cook dies aged 83

    Cook joined ITV in 1985, and the eponymous The Cook Report ran for 16 series and more than 120 episodes, as he pursued criminals, con-men and corrupt officials.

    The show was the most popular current affairs programme on television at the time, with an audience of up to 10 million.

  • The Nation ☛ San Francisco Sends Trump a Birthday Message

    We will not forget Epstein.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] Environment wins of the week

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] El Nino could push temperatures higher, UN warns

  • Futurism ☛ Fish Already Cooking Alive Across the US Ahead of Blistering Summer Heat

    Sure enough, recent studies have predicted that fish kills are set to skyrocket in the coming years, as the correlation between extreme heat and fish mortality becomes impossible to ignore.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ 'Stinks so bad': Kansas residents worry smoldering landfill on a Superfund site is making them sick

    However, residents contend it would have been impossible to screen the debris effectively, as the Columbia Missourian reported in 2012 that there were 350 trucks coming in daily, dumping 12 tons of trash per minute.

  • CNN ☛ A ‘cold blob’ in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown

    In the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Greenland and Iceland, a large patch of water is doing something very strange. While the rest of the ocean heats up, it’s been getting colder. A new study says it has the answer to this mystery — and it’s an ominous sign the world is hurtling toward one of the most alarming climate tipping points.

  • Sang-Ki Lee ☛ Why Is the North Atlantic Getting Cold?

    This preprint paper investigates the “cold blob,” a unique region in the North Atlantic that has cooled since the 19th century despite global rising temperatures. By analyzing observation-based data, the authors demonstrate that this cooling is a deep-ocean phenomenon rather than a simple change in surface weather. The study concludes that the decline in heat is primarily driven by a weakening of ocean currents, specifically the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which now transports less warmth into the area. While some theories suggest surface heat loss to the atmosphere is the cause, the researchers show that these surface fluxes actually respond to, rather than drive, the internal ocean changes. The findings warn that a continued slowdown of these currents could reach a critical tipping point, potentially triggering severe shifts in global weather and climate patterns.

  • Western Water ☛ Navajo Nation declares drought emergency

    The effects are hitting hard and in multiple directions at once.

    Water supplies are tightening. Reservoir levels are dropping. Forage production, the grasses and plants that livestock depend on for food, has declined. And the pressure on grazing lands continues to mount.

  • The New Lede ☛ Brewing battle over Forest Service glyphosate spraying near Lake Tahoe's pristine waters

    Glyphosate was introduced in the 1970s by the former Monsanto Co,. and brands made with the chemical, such as Roundup, have long been popular with farmers as well as homeowners and commercial landscapers. But in 2015, World Health Organization cancer experts classified the pesticide as probably carcinogenic to humans. The chemical is also linked to harms to animals, and federal regulators have found it could adversely impact over 90% of endangered species.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Multiple small Tennessee counties pass temporary data center bans — Nashville also passed near-unanimous moratorium on first reading

    Tennessee is currently home to 63 data centers, according to the Data Center Map, with Elon Musk’s massive Colossus and Colossus 2 data centers located in Memphis. However, it seems that Tennesseans are pushing back on these developments, as several counties are considering and passing temporary bans. This is especially true for rural areas, where many data center developers take interest because of cheaper land, less regulatory friction, and weaker resistance.

  • Wired ☛ 1 in 4 World Cup Matches Could Be Played in Dangerous Temperatures

    Extreme heat will be one of the biggest challenges for players and fans during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. According to an analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), around 25 percent of the 104 matches of the tournament could be played under temperatures that exceed the recommended thermal safety limits. The study points out that the probability of facing these conditions is almost double that recorded in the 1994 tournament held in the United States.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Ethiopia goes electric following gas car ban

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Can Hawaii wean itself of oil imports?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Germany: Lufthansa plane suffers nose gear collapse

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Can this grid monitoring tool reduce outage times by up to 80%?

      The EGM fault-location solution was independently tested in a blind study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), which then provided test data on fault location accuracy to EGM. According to EGM analysts, the study results, which consisted of 26 blind scenarios, “showed promise” that EGM’s patented Accurate Fault Location and Detection (AFLD) solution can locate multiple power distribution‑grid faults to within a single pole‑span distance.

    • Hackaday ☛ Custer’s Revenge: EVTOL Drone Brings Back Channel Wings

      They’re claiming a reduced fuel burn of 10% in hover and transition thanks to the extra lift from the channel wings. You can see their prototype in action in the demo video embedded below. We once featured a project that went even further, blowing air across a special hollow wing for propulsion and blown lift. The easiest eVTOL project still starts with a quadcopter, though.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] US plans extra tariffs for 60 countries over forced labor

  • [Repeat] Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] Who owns the billions in Germany's dormant bank accounts?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] Portugal: General strike causes disruption to services

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Germany news: Number of millionaires is growing, study shows

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] Why businesses are offering 'Quiet Hour'

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Germany news: Poverty rises to new high, charity group says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Germany's Merz backs Hungary's new pro-EU course

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] European Parliament committee votes to scrap US tariffs

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Germany: Cologne Cathedral to charge tourists €12 for entry

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Tiananmen dissident lambasts China on massacre anniversary

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini critic John Bolton to plead guilty in documents case

  • New Yorker ☛ How Did American Christianity End Up Like This?

    The fusion of Christianity and nationalism that Barton promotes is not new, though it has taken different forms in the course of American history. The First Amendment’s ambiguity means that, as Sutton points out, “Americans have never really separated church from state.” Activists of all kinds, from Frederick Douglass to Jerry Falwell, have wielded the Bible and sought political power. It’s inarguable, however, that Donald Trump’s ascendance has nourished a darker, more volatile version of the phenomenon. Tapping into the lineage of white evangelicalism, with its charismatic leaders, anti-intellectualism, and political militancy, the MAGA movement has placed a nostalgia for a Christian past at the center of a grievance-based politics.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Kennedy Center facade blocked from public view by tarp after Trump’s name removed

    According to a Kennedy Center spokesperson, the scaffolding and tarp will remain up while crews perform maintenance on the marble and soffit panels on the building’s facade.

    The center did not provide any indication about how long the maintenance work will take or when the tarps will be taken down.

  • Techdirt ☛ The VCs Who Screamed That Biden Would Kill Powerful AI Models Seem Quite Chill About Trump Actually Doing It

    Considering how much Trump-supporting VC bros in Silicon Valley insisted that the Biden admin wanted to shut down powerful AI models during the last administration, it’s quite something to see them cheering on the Trump admin actually doing exactly that.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ White House’s Anthropic block set to dominate G7

    Such so-called middle powers have largely trailed in the AI race behind the US and China, with American efforts in particular dwarfing those of transatlantic rivals: France’s leading AI firm, Mistral, is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a valuation of about $23 billion — roughly 40 times smaller than Anthropic’s estimated valuation.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Google exposes China espionage group that’s been lurking in networks undetected since 2023

    The revelation mirrors an alarming pattern of Chinese espionage groups dropping backdoors into critical infrastructure to pre-position for potential sabotage, intercept research and steal data with national security implications. These groups working at the behest of China’s government, including UNC6508, operated in stealth for years before authorities or researchers discovered their activity.

  • Michał Sapka ☛ The first Dune Trilogy

    Dune is a complex analysis of monarchy and power. There is no good or evil - just different shades of corrupt. This is especially true when it comes to Paul, the young prince of Atreides. All over the novel we hear that he is not the benevolent messiah everyone believes him to be. That following him will end in bloodshed and destruction.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Why Yad Vashem is coming to Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] German hotel apologizes for 'no Jews allowed' message

    A hotel in the southern German state of Bavaria came under heavy criticism for a message refusing a reservation to an Israeli guest that included a message reminiscent of the Nazi era.

    The case came to light when Israel's consul general to southern Germany, Talya Lador, posted the rejection message on X.

    "Have we returned to the 1930s?" Lador wrote in German.

    A screenshot in her post shows an English-language message from the Hotel zum Hirschen in Bavaria telling the recipient that "there are no Jews allowed in our hotel."

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] Germany news: Naturalizations reach record high in 2025

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] China bans 4 New Zealand lawmakers after their Taiwan trip

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] EU seeking ways to speed up Western Balkans membership

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] German asylum benefits cuts violate EU law, top court rules

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] Ethiopia: An election without a real challenge?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] EU leaders at Balkan summit optimistic about rapid expansion

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] India news: Putin hails Delhi ties, Cheeto Mussolini calls Modi 'good friend'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] Kosovo general election: the cost of political polarization

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] North Korea quietly ramps up its nuclear program

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Barents Observer ☛ Russia’s new social studies textbook tells schoolchildren: “Either a patriot or a scoundrel”

      Published by Prosveshchenie-Soyuz in 2026, the textbook has already begun circulating among teachers in electronic form. Although it was not available for purchase on the publisher's website when reviewed by the Barents Observer, teachers say it is expected to become a standard text in schools from the next academic year.

      The book's chief editor is Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council. In recent years, Medvedev has become known less for his time in office than for his increasingly inflammatory Telegram posts, in which he routinely attacks critics of the Kremlin, including Russian citizens themselves.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Misinformation fuels Ebola spread

      False claims about the virus, including that the epidemic was a hoax, have proliferated across the Central African nation, accelerating the spread of the disease in overcrowded displacement camps where hundreds of people often share a toilet, Reuters reported.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Arkansas Advocate ☛ Dozens object to rule requiring Arkansas libraries to restrict ‘sexually explicit’ materials

    At least 62 people submitted concerns in writing by Friday about the draft rule requiring libraries to ensure patrons age 16 or younger cannot check out materials that depict or describe sexual contact and behavior. Monday was the deadline to submit public comments about the rule, proposed last month by the State Library Board.

    “Arkansans do not lose their First Amendment rights at the library door, and the state should not condition funding on policies that violate those rights,” American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas Legal Director John Williams said in a Monday statement.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Most CISOs Report Pressure to Bury Bad Security News

    CISOs contend with increasingly advanced attacks, evolving compliance and regulation standards, and constant worry about what will happen to the company and themselves if a breach does occur. Stress, pressure, blame, and panic have become synonymous with the role.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] Germany sees record number of discrimination claims in 2025

  • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Meta Employee Laid Off, Immediately Detained by ICE

    Discussions about the worker, who was fired with 8,000 others during a round of layoffs on May 20, have been circulating inside the company, according to the magazine. One current employee posted about it in an internal message board this week. The post was flagged as “urgent,” and tagged two Meta executives who focus on immigration issues and employee risk.

    The ex-employee’s current status is unknown, with concerned colleagues continuing to speculate about their whereabouts. The belief is that the ex-employee is being detained in El Paso, Texas.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ ICE Is Targeting the Lawyers of Immigrant Children

    After freezing payments and demanding client data, the Trump administration attempted to raid the nonprofit offices of attorneys for unaccompanied immigrant children last week as its anti-migrant campaign increasingly turns its focus toward minors.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Meet the New Bosses, Worse Than the Old Bosses

    About wealth concentration: The standard source for information on extreme wealth is the Forbes 400 list. Forbes only began compiling that list in its current form in 1982, but it published its first listing of America’s top fortunes in 1918. The chart above compares the wealth of the richest 5 Americans in 1918 with that of the richest 15 in 2025 — 15, not 5, because the total U.S. population more than tripled over that period. I scale their wealth both as a percentage of total wealth and as a share of GDP.

    Either way, the concentration of wealth at the very top is much higher now than it ever was during the Gilded Age. And these are numbers from last year, before the SpaceX IPO. The robber barons were pikers compared with today’s oligarchs.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] Backrooms: The creepy internet phenomenon, explained

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Meta Must Face Adult Film Piracy Lawsuit as Court Denies Dismissal

      To keep their piracy lawsuit alive, adult film producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media don't have to prove Meta used their films for AI training. A California federal judge has denied Meta's motion to dismiss, ruling that the alleged torrenting is itself the infringement. Additionally, the court did not accept the idea that the torrent downloads were merely for personal use.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Judge Rules Blacked.com Can Sue Meta for Scraping Its Porn

      The judge found that Meta's attempt to blame the pirating of thousands of Vixen.com and Tushy.com porn videos on rogue employees "strains credulity."

    • 404 Media ☛ Judge Rules Blacked.com Can Sue Meta for Scraping Its Porn

      The judge also explained that whether Meta actually used Strike 3 Holdings’ videos to train its AI models is irrelevant because Meta violated Strike 3 Holdings’s copyright when it torrented its videos. It illegally downloaded the files and also “seeded” them, meaning they distributed the pirated to other users.