Overall, the Western Hemisphere now produces more oil than the Middle East did before the crisis. Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. Brazil produces four times as much oil as Venezuela; and in Guyana, where production began only seven years ago, output almost equals Venezuela’s. In Argentina’s Vaca Muerta region, shale oil production has grown sixfold since 2020. The current disruption will propel more oil and gas investment in the Western Hemisphere and Africa.
It’s hard not to be impressed by online label Red Note Records—at least at first glance. The company launched on YouTube in November, and has already released more than two thousand recordings!
The company is staunchly committed to the jazz idiom, putting out hundreds of albums in just the last few weeks. But I know a bit about jazz—and I didn’t recognize the names of any of the musicians or bands.
“Ensemble names and personnel listings in earlier releases function as formal and narrative devices,” according to the label’s YouTube page, “rather than documentation of specific recording sessions or individual performers.”
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Even so, the artist rosters still sound vaguely familiar—typical performers are called Miles, Hawkins, Coleman, etc. Jazz fans will recall actual music stars who bore those same names.
The album covers have a persuasive vintage look, even with some evident wear-and-tear on the margins, as if they had been part of a record collector’s personal archive for many years.
Sometimes the musicians even look familiar. When I saw Red Note recording artist “Jackie Donaldson” I couldn’t help but be reminded of Dave Brubeck. In fact, the entire cover design feels like a rip-off.
Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Red Hot and Cool album from 1955 on the left and a Red Note recording of ”Jackie Donaldson” on the right.
Or check out this Red Note artist, who bears and uncanny resemblance to modern jazz piano great Bud Powell, who died back in 1966.
Smoke streams from fires in Australia’s Northern Territory in an image captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 28, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
In May and June of most years, NASA satellites typically begin to detect large numbers of wildland fires throughout the Top End and Arnhem Land regions of Australia’s Northern Territory. On some days, especially in the afternoon, the blazes can resemble sizable wildfires in satellite imagery, spreading widely and producing expansive smoke plumes.
That was the case when NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image of smoke and fires on the afternoon of May 28, 2026. Often, however, fires burning in this area look smaller and less imposing. In the mornings just a few days earlier and later, for instance, NASA satellites detected little smoke despite observing many thermal anomalies, or hotspots, that indicated fire activity.
The pattern of burning, location, and timing are consistent with prescribed fires lit intentionally to manage the landscape. Land managers tend to light fires in the morning, and smoke builds over the course of the day. The process sometimes creates sizable plumes when there are updrafts and winds of moderate strength that carry smoke away from the fires, as happened on May 28 and again on June 2. The fires typically burn through the fire-adapted grasses, underbrush, and scattered trees in the region’s tropical savanna ecosystems.
Over the past few decades, the region’s land managers have combined deep-rooted Indigenous land management practices and modern technologies to establish large-scale landscape management programs such as the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement project and Arnhem Land Fire Abatement. The goal of such efforts is to intentionally burn some of the savanna underbrush to create firebreaks and reduce fuel loads early in the dry season, reducing more destructive and emissions-intensive fires later in the season. The dry season generally begins in May and extends through September, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.
While research is ongoing, there are signs that the prescribed burning efforts are having the intended effect. Analysis of satellite observations of the fires suggests that prescribed burning efforts have shifted fire activity from late to early in the dry season, leading to a reduction in high-intensity fires and emissions.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.
When during the meetings the Americans offered that at most they could convert 15 percent of U.S. auto plants to military production, Beaverbrook replies that 100 percent of British automobile factories had been converted, and encouraged Roosevelt to aim higher. He did, and on January 1 he ordered U.S. auto production halted by late Februrary. Within weeks the dearth of newe cars became moot when rubber, 90 percent of which came from Malaya and Indonesia, was rationed. The U.S. had no synthetic rubber factories to make up the shortfall. Americans soon learned what Britons had long known: without a spare tire or three stashed in the garage, the family car had a very limited range. Passage by rail — where for fifty years the Pullmans had been Americans’ preferred means of conveyance — was soon limited to troops and businessmen on official war business. And then the airlines — their routes and the national fleet of 434 aircraft — were commandeered. By spring, gasoline ratioining, as a mean to preserve rubber more than oil, dribbed on to the Eastern Seaboard and in the following year spread nationwide, guaranteeing that west coast beaches even if their bald tires could carry them there. That proved okay with most because by summer, oil and bilge tar and decomposing bodies — the U-boats’ harvest — regularly washed up onto America’s eastern beaches.
Up betimes, and my wife and Ashwell and I whiled away the morning up and down while they got themselves ready, and I did so watch to see my wife put on drawers, which poor soul she did, and yet I could not get off my suspicions, she having a mind to go into Fenchurch Street before she went out for good and all with me, which I must needs construe to be to meet Pembleton, when she afterwards told me it was to buy a fan that she had not a mind that I should know of, and I believe it is so. Specially I did by a wile get out of my boy that he did not yesterday go to Pembleton’s or thereabouts, but only was sent all that time for some starch, and I did see him bringing home some, and yet all this cannot make my mind quiet.
At last by coach I carried her to Westminster Hall, and they two to Mrs. Bowyer to go from thence to my wife’s father’s and Ashwell to hers, and by and by seeing my wife’s father in the Hall, and being loth that my wife should put me to another trouble and charge by missing him to-day, I did employ a porter to go from a person unknown to tell him his daughter was come to his lodgings, and I at a distance did observe him, but, Lord! what a company of questions he did ask him, what kind of man I was, and God knows what. So he went home, and after I had staid in the Hall a good while, where I heard that this day the Archbishop of Canterbury, Juxon, a man well spoken of by all for a good man, is dead; and the Bishop of London is to have his seat. Home by water, where by and by comes Dean Honiwood, and I showed him my double horizontal diall, and promise to give him one, and that shall be it. So, without eating or drinking, he went away to Mr. Turner’s, where Sir J. Minnes do treat my Lord Chancellor and a great deal of guests to-day with a great dinner, which I thank God I do not pay for; and besides, I doubt it is too late for any man to expect any great service from my Lord Chancellor, for which I am sorry, and pray God a worse do not come in his room.
So I to dinner alone, and so to my chamber, and then to the office alone, my head aching and my mind in trouble for my wife, being jealous of her spending the day, though God knows I have no great reason. Yet my mind is troubled. By and by comes Will Howe to see us, and walked with me an hour in the garden, talking of my Lord’s falling to business again, which I am glad of, and his coming to lie at his lodgings at White Hall again.
The match between Sir J. Cutts and my Lady Jemimah, he says, is likely to go on; for which I am glad.
In the Hall to-day Dr. Pierce tells me that the Queen begins to be brisk, and play like other ladies, and is quite another woman from what she was, of which I am glad. It may be, it may make the King like her the better, and forsake his two mistresses, my Lady Castlemaine and Stewart.
He gone we sat at the office till night, and then home, where my wife is come, and has been with her father all the afternoon, and so home, and she and I to walk in the garden, giving ear to her discourse of her father’s affairs, and I found all well.
So after putting things in order at my office, home to supper and to bed.
Amid public funding chaos, post-Helene housing recovery has been slow, uneven and deeply community-driven.
Kim Pierce paid $387,000 in cash for the east Asheville townhome she moved into on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. A divorced mother of six, the 57-year-old moved to the River Knoll community to downsize, slow down from work and spend more time with her grandchildren.
But she only slept four nights in that house. Tropical Storm Helene hit on Friday, flooding Pierce’s new home and destroying most of her possessions along with it. A year and a half later, she’s finally settled into another townhome, this time in east Asheville’s Hawthorne Villages complex about four miles west of River Knoll. She moved there in June 2025.
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“It’s still surreal,” she said of the experience. “I mean, I couldn’t wrap my brain around the loss of everything.”
Pierce is one of thousands who lost their house to Helene. According to estimates from FEMA, which were cited in Buncombe County’s 2025 housing needs assessment, approximately 19,951 homes were damaged by the storm, and more than 1,400 were wrecked to the point of needing replacement.
But even eighteen months later, many Western North Carolina residents are still not back to normal. Post-disaster housing recovery was always going to be slow, but it has faced additional delays due to federal funding chaos amid a new administration. The result is mounting frustration by a population already exhausted from the toll rebuilding takes on everything from bank accounts to mental health.
President Trump taking office four months after the storm “caused things to look different than what people who have done this for a long time told us to expect,” said Rachael Sawyer, the strategic partnerships director at Buncombe County and a former Helene recovery coordinator. Though Sawyer’s recovery work has been more administrative than political, she said that local and county government leaders have often had “to advocate to get things unstuck when they got stuck.”
Pierce knows this reality all too well. “I used to be a little bit able to tell my story without crying so much,” she said on a recent warm day in early spring.
She is still waiting for FEMA to start the process of buying out her lost home. But “it wiped me out more than anything I’ve ever been through [and] I get frustrated that it’s taken so long,” she said. “I also am trying to be realistic and understanding that I’m not the only person that’s in this situation.”
Kim Pierce stands in front of a dining room table she was able to salvage from her flood-ravaged home. Photo credit: Claire Ogden
Pierce’s grandmother’s desk is one of three pieces of furniture she was able to salvage from the wreckage. Photo credit: Claire Ogden
From transitional housing to recovery
For the first several weeks after Helene, government efforts were focused on disaster response, trying to make sure everyone had access to the essentials. This included temporary housing support from FEMA. At its peak in October 2024, FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program was helping 5,284 households access temporary housing, according to the Buncombe County Helene Recovery Plan. That meant funding for things like temporary stays in hotels or trailers, help with rent and home repair. Since then, transitional housing support had been at risk of expiring in spring 2025 and again on April 11 of this year. Most recently, on March 16, FEMA announced a six-month extension for temporary housing and rental assistance.
Even amid emergency operations, local governments were already preparing for recovery. In January 2025, over $1.4 billion was allocated by HUD to North Carolina through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. Asheville falls under the program’s “entitlement” jurisdiction, which means the city received an additional $225 million in CDBG-DR funds directly from the federal government. Asheville is putting $31 million, or 13% of those funds, toward housing recovery.
But support from churches and nonprofits has outpaced that from governments. Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian nonprofit headquartered in Boone, has replaced over 140 mobile homes, built 26 new homes and completed over 100 major home repairs — all at no cost to the recipients. In April, they also announced an expansion of their rebuilding program, adding 19 new locations in four different states.
Jack Bailey, a 60-year-old cook at Asheville’s downtown branch of Hotel Indigo, is one of many who has community organizations to thank for both his transitional housing and his new home. Early that Friday morning before Helene hit Asheville, Bailey left his Black Mountain home for work — not knowing he’d become homeless that day — then spent over a month living at the hotel and cooking for disaster response staff staying there. Meanwhile, his wife and 15-year-old son stayed with the wife’s sister in Atlanta, coming up only occasionally for visits.
By the time Bailey finally went back home, mold had infested the building after several weeks of no power. The house was condemned. Luckily, a local church gifted Bailey’s family a trailer, where they spent Christmas 2024 parked next to the old home. They lived in that trailer for over a year until they had a new house to move into the following December.
Despite losing his house, Bailey still owed $59,000 on the old mortgage. “Do you know anybody on this planet that would go and spend $59,000 to pay off a house that’s condemned?” he said. “That’s what we had to do.” He and his wife paid off the old mortgage on their 17th anniversary.
Though he cited frustrations with FEMA, Bailey did get some money from the agency, though he’s lost track of exactly how much. Yet it was community donations that helped him afford the new house. The nonprofit BeLoved Asheville gave Bailey a check for $48,000, and on June 3, 2025, Samaritan’s Purse gave him $134,575. Bailey is one of many WNC residents who have churches to thank for their new or repaired home.
Jack Bailey poses with a tree that was damaged by the storm but lives on. Photo credit: Claire Ogden
Bailey’s new house sits in the same spot as the old one, and it looks like the old house, too. It was prefabricated by Clayton Homes, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. It’s not perfect; walking around the new place, Bailey pointed to several areas where vinyl trim was improperly installed, exposing the nails it was meant to cover. And it has less storage than their old place.
“There’s not a lot of room like we’re used to,” Bailey said. “But still, we’re still not going to complain, because the house prices out here have gone up anyway.”
He looks around at his living room, which is filled with quirky furniture and knick-knacks, bought mostly from Habitat for Humanity. There’s a bright fuschia couch and a carpet with a unicorn on it. “She picked it all out,” he said of his wife.
Bailey is one of the lucky ones. As of late January this year, Blue Ridge Public Radio reported that hundreds of people displaced from Helene were still living in RVs. And while it’s difficult to measure exactly how Helene has affected the area’s homelessness crisis, the city of Asheville’s 2025 point-in-time count showed a 50% increase in the number of unsheltered people — or people living in tents, cars and the like — from March 2024 to March 2025.
While many are still displaced, local governments have moved on to recovery. By June 2025, Buncombe County had mostly transitioned away from emergency services, closing their emergency operations center on June 4.
By October 2025, the county hired Kevin Madsen, its first full-time recovery staffer. Madsen now manages a dedicated recovery team of three other employees. Their job is to manage progress on the county’s recovery plan, which consists of 114 projects divided among seven local governments that opted into and contributed to the plan.
The major housing programs at play, including single-family home repair through RenewNC and home buyouts through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, are federally funded but managed at the state and/or county level. Notably, federal housing recovery dollars are mostly for homeowners. Although the North Carolina legislature allocated $1 million in rental assistance and Asheville has beefed up that number using its CDBG-DR funding, it has still not met the need for an area that was already in a housing crisis pre-Helene.
Amid confusion over federal funding, local governments have tried to help constituents navigate the chaos. “We’ve tried to go above and beyond” what the federal government provided, said Sawyer. The county established a Helene Resource Center, where county officials were available to “be a liaison so they don’t have to go through all the alphabet soup” of various funding programs, she said. As of early March, though, the resource center is only open by appointment. Sawyer said Buncombe County was “thankful” the state was able to manage the hazard mitigation program, given the high volume of applications.
Likewise, Madsen said that although applications for the major housing rebuilding programs have closed, the Buncombe County Long-Term Recovery Group, of which the national nonprofit United Way is the fiscal agent, is still doing intakes for recovery case management.
Public funding confusion
For Nadja Simon, a personal trainer who lost her house in Swannanoa, the alphabet soup of public funding has been almost entirely fruitless. Ten miles east of Asheville and tucked away in a green house on a mountain, Simon always felt safe in the privacy offered by her Swannanoa alcove. But Helene changed that.
Nadja Simon points to the hill where a landslide came down during Helene, destroying her house’s foundation. Photo credit: Ali Caudle
Though the media had dubbed the area a “climate haven,” the mountains actually played a part in bringing heavy rainfall to greater Asheville through a combination of atmospheric and geographic factors. In a process called orographic lift, mountains forced the air to rise, cool, condense and form clouds. The area had already been inundated with rainstorms in the days before Helene even came, which destabilized slope structures and created the perfect conditions for landslides. Simon’s house fell victim to one of the more than 4,000 landslides that hit the area during Helene, killing at least 23 people and damaging over 245 homes in Buncombe County alone.
Several trees fell down next to Simon’s house, while two separate landslides sent a mess of tree stumps and debris barreling toward the building. Mercifully, it stopped right next to the house but didn’t enter.
Simon had just gotten a new sliding glass door, which she thinks saved her life. “It’s a miracle it didn’t come inside the house,” she said.
“My phone was going off, like, ‘get to higher ground,’” she said. “But we are on higher ground.”
Landslides destroyed the foundation of Nadja Simon’s house, making the parcel of land it sits on unlivable. Photo credit: Ali Caudle
Standing at that sliding glass door, Simon, 58, looked out at the mass of tree stumps and debris that still sit right outside the window, 18 months later. She hasn’t lived there for over a year, but she’s still paying about $200 a month on an electric bill to prevent mold growth. She was able to get a forbearance on her mortgage for a year, but she recently started paying that again at $750 a month. That’s on top of the $1,200 in monthly rent for her new apartment in south Asheville.
Since the storm, Simon has applied to every form of government relief she could find, like FEMA’s individual assistance program and the several opportunities available for homeowners, including Renew NC and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. The former helps rebuild and replace single family housing, while the latter is FEMA-funded and gives property owners the option to rebuild with future disaster preparedness in mind, or to have their property bought out by the government.
Simon said that Renew NC came out and inspected her property in fall 2025, but that she hasn’t heard anything from them since. She also has yet to hear back from the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. “The frustration of not hearing anything and not knowing what’s happening gets kind of wearing,” she said.
At first, FEMA sent Simon a letter denying her application for individual assistance, since they had incorrectly determined her house was still livable. “I lost my shit,” she said. “I cried on the phone and they apologized.” Simon eventually got $42,000 from FEMA for the damages, but “It’s been a lot of back and forth with them,” she said.
In the meantime, she has had to handle much of the cost of her former house, plus costs for renting a new apartment. “I don’t get to walk away from that,” she said.
Though Simon’s house still looks intact, she said the landslides “carved out a whole new path” for water on the slope she lives on — meaning any future storms would just go straight through her house’s current foundation. “There’s no repairing this house,” she said. “There’s no fixing this mountain.”
Simon pointed to the underbelly of the house, where several bricks have fallen away from the foundation. “The whole thing is sitting on chocolate pudding, essentially,” Simon said. “So this could all just go.”
More than 18 months later, downed trees still surround Nadja Simon’s house. No volunteer organization has had the capacity or equipment to clear the area. Photo credit: Ali Caudle
Though government support has been slow to arrive, Simon has gotten a lot of help from friends and family, her synagogue and even strangers. A colleague created a GoFundMe that raised over $13,000 for her, and she did get $31,000 from her synagogue, Temple Beth HaTephila. She also got around $42,000 from FEMA for repair, storage and some rental assistance. Simon credits Pisgah Legal Services with helping her put in the work required to get the FEMA funds.
Despite the challenges, Simon has no intention of leaving the area. “My business is here,” Simon said. “I’m rooted here. I love it here.”
Simon has taken refuge in her community as well as her job at Allon Health and Wellness, a personal training studio that she founded and owns and operates in North Asheville. Though she lost the house, her gym was luckily untouched.
“I’ve been through some things,” Simon said, “and you know, you just put one foot in front of the other. You just keep going, right?”
Hazard mitigation grant program
While Simon has yet to hear back about the Hazard Mitigation Grant, Pierce was recently told that her application passed at the county level, and will go to the state and then FEMA next.
On the evening of March 4, North Carolina’s Emergency Management division and Buncombe County government hosted a kickoff meeting for owners of the 47 properties that were recently approved to be acquired by the county through the program. Those property owners are in the first of three groups; letters of intent were due on Oct. 31.
At that March meeting, property owners met the contracted vendor who will help them through the entire acquisitions process, which could take several years. In that process, they’ll get the property value surveyed and appraised; then, the owners will be given an offer for purchase and negotiations can begin. Upon acceptance, the property will be closed and the contractors will manage the process by which the property will eventually be returned to the local government and remain green space in perpetuity.
Pierce is in group two of the HMGP, so she said it could be eight to nine months or more before her official kickoff even takes place. She’s under no illusions that the HMGP will cover the full extent of her need, but her hope is that she can at least pay her mortgage off.
“Do I get frustrated that it’s taking so long?” Pierce said. Yes, but she knows “there are far worse people off. I’ve tried to be thankful for what I do have.”
According to Sawyer, “Disasters are generally not political,” she said, “because everyone in a place is impacted.” Even so, recovery procedures have frequently collided with politics post-Helene.
“FEMA already has, when they’re following regular process,” she said, “so many steps that it snakes down the page.” That means political effects — like the funding delays that a report by Senate Democrats attributed to former Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s extra scrutiny of FEMA funding — can delay an already arduous process.
For the Hazard Mitigation program, the properties the county acquires “are going to be a great opportunity, but also a burden to be managed,” Sawyer said. “None of that will be easy.”
Housing recovery has fallen prey to several political stoppages and confusion over funding timelines. Shortly after the hazard mitigation kickoff meeting, the secretary rejected Buncombe County’s recovery plan, citing DEI as the reason. Transitional housing support — another FEMA-funded program — was supposed to end in March 2026, but FEMA announced a six-month extension two weeks before its expiration.
While long-term recovery efforts continue — with all their fits and starts — regular people are still rebuilding, every day. That work doesn’t get to wait.
Something old, something new
Over in east Asheville, Pierce reflected on her own journey. A little while ago, a team of volunteers at Baptist on Mission came to her house in River Knoll to help get all her belongings out of the house and assess the structural integrity of the building. “We had to get it down to the studs,” she said, “to see if structurally it had been compromised.”
It turned out that the engineer who came to survey the damaged house was actually the same person who had inspected it when Pierce was about to buy it pre-Helene; he had seen what it looked like before and after. “He walked in my garage and started crying,” Pierce said. “There’s just no words, the amount of mud, the amount of dirt, the amount of moisture” that was on everything.
Mud covered many of the houses that were condemned after the flooding, making homes like Pierce’s, Bailey’s and Smith’s unrecoverable. In these photos, taken in an abandoned home in Swannanoa 18 months after the storm, a sink full of dried mud and a wrecked bedroom illustrate the kind of damage residents experienced. Photo credit: Sydney Woogerd
Pierce didn’t want to get her hopes up, but her mother kept saying she thought some of Pierce’s belongings could be salvaged. It turned out that was true. After a long time spent washing and money spent restoring some belongings, Pierce was able to save a bunch of plates and teacups, as well as three pieces of old furniture — all family heirlooms.
The most meaningful one for Pierce was a chandelier made from her grandmother’s set of teacups that her mother made as a Christmas present about 20 years ago. Each individual cup had to be washed, and Pierce’s mother had to get the chandelier totally redone, a process that cost $700. It now sits over her dining room table, just like it did in River Knoll.
When Pierce looks at that chandelier — and thinks about all she went through to get it back — she sees the hand of God. “It’s totally grace,” she said. “It doesn’t feel earned or deserved, and it’s a beautiful picture of people loving other people.”
With the help of her mother, Kim Pierce was able to salvage this treasured chandelier, made with her grandmother’s teacups, from the mud that covered the inside of her house. Photo credit: Claire Ogden
This article is part of Caught in the Current: Helene Recovery in Asheville and Beyond a project that we have partnered on with the School of Journalism at Northeastern University. Their enterprising students took on the story of Asheville, North Carolina, a community still dealing with the devastation of Hurricane Helene, 18 months later. As part of our mentoring program, we’re amplifying their efforts by sharing the amazing work produced by their students. Visit the official interactive magazine for the project HERE.
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The American Museum and Gardens in Bath, England has a collection of Renaissance maps that came to them from the private collection of the museum’s co-founder, Dallas Pratt. This collection was the subject of an… More
For many years, I was a big proponent of the idea that increased market power was harming the U.S. economy in various ways. In the 2010s, in the economics world, circumstantial evidence began piling up that implicated increased industrial concentration as the culprit in a variety of recent negative trends. Here’s what I wrote in 2017, after reading a bunch of that evidence:
[B]asically I see the case of the Market Power Story - or any big economic story like this - as detective work. We’re collecting circumstantial evidence, and while no piece of evidence is a smoking gun, each adds to the overall picture. IF the economy were being throttled by increased market power, we’d expect to see:
1. Increased market concentration (Check! See Autor et al.)
So, as I see it, the evidence is piling up from a number of sides here.
Some of this is micro evidence, demonstrating some of the pieces of the causal chain that some economists think leads from lax antitrust to bad economic outcomes. The Azar et al. (2017) paper shows that labor market concentration hurts wages. The Blonigen and Pierce (2016) paper shows that mergers raise prices.
The rest is macro evidence and macro theory. Economists see some trend in the economy — a lower labor share of national income, or decreased business investment, or fewer new companies being formed — and they think about whether something like monopoly power could explain those trends.
Just because a single story can explain the trends, of course, doesn’t mean it does. Ultimately you need a whole lot of micro evidence — not just a few papers — to prove each link in the chain of causality from weak antitrust enforcement to higher prices, lower output, lower wages, and so on. But in this case, the market power explanation was very tantalizing, because it had the power to explain so many of 21st century America’s dysfunctions at the same time.
When Biden was elected, I was optimistic. His appointment of people like Lina Khan showed that antitrust was finally being taken seriously in Democratic Party circles. Finally, it seemed, the growing clamor of economists was going to result in some real efforts at reform:
In that post, I revisited some of the important recent papers about market power, and I also noted that prominent economists were increasingly putting their reputations on the line by writing popular books advancing the thesis that market power was hurting our economy:
I concluded that the Biden administration’s shift toward antitrust was a healthy example of ideas making their way from academic economics to the halls of power:
Economists have been suspicious of excess profits ever since Adam Smith complained about “the bad effects of high profits” and declared that “people of the same trade seldom meet together…but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” The idea that competition should reduce profits to a low level in a well-functioning economy is Econ 101, as is the theory of monopoly. Biden’s tweet about capitalism and competition might sound like bold populist rhetoric, but it also could have come right out of an econ textbook…
What this means is that economists are included in the vanguard of this revolt against American corporate power…Economists make unlikely crusaders, but here they are, taking on the biggest companies in the country.
I wasn’t always happy with the Biden administration’s antitrust actions — the government lost most of its cases against Big Tech, and the vendetta against Meta seemed misplaced. But overall, a lot of action seemed to be happening in the prosaic, boring sectors of the economy where market power has probably been eroding the foundations of capitalism for years. In meat processing (multiple times), in publishing, in insurance brokering, in pharma, in medical care provision, and so on, Biden’s FTC and DOJ notched up real wins — not enough to reverse the U.S. economy’s trend toward greater concentration, but possibly enough to create a “chilling effect” that would restrain the trend toward megacorporations-in-everything.
And yet over the last couple of years, I’ve had increasingly serious doubts about the antimonopoly movement. I’m still concerned about corporate power itself — in fact, in many ways, I’m more concerned than I was a decade ago, because of the advent of AI and the unprecedented corruption of the Trump administration. But I’m increasingly unenthusiastic about the ability of the antimonopoly movement, as it currently exists in the Democratic Party, to make useful headway in curbing or balancing corporate power.
Antimonopoly is simply too important to leave to the antimonopolists.
Antimonopoly should be a tool, not an obsession
Speaking about Milton Friedman, Robert Solow once quipped: “Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper.” I am starting to feel that way about the antimonopoly folks.
Jonathan Chait has a long and very damning article about the antimonopoly movement, focusing on its crusading founder, the former journalist Barry C. Lynn. Until I read Chait’s article, I had never even heard of Lynn; this demonstrates that I’m very much out of the loop when it comes to D.C. policymaking and thought leadership, but it also shows how Lynn has escaped scrutiny compared to more popular figures like Lina Khan, Elizabeth Warren, and Matt Stoller.
In any case, from Chait’s description of Lynn, he is not the type of person whose movement I would want to follow. First of all, he seems monomaniacally obsessed with monopoly power:
“It is vital to understand,” Lynn wrote in his 2020 book, Liberty from All Masters, “that monopoly is not one of many economics problems but rather the political economic problem of our time,” causing “just about every ill in our society today.”
When he says that he holds corporate consolidation responsible for just about every problem, he means it. A list of social ills Lynn has attributed to monopolists includes not just the cost of goods and services but also: “The vast and growing inequality of wealth, political power, and control. The rise of the radical right. The surge in racism and homophobia. The attacks on reproductive choice and marriage. The collapse of our news media.”…
Anti-monopolization, Lynn argues, is “an all-encompassing framework for seeing and shaping power in every corner of our democratic republic.”…Lynn sees American history as a struggle against monopolization…A profound crisis must have profound causes, and Lynn was offering a totalistic account of social decay.
This monomania is obviously just silly. A lot of these links are just incredibly tenuous, requiring heroic leaps of assumptions about society, politics, culture, and economics. If you want to say that corporate concentration is responsible for racism, for example, you have to believe that:
the rise in racism, if it exists, is caused by economic factors (doubtful)
those economic factors are primarily — not just slightly — due to corporate concentration (highly doubtful)
Even the economics papers that find measurable effects of corporate concentration on low wages, for example, find that the effect differs enormously by geographic location. If monopsony power is responsible for low wages, then minimum wages should increase employment rather than decreasing it; in some areas, this does seem to happen, while in other areas minimum wages decrease employment, consistent with a greater amount of competition in the latter areas.
Furthermore, several credible research teams — Rossi-Hansberg et al. (2021), Rinz (2022), Autor et al. (2023) and others — have found that employer concentration has actually decreased in local markets in recent decades. This means that not just racism, but any social ill that Barry C. Lynn and his followers want to ascribe to labor monopsony, should have decreased over that period.
Another example is inflation. Antimonopoly crusaders like Elizabeth Warren were quick to blame corporate greed for inflation in 2021-22. There was extremely little data to back this up. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
Alvarez et al. (2025) found that markups — i.e., the amount that companies charge for things above and beyond what those things cost to produce — stayed constant during the post-pandemic inflation, meaning that companies weren’t actually able to use the inflation to gouge consumers…Leduc et al. (2024) and Bouras et al. (2023) found the same. And Jose Azar found that industries with higher markups — implying more market power — actually passed on less of their costs to consumers during the post-pandemic inflation…Greedflation, in other words, is not a real thing.
These are just two examples of the shaky chain of reasoning and evidence that backs up expansive claims like Lynn’s. There are many more, if you want to go looking for them. More sober antitrust types absolutely know that monopoly power is not a Grand Theory of Everything Bad in America. From Chait’s article:
Diana Moss of the Progressive Policy Institute [and] a former head of the American Antitrust Institute…told me the neo-Brandeisians’ error is to view antitrust policy “not as law enforcement but as a broad policy tool for fixing a lot of problems—economic, political, and social.” Antitrust enforcement isn’t that powerful, for the simple reason that corporate concentration is not the root cause of every problem.
This is good. But this reasonable, moderate perspective doesn’t seem to be what’s animating the modern antimonopoly movement. Chait details a telling exchange between Ezra Klein and Zephyr Teachout:
Last year, the New York Times columnist Ezra Klein asked Teachout on his podcast if she could think of any issues that cannot be solved by smashing corporate concentration. At first she ventured, “I don’t think that anti-monopoly can solve significant problems of racism in this country,” but quickly retracted even this concession. “Having said that,” she continued, “there’s a reason that Frederick Douglass and [W. E. B.] Du Bois were so concerned about monopoly power.”
Admittedly, these are words, and not actions. Chait may have also cherry-picked them from among antimonopoly movement leaders’ more reasonable statements, in order to make his point.
But when you look at the movement’s actual actions, you can clearly see the obsessive, all-encompassing nature of the belief system. For example, consider the movement’s choice of targets. These include some industries with high profit margins, but also some with very low margins. These include grocery stores, airlines, and health insurers. Grocery stores and health insurers both consistently have much lower profit margins than American corporations in general, often hovering near the zero mark. Airlines are a cyclical industry that sometimes sees some very profitable years, but generally hovers below the average:
Sources: NAIC, FMI/Food Industry Association, BEA/FRED, BLS/FRED via GPT-5.5
The causal chain that runs from weak antitrust to all sorts of social harms necessarily runs through profits. If companies aren’t making profit, they aren’t controlling the market. Yet Elizabeth Warren blamed high food prices on grocery stores’ market power during the post-pandemic inflation, despite the fact that these stores make very little profit, and their margins actually declined as inflation accelerated. You could see that exact same misplaced focus in Lina Khan’s blockage of the Kroger/Albertsons merger.
As for airlines, the Biden administration’s blockage of the Spirit/JetBlue merger resulted in Spirit Airlines simply going out of business entirely. Corporate concentration was achieved after all — but it was achieved with disorder, corporate failure, and 17,000 unemployed workers rather than with an orderly merger that would have preserved some of Spirit’s routes and workers. Not exactly a resounding success for the antimonopoly movement — but that’s what happens when you try to use antitrust tools against companies in low-margin industries.
Then there’s the case of housing. The antimonopoly people have eagerly embraced the idea that corporate landlords buying up rental properties and jacking up the price is a major cause of high rent. Democrats and Republicans have both embraced this piece of “slopulism”, despite the fact that the percent of homes owned by corporate landlords is tiny and there’s some evidence showing that corporate landlords tend to charge lower rents. Supply constraints — failure to build more housing — is actually the reason for high rents, so the antimonopoly movement is distracting us from solving the real problem.
The movement’s obsessive monomania — its conviction that corporate concentration is the root of all of America’s problems — is causing it to pick the wrong targets and hurt workers. That doesn’t mean bigger corporations are better, or that there aren’t industries where we need stronger antitrust. But the antimonopolists’ totalizing obsession causes them to ignore the evidence of where and when their ideas are needed, because they assume that their ideas are always the top priority in every situation and should be applied in a blanket way to any target they choose.
The science on monopoly power isn’t settled
Richard Feynman once said of science that “Of all its many values, the greatest must be the freedom to doubt.” Now you can respond that economics and politics aren’t “science”, but that makes the freedom to doubt even more important; the less conclusively that any one data set can answer your questions, the more important it is to look at a wide variety of data sets and consider a variety of explanations and theories.
From Jonathan Chait’s description of Barry C. Lynn, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s inclined to look at evidence that goes against his ideas:
[Lynn] believes that “most prices are entirely arbitrary and political in nature.”…More expansively, Lynn believes that “market forces”—which he places in scare quotes—do not exist. His indictment of economics is neither mild nor limited. He has compared the discipline to Lysenkoism, a pseudo-scientific fad under Stalin. “The ‘science’ of economics today … ,” he wrote in his 2011 book, Cornered, “has become a form of madness, a dream of human imagination we mistake for a pattern of the world.”
Lina Khan has also written that “There are no such things as market ‘forces’.” Statements like this certainly don’t do much to refute Chait’s allegation that the antimonopoly belief system “is more like a religion than an economic theory”.
First of all, as an aside, we should consider what it would mean for market forces not to exist and prices to be determined by politics. It would mean that grocery stores carefully calculate exactly how much they can charge for a cucumber or a package of napkins without Senators giving them an angry call or the working class rioting, or something like that. That’s kind of preposterous. It would also mean that small businesses would charge lower prices, because they’re less politically powerful than big businesses. But in fact, it’s big businesses that charge lower prices for the same goods. So the “prices are determined by politics” idea is just abjectly ridiculous, except maybe in a few special cases or where explicit regulation is involved.
But more to the point: Market forces obviously do exist. When you include sales taxes on price tags — reminding people that prices are higher than they had thought — they buy less, proving that demand curves exist and slope downward. When there is bad weather at sea, the price of fish goes up. When you charge electricity customers more, they use less electricity.
And so on. Market forces are not easy to observe in all cases, and they’re not always the most important determinant of prices. But their existence has been proven so thoroughly, by so much careful empirical observation, that to deny their existence requires a deep level of mysticism and blind faith.
If you’re not the kind of person to believe in empirical economics, then of course you’re not going to care if economists find evidence against your worldview. But once we move out of the realm of willful faith-based belief and into the real world of evidence and observation, we find that the science on monopoly power is far from settled.
First of all, there is the evidence I cited before about decreasing concentration in local labor markets (even as concentration increases nationwide). The monopsony wage penalty might be very high, but it was probably even higher in the past; this leaves room for antitrust action to help workers, but it should make us question whether monopoly power is at the root of slow wage growth.
But more fundamentally, the entire story about creeping market power being responsible for a bunch of different ills in the modern American economy is under serious dispute.
For example, the whole story about monopoly power increasing in recent decades relies on the idea that price markups have increased — if companies can’t charge higher prices relative to their costs, they must not be very powerful. Economists like De Loecker and Eeckhout find that markups have increased a lot, but there are plenty of economists who disagree with that finding! There are tons of measurement issues involved in trying to estimate markups across the whole economy. Some economists claim that essentially the entire increase in markups is due to the finance sector.
There are plenty of other pieces of the monopoly power story that are also disputed. Shapiro and Yurukoglu (2024) summarize a bunch of these. It’s hard to define what each “market” is over time, because the boundaries of the categories are arbitrary, and the nature of products themselves keeps changing. It’s hard to choose the region over which local concentration should be measured (when is one store in the same “market” as another?). Companies’ costs are hard to measure for many reasons — for example, companies sell lots of different things, and researchers don’t necessarily have the data to determine which costs are for which products. Profits are hard to measure because the cost of risk is hard to assess. And so on. In general, choosing a different set of assumptions can get you wildly different results regarding how much monopoly power has actually risen in America.
The point here is not that De Loecker and Eeckhout, or the other economists who concluded in the 2010s that monopoly power is a big deal, were wrong. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Nor should you conclude that economics is just a game of “he said, she said” where everyone contradicts each other and nobody really knows anything. The correct takeaway here is that these questions are very subtle and difficult, and the most careful, serious researchers will take a long time to hash out the correct answer. In the meantime, we must live with uncertainty.
A big problem with the antimonopoly crusaders is that they don’t just refuse to live with uncertainty — they insist that you don’t live with uncertainty either. If you say “Hey dudes, maybe corporate landlords actually lower rents”, they won’t debate the finer points of causal estimation with you — they’ll simply label you as a corporate shill and dismiss you.
Don’t let the factionalists win
It’s this last bit — the anathematization of anyone who disagrees with them — that really warns me away from the antimonopoly movement. Chait describes in his article how anyone who tries to buck the antimonopoly people gets accused of being a paid corporate hack:
“We’ve largely won the intellectual debate,” [Lynn] told me matter-of-factly, allowing that the only remaining liberals who disagree with him are “those who are paid to do so.”…
When Biden considered appointing Susan Davies, a former deputy White House counsel under President Obama, to the Justice Department’s top antitrust post, a slew of articlessavagedher as a corporate shill. Her candidacy died. [emphasis mine]
This tactic was clearly on display when the antimonopoly people leapt to savage Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance. Matt Stoller wrote a post entitled “An Abundance of Sleaze: How a Beltway Brain Trust Sells Oligarchy to Liberals”. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis1called the Abundance movement “The new centrist push to regain control of the Democratic Party, with corporate money”. Barry C. Lynn said that Abundance wants “to cozy up to good oligarchs, so they can shelter us until the MAGA storm blows over.”
First of all, claiming that anyone who disagrees with your ideas must be on the payroll of nefarious forces is blatant intellectual dishonesty. It also signals how weak your argument is if you have to accuse every critic of being a bad actor.
But beyond that, the antimonopoly crusaders’ reaction to Abundance shows how utterly factionalist they are. They could have simply said “Yes, we want abundance too. Guess how you get abundance? By breaking up monopolies!” Or something like that. They could have easily tried to co-opt the energy behind Abundance and treated Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson as potential allies. Instead, they leapt instantly to the attack with maximum savagery.
This is the behavior of factionalists, for whom ideas and policy are less important than building power for a clique of favored allies and fellow-travelers within the Democratic Party. Klein and Thompson were a threat not because their ideas contradicted those of the antimonopoly clique, but simply because they were not beholden to the patronage or the intellectual legacy of that clique. They were not on the team, so they were the enemy.
In my view, it is very dangerous for any political party to allow itself to be entered and captured by a clique or faction like this. I’ve spent a long time being very favorable to the ideas being put forward by the antimonopoly people, but their behavior with regards to the Abundance liberals — and the shoddy reasoning, baseless accusations, and backroom arm-twisting that they employ in these debates — has given me what the Zoomers call “the ick”.
A problem with economic policy is that it is very vulnerable to intellectual pseudo-cults. Economics research is very hard to understand, isn’t always useful, and rarely offers clear-cut answers. So policymakers and writers seeking certainty and a reason for decisiveness often fall victim to charismatic gangs of intellectuals who claim that economics is solved and that they have it all figured out. On the GOP side, these include the “supply-siders” in the 1980s and the “national conservatives” today. On the Democratic side, it includes the MMT people.
But MMT failed — essentially no one listens to people who say infinite deficits are good. The antimonopoly faction, on the other hand, appears to have succeeded in winning enormous power and prestige within an increasingly epistemically closed progressive movement. Elizabeth Warren was basically a one-woman Organization Department2 for the Biden administration, popular Democrats like AOC are going around claiming that “market power” is what produces billionaires, and every major progressive publication now platforms the antimonopoly people’s intellectual output.
Given my writings about the problems of corporate power in the past — and my fear of the overwhelming power that AI companies might achieve — it would be relatively easy for me to join this movement. But I can’t, because monomaniacal obsession, epistemic closure, anti-empiricism, and intense factionalism are the kinds of things I just can’t sign on to.
Corporate power is a real problem in our society. But we need more reasonable programs, and more reasonable people, to fight it effectively. Banning corporate landlords, calling for price controls, attacking the grocery store industry, forcing airlines out of business, and making accusations against anyone who calls for deregulation of housing supply are just signs of an approach that’s going to lead nowhere good.
When I had GPT proofread this post before publication, it flagged the name “Dylan Gyauch-Lewis”, but its only comment was: “This unusual spelling appears to be correct.”
There is no getting around the fact that, in the last year, code has gotten much cheaper to create. AI is able to generate
reams and reams of code, often of reasonably decent quality, incredibly quickly. There is no point in pretending that
this isn’t the case.
At times, when confronted with this admittedly uncomfortable fact, I have seen people I respect say something like
“coding was never the problem.�
While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t completely agree with that: certainly coding was at least part of the problem.
And that part of the problem has shrunk significantly with the advent of effective AI coding tools.
So what does raw coding becoming less important mean for software developers, people who, in the past, prided themselves
(and often compared themselves) on their ability to code?
One thing I see is that it means that understanding code has become more expensive. This is because when reams
and reams of code are generated, rather than emerging painfully from a particular programmer’s fingers, there is no
understanding of that code.
In as much as understanding that code needs to exist, it has to be done after the code is written, by reading the code.
Note that conventional wisdom is that reading someone else’s code is harder than writing your own code.
Some AI enthusiasts say “Who cares, you don’t understand the output of compilers.�
I think that is a category error for multiple reasons:
Compilers are deterministic; LLMs are, by design, not
Compiler workflows retain their original source code; LLM workflows typically do not
Compiler output is to a narrowly constrained domain (machine code); LLM output is not (generalized software)
I maintain that, in most cases and certainly for mission-critical software, developers still need to understand the
underlying code even if it is generated by an LLM.
And if code is generated by an LLM there is a stark danger: the LLM can produce code far faster than you, or anyone else,
can understand it. This is why I recommend incremental use of LLMs rather than allowing them to generate massive changelists
that neither you, nor anyone else, can understand.
(There are times when this can be appropriate, such as in a mechanical refactor, but it is extremely dangerous when new
semantics are being introduced into a code base.)
One movie scene that has been consistently coming back to me as I have watched AI garner more and more attention
is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
from Disney’s movie Fantasia.
In this scene the apprentice decides to use magic to assist in the drudgery of cleaning. He enchants a broom which
then proceeds to start cleaning things up. Things appear to be going swimmingly for a while, until the broom starts
cleaning more and more vigorously, reaching a point where things start going swimmingly literally.
The chaos is resolved when the Sorcerer reappears and asserts control over the situation, glaring at the apprentice for
his foolishness.
This seems like an apt metaphor for the AI era: you want to be a sorcerer and not an apprentice.
Humans, generally, have a poor grasp of geometric and exponential curves.
(This is why they believe in fairy tales such as compound interest.)
The core danger of code being cheap is complexity, which I assert, without proof, tends to grow
at least geometrically and often exponentially with the size of a system.
Before LLMs there were prolific human coders.
Perhaps you have worked with one: they can write a lot of code.
I have seen prolific coders who lack a proper fear of complexity heap more and more code on top of an existing problem
until the whole system collapses into an unmodifiable steady state, where any change creates as many bugs as it fixes.
LLMs are incapable of fear of complexity, and are prolific coders.
To address this danger of LLM-generated code, I propose the subtractive, constraining engineer:
This engineer says no, closely examines LLM output, suggests simplifications and
generally retains a firm hand when dealing with LLM-generated code.
Rather than priding themselves on the code they create, they pride themselves on the code (and layers) they remove from
or prevent from entering systems.
This ethos is more sculptor and less builder.
Where the builder ethos still applies, to an extent, is at the system design level: a good engineer will need to know
how to compose components effectively to create systems. However, even here, I think that the subtractive mindset will
be useful: removing unnecessary components and system boundaries to simplify system deployment and inter-component interactions,
etc.
The subtractive engineer is a different kind of engineer than most coders have been in the past. I will admit that I
have always been sympathetic to the subtractive engineer mindset: I don’t mind saying no, I don’t mind polishing existing
systems rather than heroic rewrites, etc.
But, admitting my own biases, I believe this approach is a productive way to engage with LLMs that retains the art of
computer programming and properly acknowledges a dual reality: code has gotten much cheaper to create and complexity
remains our apex predator.
People across the country are offering a service on Facebook
Marketplace to disable the recording light on Ray-Ban Meta
glasses. They call it “Stealth Mode.” Joanna paid $100 for the
modification and went inside the growing business of turning smart
glasses into covert cameras. She investigates who is doing it,
whether it’s legal and what some are doing to try and stop it.
Of course there’s a market for this. But the true chef’s kiss is that the market to find people who offer the service is on ... Facebook Marketplace. Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.
An artist’s rendering of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on the surface of the Moon. Graphic: Blue Origin
In the wake of the catastrophic explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, NASA wants to find an alternative launcher for the first of the company’s Blue Moon landers.
In an interview with FOX Business on Thursday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described a “whole of government response” to the May 28 incident, which badly damaged Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral. “We are also de-coupling the lander from the launch vehicle and the pad itself,” he said.
“NASA is laser focused on the lander because we’re laser focused on our mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before 2028, and we’re gonna be able to keep that lander in development, progressing, so it’s available for our test mission in 2027, which is Artemis 3, and potentially available to meet our landing objectives in 2028,” Isaacman said.
“It’s a setback that happens in this business. It’s incredibly complicated. A rocket is a controlled explosion, whether you’re going to Earth orbit, 17,500 miles an hour, escape velocity, 25,000 miles an hour, it’s an awful lot of energy, things will happen. We have to learn from it and be ready to move forward.”
An agency spokesperson confirmed to Spaceflight Now that NASA would like to see the launches of the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and potentially the Blue Moon Mark 2 crewed lander move to a rocket that’s not New Glenn.
The New Glenn static fire anomaly triggered what was “the largest explosion” seen at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, according to Col. Brian Chatman, the commander of Space Launch Delta 45, which encompasses Cape Canaveral and Patrick Space Force Base. Chatman and officials with Blue Origin confirmed the night of the explosion that there were no injuries or fatalities as a result of the blast.
Isaacman and several senior engineers at NASA traveled to Florida the following day to speak with Blue Origin engineers and to survey the damage directly. At the time, Isaacman pledged NASA’s support of Blue Origin in helping to find the root cause and get back to launching New Glenn rockets “as soon as safely possible.”
“We have been saying for months at NASA that we are not going to sit on our hands and wait for the capabilities necessary to achieve the nation’s most pressing objectives,” Isaacman wrote in a post on X. “We are going to take an active role alongside our partners, just as we did in the 1960s, to overcome setbacks, remove obstacles, and deliver the intended outcomes.”
An aerial view of Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station showing the aftermath of the New Glenn explosion last Thursday. The rocket itself virtually disintegrated in the blast leaving its transporter-erector in wreckage on the concrete pad’s surface. The large gantry suffered structural damage near its base while the mangled remains of a lightning tower are visible to the right of the pad surface. A large processing hangar (at left) came through the blast without major damage, as did propellant tanks and distribution systems. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
On Monday, June 1, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp also took to social media to share with the public that the pads propellant storage tanks were “all in good shape” and that the large support tower “can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced.”
Limp concluded his post by stating, “We will fly again before the end of this year.”
Not fast enough
Just days prior to the explosion at Launch Complex 36, Isaacman and others at NASA held a news conference to tout multiple missions that will help either directly build or test technologies needed to support a Moon Base at the south pole of the Moon.
Multiple missions were awarded to Blue Origin and its Blue Moon Mk.1 cargo lander, including the delivery of lunar terrain vehicles to the lunar surface to allow greater mobility for future astronauts on Moon landing missions, like Artemis 4, which is planned for 2028.
The Blue Moon Mk.2 crew lander, a larger version of the Mark 1 lander that includes a crew habitation volume, is slated to launch as part of the Artemis 3 mission as soon as mid-2027. NASA wants to see both it and SpaceX’s Starship lander dock with the agency’s Orion spacecraft to help buy down risk for future lunar landings.
An artist’s impression of an Apollo-era lunar module (left) and moon landers being built by Blue Origin (center) and SpaceX (right). Graphic: NASA Office of Inspector General
Blue Origin officials have said that the Blue Moon landers were designed and optimized to fly as a payload on the New Glenn rocket.
“One of the best things about that was being able to work with the New Glenn Team. Having the launch vehicle as the same company’s vehicle as the lander has allowed us to optimize the entire stack, the entire design,” said John Couluris, senior vice president of Lunar Permanence at Blue Origin during it’s NG-3 launch broadcast in April. “So we’ve gotten a lot more performance out of our lander thanks to New Glenn.”
During an appearance at CNBC’s CEO Summit earlier this week, Isaacman said the mass and volume of the Blue Moon landers leaves few options for alternative vehicles. “In terms of heavy lift, you know, real heavy lift, you’ve got, SpaceX and Blue Origin, and obviously one of them is down a pad right now.”
The Blue Moon landers were tailored to fit within the seven-meter diameter fairing of a New Glenn rocket. The Falcon Heavy payload fairing has a diameter of 5.2 meters and although the company has developed a taller version, it has not revealed any wider options. Additionally, SpaceX’s launch pads are not equipped to service a hydrogen-fueled lander like Blue Moon.
I look forward to pseudoscience like this finally getting some airtime on 60 Minutes. For 58 long years the program has been hopelessly biased toward actual science.
Back in 2011, when he was a tech columnist at The New York Times, Nick Bilton figured out that Apple was soon going to launch an Apple branded-television set, with no remote control. You’d just talk to it. This made no sense of course, as I pointed out.
Scott Pelley, in a statement posted on Instagram (which I’ll quote in full, as the original is locked behind a dickwall if you’re not signed in to an Instagram account):
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in
history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every
major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions
around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60
Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades
because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and
humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to
my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand
energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving
the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network
is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of
favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior
leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly
fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood
up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of
political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods
and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to
include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I
have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.
Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents
for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over
60 Minutes interviews is not how honest journalism is done.
Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new
management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my
stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not
getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the
program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions
of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have
received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of my colleagues at CBS
News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at
the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no
longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I
must leave as well.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion — a heart
brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who
encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of
their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their
ideals are honored again — a day when sanity, competence, and
courage return.
Paramount’s “Press Express” page promoting 60 Minutes still lists all eight correspondent from the 2025–2026 season, the program’s 58th. (Perhaps they fired the person responsible for keeping the cast page up to date.) In the order they appear on Paramount’s listing:
A big part of the brand for 60 Minutes is that the show doesn’t change. Someone who last saw it 40 years ago would instantly recognize it today. There’s no silly fucking theme song. There’s no glossy set. There’s a ticking stopwatch, a logotype set in Microgramma/Eurostile, and correspondents sit against a black background. And correspondents measure their tenure not by years but by decades. Of the original hosts, Harry Reasoner was there for 23 years (and left the cast only upon his death at 68 in 1991), Dan Rather was there for 38 years, Mike Wallace for 40, and Morley Safer for 48. 48 years! Of the current hosts, Lesley Stahl has been there since 1991. I graduated high school that year.
In just six months since David Ellison bought CBS and installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, they’ve fired or lost half their on-air talent, and of the four who remain, Wertheim and O’Donnell are only part-time (O’Donnell’s title is “CBS News senior correspondent”, not “60 Minutes correspondent”), Whitaker is 74 years old, and Stahl is 84.
Behind the cameras, longtime executive producer Bill Owens resigned in protest of corporate interference a year ago, in the cowardly run-up to Ellison’s acquisition of CBS. Last week Weiss fired Owens’s successor, Tanya Simon, who had been with the program for 30 years, replacing her with Nick Bilton, who not only had never worked at 60 Minutes, but has never worked in TV news period. Weiss also fired executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, who’d been at the show for 28 years.
It seems untenable for Stahl or Whitaker to remain on the show. Pelley called it what it was in Bilton’s ham-fisted staff meeting Monday: the murder of the institution.
In a formal letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The
New York Times, Mr. Bilton wrote that the correspondent had been
“terminated for cause effective immediately.”
The letter is a must-read. No summary of it can capture just how pathetic a man Nick Bilton is. He disputes nothing Pelley said in the Monday staff meeting, and firing Pelley proves that Pelley was exactly right.
Mr. Pelley, in a telephone interview on Tuesday evening shortly
after he was fired, said he had devoted decades of his life to “60
Minutes,” which he said he still cared about deeply.
“I have been in combat in Afghanistan,” Mr. Pelley said. “I have
been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine
multiple times, risking my life and the happiness of my family
because of my devotion to the broadcast.” [...]
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Pelley sent a statement to The Times that
assailed the new leadership of CBS News, writing that
“incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have
wreaked havoc” at the network.” He added, “The collapse of values
at the top has become untenable.” Mr. Pelley also wrote that
senior managers at CBS News had pressured him to insert bias into
stories for “60 Minutes” this past season, though he did not
provide details about specific segments.
I look forward to hearing those segment-specific details. It’s not hard to guess the direction that bias went.
Lingon makes scheduling apps, scripts, shortcuts, and commands
feel simple. Create a task in minutes, run it on a schedule, and
stay in control.
Lingon helps you run whatever you want whenever you want without
living in Terminal. Schedule apps, scripts, shortcuts, and
commands with a clear, friendly UI.
Run tasks at specific times, on intervals or at login. Optional
notifications make it easy to keep control.
Two separate apps. Lingon is the simpler Mac App Store version and
free to use, while Lingon Pro is the advanced one-time purchase
with extra power.
Lingon and Lingon Pro are great apps. I’ve been meaning to recommend them for a while.
Back in 2023 I wrote about a problem I was having with Maestral, the incredible “works like Dropbox in the old days” open-source Dropbox client, where Maestral would just silently crash once in a while and I wouldn’t notice for a while. Then I would notice, manually re-launch Maestral, and have to wait while Maestral synced. Or, worse, I’d put a podcast recording in a shared folder and walk away from my computer, and my editor would never get the file because Maestral wasn’t running. My write-up described how I solved the problem with a Keyboard Maestro macro that runs once an hour — it checks if Maestral is running, and if it isn’t, launches it (and writes to a log, to satisfy my own curiosity). Borg wrote to me after I posted that and — very politely — explained that Lingon would make that much simpler.
In addition to creating your own scripts and rules that run periodically, Lingon is great for inspecting all the login items and background agents on your system — whether they’re from Apple or third parties. Poking around at everything Google Gemini installed is what made me think to recommend Lingon today. At the very least you should install the free regular version. It’s just a great Mac utility from a great Mac developer. There’s nothing else like it.
Short story: Google Chrome installs an updater called Keystone on
your computer, which is bizarrely correlated to massive
unexplained CPU usage in WindowServer (a system process)1, and
made my whole computer slow even when Chrome wasn’t running.
Deleting Chrome and Keystone made my computer way, way faster,
all the time.
Long story: I noticed my brand new 16” MacBook Pro started acting
sluggishly doing even trivial things like scrolling. Activity
Monitor showed nothing from Google using the CPU, but
WindowServer was taking ~80%, which is abnormally high (it
should use < 10% normally).
Doing all the normal things (quitting apps, logging out other
users, restarting, zapping PRAM/SMC, etc) did nothing, then I
remembered I had installed Chrome a while back to test a website.
I deleted Chrome, and noticed Keystone while deleting some of
Chrome’s other preferences and caches. I deleted everything from
Google I could find, restarted the computer, and it was like
night-and-day. Everything was instantly and noticeably faster,
and WindowServer CPU was well under 10% again.
Not all Mac users, but many, found that just having Chrome installed slowed down their Macs dramatically. Completely uninstalling Chrome — and its pernicious background agents — solved the problem. This years-old “Chrome Is Bad” saga came to mind when I wrote about Google’s Gemini Mac app’s background agents.
It seems as though Google eventually fixed these Chrome bugs — or Apple changed something in a MacOS update that fixed the bugs for them — but I’ve never seen a full explanation of the problem and eventual solution. Does anyone know what happened here?
The main point is it never should have happened in the first place. A third-party app should just be a third-party app — not add components to your system software just so it can update itself when it isn’t running. Background agents and extensions are sometimes necessary to the functionality of a product. Checking for software updates to a browser or AI chatbot, when those apps aren’t running, is not necessary. The golden rule applies: imagine if every app on your system installed its own background agent to check for software updates. Chrome is a popular browser on the Mac, but it’s just a web browser. Other web browsers do just fine checking for updates from the browser itself when it’s running. If the user is actually using an app regularly, it’ll get plenty of chances to check for updates when it’s running. If the user isn’t regularly using an app, why in the world should that seldom-used app have software running all the time in the background?
This sort of chaos is why Apple keeps iOS locked down. There are no third-party login items on iOS that run in the background — let alone ones with no option to disable. No third-party app can do anything that causes the iOS window manager to consume 80 percent of the CPU while ostensibly idle. There are obviously trade-offs here. I rely on a Mac for my workstation because the Mac gives me the power to potentially shoot myself in the foot. But iOS is an order of magnitude more popular than MacOS because you cannot shoot yourself in the foot with it, even though that means you can’t use it do things that would require that power.
Two months ago Google launched a new native Mac app for Gemini. I’ve been trying it, on and off, since. It’s ... not bad. Certainly better than Claude’s Electron shitbox. But the Gemini app isn’t all that good, either. I’m sticking with ChatGPT, which remains far and away the best native Mac client to an LLM. (And ChatGPT is not that great of a Mac app — it’s just the closest to good of the bunch.)
The thing that really turns me off about the Gemini Mac app is Google’s gall. The Gemini app installs a background helper named “GeminiAppLauncher” in your login items. It also installs “GoogleUpdater” as a process with the privilege to launch in the background whenever it wants. Gemini never asks for permission to install either of these, and, most arrogantly, if you, as an informed user, remove either of them, the Gemini app silently adds them back. There is no setting in Gemini to disable this. There’s a mindset from some big companies that your system is theirs to play with at the system software level. Fuck that. Michael Tsai’s post on the Gemini Mac app links to this thread on MacRumors regarding this pernicious auto-installed and auto-reinstalled login item. Here’s another on Reddit.
Google’s approach to its Mac software is disrespectful and entitled.
I’d have been happy to keep the Gemini app installed if it just sat in my Applications folder when I wasn’t using it. But it doesn’t, and Google shows no signs of caring, so I just deleted it and uninstalled its background launch agents (in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/). Feels great, like I took a much needed shower.
(Sidenote: The Gemini Mac app is a native Mac app, but it is ... weird. Gus Mueller poked around at it and found that it’s the product of a Java-to-Objective-C converter that Google made, and much of it was originally written for Android.)
Jason Snell at Six Colors, looking ahead to WWDC next week:
These days, I’m getting emails pitching me for an endless stream
of new Mac apps. It’s quite remarkable because there was a
period five or ten years ago when it seemed like all app
development on Apple’s platforms was focused on iOS. Even more
interesting, these are all indie Mac apps that seem to be built
using native Mac frameworks, not the product of big corporations
that are just rolling their cross-platform development system
out everywhere. These apps seem to have a point of view and are
focused on the Mac.
Of course, it’s happening because of AI. [...]
Mac users — some of them developers, some of them people who have
never written software in their lives — are building apps that
fulfill their imaginations.
We now live in an era where, if you can dream an app, you can
probably build it. Especially Mac utilities. And who cares more
about native Mac software than Mac users? Certainly not those
companies that gave up on Mac development and focused all their
energies on giant cross-platform code bases to attract venture
investment and big payouts.
There are pros and cons to everything, but on the whole, AI-assisted programming has rejuvenated Mac development. It wasn’t moribund, but it was stagnant. And stagnation is the first step toward decline. Now it’s resurgent, and that’s a fun thing to see. And, I think, genuinely important for the future of the platform. I’ve been concerned for years that the biggest problem the Mac faces is that so many new apps for the platform weren’t Mac apps. The Mac has never faced a decline in popularity, but truly native Mac application development (and the skills) did. Now it’s turning around. Mac users are thirsty for Mac apps, and with AI, they can quench their own thirst and tell the dullards promulgating Electron bundles to pound sand.
So it’s plenty clear that Ken Calvert will walk away with the CA-40 primary, then enter the general as a huge favorite over Young Kim. Hell, I wouldn’t be 100 percent shocked if the state GOP urges Young Kim to drop out, endorse Calvert and save the party a bloodbath. But … what do I know?
Anyhow, with results pretty much in, here’s my list of Winners and Losers.
WINNER:
Ken Calvert: Look, I don’t like the dude. But he won in a landslide and he’ll likely cruise to a fairly easy November triumph. Truth is, the 40th (Young Kim’s old district) is far more 41st than 40th after Prop 50. So while Calvert winning isn’t surprising, I’m a little shocked by the margin …
LOSER:
Young Kim: I actually feel badly for her, because—politics be damned, and inconsistencies be damned, and MAGA pandering be damned—she’s genuinely thought of as a kind and decent sort. So to have it all come crashing down like this … I dunno. Sorta sucks. Also, Young Kim was very hard to paint as a villain. She just didn’t have that Dr. Doom thing in her.
WINNER:
Lisa Ramirez: She entered late, she didn’t have a ton of money or name recognition—and she’s not all that far behind Esther Kim-Varet. Most of all, Lisa walks away from this campaign genuinely liked and respected, and I suspect she’ll have a lot of party support should she run for another office. On a personal note, I very much admired her engagement skills. Lisa’s a real one.
LOSER:
Joe Kerr: Certainly not the way he wanted to go out. Joe was the Democratic candidate two years ago, and now he’s the Chris Kirkpatrick of this election. That said, I do believe he’d be an outstanding member of a city council or safety board. Sincerely.
WINNER:
Esther Kim Varet and Family: I joked with someone—have the Varets moved back to LA yet, or will it be next week? Now Esther is free to return to the big city, free to roam the streets and talk art, free to be with her people and complain about all the chain restaurants “down there.” Honestly, I just never got the feeling she felt like OC was her place; her peeps. So, now she can go home and be happy.
LOSER:
Jeff Pearlman: Multiple reasons. First, what am I going to do with my free time? Second, my coverage of this race—while well-intended—was pretty erratic. I’m new to political writing. It’s not sports. It takes more of a longer view. You learn.
WINNER:
Perry Meade: Candidate early on, wise enough to ditch this train. The kid has a super bright future in politics, should he aspire toward it.
LOSER:
Nina Linh: The most … befuddling candidate. I don’t think I ever saw her not look down at her notes. Will wrap this circus with less than 2,000 votes. Making her Chris Kirkpatrick’s stunt double, Biff.
WINNER:
Handel’s: The finest ice cream spot in Orange County no longer has to compete.
Last night, in an unsigned opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded its finding in the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision. That decision overturned decades of law to declare that states could not construct majority-minority voting districts, as they had done under Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to ensure Black voters had the opportunity to elect members of Congress who would represent the interests of the Black community.
After handing down the Callais decision, the Supreme Court sent a case involving Alabama’s map back to the state. One lower court had ruled the 2023 map unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment and, in diluting Black voting by spreading Black voters across three districts, eliminated a majority-Black district in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
As Lawrence Hurley of NBC News reported, on May 26 a panel of three judges reaffirmed that the map showed intentional discrimination and was unconstitutional. The state took the case to the Supreme Court, and last night the right-wing justices allowed the state to use the 2023 map, saying it was likely to win its case that the map was lawfully drawn.
And so, Alabama will likely replace a Black Democratic lawmaker with a white Republican, using a map that previous courts have said violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Republican lawmakers currently in power appear to be trying to grab as much power as they can as President Donald J. Trump deteriorates both personally and politically.
Today, a day after visiting the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the White House said was a six-month physical that he said went “PERFECTLY,” the nearly 80-year-old Trump appeared in public for the first time since May 27. He seemed tired and vague.
In the House of Representatives, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio was testifying before the Foreign Relations Committee about Trump’s 2027 budget requests for the State Department, Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) played a video of Trump sleeping in two Cabinet meetings as Rubio was talking, and asked how the president could make good decisions about war if he couldn’t stay awake even during public events.
Rubio insisted he had never seen Trump asleep in a meeting, although in the instances Lieu showed, the president was sleeping in a chair directly beside him. Lieu accused Rubio of lying to Congress.
The weekend’s promises of an end to the war on Iran have fizzled, and the economy is slowing under the pressure of higher oil prices. The administration announced on Monday that it is dropping tariffs on imported farm and construction equipment from 25% to 15% to ease prices, proving—as critics have maintained all along—that the tariffs are in fact raising prices.
On Sunday, when Shannon Bream of the Fox News Channel asked Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett about a Wall Street Journal report that delinquent credit card balances are at their highest level in 15 years as people use their credit cards for necessities, Hassett centered not the American people but the credit card companies. “We talk to the CEOs of the credit card companies all the time, and we do see some increased stress like the numbers that the Wall Street Journal quotes, but for the most part…there’s not any kind of…financial threat to the credit card companies.”
Americans trying to navigate rising prices by putting necessities on their credit cards were not likely to be concerned about how their financial pain might hurt credit card companies.
As Trump and the administration falter, the MAGA leaders Trump has installed in the government are pushing their agenda as fast as they can. Russell Vought, the co-author of Project 2025 who directs the the Office of Management and Budget and who therefore has the power—although not the authority—to ignore the laws Congress has passed for the expenditure of money, proposed last Thursday, May 28, that political appointees in his office should have final say over research grants, including those for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other governmental science agencies.
The proposal promises to root out “a ‘woke’ policy agenda that deliberately favor[s] certain identity groups over others.” In addition to submitting scientific research to political approval, the new rules would also stop international research collaboration unless it was approved by political appointees.
Aligning with Project 2025, which criticizes federal science programs for paying too much attention to climate change, the Trump administration is also tearing out a $368 million deep-ocean observation system along the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts that monitors marine ecosystems, coastal environments, and the ocean currents that affect climate change. Eric Niiler of the New York Times reported that the U.S. began operating the system in 2016 and expected it to continue for 25 years.
Democrats have pledged to fight the plan to tear out the observation system.
While those empowered by his 2024 win are pushing through their agenda, Trump himself appears to have abandoned any pretense of governing and is focusing on his Ultimate Fighting Championship ring in front of the White House—today he suggested making it permanent—and the painting of the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Today he showed to reporters images of how the Reflecting Pool is longer than skyscrapers are tall and that he is having it painted “American Flag Blue.”
He is also trying to cement control over the government. Today Trump signed an executive order stripping nearly 10,000 career civil service workers of their protected status, making it possible for the president to fire them at will. This move was introduced late in Trump’s first term but rescinded under President Joe Biden, and was a key part of Project 2025.
Trump’s announcement yesterday that he is nominating the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, as acting director of national intelligence (DNI) illustrated that he is willing to pervert one of the most important positions in the U.S. government to his own whims. Pulte has no experience in intelligence, but he has demonstrated a willingness to persecute Trump’s perceived political enemies. By making him an acting director, Trump can get around the requirement for Senate confirmation.
But lawmakers who will have to face the voters in November appear to be getting queasy at being tied to Trump’s actions. Pulte’s nomination could be a bridge too far. The nomination threatens the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which expires on June 12. Right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec has called for Pulte to take control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to “start digging in on the domestic side of terrorism as well as the international,” and Democratic lawmakers have said they will not renew the controversial Section 702 of FISA with Pulte as DNI.
Section 702 permits intelligence agencies to collect the communications of foreigners operating outside the U.S. without a judicial warrant. But in the process of that collection, the communications of U.S. citizens often get swept up. As Joseph Gedeon of The Guardian notes, the FBI used Section 702 to investigate protesters in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has led the charge against renewing FISA without significant protections for American citizens, warned that Pulte could use Section 702 as a political weapon, abusing surveillance powers for purposes of blackmail, smear campaigns, or attacks on lawmakers, nonprofits, or activists. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance added that Pulte could use his position to seize ballots or election equipment. Wyden urged lawmakers to refuse to reauthorize FISA “without strong new safeguards for Americans’ rights.”
Mark Warner (D-VA), the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the person who can deliver the necessary Democratic votes for the renewal of FISA, warned that Pulte’s nomination could doom the measure’s reauthorization. Even Republicans, including former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are objecting to Pulte, citing his lack of intelligence experience, which the law requires for a DNI head, as a deal-breaker.
House Republicans are also starting to balk at the administration’s actions.
Meredith Lee Hill and Calen Razor of Politico reported today that House leaders had to push back votes today when Republicans didn’t show up from their holiday week. The House has been at work 43 fewer days in this congressional session than the Senate has as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has avoided pushback against Trump in the House by keeping members away from Washington. The Republican majority in the House is so slim that attendance issues have forced Johnson to delay votes to prevent Democrats from defeating bills. Now that members don’t want to go on the record either against Trump or for him, the ability of the House to get through the work it needs to is in jeopardy.
Johnson’s slipping control over the House showed today when the House voted to pass a resolution, introduced by Democrats, telling Trump either to stop further strikes against Iran or to get congressional approval for them. Johnson sent House members home early before the Memorial Day holiday to keep such a measure from passing, but today it did, by a vote of 215 to 208. Although Johnson warned that the resolution was “very dangerous” and would “weaken” Trump’s ability to find a way out of the conflict, members passed it, likely noting that according to a recent New York Times–Siena College poll, 64% of registered voters think Trump’s decision to go to war was wrong, while only 30% approve of it.
Shortly after passing that measure, the House rebuked both Trump and Johnson a second time when it advanced a measure that would aid Ukraine in its war to repel Russia’s invasion by a vote of 218 to 204. If the measure now passes the House and then the Senate, it will provide $8 billion in loans and $300 million in security aid.
Trump does not appear to be taking his loss of power well, retreating to the traditional Republican position that anyone who disagrees with him is a communist. This afternoon, he posted on social media: “Communists always do well with the Voters or, as they would say, THE PEOPLE, in the Early Years! But, in the end, the Country, State, or City, GOES TO HELL! Great Violence proceeds at levels never seen before, and the entity dissolves into Poverty, Squalor, and Crime. Remember, breathtaking ‘Popularity’ first, and then, guaranteed DEATH AND DESTRUCTION! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
So, with the CA-40 race pretty much a wrap, here’s a final message of kindness, decency, compassion from Esther Kim Varet, Los Angeles’ finest OC savior.
She posted it on her socials …
And here are the things I wanna say:
• 1. This is, without fail and without surprise, the least-classy “I’ve lost” message I’ve ever seen. And it 100 percent meets the standards of the crumb who wrote it. Some people just … suck. They’re entitled and tone-deaf and without a sliver of self-reflection.
• 2. Esther, you were never the best candidate in this race. Only the wealthiest.
• 3. Esther, you inflicted endless cuts upon yourself with your rudeness, your cattiness, your tone-deafness, your arrogance, your impulsiveness. The only reason you gave people to vote your way was money. That’s it—money. Otherwise, you just presented as a unique-level asshole. Which this final post reinforced.
• 4. Esther, you were literally taking money from Republicans—who wanted you in the race.
• 5. Esther, calling Lisa the “enemy from within” says it all about you. One. Hundred. Percent.
• 6. Esther, nobody liked you. Which is remarkable. Nobody. Liked. You. And, initially, I thought, “It’s a matter of messaging. That can be fixed.” Nope. Nobody liked you because you’re not likable. You’re the mean kid in school. The bully. The child who shows up in Dior sneakers and mocks those wearing Keds. You didn’t lose because other candidates took out your knees. You lost because you took out your own knees. You behaved as if all of this was beneath you; as if this election should have been handed to you; as if we were fortunate to have you.
• 7. Esther, do you at all find it curious that—despite spending roughly four times the amount of money—you barely finished ahead of Lisa? Isn’t that a bit strange? A tiny bit weird. Maybe, just maybe, if winning was THE thing, you’d have donated all your funds to Lisa’s campaign and stepped out of the way.
• 8. Esther, it’s time to return to LA. Your political standing here is zero. Less than zero. It’s over. I hope one day, maybe decades from now, you’ll muster up enough introspection to look in the mirror and understand what happened; why this happened. Regional political candidates don’t necessarily have to be humble, but they do need to at least present humility.
• 9. Esther, how many campaign managers did you run through? Was it four, five or six? I lost count.
• 10. Esther, how many social media randos did you attack? Was it 50, 60 or 100? I also lost count.
• 11. Lisa Ramirez, keep your head up. You ran a noble campaign. When I mentioned you last night at a meeting in Irvine, people applauded. Literally applauded. You put up a good fight as an underdog, and you have a future in this business. Be proud.
• 12. Esther, good news. This is the last time your name will ever appear on this site. You’re cold product. You’re Vanilla Ice at the Freedom Concert. You’re the Alf puppet.
So one of our turf’s most interesting races is State Assembly District 72, which involves former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and a Huntington Beach City Council member who is 17 bricks shy of a load.
That would be Gracey Van Der Mark, aka one of America’s few Latinas to also go to bat for QAnon. And, in her time on the HB City Council, Gracey has supported book banning, MAGA plaques, corruption, cruelty and remarkable ineptitude. She is as Trumpy and Trump gets, but also incompetent with a capital V.
Put differently …
As I write this, it appears likely Kluwe and Kooky will be battling it out in November …
And while I am thrilled for Chris, I think it’s important for Democrats (and other reasonable people) to really get involved here. Chris is, truly, a great dude. Smart, intellectual, overflowing with decency, integrity. He’s the rare NFL vet who doesn’t like talking about the NFL. He’s much more into issues, solutions.
But, to win the general, he’s going to need three things:
Fourteen months ago, Donald Trump announced that he was starting a trade war by imposing sweeping tariffs on almost every nation in the world. His move caused shock waves, and not just because of the economic impact.
The Trump tariffs were clearly illegal — taxes imposed not via proper legislation, but by invoking an obscure existing law intended to deal with economic emergencies, even though no emergency existed. Also, by imposing these tariffs unilaterally, Trump was violating many decades’ worth of solemn U.S. agreements with other nations, including our closest allies. So “Liberation Day” marked the end of rule of law at home — goodbye separation of powers, hello a monarchical system in which the president does whatever he wants. And it also marked the transformation of the United States into a rogue nation that holds its erstwhile allies in contempt and can’t be trusted to honor its promises.
The initial shock has faded, largely because there have been so many outrages since, from pogroms at home to the disastrous war in Iran. And the Supreme Court, after dragging its feet for many months, eventually, grudgingly, ruled that the illegal tariffs were, in fact, illegal, and will have to be refunded.
But Trump officials kept many of the tariffs in place using another obscure law, this one intended to deal with balance of payments emergencies, although again no such emergency existed. This invocation of “Section 122” will probably also be ruled illegal at some point, but in any case the law sets a 150-day time limit on such tariffs, so the Trumpists needed another dodge.
Yesterday it came in the form of “Section 301” tariffs on 60 trading partners, including the European Union and Japan. Section 301 is titled “Relief from Unfair Trade Practices.” So what are the unfair practices the Trumpists say the whole world is engaging in?
The answer is that the Trump administration is accusing other countries of “failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”
Notice the wording. They aren’t accusing the European Union itself of employing slave labor. Even the Trumpists aren’t willing to lie that shamelessly (yet). No, the claim is that the EU isn’t doing enough to stop countries that do employ slave labor from selling their goods in Europe.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, understands that the alleged justification for these tariffs is a lie. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the EU is less diligent about opposing the use of slave labor than the US. For that matter, there is no reason to believe that Trump and his minions have any particular objection to slave labor. This is nothing but a transparently, one might say sneeringly, bogus rationale for continuing to flout both US law and international agreements.
Why do Trump’s minions keep using legal tricks and lies to impose tariffs? There is, after all, no reason they couldn’t simply ask Congress to impose tariffs through normal legislation. But doing so would run into three problems, from Trump’s point of view. First, Congress might balk. Second, at minimum an attempt to pass legislation would require hearings, in which the weakness of the administration’s arguments would become obvious. Third, one of the reasons Trump loves tariffs is that he gets to issue decrees at will, none of this pesky nonsense of consulting with the legislative branch; having to follow the Constitution would spoil his fantasies of omnipotence.
So here we go again, with another round of tariffs that will probably be ruled illegal some months from now.
Why doesn’t Trump just back down? After all, the tariffs aren’t achieving their stated objectives. Remember how Trump was going to revive US manufacturing?
The tariffs are also deeply unpopular, with an overwhelming majority of Americans believing, rightly, that they have raised prices:
But for Trump, backing off on the tariffs would amount to admitting failure. And if you believe he’s going to do that, I have a quick, easy victory over Iran you might want to buy.
May was a big month! The highlight was a cycling trip around Lake Konstanz, passing through Konstanz, Bregenz Austria, Stein am Rhein in Switzerland, and Meersburg.
A farm in Bodenseeufer, Germany
We passed a lot of operating agriculture, growing apples, strawberries, and other fruits.
The route is very continuous, mostly flat, and popular with retirees. It's very idyllic riding: lots of protected and separated lanes. There are some interesting regional differences in the riding. Swiss drivers were noticeably more aggressive and gave a lot less space to bikes, but the Swiss infrastructure was really nice when it was off-road. Also it was interesting to see that the vast majority of other cyclists on most of the route were on ebikes. This only changed when we were close to hip cities and we'd notice more young people on high-end road bikes.
Münster St. Maria und Markus
Taking the ride in 40-60 mile days left a lot of room for checking out the towns, food, and views. It was very easy being vegan in Germany, and significantly harder in Austria and Switzerland. Some highlights:
KERVAN Imbiss in Konstanz: cheap, delicious vegan kebabs
Insel Mainau: beautiful botanical garden on an island, recommended to follow up with Biergarten St. Katharina, a beer garden in the woods
The Pile Dwelling Museum in Uhldingen-Mühlhofen-Unteruhldingen: very aesthetic museum plus recreations of pile dwellings
In Zurich: the Swiss National Museum was gigantic and featured the best-integrated high-tech exhibits I've seen
On the final evening we took a cable car up to Panorama Restaurant Falsenegg and it delivered on the name
Reading
I read The Technological Republic the book by Alex Karp and one of his employees. It was terrible as expected: part sales-pitch, part standard-issue MAGA cultural critique, part implied defense of just war. The last part was the most interesting to me, because Karp spends so much time grandstanding about his intellectual background and telling protestors to quiet down and have a real discussion, and this book confirms that he can't actually have that conversation. He has nothing to say about the moral complexity or justification of war.
It's surprising that the only critical reviews I could find of the book are from other right-leaning sources. Providence, an American Christian Realist magazine, found it too weak. The Independent Institute didn't like it based on their Libertarian principles. I guess it's just so far from any left-wing thought that nobody bothers to read it.
Democratic governance rests on a bargain so old we’ve forgotten it’s a bargain at all. The governed have something the governors need: labor, tax revenue, military service, consumer spending. This dependency is the source of democratic leverage. The whole system functions because power is distributed, and it’s distributed because the people at the top need something from the people at the bottom.
I'm still trying to avoid writing about AI, but this piece by Owen McGrann was worth the time. It takes a lot of points that I've long agreed with and stitches them together into a coherent but miserable whole.
On the bright side, I'm just finishing reading Intermezzo and it's wonderful. A totally rejuvenating and inspiring novel.
Listening
Cheekface is a ~9 year old band in the tradition of Cake, They Might Be Giants, etc. They've got some great hits - part sardonic and ironic, part euphoric and ultra-light pop choruses.
Watching
Adam Neely's talking about AI and music again, and like always, it's very worth watching. The generational element is especially interesting here: just like the commencement speakers getting booed, there's a consistent theme where Gen Z (and millennials, to some extent) are rejecting the AI hype while older generations are optimistic and coincidentally in a position to benefit from it.
"despite the severity of the allegations — an affair that raised serious blackmail risks, attending openly partisan events, and lying to investigators when caught — the Eleventh Circuit and the Judicial Conference both concealed the judge’s identity. They even adjusted the very minor sanction to allow the judge “to word the letters of apology vaguely so as to ensure that a letter could not be ‘used against [the Subject Judge] in some way.’”
...
"The Eleventh Circuit thought it had been so clever in anonymizing its report. The reports don’t include a name or a district, and refer only to “Subject Judge” throughout. The reports even assiduously avoid identifying the judge by gender, proving that even conservative judges can figure out how pronouns work with minimal effort. And yet the reports failed to obscure a number of details that made working out the judge’s identity possible.
...
Handing the reports into two different AI models and turning on all the “deep research” modes, the bots churned for several minutes comparing the reports to publicly available information. Both models delivered lengthy reports reaching the same conclusion. So how did these models do it?
...
"the models instantly filtered out the entire state of Florida. The official reports are littered with references, in varying contexts, to the office of “District Attorney.” Florida uses “State Attorneys” for its local prosecutors. After that, the bots noted that the sanction barred the judge from ever serving as chief judge of their district — meaning the judge was not senior status and not currently the chief judge. The report indicates that investigators spoke with clerks dating back to 2020, disqualifying anyone elevated after that. Discussing the judge attending a DA’s primary victory party, the bot pointed out that the judge had claimed to know the candidate based on their time at the office, narrowing the scope to judges with state prosecutorial experience who overlapped with a sitting DA who won a primary. And had martinis at the victory party. The AI models decided that matched with Atlanta’s Fani Willis. [as the DA]
Once it narrowed the list down, the bot also searched the dockets of possible judges to match the claim in the reports that the high-ranking law enforcement officer did not materialize into a conflict because no cases involving that police department showed up on the judge’s docket.
For good measure, the bot went ahead and took a guess at the officer’s identity too.
In about 10 minutes of work, the AI unraveled all the work these judges put in to keep this confidential. With nothing but a couple of published court documents and the open web. In the time someone might brew a cup of coffee, the most basic possible workflow defeated the Eleventh Circuit’s entire anonymization strategy."
Hackers are convincing Meta’s AI support chatbot to let them take over other peoples’ accounts:
A video posted on X showed the step-by-step process to hack someone’s Instagram account. The hacker allegedly used a VPN to spoof the targets’ presumed location to avoid triggering Instagram’s automated account protections. Then, the hacker opened a chat with Meta AI Support Assistant and asked the bot to add a new email address to the target’s account. The chatbot can be seen sending a verification code to the email address provided by the hacker; the hacker then shares the verification code with the chatbot, which prompts the chatbot to show a button to “Reset Password.” The hacker enters a new password and takes over the victim’s account.
[…]
On Monday, Instagram spokesperson Andy Stone said in a reply to Wong’s post and others that the issue was now fixed. It’s unclear how many Instagram users had their accounts improperly accessed.
It’s not that easy. Probably this particular tactic is now blocked. But there are others, many others, and they cannot be blocked as a class. The real problem is that LLM chatbots are not trustworthy enough for this application.
A few more nuggets to report out of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office. Yesterday the DOJ released what it referred to, rather grandiosely, as a “rare special report” about grand jury appearances. It was basically a statement and and defense by U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros himself to charges that he was himself involved with the tainted grand jury which brought charges against the so-called Broadview Six. It’s a bit convoluted, even for someone like me who’s followed the case pretty closely. The “report” starts by arguing that one transcript reference that appears to refer to the “USA”, i.e., the US Attorney, was actually a transcription error. So, as the “report” puts it, a classic case of mistaken identity. It seems like that may be right, though it’s not clear to me that anyone was actually referring to that bit of transcript. In any case, the “report” leads with that, making it seem like any claims that Boutros has dirty hands is just wrong and there’s no there there.
I read an account of this “report” and then shortly after the pretty aggressive/smackdowny statement from Broadview Six defense attorney Chris Parente, Boutros’ current main antagonist.
Here’s that statement.
The U.S. Attorney has now acknowledged having personal contact with the Broadview 6 grand jury—on the date they delivered the indictment in this case. As the transcript demonstrates, U.S. Attorney Boutros asked these grand jurors, who previously refused to return an indictment, to ‘raise their hand’ if they had personal feelings on immigration cases, and informed them there would be a ‘different procedure’ for them. This was one week after the AUSA dismissed grand jurors who voiced dissent in the Broadview 6 case presentation.
Of all days for the U.S. Attorney to make a rare appearance before the grand jury, that he would be present on the day he likely knew this case would be re-presented speaks for itself. Despite this interaction having occurred in October, none of this information was disclosed to the defense or the public before this afternoon. It is only being revealed now because of the demands of the Broadview 6 defense team for transparency on this U.S. Attorney’s engagement in the grand jury process.
I was more than a little confused by this. Because where did he admit this? Is Boutros off the hook or deeper on the hook?
So it turns out that the “report” leads with the transcription error and then goes into this fairly technical distinction between Boutros not having any contact with any grand jurors but then sort of parathetically noting that he’d done little greetings to thank the grand jurors for their service. In other words, Boutros’s flat denials hang on appearing as a prosecutor vs appearing in a kind of ceremonial role to thank grand jurors for their service.
It’s one of those greetings that Parente is talking about. And yes, it’s right there in the report, just kind of buried at the end. The day the grand jury would finally bring its indictment on the third try, after certain grand jurors had already been removed to make it easier to bring the indictment, Boutros showed up to speak to a grand jury which (from what I can tell) had already been sitting for like a year to talk with them. He thanked them for their service and then said this (emphasis added) …
But we also recognize that these are trying times, these are emotional times. You can’t help but turn on the news, read the newspapers, or for those of you who use TikTok and Instagram, and there’s stuff in there all the time. So my question to you, and again, I’m gonna do this in all the grand juries, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If there’s anyone here who is struggling with a certain type of cases, such as the immigration cases or other cases where they do not believe that they can set aside their personal, their personal emotions, that they cannot listen and deliberate honestly and objectively, I would ask that you raise your hand and identify yourself, because we have a different procedure for that.
I’m no expert on what’s kosher and not before a grand jury. I don’t think this amounts to misconduct in itself. Boutros didn’t quite ask if jurors had “personal feelings on immigration cases”, as Parente’s statement puts it. He framed the comment as personal feelings that would prevent them from being objective. But pretty close. And the point here isn’t whether Boutros is personally guilty of misconduct, at least as I understand it. It’s whether he was part of, aware of, or involved in the effort to jam this high-profile, political retribution indictment through this grand jury. And yeah, this nugget seems to say that he was.
There are a lot of details here and it can be kind of confusing. But here’s the big picture. They need to get this indictment. A week earlier, the lead prosecutor has to commit serious misconduct to try to get the indictment. Now they’re back a week later to try again. Boutros shows up to talk to this long-sitting grand jury and, after some platitudinous remarks about the importance of grand juries, invites people who have strong feelings about immigration to leave. As it happens, no one raised their hands. But it’s very hard to believe that that was just random. It seems highly, highly likely that Boutros knew about what had already happened and was showing up to do what he could to help the process along.
For now, score one for Parente.
(As I said in yesterday’s post, if you’re a lawyer in Chicago and you’ve got more information on this, get in touch with me.)
Republicans will never turn on Trump. He’s gobbled up too much power in the architecture of the Republican Party. Even as his national approval numbers have continued to tumble, Trump has upped his ritual slayings of Republican incumbents, some for lack of total loyalty and then some, like John Cornyn, just for — well, let’s just say it — for the fuck of it. So it’s not just that he has too much power. The party’s elected officials are now overwhelming his people. When you see a breakdown between the White House and Republican majorities on Capitol Hill, it doesn’t come with any fingerprints. It’s almost like a black hole. Things that were going to happen just suddenly don’t happen. Or things disappear without a really obvious explanation.
The White House’s maybe-backaway from the Trump Thug Fund is an example of that. Todd Blanche says the Trump family’s immunity stays. They might try bring the fund back at any moment. But for now they’ve shelved it or are claiming they have. And the court ruling against it isn’t a sufficient explanation. They get those all the time. They’re abandoning it because it’s simply too unpopular on Capitol Hill.
John Thune has been telling Trump that. Even Axios this morning ran an item on “Thune’s breaking point.” And it even seems like it may have been Mike Johnson, no doubt in the most worshipful way, who delivered the final message on the Thug Fund. This isn’t a matter of anyone on Capitol Hill seeing the light or finding that the Thug Fund was a bridge too far for them. It’s simply too unpopular. Each new cash-out/corruption gambit measurably increases the danger that Senate Republicans will lose their majority next year. The House may already be a foregone conclusion.
It’s not that Republicans are breaking with Trump in any showy way. They’re not becoming less MAGA. It’s that Trump’s behavior is no longer in any alignment with their electoral interests. They’re not turning against him. That’s impossible. They are — particularly in the Senate — just getting less eager, less willing to make votes to back his latest farcical demands.
With all our doom-saying about how nothing matters, there’s a reason Trump’s popularity and power have ebbed this steeply. The mix of the ballroom, the Thug Fund and perhaps now the triumphal arch together amount to a kind of slavering, militant, Marie Antoinette-ism that is simply impossible to defend outside of maybe the hardest-core MAGA base, which is maybe 25% of the population or less. Too little attention has focused on the way this period of cash prize/retribution overdrive already at least temporarily sidelined Trump’s new immigration funding bill.
Everyone is rightly skeptical of any claim that Trump is finally losing his hold on the GOP or that some older version of the GOP is reemerging. You should be skeptical of that because it’s not happening. And that’s not what I’m arguing. Trump really has whittled down the GOP until it’s overwhelmingly made up of MAGA acolytes. But everyone wants to get reelected. It’s a response to Trump’s new focus over the last four or five months, one that was already significantly a response to his diminishing popularity. Trump is focused almost exclusively on retribution, demonstrations of untrammeled power, and cashing out as much money as possible before 2029. Defending his GOP majorities or doing anything to make it easier on Republicans to win reelection doesn’t seem to play into his calculus at all. Even his election-rigging moves — like housing nepo-baby Bill Pulte to oversee the U.S. intelligence community — seem more focused on 2028 than 2026. He seems completely indifferent about the midterms. He’s doubling down on the least popular, most toxic parts of his agenda.
In a way none of this is new. Trump has never cared about the Republican Party to the extent it exists separate from himself and his political fortunes. It’s just that he and the party haven’t been as clearly at odds with each other until now.
In very different language, and coming from his own vantage point, Jamelle Bouie has a piece up in the New York Times today which points in the same direction as I’ve been arguing here in various posts. The gist version is this. The current Project 2029 efforts are a mix of messaging/positioning efforts and policy proposals. Those may be solid or promising on their own terms. But they are inadequate. Trump broke the old system, which has existed in an evolving form since the 1930s and 1940s. You need to build a new system, a new vision and mechanism of public power in its place. As Bouie puts it, “A Project 2029 that has nothing to say about either the Senate filibuster, or an ideologically captured Supreme Court, or extreme partisan gerrymandering — among other concerns — is not a Project 2029 worth the time or effort.”
I’m flagging this because Bouie is one of the best and I want to highlight this article. But this is a position that is clearly enough distinct — structural reformers, reconstructionists — that it really needs to be seen as such in the world of Democratic politics, at least through 2029. When that happens, public arguments become more coherent. It provides clarity to voters.
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When Acting Attorney General and committed Trump toady Todd Blanche told a House committee on Tuesday that the Justice Department has decided that on second thought, it isn’t going to set up a “weaponization fund” to give payouts to supporters of Donald Trump who were prosecuted for their crimes — especially the violent thugs who tried to overthrow the government on January 6 — Rep. Grace Meng, who was questioning Blanche, seemed genuinely taken aback:
You can understand her surprise: Here was a case in which the Trump administration has decided not to do something spectacularly corrupt that President Trump clearly wanted very much to do. How could such a thing have happened?
The quick rise and fall of his plan for an insurrectionist slush fund shows that Trump is still constrained by public opinion — not always, not as much as he should be, but in meaningful ways that are important to understand.
Few things are more important to Trump than being able to act without constraint, to do whatever he wants. Not only has he worked to destroy any institution or procedure that might limit his power or impose accountability for his misdeeds, but sometimes he comes right out and says it. “I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president,” he said during his first term. More recently, he was asked whether there are constraints on his power in foreign affairs, and he responded, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” In other words, nothing.
But it’s not true.
Like a lead balloon
Even after Trump’s long campaign to rewrite the history of that dark day and rehabilitate the army of anti-American goons who stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow the government, the slush fund idea was shocking. Not only did Trump already pardon them all — including those tried and convicted of specific violent crimes — but now they would be getting payouts with your tax money.
There has been a steady stream of stories about corruption and abuse of power over the last year and a half, some of which have gotten plenty of press coverage, including Qatar gifting Trump a $400 million plane and him tearing down the East Wing of the White House to construct a golden ballroom. While the public opposition to those kinds of moves has been strong whenever it is measured, that opposition wasn’t enough to stop him. But this time it was. So how is this different?
The first part of the answer is that there was an immediate, bipartisan elite rejection of the slush fund. While Republicans have mostly lined up to defend the other examples of Trump’s corruption, including all the ways he has sought to enrich himself and his family (many of which can be classified as outright bribes), the reaction this time didn’t fall down so cleanly on partisan lines.
While the more shameless lickspittles among them trooped to Fox News to defend the idea, many other Republicans were immediately critical. “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” said Sen. Mitch McConnell. Blanche went to Capitol Hill to talk to Republican senators about it, and he received an “incredibly hostile” response. “I mean, my God, do you see where this would head? These people don’t deserve restitution; they, many of them deserve to be in prison,” said Sen. Thom Tillis.
We’ll discuss why the idea got that response from Republicans in a moment, but the fact that it did changed how the idea would be understood by the public. As political scientist John Zaller explored in his seminal 1992 book The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, the public is highly responsive to elite cues: They see what position is being taken by those they trust (politicians from their party, media figures they like), and then align themselves accordingly. When a controversy falls clearly along liberal/conservative lines among the elites, the public will follow.
But in the case of the slush fund, the visible opposition from some prominent Republicans made the partisan valence less than clear. That allowed Republican voters to have a different opinion than the president without feeling that they were violating their sense of identity.
But that in itself wouldn’t be enough to make Trump pull back. After all, he does unpopular things all the time.
It’s the corruption
When the news of the slush fund dropped, Democrats were extremely focused and aggressive in their media strategy, to a degree they don’t always achieve. They were loud, they talked to every news outlet they could about it, and they repeated the same simple message over and over: This is corrupt. Trump wants to take your money and give it to insurrectionists who ransacked the Capitol and beat up cops. The fact that the slush fund is almost impossible to defend on any reasonable grounds didn’t hurt.
Most importantly, Republicans who are terrified of losing their majorities in both houses understood immediately how this fits in with the rest of the political problem they face. Corruption is emerging as one of the central themes of the midterm elections, along with Trump’s seeming indifference to the tenuous conditions of people’s lives. People are struggling to pay for gas and groceries and health care, the economy feels like it’s spinning its wheels, and meanwhile Trump is waging an idiotic war in Iran and building himself a ridiculous ballroom. Now on top of that, he wants tax money for criminals? It all fits together.
You can see why a GOP congressman from a swing district wouldn’t be eager to have that dominate the news, when he’s trying to convince voters to send him back to Washington so he can keep the status quo in place.
So behind the scenes, Republicans in Congress communicated to the White House that the slush fund was developing into a PR disaster. They’re almost certain to lose the House, and the Senate is looking vulnerable, too. This is making it much worse — as did the runoff victory of Ken Paxton in Texas, whose presence as a national figure only reinforces the corruption issue (even if he winds up winning). Senate Majority Leader John Thune eventually told the White House to shut the slush fund down, which they did.
We shouldn’t overstate what kind of victory this is. Among other things, as part of the same agreement that was going to create the slush fund, the IRS pledged to end tax audits for Trump and his family, now and forever — tantamount to telling them it’s cool if they’ve committed tax evasion, which they probably have. And there may still be ways for Trump-affiliated criminals of various kinds to get payouts with your money.
Nevertheless, it does demonstrate that even now, there are times when Trump is faced with public anger and he backs down. That in itself is worthy of note — and the episode vividly demonstrates how frightened Republicans in Congress are about what might happen in November. Which they should be.
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AST SpaceMobile expects Blue Origin’s recent launchpad explosion will delay its direct-to-smartphone constellation by three to six months, investment bank William Blair said in an equity research note, pushing initial commercial services into the first half of 2027.
ESA and China recently launched the joint SMILE magnetosphere mission after a decade of cooperation, but despite similar goals, another collaboration appears distant.
Europe is rapidly rewriting its security architecture. Faced with Russian aggression, mounting doubts about long-term American commitment and growing pressure to shoulder more of its own defense burden, European states […]
Muon Space announced a Starship-class satellite platform June 3 designed from the ground up to meet the demands of the emerging orbital data center market, with an initial launch slated for 2028 after securing customers.
NASA is working on a streamlined management approach for a nuclear electric propulsion demonstration mission the agency wants to launch in two and a half years.
China is establishing an industrial policy framework to support a push to build space-based computing infrastructure, with the emergence of influential coordinating bodies.
I’ve just added a couple of new charts to the self-absorbed Stats section of the site. Both are on the money page, and those will be updated at the end of each year.
§ First I’ve got one showing how much I’ve spent each year on music over the past 30 years: CDs, downloads, and streaming. Here’s an image of the current state of it:
Amount spent on music listening per year
This doesn’t include spending in cash, which I didn’t track, and was more common in the early years when buying CDs. I mainly made this chart because I wondered how my spending now compared to previous years. I’m kind of pleased it isn’t really less that it used to be (the missing cash spending aside).
I didn’t include spending on gigs, or contributions to radio stations, because while they’re music, they feel like a different kind of thing than buying music to own (sorry, I mean buying a licence to play files).
Of course, if we take inflation into account, my spending has dropped: the £299 I spent on CDs in 1997 is the equivalent of £605 now. But then the cost of an album has dropped too – new CDs back then were costing me around £12-£14, or £24-£28 now, compared to an MP3 download today being more like £8-£12.
I stopped paying for Spotify last year, and I’m not sure my spending on downloads has increased proportionately. We’ll see. I’m sure you can’t wait.
§ The other chart, inspired by wondering about the missing data for buying CDs with cash, is of how much I withdrew from bank accounts in cash each year:
Amount withdrawn in cash per year
Unsurprisingly this has dropped to practically zero because, despite being slightly resistant to the decline of cash at first, I very rarely use it now.
But I was surprised how much cash I was taking out years ago – averaging £89 per week in 2002 (£170 today)! I’m not sure if the drop after that is a result of switching more to card payments and/or reducing my spending in general, which I did a bit after buying my first flat around then.
§ The data for both charts only starts in August 1996 so that year is underreported.
I think I started recording this data when I got an Apple Newton MessagePad 120, then a 2000. I think I used the PocketMoney program which is still going today on various platforms. In 2001 I got a Palm Vx from work and think I continued with the same app, transferring data across.
At some point I switched to using Moneydance on my Mac, managing to import the PocketMoney data into that. I’m still using Moneydance today to laboriously keep track of my spending, savings and investments. It’s a reassuring habit at this point and I’d feel adrift if I didn’t input data from my statements or banking app each month.
Randy Shoup set out to be an international lawyer. He studied in West Berlin when there was still a wall around it, spent a year at Stanford Law, and had what should have been the perfect summer internship on Sand Hill Road. Instead he spent it watching inventors light up whiteboards with brilliant ideas — then being told his job was just to write them down. That summer broke something open. He went back to Oracle that fall and never looked back. Kent and Randy dig into what it means to need to make things, why the people who wrote the original distributed systems playbook aren’t panicking about AI wiping it clean, and how Jevons paradox explains what happens when cognition gets cheap.
The present and also future of mankind is a world where reasonably high levels of self-discipline are needed to do well. The journalist Daniel Akst pointed this out in his 2011 book Temptation: Finding Self-Control in an Age of Excess, and we are now living it full force.
I would rather cope with that world than face the full nanny state, backed by modern, AI-intensified surveillance techniques to boot. Concentrating more power in political authorities hardly solves the basic problem. If marijuana and sports gambling can manipulate weak individuals, so can unscrupulous political leaders. A greater realization of individual weakness does not translate into a case for more government action; if anything, it suggests the opposite. Better to allow our social problems to fester in a more decentralized fashion, rather than reinforce our social pathologies through a manipulative and dysfunctional leader at the very top.
In the longer term, we may need to look to medications, such as GLP-1 drugs and their offshoots, which seem to curb some forms of addictive behavior beyond the appetite for food. Alternatively, some individuals may choose self-surveillance, with self-imposed penalties for bad or addictive behavior. Perhaps your AI, or a hired third party, docks your bank account every time you puff on a joint. I am not convinced such services ever will become popular, but that should be taken seriously as an indicator of what people really want to do. We can at least give them better options for self-constraint. If they rarely choose such options, then perhaps for many of those people, marijuana consumption is not a matter of weakness but a very well-established preference, whether we like it or not…
In short, it is time to realize that paternalism is far less workable than in times past. Our government does not have the credibility, the control over information, or the control over our lives to pull it off.
I do understand that is in some significant ways bad news, as voluntary choice is overwhelming some of us with bad outcomes.
My response is to start by accepting some steps backward, holding paternalist tyranny at bay, and hoping some longer-run cultural and technological adjustments will make this all more workable.
If you have a better solution, I would love to hear it.
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly promoted as educational tutors, yet most evaluations focus on domains with a single ground truth. Many disciplines, however, hinge on judgment: reasoning, weighing ambiguity, and reaching defensible conclusions. Law provides a sharp test. We conducted a blinded evaluation of short-answer tutoring in contracts courses with sixteen U.S. law professors. Participants created 40 representative questions, wrote answers, and judged 2,918 anonymized comparisons between human and LLM responses. Professors rated LLMs far higher than their peers (average win rate = 75.33%), with models performing similarly to the best instructor. LLM responses were also rarely flagged as harmful (3.53%, vs 12.06% for professors). Preferences for LLM answers were consistent across evaluators and reflected shared professional standards. Our evaluation can be reliably extended to additional models by employing a separate LLM as a judge, rendering expert agreements an effective, scalable method to evaluate AI tutors in judgment-rich domains.
“far”. That is from a new paper by Alejandro Salinas, et.al. Via Andrew Curran. And via John Chamberlain:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) tools are capable of mass-producing academic finance papers that are nearly indistinguishable from human-authored research, according to a new study published in the Journal of Economic Literature.
C’mon people, get ready. I know it is difficult to admit when your human capital has been devalued, but that time is upon us. In particular, being prolific is no longer such a comparative advantage in academia. You might run to the “but I know what questions to ask” cope, but I implore you to solve for the equilibrium. What is the equilibrium wage for merely asking questions?
Of course academic life and projects will continue, but the real rewards will go to people doing new, innovative, and hitherto impossible projects with AI.
One of the first images transmitted back to Earth from the Artemis II mission was a stunner. In a single image, Earth’s full disk appears amid celestial phenomena that illustrate its place in the solar system. And although the visible hemisphere appears to be awash in sunlight, it is actually lit by moonlight. The astronauts’ vantage point provided a rare opportunity to capture nighttime features—most notably lights from human habitation—from a new perspective.
An Artemis crew member captured the photo from the Orion spacecraft after it completed the translunar injection burn, which sent the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and on a trajectory toward the Moon. In the photo, Earth eclipses the Sun from Orion’s perspective, leaving only a small sliver of its bright light visible around the bottom right edge. Green auroras, caused by charged particles from the Sun interacting with Earth’s upper atmosphere, glow around the north and south poles (lower left and upper right, respectively).
The Sun’s light also produces the fuzzy glow, known as zodiacal light, that appears to the lower right of Earth. This phenomenon comes from sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust. Skywatchers on Earth may see it at certain times of year around dawn or dusk as a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. Data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on its journey to Jupiter suggest that Mars may be a significant source of the dust particles that produce zodiacal light. Earth’s other planetary neighbor, Venus, appears as the bright object in the bottom right of the image.
April 2, 2026
On Earth itself, city lights are evidence of human activity. Bright areas appear in Spain, Portugal, and northern Africa (lower left), sub-Saharan Africa (center left), and Brazil (center right). Digital camera technology—with help from the illumination of a full Moon—made it possible to see these and other details of Earth’s surface and atmosphere in low light. The crew set the camera’s ISO to 51,200 to make it highly sensitive to light. For comparison, an ISO setting of 100 or 200 is common for daytime photography.
Previous nighttime views of Earth taken from spacecraft may look very different from this photo but have also inspired and enlightened. For instance, the Apollo 12 crew photographed Earth eclipsing the Sun in 1969; astronaut Alan Bean would go on to depict his impressions of the event in paintings.
More recently, astronauts aboard the International Space Station have photographed the planet at night from low Earth orbit, while NASA’s Black Marble nighttime lights product suite uses satellite observations to produce science-quality records of nighttime lights at daily, monthly, and yearly time scales. Those programs provide sustained data records, while the Artemis II photo is distinctive as a single human-captured full-disk view showing many low-light features at once.
Cindy Evans, senior exploration scientist in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, was working in the Science Evaluation Room during the Artemis II mission and was one of the first people on Earth to see the image. Evans was struck both by its beauty and the perspective revealed by all the visible solar system features. “I love the image so much because it was taken with Earth in moonshine, and shows Earth as a solar system body, a dynamic planet interacting with the solar wind, and a place harboring life,” she said.
The image is scientifically valuable, as well, said Miguel Román, Deputy Director for Atmospheres and Data Systems at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It speaks powerfully to the breadth of what NASA does across science and human exploration,” he said. Román studies artificial light at night, as viewed from space, as a measurable signal of human activity.
“[This photo] reminds us that Earth at night is visually compelling, physically complex, and scientifically underexplored,” Román said. “I see this image as a glimpse of what Earth science can become in the future.”
NASA images prepared for Earth Observatory by Lauren Dauphin. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
A former NASA engineer named John Muratore sat on console as launch director in early September 2016 as propellant flowed onto a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Ahead of a planned launch two days later, SpaceX was preparing for a static fire test of the vehicle.
Then, all of a sudden, the rocket exploded. "It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent," Muratore said. This fireball resulted in the destruction of the rocket, much of its launch site, and the AMOS-6 satellite already attached to the vehicle.
Nearly a decade later, on May 28, Blue Origin conducted a static fire test of a new rocket, with its larger New Glenn vehicle a few miles down the Florida coast. The company had gotten further into its test, reaching engine ignition, before its rocket also exploded.
Up betimes, and studying of my double horizontal diall against Dean Honiwood comes to me, who dotes mightily upon it, and I think I must give it him.
So after talking with Sir W. Batten, who is this morning gone to Guildhall to his trial with Field, I to my office, and there read all the morning in my statute-book, consulting among others the statute against selling of offices, wherein Mr. Coventry is so much concerned; and though he tells me that the statute do not reach him, yet I much fear that it will.
At noon, hearing that the trial is done, and Sir W. Batten come to the Sun behind the Exchange I went thither, where he tells me that he had much ado to carry it on his side, but that at last he did, but the jury, by the judge’s favour, did give us but 10l. damages and the charges of the suit, which troubles me; but it is well it went not against us, which would have been much worse.
So to the Exchange, and thence home to dinner, taking Deane of Woolwich along with me, and he dined alone with my wife being undressed, and he and I spent all the afternoon finely, learning of him the method of drawing the lines of a ship, to my great satisfaction, and which is well worth my spending some time in, as I shall do when my wife is gone into the country. In the evening to the office and did some business, then home, and, God forgive me, did from my wife’s unwillingness to tell me whither she had sent the boy, presently suspect that he was gone to Pembleton’s, and from that occasion grew so discontented that I could hardly speak or sleep all night.
Transportation megaprojects experience massive cost overruns in part because state agencies and consultants never meet scheduled deadlines.
The now-$15 billion Interstate Bridge Project is two-and-half years behind schedule. The Abernethy Bridge, in construction, is now two or even five years behind schedule, with construction expected to extend to 2030.
Agency officials routinely deny or conveniently forget promised deadlines. IBR Program director Greg Johnson told a joint Oregon-Washington legislative committee on September 15, 2025, that he never said a critical Record of Decision step would be done in the Summer of 2023.
Mr. Johnson’s claim is demonstrably false. The video recording and submitted files that are part of the legislative record of a December 15, 2020 hearing–before the same committee–show exactly this date (Summer 2023) for the the completion of the NEPA process (consisting of a final EIS and a Record of Decision).
And in in March 2023, Johnson claimed that the “Record of Decision” would be completed by “the end of 2024.”
IBR is not just a little late: It now appears that the earliest a record of decision will be released is mid -2026 more than two and a half years late.
These delays contribute to driving up project costs–and creating more billable hours for consultants.
Dissembling about schedules is part of a long-standing practice of the Oregon Department of Transportation, which always claims it is “on schedule”–meaning the current, revised schedule, not one announced earlier.
City Observatory reported on September 15, 2025, that the Interstate Bridge Project was more than two and a half years behind schedule in producing a required environmental impact statement. We pointed out that when the project was revived five years ago, officials promised that the environmental review would be finished in about two and a half years, by the summer of 2023.
At the September 15, 2025 meeting of the Joint Oregon Washington legislative committee on the I-5 bridge, legislators asked the reasons for the delay. Program Administrator Greg Johnson claimed that they had never promised “Record of Decision” by 2023. Here is a condensed version of a question from Senator Khan Pham and answer by Mr. Johnson (the full colloquy is appended to the end of this commentary).
Senator Pham: I know In 2020, when we first started, we were told that we’d have a Record of Decision by 2023 and then, and it was moved more to 2025 and now it looks like the earliest we could have a record of decision would be April of 2026 which is two and a half years later than what we were told in 2020. . . . .
Greg Johnson
Thank you. Okay, thank you, Senator Pham, for the question. I don’t think that there was ever anything from this program that said we would get to a Record of Decision in 2023.
Johnson’s statement is untrue. There actually was something from the IBR program that did in fact indicate that a record of decision would be produced in 2023. It comes from a testimony Mr. Johnson and IBR made to the very same joint Oregon-Washington legislative committee that met almost five years ago, on December 15, 2020. Here is a screenshot of Mr. Johnson’s presentation showing the project schedule. This schedule called for the NEPA process to be complete by “Summer 2023” (the green dot in the fourth row, labelled “complete NEPA, begin right-of-way acquisition”).
OLIS Video, December 15, 2020 (click to view)
Here’s what Mr. Johnson said on December 15, 2020, as this slide was displayed:
. . . we’re looking at the initiation of the NEPA process. We have established the program office already, so we are moving into that planning phase of satisfying the federal NEPA requirements and making sure that we are getting input from both communities.
We are looking at a next major deliverable will be a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that will have looked at alternatives and narrowed those down. And finally, in the 2023 timeframe, a final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which we will be submitting to the federal government for a an approval of a record of decision. (emphasis added)
The “Record of Decision” completes the NEPA process: As Johnson testified to the legislative committee on September 15, 2025, the issuance of the record of decision is the final step in the environmental review process:
. . . we’re hoping to have achieved that milestone [issuing the final supplemental EIS] early in 2026 and soon to follow on the heels of that will be an amended Record of Decision and that will complete the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement . . .
What this means is the Interstate Bridge Project is not a few months or even a year behind schedule, due to recent developments. Instead, it is certain to be at least two and a half years behind its original schedule: the Record of Decision should have been completed two years ago, in the summer of 2023; it now appears that the ROD will not be released for at least another six months, until April of 2026.
These delays, as the IBR project regularly tells us are playing a key role in driving up costs. While that’s a problem for taxpayers, it actually means more billable hours for the consultants working on IBR: the fact that the environmental review process has taken more than two years longer than anticipated means that they’ve billed even more.
A history of vague assurances about schedule
This is nothing new: IBR officials have always offered up misleadingly vague statements claiming to be on schedule, even as the project fails to meet its own deadlines. For example, asked at a June 10, 2024 legislative hearing whether the project would start construction in 2025—something that plainly isn’t going to happen—project director Greg Johnson seemed to answer in the affirmative, but really said nothing “we are on a good path to get this project underway”:
REP. MCLAIN: Okay, so this is normal stuff. We’re still on on . . . basically we’re one or two months slowed down, but we’re still on line to get construction started in 2025 with all of the things that you’ve presented today, as far as getting our work done on our permits, etc, correct?
GREG JOHNSON: Yes, we are still on track to uhhh . . . we’re moving some things around, and you’ll see a presentation later about our proposed delivery process that we put forward to the industry to get input on. We are, we are on a good path to get this project underway.
(Emphasis added)
In reality, even fifteen months ago, it was apparent that construction would not start in 2025, and with these delays, it is almost certain that construction cannot start in 2026, either. But Greg Johnson always says he is on schedule, even when announcing delays. It is something he has been saying for years. For example, in October, 2023, The Columbian reported that Johnson claimed the project was “on schedule”:
I-5 bridge environmental impact statement delayed, again — this time until 2024
Administrator: ‘We’re still on time and on schedule at this point’
The goalposts are in a nearly constant state of movement. Recall that in 2020, IBR officials said the NEPA process would be complete by 2023. In March 2023, IBR director Greg Johnson said that they would have the record of decision by the end of 2024.
Columbian, March 10, 2023
Now, in 2025, Johnson insists that the record of decision will be next April. As long as you keep producing a new schedule—and conveniently forgetting about the previous ones—you can always claim that you are “on schedule at this point.” This practice is essentially built-in to the scheduling documents, which have this footnote:
“The IBR Program Plan is a PLANNING TOOL and represents the current plan to progress the work. This plan is subject to frequent change and adjustment. No dates are concrete until they have been actualized.”
In practice, what this means is, nothing in the schedule is actually “scheduled” until it has been “actualized” meaning, completed. It’s a meaningless and circular definition that allows them to assert that they’re always on schedule.
Similar re-writing of history about the Abernethy Bridge Project
ODOT always claims that its projects are under-budget and on-schedule. Take their largest current project, widening and seismic improvements to the I-205 Abernethy Bridge. In a November 2025 letter to the Oregon Transportation Commission, Director Kris Strickler stated:
The project team is actively managing risks to on-time and on-budget completion of the project.
Strickler’s letter implies the project could still be on-time and on-budget. In reality, the project already is way over budget and a year behind schedule. The project was scheduled to be completed in 2025 according to ODOT reports 2024;
In late 2024, press reports say ODOT announced it was postponing completion from Fall 2025 to Fall 2026. In late 2025, ODOT claimed the project may be done in “Winter 2026,” (by which they actually mean the fourth quarter of calendar year 2026, not the first quarter), while the schedule of payments to the project’s construction contractor continues through the first quarter of 2027. In the latest (June 2026) presentation to the Commission, the staff now say that construction will continue until the end of 2027. That doesn’t include additional work needed to mitigation soil liquidation risks to three of the bridge’s piers, which is likely to last until 2030, and cost an additional $130 million. The project is hardly “on time”–it is between two and five years late: not finishing in 2025 as ODOT promised, but either in 2027, or as late as 2030.
As we’ve noted at City Observatory, ODOT’s original “cost to complete” estimate for the project was less than $250 million, then doubled to almost $500 million, and the rose further to $622 million and then $750 million, and most recently $815 million, and ODOT has acknowledged it could go higher. It’s at least a year, and half a billion dollars too late to be talking about delivering this project “on-time and on-budget.”
Appendix: Longer Colloquy Between Senator Pham and Mr. Johnson
Transcribed from the legislative recording of the September 15, 2025 meeting of the Joint Oregon-Washington I-5 Bridge Committee.
Senator Pham: I know in 2020, when we first started, we were told that we’d have a Record of Decision by 2023 and then, and it was moved more to 2025 and now it looks like the earliest we could have a record of decision would be April of 2026 which is two and a half years later than what we were told in 2020. . . . I’m just concerned, because this is driving up costs for Oregon and Washington taxpayers. When we miss our deadlines, it really does have an impact on our transportation budget as we try to find the funding for to make up for the increased costs. So can you tell me a little bit more Director Johnson about the reasons for these delays and what we can do to hold our contractors more accountable to meeting our original the deadlines that have been promised, so that way, we can kind of make sure that we’re delivering the most efficiency for our taxpayer dollars in this moment of really constrained budget.
Greg Johnson
Thank you. Okay, thank you, Senator Pham, for the question. I don’t think that there was ever anything from this program that said we would get to a Record of Decision in 2023. In 2022, we reached a modified, locally preferred alternative, which is the first step of getting us into the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement process. And this is a complex process that there are a lot of elements that are not under our team’s control, that we have to react to certain, certain things that come our way. But you’re right. We originally promised that we would have a Record of Decision in 2025. That did not happen because we had elements that had to be revisited by our federal partners and our team. So we have been partnering with our federal partners, they understand the the timelines to get this and the importance of the timelines, but these are complex issues that we are dealing with. We cannot skip steps, so we are making sure that we are checking every box so we don’t have to go back and repeat steps. So yes, we originally assumed that we would have a Record of Decision this year. That did not happen.
You’ve all seen the video of that United 767 hitting the light pole as it landed in Newark back on May 3rd. The footage from inside the careening bread truck is startling.
How it happened, exactly, is still being investigated. But I’ve been asked to speculate, and so I will:
Runway 29 at Newark is short. Long enough, under most conditions, to accommodate a 767, but short enough to require extra concentration from the crew. The runway’s threshold is also unusually close to the highway, lessening the margin for error.
One way or another, flight 169 drifted below the glide path and impacted the utility standard at the edge of the highway.
It’s possible they were “ducking under,” as we call it. That is, intentionally sneaking just a touch below the normal angle — to take advantage of as much pavement as possible and avoid landing long.
This technique, while not unheard of, is usually discouraged, and in some cases prohibited by the airline. We always pull up the performance data prior to landing, which tells us how much runway is required. It accounts for wind, surface conditions, and so on. If you’ve crunched the numbers correctly, there shouldn’t be a need for improvising.
In its flight manuals, United had a short-runway policy that while it didn’t encourage ducking under per se, it recommended that pilots adjust their touchdown aiming point to one closer to the threshold. This policy had, in fact, been rescinded only days before the Newark incident. Whether the pilots were clear on this, or if it played a role, is uncertain.
Even if they were ducking under, they still shouldn’t have hit the pole. Somehow they ended up lower than they intended.
Or, for whatever reasons, it was entirely inadvertent. Sometimes an approach gets unstable and you fall a bit low. This isn’t terribly uncommon. If you’re unable to correct in time, you’re supposed to break off the landing and go around.
There is no ILS approach to runway 29 — a system that sends out a vertical guidance signal, called a “glide slope,” that pilots track to the runway. Instead there are what we call “non-precision” and/or “visual” approaches. These come in different flavors, and while they’re very routine, and still plenty precise, they’re more complicated. The descent path is handled differently, and slipping low is perhaps more likely than it would be with an ILS. And winds were quite gusty at the time, adding to the difficulty.
Were they ducking under? Did they sink too and neglect to go around? Did they even realize what was happening? Was there time?
I don’t know. Any of that is possible. Or something else.
These are just guesses and conjecture, and I’m not implying that anyone was negligent or reckless. Eventually we’ll have more info.
I landed on runway 29 many times, but it was years ago when I flew regional turboprops. What’s short for a 767 isn’t so short for a 19-seater.
Meanwhile, Instagram is full of reels showing purported “close calls” at the edge of 29, insinuating that the runway is unsafe and that planes are routinely almost crashing. These scary-seeming videos are mostly just tricks of angle and perspective. And as I noted earlier, the runway’s threshold is close to the highway, meaning that jets on a perfectly normal glide path can appear “low” when in fact they’re right where they should be.
The aircraft at Newark was a 767-400, largest variant of the 767 family. United and Delta are the only two carriers in the world that fly these models. United inherited its -400s from Continental Airlines when it merged with that carrier in 2010.
The -400 was a bespoke collaboration between Delta and Boeing. Delta wanted a widebody to replace its aging L-1011s, for use mainly in high-density domestic markets. Speaking of short runways, the -400 was once a regular visitor at La Guardia.
The jet was later shifted onto international routes. Flight 169 was coming from Venice.
During probate in Washington State, the court oversees the legal process of validating a deceased person’s will, paying debts and taxes, identifying assets, and distributing property to beneficiaries or heirs. While probate can help ensure an estate is handled properly, it can also take time, involve court costs, and create stress for family members. Many individuals choose to plan ahead with estate planning tools to reduce or completely avoid probate whenever possible.
Washington State is known for its strong legal protections, growing communities, and increasing focus on estate planning and asset management. Families across the state often seek ways to simplify the transfer of property and reduce complications after a loved one passes away.
Because probate laws can affect how assets are handled, understanding the process is important for anyone planning their estate or helping family members navigate legal matters. Many people researching how to avoid probate in Washington State are looking for ways to save time, reduce expenses, and make the transition easier for their loved ones.
What Is Probate?
Probate is the legal process that takes place after someone dies. The purpose of probate is to ensure the deceased person’s assets are properly managed and distributed according to their will or state law.
If the person had a valid will, the court generally confirms its authenticity and appoints the executor named in the document. If there is no will, the court appoints an administrator to manage the estate according to Washington’s intestacy laws.
Probate may involve court supervision depending on the complexity of the estate and whether disputes arise among family members or beneficiaries.
What Happens During Probate in Washington State?
Filing the Will with the Court
The probate process usually begins when the executor files the will and other required documents with the local probate court. This officially opens the estate.
The court may then appoint the executor or personal representative responsible for managing the estate.
Identifying and Valuing Assets
The executor must identify all assets owned by the deceased person. These may include:
Bank accounts
Real estate
Vehicles
Investments
Personal property
Business interests
Some assets may require professional appraisals to determine their value accurately.
Paying Debts and Taxes
Before beneficiaries receive assets, the estate must pay outstanding debts, taxes, and administrative expenses. Creditors are typically notified and given time to submit claims against the estate.
The executor is responsible for reviewing and resolving valid debts using estate funds.
Distributing Assets to Beneficiaries
After debts and taxes are handled, the remaining assets are distributed to beneficiaries according to the will or state law if no will exists.
Once all responsibilities are completed, the probate process can officially close.
How Long Does Probate Take?
The length of probate varies depending on the estate’s complexity, court schedules, and whether disputes occur. Some probate cases may finish within several months, while others can take a year or longer.
Factors that may delay probate include:
Family disagreements
Missing documents
Complex assets
Creditor claims
Tax issues
Proper estate planning can often reduce delays and complications.
Ways to Avoid Probate in Washington State
Create a Living Trust
A revocable living trust is one of the most common ways to avoid probate. Assets placed inside the trust are managed privately and transferred directly to beneficiaries after death without court involvement.
Living trusts can help families avoid delays and maintain privacy.
Use Beneficiary Designations
Certain assets allow direct beneficiary designations, including:
Retirement accounts
Life insurance policies
Payable-on-death bank accounts
These assets typically transfer automatically to the named beneficiaries outside of probate.
Joint Ownership of Property
Property owned jointly with rights of survivorship may transfer directly to the surviving owner without probate.
This is commonly used for homes, bank accounts, and other shared assets.
Transfer-on-Death Deeds
Washington State allows transfer-on-death deeds for real estate in some situations. This legal document allows property to pass directly to a beneficiary after death without probate proceedings.
Why Estate Planning Matters
Estate planning helps individuals maintain greater control over how their assets are handled after death. It can reduce stress for surviving family members, minimize legal complications, and potentially lower administrative costs.
Without proper planning, loved ones may face longer probate processes and unexpected legal challenges.
Consulting with an estate planning attorney can help individuals create documents that match their personal goals and financial situation.
Key Takeaways
Probate is the legal process of managing and distributing a deceased person’s estate.
Probate in Washington State may involve validating wills, paying debts, and distributing assets.
Probate can sometimes be time-consuming and expensive.
Living trusts are one of the most effective ways to avoid probate.
Beneficiary designations and joint ownership may also help bypass probate.
Estate planning can reduce stress and simplify asset transfers for families.
Consulting an estate planning attorney can help create an effective long-term plan.
An ideal attorney helps accident victims handle legal claims, negotiate with insurance companies, and pursue financial recovery for their losses. Choosing the right attorney can make a major difference in how smoothly your case moves forward and how strong your claim becomes.
The right legal guidance can help you recover fair compensation after an accident. This helps reduce the stress that often comes with medical bills, paperwork, and insurance disputes.
However, many people rush the process and make avoidable mistakes, such as hiring a lawyer without personal injury experience, choosing based only on fees, or failing to review client feedback. Understanding these common mistakes can help you avoid unnecessary problems later.
Hiring a Lawyer Without Personal Injury Experience
One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming any lawyer can handle a personal injury claim. In reality, personal injury law involves detailed negotiations, insurance claims, medical documentation, and liability rules that require focused experience.
A lawyer who regularly handles injury claims is more likely to understand:
How to calculate damages properly
What evidence strengthens a case
How insurance companies try to reduce payouts
When to negotiate and when to go to court
Choosing someone with direct experience in personal injury law can improve both confidence and case strategy.
Focusing Only on Advertising
A well-known advertisement does not automatically mean a lawyer is the best choice for your case. Many people hire the first attorney they see on television or social media without researching further.
Instead of relying only on marketing, look into:
Client reviews
Case results
Years of experience
Communication style
Availability for consultations
A lawyer’s reputation should come from consistent client satisfaction and professional results, not just visibility.
Choosing Based Only on Low Fees
It is understandable to think about costs after an accident, especially when medical expenses start piling up. Still, choosing a lawyer purely because they charge the lowest fee can sometimes backfire.
An experienced personal injury lawyer may have stronger negotiation skills, better resources, and access to expert witnesses when needed. The focus should be on value and quality of representation rather than simply the cheapest option available.
Not Asking Questions During the Consultation
Many people stay quiet during consultations because they feel nervous or overwhelmed. But this is the time to gather as much information as possible.
Consider asking questions like:
How many similar cases have you handled?
Who will manage my case directly?
What challenges do you expect in my claim?
How often will I receive updates?
What is your approach to settlements?
A trustworthy lawyer should answer these questions openly and professionally.
Overlooking Reviews and References
Client feedback often provides insight that advertisements cannot. Reviews can reveal whether a lawyer is responsive, organized, and supportive throughout the legal process.
While no attorney will have perfect reviews, repeated complaints about poor communication or lack of transparency should not be ignored. Reading testimonials and checking references can help you make a more informed decision.
Waiting Too Long to Hire a Lawyer
Delaying legal help can hurt a personal injury case. Evidence may disappear, witnesses may become harder to contact, and important deadlines could be missed.
Speaking with a lawyer early allows them to preserve evidence, communicate with insurers, and guide you through the process before mistakes happen. Acting quickly often puts clients in a stronger position overall.
Key Takeaways
Choosing the right personal injury lawyer is not something to rush. A little research and careful attention at the beginning can save a lot of stress later.
Keep These Points in Mind:
Look for lawyers with personal injury experience.
Do not rely only on advertisements.
Pay attention to communication style.
Avoid choosing solely based on low fees.
Ask detailed questions during consultations.
Read reviews and client feedback carefully.
Contact a lawyer as early as possible after an accident.
The mobile entertainment industry in the Philippines is rapidly evolving, propelled by users’ growing preference for faster and easier digital experiences on their smartphones. Among the standout names gaining remarkable traction is Jili, primarily through its interactive and engaging offerings on the GameZone platform. This notable growth is not accidental but rather the result of evolving user behaviors, mobile-first content consumption, and strategic platform exposure. As digital habits continue to change, content that prioritizes convenience, speed, and strong visual appeal becomes increasingly vital, positioning Jili as an essential player in the entertainment ecosystem.
The Mobile-First Movement Accelerating Jili’s Growth
The mobile-first consumption trend is one of the most influential forces fueling Jili’s expansion. Modern users prefer instant, on-the-go entertainment rather than prolonged sessions on desktop or other traditional devices. Platforms optimized specifically for mobile—with intuitive navigation, rapid loading times, and responsive controls—naturally attract larger audiences, meeting the growing demand for seamless mobile-friendly content.
User engagement commonly takes place during brief moments throughout the day, such as commutes, breaks, or waiting periods, increasing the need for content that loads swiftly, is easy to browse, and allows for quick exits with minimal friction. Jili’s portfolio is carefully tailored to this type of consumption, enabling users to flexibly interact with entertainment while fitting neatly into their busy lifestyles.
Further enhancing its mobile-first suitability, JiliPH ensures that its content performs smoothly across different devices and network conditions. Optimized technical design reduces buffering and lag, providing a frustration-free experience critical to sustaining mobile users’ attention.
Visual Appeal and Rapid Interaction Boost User Engagement
In today’s competitive digital space, capturing user attention within seconds is essential. Clear, compelling visual design paired with swift interaction cycles plays a key role in maintaining interest and encouraging ongoing engagement.
Jili’s content delivers sharp graphics, smooth animations, and instantaneous feedback to craft a captivating and dynamic interface. Such visual fidelity and responsiveness combine to create an immersive user experience that invites longer sessions.
However, overloading platforms with complex visuals or heavy effects can impair performance and tire users more quickly. That’s why maintaining a balance—favoring clean, efficient design and prioritizing speed—is crucial to maximizing engagement without sacrificing quality.
Users tend to gravitate towards systems that respond immediately to their inputs, reinforcing a sense of control and satisfaction. These responsive interaction loops significantly contribute to Jili’s appeal on GameZone.
Accessibility Enhances User Adoption and Satisfaction
Ease of use stands as another major factor behind Jili’s increasing user base. Platforms that are easy to navigate and understand from the first interaction foster longer engagement and stronger loyalty.
Jili’s straightforward layouts and predictable navigation flow reduce barriers, allowing users of varying technical skill levels to access content comfortably. By simplifying interaction models and eliminating unnecessary complexity, Jiligame meets consumer demand for convenience.
In addition, cross-device compatibility ensures consistent, high-quality experiences across a wide range of smartphones and network environments. This inclusivity broadens the content’s reach and enables a diverse audience to engage without technical difficulties.
GameZone’s Ecosystem Amplifies Jili’s Reach
GameZone plays a pivotal role in boosting the visibility of Jili’s content by providing a thoroughly integrated platform environment. Bundling multiple entertainment categories into one mobile-optimized hub reduces user effort, enabling seamless content discovery without having to switch between apps or sites.
This ecosystem approach increases exposure, giving Jiligame slots and other content types greater opportunities to attract new players naturally. The platform’s strong reputation as a regulated and licensed operator builds user trust, helping reduce hesitation to try unfamiliar offerings.
GameZone’s intuitive navigation and responsive design further enhance the user experience, supporting longer engagement times and encouraging exploration across diverse content.
Variety Keeps Users Coming Back
Sustaining user interest over time requires the continuous introduction of diverse entertainment options. Repetitive or overly predictable content often leads to declining engagement, while variety motivates users to return repeatedly.
Jili’s extensive range of themes, pacing differences, and interaction styles appeal to a broad audience with varying preferences. Whether users seek quick play sessions or more immersive experiences, the content library accommodates these needs effectively.
Regular updates that include new game mechanics, visual refreshes, and reward structures maintain excitement and novelty, encouraging a loyal user community.
Responsible Use for Balanced Digital Enjoyment
Promoting responsible consumption underlies healthy digital entertainment growth. Balanced screen time paired with meaningful social interaction helps prevent fatigue and supports sustained user well-being.
Extended, uninterrupted gameplay sessions can lead to tiredness and decreased focus, emphasizing the importance of moderation. GameZone follows licensing and regulatory frameworks, including PAGCOR guidelines, to implement safe access policies.
These measures foster trust and stability, enabling users to enjoy content confidently and responsibly. A focus on user protection not only benefits individuals but also sustains a thriving community around platforms like GameZone and providers such as JiliPH.
Conclusion: Elements Driving Jili’s Strong Presence
Jili’s continued rise within the mobile digital entertainment space stems from a combination of effective mobile-first strategy, rapid and intuitive interaction designs, clear and appealing visuals, and high accessibility. Along with GameZone’s ecosystem that enhances user discovery and engagement, these elements collectively foster growth.
Adapting to evolving user habits and platform structures ensures Jili remains poised to meet future demands. Emphasizing convenience, responsiveness, diversity, and responsible access guarantees its ongoing relevance in the Philippine digital entertainment industry.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. What is Jili on GameZone? Jili is a digital entertainment provider featured on GameZone, delivering mobile-optimized, interactive content designed for user convenience and captivating visuals.
Q2. Why is Jili gaining popularity? Its growth is powered by mobile-friendly accessibility, rapid and smooth interactions, appealing visual presentation, and alignment with users’ desire for quick and engaging entertainment.
Q3. How does GameZone support Jili? GameZone provides a centralized, mobile-optimized platform that simplifies content discovery and offers trustworthy, user-friendly navigation, leading to greater exposure for Jili’s offerings.
International Sea Level Satellite Observes El Niño Precursor
PIA26710
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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International Sea Level Satellite Observes El Niño Precursor
MP4 (1.10 MB)
Description
Sea level height data from the international Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite collected from March to May 2026 show higher, warmer water moving from the western Pacific Ocean to just off the coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. This phenomenon is known as a warm Kelvin wave, signified in this animation of the data by yellow, orange, red, and white. The emergence of Kelvin waves in the early part the year is a signal that an El Niño event is likely to follow.
In early 2026, measurements from Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich showed a small Kelvin wave forming around Micronesia in late January and dissipating by mid-February. The wave shown in the animation emerged in early March, then moved east over time. By mid-May, the seas around Peru were more than 5.9 inches (15 centimeters) higher than long-term averages. Because water expands as it warms, a rise in elevation of an area of the ocean indicates increasing temperature.
The additional heat at the sea surface can change the circulation patterns of energy, water, and air in the atmosphere, which can affect weather. El Niños can cause heavy precipitation in some regions and deficits in others, influencing daily life and commerce around the world.
Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, named after former NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, is one of two satellites that compose the Copernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission.
Sentinel-6/Jason-CS was jointly developed by ESA, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), NASA, and NOAA, with funding support from the European Commission and technical support on performance from the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). Spacecraft monitoring and control, as well as the processing of all the altimeter science data, is carried out by EUMETSAT on behalf of the European Union’s Copernicus programme, with the support of all partner agencies.
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory contributed three science instruments for each Sentinel-6 satellite: the Advanced Microwave Radiometer, the Global Navigation Satellite System – Radio Occultation, and the Laser Retroreflector Array. NASA also contributed launch services, ground systems supporting operation of the NASA science instruments, the science data processors for two of these instruments, and support for the U.S. members of the international Ocean Surface Topography Science Team.
To learn more about Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, visit:
Sea level height data from the international Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite collected from March to May 2026 show higher, warmer water moving from the western Pacific Ocean to just off the coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. This phenomenon is known as a warm Kelvin wave, signified in this animation of the data by yellow, orange, red, and white. The emergence of Kelvin waves in the early part the year is a signal that an El Niño event is likely to follow.
Maybe from Esther Kim Varet, maybe from her husband, maybe from a cousin or uncle or dog. Maybe from her third campaign manager, or her fourth, or fifth. Or is it sixth?
Whatever the case, it will come.
“You caused this to happen …”
She will be referring to this website, and her underwhelming showing in the CA-40 congressional race, which—as of this moment—has her a distant third to the two (inevitable) Republicans, Ken Calvert and Young Kim …
Esther, as y’all know by now, moved here from Los Angeles to save our souls. A Los Angeles art dealer and gallerist, she literally relocated her family to Orange County to become a member of Congress. She spent money, hired staffers, rented an ice cream truck, plastered her name all over the place. But she also, from Day 1, offended the living fuck out of people with arrogance, condescension, rudeness. She labeled herself an “apex predator,” dumped on her Democratic opponents, made enemies like Louisville Slugger makes bats. She and her crew responded to pretty much everyone who criticized her—but never with, “I admire your opinion, even if we disagree,” and usually with some sort of insult, or block, or smackdown.
And here’s the crazy part.
The crazy, crazy, crazy part.
Esther Kim Varet spent millions on this race. Lisa Ramirez, the warm immigration attorney, spent, oh, $300,000. And, as we speak, Esther is barely beating her. Like, b-a-r-e-l-y.
So what does it all mean?
• 1. A Democrat was never, ever, ever going to win this seat. Never. The rejiggered-under-Prop 50 40th is mostly Calvert’s old district (the 41st), and Calvert (pardon me as I vomit in my mouth) is popular there. The 40th is also plus-nine Republican—which is a far cry from, oh, plus-six or plus-seven. It is a district the Democratic Party knew it could not capture. In many ways, it was designed for them to lose. Even if a singular Democratic emerged from the primary, they would be roadkill for Calvert.
• 2. Young Kim will advance to the general, but she knows (and Calvert certainly knows) she’s squirrel stew. The good news: The two Republicans will spend millions bashing one another and tarnishing their brands. The bad news: As shitty as Young Kim can be, she’s moderate compared to the Ted Cruz-ish Calvert, a culture warrior douche with a love of MAGA. Oh, well.
• 3. This probably feels like a loss for Lisa Ramirez, but it’s not. Again—she was not going to win this election. But she performed extremely well, considering the limited dough and late entry. As a political insider said to me this morning, “If she were smart, she’d jump into a local race this November. Community college board, city council, fucking water board. Anything to get started.” I agree. I believe, truly, Lisa can be a political star. Her resume, her disposition, etc. This was a really good jumping off point for her.
• 4. I’ll miss Joe Kerr. I don’t care what anyone says, I believe he’s a good dude. And Esther’s efforts to have him remove RETIRED FIREFIGHTER from his ballot ID was just stupid, petty JV-level nonsense. I believe, ultimately, Joe thought he’d be good at this job. Which matters.
• 5. Am I alone in never before hearing of Claude Keissieh? Who has—a website?
• 6. Like many of you, I’m learning as I go along. The CA-40 was confusing from jump. The race began before Prop 50, changed 100 ways, had candidates come and go, arrive and depart, rise and fall. Remember Paula Swift? Remember Christina Gagnier? Remember Perry Meade? Remember Butch Huskey? Where have they all gone? What have they all become? I initially got sucked into the idea that a Dem might win, then realized it was silly, then got sucked in again, then realized it was silly, then …
California politics are strange.
• 7. In all seriousness, running for office sucks. I’ve witnessed it up close. The banal conversations, the ceaseless handshakes, the introductions to people you’ll never remember, the money requests. It’s thankless, tiring, emotionally draining.
Officials in the Trump administration have worked hard to restrict the access of members of Congress to the detention centers it has established across the country. Although lawmakers have a constitutional duty to oversee executive agencies and courts have reiterated their authority to conduct unannounced visits to federal immigration facilities, officials have repeatedly tried to limit that access.
Last May they went so far as to arrest Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, for trespassing after he waited inside the gate of the privately operated Delaney Hall detention center where a staffer had asked him to stand after he accompanied three members of Congress to Delaney Hall, and then stepped outside when asked to leave. After they dropped the charges against Baraka days later, they charged Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with assault for her actions during a skirmish that broke out when immigration agents arrested Baraka.
On May 11, 2026, Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tried again, issuing a memo that calls congressional visits “disruptive” and saying ICE will facilitate meetings of lawmakers with people in detention only if the lawmaker can specifically identify the individual in detention and provide “valid proof” that the detainee consents to a visit. Any such visit, they said, will require two days’ advance notice.
On May 22, after writing public letters to call attention to the crowded and unsanitary conditions inside Delaney Hall, the largest detention center in the Northeast, about 300 detainees began a hunger strike to demand the immediate release of young, elderly, and medically vulnerable detainees and to bring attention to the fact that immigration judges are ignoring their cases, leaving them incarcerated.
While much of the protest focuses on the horrific conditions inside the facility, the detainees themselves have focused on their lack of access to the legal system. They wrote: “We see with deep helplessness and frustration that our due process, rights, and defense have been violated, disregarding benefits granted under the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments of the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.”
“We are certain that we are not being processed equally under immigration laws and the Constitution….. We have seen judges in this detention center who are ready to carry out deportations and mass expulsions without properly reviewing cases. We live with anguish and fear of appearing in court. We are witnessing how judges are disregarding decisions of federal judges, for example not honoring HABEAS CORPUS rulings decided by a FEDERAL judge, depriving us of our liberty.”
They asked for help from senators and members of Congress and said, “[W]e trust in God and believe that justice will be done under the law of the United States of America, since it is a sovereign and constitutional country respected worldwide for upholding human rights.”
Since the Delaney Hall detainees began their strike, supporters outside have gathered to show support. Federal agents have clashed with them repeatedly, pepper-spraying Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) among others. MAGA activists went to the site to counter-protest, and Mayor Baraka established a curfew near the facility. Late last week, Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, deployed New Jersey state troopers after White House advisor Tom Homan—a former consultant for Delaney Hall operator GEO Group—threatened to send “tactical units” to New Jersey if the situation continued. The troopers arrested dozens of protesters.
Today New Jersey attorney general Jennifer Davenport sued the GEO Group for refusing to allow inspectors into the facility in violation of state law. “If the GEO Group—with a $1 billion government contract—has nothing to hide and the conditions inside Delaney Hall are as safe and as sanitary as this private corporation and the Trump Administration claim, then there is no legitimate reason why my health inspectors are being kept from full access throughout the building,” Sherrill said. “The people of New Jersey deserve transparency and accountability, and I will continue using all the power of this office to advocate for the detainees and their families.”
In a May 29 interview with me on American Conversations, Senator Kim said that “the detainees were actually very clear with me… they’re concerned about the conditions, but the main reason they’re pushing forward right now, on this hunger strike and broader protest, is about the lack of forward movement when it comes to their cases. I remember one of them ran out of the room when I was talking to them, to go grab a piece of paper off a bulletin board…. The paper, when they brought it back, was about the court docket for the following couple days. And it showed that…this past Tuesday, when the courts opened up after the holiday weekend, this one judge that they are put in front of has 74 cases before her in just that one day, just on Tuesday. She had 74 cases on her docket. You know, I did the…math. I mean, that’s roughly about five minutes per case, if that’s everything is perfectly aligned…. [I]t’s just a…farce. This is not actual justice. This is not actual… legal proceedings as per our Constitution, and as per our laws.”
The destruction of the rule of law in Delaney Hall is part of the Trump administration’s destruction of the rule of law across the United States. This morning, Trump announced he is appointing the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, to become the acting director of national intelligence in addition to his job at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The director of national intelligence is the nation’s top intelligence official, and federal law requires that the director have “extensive national security expertise.” Pulte has none.
What he does have is willingness to use the power of the government to persecute Trump’s perceived political enemies. It was Pulte who came up with the scheme of going after Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and New York attorney general Letitia James by accusing them of mortgage fraud. He also advocated investigating then–Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for alleged overruns in the renovation of Federal Reserve buildings.
Today, under pressure from Senate Republicans who recognize that the optics of Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund will hurt Republicans in the midterms and demanded the removal of that funding from the budget reconciliation measure they are working on to fund ICE and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Trump appears to have dropped that demand. But acting attorney general Todd Blanche told members of Congress today that he would not commit in writing not to proceed with the slush fund, and that the Department of Justice is not dropping the plan to provide Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization broad amnesty for any laws broken in past tax filings and a pass on future audits.
Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted that his criminal conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records and the civil fraud judgement against him in New York for manipulating his financial statements to get better tax and insurance rates be dismissed, saying he was “an innocent man who has been horribly treated.” As Sophie Brams of The Hill noted, he also called for criminal charges to be launched against New York attorney general James and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the successful lawsuits.
Today the new secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, refused to assure a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would follow court orders. Repeatedly, he told Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) that DHS “will never break the Constitution, and we’re not going to break the law.” But he refused to agree that they would follow court orders. “If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that,” Mullin said. “But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just the rule of law.”
Kyle Cheney of Politico reported last month that the Trump administration has lost nearly 10,400 court cases over DHS immigration detentions while prevailing in about 1,200. That translates to a 90% loss rate. More than 425 judges—an overwhelming majority of them—have decided against the administration. Cheney notes that even a majority of the judges Trump himself appointed have decided against the administration on immigration.
In February, then–DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin explained away the administration’s dismal record by saying that “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.”
But Judge Joseph R. Goodwin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia wrote: “Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening. Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process…. It is an assault on the constitutional order.”
Today, after Mullin wouldn’t agree to obey the courts, suggesting instead that “we’ll hold each other accountable” if ICE breaks the law, Senator Murphy said: “Listen, if you’re a Republican or Democrat on this committee, you should be really, really freaked out.”
Former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who oversaw the operations during which federal agents shot and killed American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, joined white nationalist Jared Taylor at a conference of far-right activists and influencers in Portugal over the weekend. As Marion Solletty of Politico reported, in an interview before the conference, Bovino embraced the white nationalism of the Great Replacement theory that says white Europeans and white Americans are in a fight to save their civilization from Black and Brown people.
He claimed that of the 342 million people in the U.S.—he said there were 420 million—100 million are undocumented immigrants who must be removed. But, he added, “our main battle is not with undocumented immigrants or unassimilated immigrants: it is with the bureaucrats of the status quo and the timid politicians, determined to suspend action or wait for the next election cycle.”
“If there is inspiration gained from the U.S. Border Patrol model and method,” he said, “then fantastic.”
According to Feynman’s approach, in this context, people should try a different restaurant each night until they find one that exceeds a particular threshold that reflects a desired quality.
In Feynman’s equations this threshold is not fixed. Instead it declines more and more rapidly as the number of days left in the city reduces. In other words, as the days go by there is increasingly less motivation to hunt for an amazing dining spot, because the time you will have to enjoy it has decreased.
“The thresholds are being guided by the best thing you might be able to find if you kept looking,” said Griffiths. “If you have a long time to look, finding something amazing has a lot of value because you can go back many times.”
Feynman’s approach assumed there is equal possibility of finding any restaurant within a fixed range of quality. However the researchers also explored other scenarios.
“We showed that if the distribution of restaurants varies, then the strategy you should follow will change too,” said Griffiths.
Here is the full story, and here is the PNAS article. I think of that as a pretty pessimistic approach to the problem. In most locales you should be able to find lots of very good restaurants, so if you find a quality place early on you do not return to it, rather you keep looking for more, in fact feeling emboldened by your early success. Maybe this algorithm applies to Cuba?
Growing older can change strength, balance, memory, and stamina, yet personal dignity should stay intact through each stage of later life. Many older adults value familiar rooms, steady routines, and the ability to make ordinary decisions without feeling rushed. Families usually want support that protects safety without taking over. Care delivered at home can preserve comfort, identity, and social connection while easing daily strain for relatives and reducing avoidable disruption.
Daily Life Stays Familiar
Home surroundings often steady an older adult during periods of physical or cognitive change. Familiar furniture, neighborhood sounds, and established habits can lower stress and support orientation. After relatives notice skipped lunches, medication mix-ups, or unsafe walking, many begin exploring senior home care as a practical next step. Services may include companionship, light household tasks, and watchful assistance, helping aging adults keep authority over daily life while receiving support where it has the greatest effect.
Safety Without Losing Choice
Falls remain a major source of injury in later life. Federal public health data show that millions of older adults experience a fall each year, with many needing emergency treatment. Support at home can lower risk during bathing, dressing, transfers, and walking. A trained helper may spot dim lighting, uneven flooring, or loose cords early. Those simple corrections can protect mobility without stripping away personal control.
Health Routines Become Easier
Medication schedules grow harder to manage when vision changes, memory lapses, or fatigue affect concentration. A steady caregiver can prompt prescriptions, encourage hydration, and help maintain meals with adequate protein, fiber, and calories. Recovery after illness or surgery also tends to go better with regular observation. Families feel less anxious when someone notices poor appetite, daytime sleepiness, or unusual weakness before a small issue becomes acute.
Companionship Matters Too
Isolation can affect more than mood. Research has linked chronic loneliness with depression, cognitive decline, disturbed sleep, and poorer cardiovascular health. Regular conversation, shared meals, card games, or short walks can improve engagement and emotional steadiness. These interactions may look modest from the outside, yet they often restore interest in the day. Meaningful contact reminds older adults that their preferences, memories, and presence still matter.
Families Receive Relief
Relatives who provide care often carry several roles at once, including work duties, parenting, transportation, and household management. Over time, that strain can produce sleep loss, irritability, back pain, and emotional exhaustion. Extra help at home gives families room to recover without stepping away completely. Time together can focus more on conversation and less on chores. That shift often improves relationships across the household.
Support Can Adjust Over Time
Needs rarely stay fixed for long. One season may call for meal preparation and a few hours of companionship each week. Later, assistance with transfers, toileting, or overnight supervision may become necessary. Home support can expand gradually as health status changes. That measured approach gives older adults continuity and gives families time to weigh future choices carefully. Stability during transitions can reduce fear and protect confidence.
Dignity Lives in Small Decisions
Respect is often expressed through ordinary choices. Selecting clothes, deciding meal times, or choosing a favorite radio program can reinforce identity and self-worth. Good care should protect those decisions whenever safety allows. Attentive helpers ask, listen, and respond instead of assuming. That habit preserves participation in daily life. Independence is rarely absolute, yet many parts of it can remain intact with the right assistance.
Community Ties Stay Stronger
Remaining at home can make it easier for older adults to stay connected with faith communities, neighbors, clubs, and family events. Continued participation supports mood, memory, and a sense of purpose. Transportation help may prevent missed appointments or social visits. Staying involved in familiar circles can reduce withdrawal after illness or bereavement. Those ties often encourage stronger engagement, steadier emotions, and a better quality of life.
Planning Early Helps Everyone
Families often wait for a fall, hospitalization, or serious scare before discussing home support. Earlier planning usually leads to calmer decisions and clearer expectations. It also gives older adults more voice in schedules, routines, and personal priorities. Honest conversations can reduce conflict later. Starting before urgent need appears allows time to match services with real concerns and to build trust gradually across the family.
Conclusion
Dignity in later life rests on safety, choice, familiar routine, and human connection. Support provided at home can protect those essentials while helping older adults remain in surroundings that feel secure and meaningful. Families often gain relief, better communication, and stronger confidence that their daily needs are being noticed. With thoughtful assistance, aging does not have to mean surrendering control. It can remain a period shaped by comfort, respect, and preserved independence.
Taking old cars and turning them into electric vehicles is not a new idea. Tinkerers and car enthusiasts have been doing this for decades. Tesla, in fact, can trace its origins back to AC Propulsion,…
When you click to spin a casino reel or place a bet online, you’re trusting something you can’t see: math. Regulated platforms rely on strict algorithmic audits to make sure online casino fair play isn’t just a promise, it’s enforced.
Every day, millions of people log in to online sportsbooks and online casinos expecting the system to operate honestly. Behind that expectation sits a dense framework of regulatory oversight, code verification and mathematical testing, all designed to keep outcomes fair and systems secure.
The Invisible Rules of the Digital Floor
As soon as you enter a legal online casino, everything changes. There are no real dice or wheels spinning around; all you get are random number generators, highly complicated algorithms designed to provide unpredictable numbers and thus dictate outcomes of games played, whether it’s a hand dealt out of a deck of cards or where a virtual ball lands.
These algorithms are constantly put under scrutiny at independent labs. Thousands upon thousands of test cycles are completed to demonstrate that the outcomes have the correct probability distribution.
The moment something changes, the moment the code is slightly modified in a way that would introduce any bias into the system, all compliance systems are notified straight away. Why? Simple – every single gambler gets their turn to get lucky through purely mathematical means.
How Established Platforms Maintain Algorithmic Integrity
To see how this works in practice, look at how major platforms operate. When you use a well-known platform like Jackpot City, you’re interacting with software that has already passed multiple layers of external validation. Like other regulated operators, it uses games developed by independently certified licensed providers.
This matters because the game logic doesn’t sit with the casino itself. It runs on secure developer servers, meaning the online casino operator can’t tweak outcomes or adjust payout rates behind the scenes. So when you play on Jackpot City, the odds you see are the odds you get.
You’ll often notice seals from testing bodies such as eCOGRA. These aren’t just decorative; they signal that the underlying systems have been audited and approved. Platforms like Jackpot City also publish structured reporting data, making it easier for auditors to confirm that player protection standards are actually being met.
For many experienced users, Jackpot City serves as a benchmark for judging whether other online casino operators meet the same level of compliance.
The High Stakes of Code Certification
This process does not occur only once; online casino operators are expected to provide full software builds for continuous analysis without prior notice. Before getting a chance to enjoy any gaming service, it will undergo forensic auditing and independent testing not only of game results but also of the code logic that produces them.
Several measures are employed in licensed environments to safeguard games’ integrity:
– Cryptographic signatures guarantee that the code cannot be tampered with after the approval stage
– Return-to-Player ratios are continuously monitored to make sure actual pay-outs meet theoretical expectations
– Server isolation ensures that game logic is invulnerable to outside influences
– Geographic restrictions make sure that platforms comply with applicable laws
The described measures are critical in ensuring a clear division between technological performance and financial concerns. In other words, it means business objectives will not affect games’ operations.
The Power of Real-Time Data Auditing
In modern times, regulatory bodies not only look at past occurrences but also examine current activities. Regulatory bodies analyze live feeds pulled directly from the operator, recording all processes and results in real time.
Should any of the games start running outside their statistically certified norms, they are immediately flagged. As a result, investigations take place and the problem is usually isolated to either the software or the system level.
For you, it means you no longer have to rely on the operator’s integrity. Modern systems work in your favor and help ensure you get fair play. All of these oversight systems operate in the background, allowing them to detect issues without affecting you. The penalty for violating any rules will be severe.
Demanding Transparency in Digital Entertainment
As online betting expands, the role of the user becomes more important. You’re not just a participant, you’re part of the pressure that shapes the industry. Choosing licensed, audited platforms reinforces the value of transparency.
When you expect clear information about how games work and how they’re tested, online casino operators are pushed to meet that expectation. Over time, that pressure moves the industry away from opaque systems toward ones that can be independently verified.
The future of online casinos depends on that shift. When platforms are required to expose how their systems operate, trust becomes easier to maintain. And when trust is backed by continuous external verification, every wager rests on something solid: consistent, measurable fairness.
In the end, algorithmic accountability isn’t just a regulatory requirement. It’s what allows the entire system to function in a way that feels reliable, transparent and sustainable for everyone involved.
Another day of many errands and meetings, so another short, informal post.
Donald Trump will never admit that his gratuitous Iran war has been a total disaster. But the debacle has clearly broken him. So we are now saddled with a president who has given up governing, but will maintain his grip on power wherever he can. And his power will be exclusively focused on rage and revenge.
Hence Trump has appointed Bill Pulte as the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a position critical to national security.
The word “acting” is crucial. The statute creating the position of DNI explicitly requires that the appointee “shall have extensive national security expertise.” Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has no background in anything related to national security. So Trump is trying to bypass a Congressional confirmation process that would put Pulte under the spotlight. Even Republicans might shed their slavish obedience at this point, given Trump’s plummeting poll numbers and his betrayal of John Cornyn.
But pointing out that Pulte is unqualified for his new job doesn’t convey the extent to which Trump is trolling America with this new appointment.
For Pulte isn’t merely unqualified for a sensitive national security position. He’s unqualified, intellectually and morally, for any government position. All he has are the qualifications that matter to Trump: he is a shameless lackey and willing hitman for Trump’s vendettas.
Who is Pulte? He’s a wealthy nepo-baby, the grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, the nation’s third-largest residential builder. He likes to present himself as the face of the family business, but as a devastating New York Times profile last year explained, he was pushed off PulteGroup’s board in 2020. The family’s charitable foundation has issued a statement that “Bill Pulte does not represent, nor is he a spokesperson for, all members of the Pulte family, in any capacity.”
The Times goes on to note that
These days, one of Bill Pulte’s primary connections to the residential real estate business is a group of five aging mobile home parks he owns in Florida, some badly in need of repair.
How has Pulte handled his falling out with his family?
Mr. Pulte has spent years battling with his aunt, the foundation’s president, over his grandfather’s legacy and other issues. In social media posts he has called her “totally fake and phony” and has written that she “defecates” about him and his late grandfather’s legacy on the foundation website.
Thousands of nasty political posts on social media landed Pulte a powerful post in the Trump administration. And while his former role in his family’s business may have led to his appointment as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, his real job has been weaponizing the agency as a tool against Trump’s perceived enemies — weaponization that is being investigated by the Government Accountability Office as a potential misuse of authority. Pulte confected false claims of mortgage fraud to try to push out Lisa Cook, the only black woman on the Federal Reserve Board. He has leveled similar trumped-up charges against Letitia James, New York’s Attorney General, and several Democratic politicians. And he pushed groundless fraud accusations against Jerome Powell, the former Federal Reserve chair, who stood in the way of Trump’s attempt to politicize monetary policy.
Pulte is a bumbling hatchet man: so far none of his attempted lynchings have succeeded. But for Trump, willingness to engage in unethical behavior is all that matters.
What will Pulte do as America’s senior intelligence official? You might think that even someone like Trump, who has no desire to serve the national interest, who sees wars only as ways to enrich himself and distract from his domestic woes, would want accurate intelligence. After all, if you’re going to wag the dog, you don’t want the dog to bite back the way it has in Iran.
But Trump appears to have given up on governing — even governing aimed at consolidating his own power and legacy. He wants to punish everyone he imagines has wronged him but has lost all interest in making the government work, even for nefarious purposes. So he don’t need no intelligence, just someone who will indulge his rage. And that will be Pulte’s job.
Just to be clear, I am by no means saying that Trump’s descent into rage-madness has ended the threat to U.S. democracy. The Koch-backed Federalist Society, which now controls the Supreme Court, is going all in on rigging U.S. elections with the goal of locking in permanent Republican rule. The architects of Project 2025 are marching ahead with their goal of turning the federal government into a spoils system that answers only to billionaires and their political pawns. Politicization of research funding is getting very close to destroying a scientific community that took generations to build.
But Trump himself is, at this point, little more than a festering ball of anger and hate.
I wrote the other day about Uber blowing its 2026 AI budget in four months, and how that wasn't particularly surprising given they would have set that budget in 2025, before anyone could have predicted how popular token-burning coding agents were about to become.
Natalie Lung for Bloomberg:
The rideshare giant is limiting all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending per AI coding tool, an Uber spokesperson said in response to a Bloomberg News inquiry. That means spending on one tool doesn’t have a bearing on the budget for another. The limits, which have been instituted in recent months, only apply to agentic coding software such as Cursor or Anthropic PBC’s Claude Code.
A $1,500 monthly limit per tool strikes me as a rational policy response to over-spending, and much more sensible than those tokenmaxxing leaderboards encouraging employees to compete for as much AI usage as possible.
It's also interesting in that it hints at a real dollar value for what Uber is getting out of these tools. If we assume two actively used tools per engineer that's $3,000 * 12 = $36,000 cap per engineer per year. Levels.fyi lists the median yearly compensation package for Uber software engineers in the USA at $330,000.
That means each employee's AI spending cap is ~11% of that median compensation package.
I noted that my own token usage comes to about $1,000/month against each of Anthropic and OpenAI - which currently costs me just $100 per provider thanks to their generous subsidized plans for individual subscribers. Those plans are no longer available to larger companies like Uber.
Their new policy means if I were working at Uber I'd still have ~$500/month of tokens to spare for each of those tools, given my current usage patterns.
Every week, I try to summarize the D.C. crime stats, because we only seem to talk about crime in cities when the numbers get worse, not when they’re getting better. As I point out, D.C. has seen large decreases in four categories: homicides, thefts of cars, thefts from cars, and robberies (muggings). Homicides seem to be part of a multi-year decline, as in the last two years, homicides have dropped by a third each year, and D.C. seems on pace to do that again; likewise, robberies also have dropped consistently over the same period. The car-related categories have experienced huge drops, which would be expected with a bunch of armed guardsmen walking around. Few people are going to try to boost a car when there are more eyes on the street.
But that has been mostly supposition on my part. A recent analysis by the Niskanen Center seems to support my supposition (boldface mine):
We argue that MPD’s improvement was driven not by headcount but by a tactical shift toward proactive, upstream enforcement — though the department left significant gains on the table by failing to concentrate that enforcement where and when crime was most severe, or to adjust dynamically as crime patterns shifted. We also examine the August 2025 National Guard deployment, which added roughly 2,000 uniformed personnel to D.C.’s streets virtually overnight, and find that it produced a real but narrow improvement: a 24 percent reduction in opportunistic property crime in the first six months, with no measurable effect on violent crime…
Washington, D.C.’s recent crime history contains three lessons that speak directly to the national debate about policing.
…police headcount is not all that matters. Crime fell in D.C. as MPD shrank to its smallest size in half a century. This is counterintuitive only if we assume that the effectiveness of a police department is mostly a function of officer count. It is not. It works through how officers are deployed, what they do when on duty, and whether their activities are concentrated in the places and times where they can actually prevent crime.
The second is that MPD figured this out. The shift toward upstream, proactive enforcement between 2022 and 2025 — fewer officers, more arrests, different kinds of arrests — represents a strategic pivot that contributed to a decline in crime. This is not visible in standard staffing statistics, but it is visible in arrest composition data. Giving credit where it is due requires looking beneath the headline numbers.
The third is that the National Guard deployment demonstrated both the promise and the limits of presence-based policing. It worked — but on the wrong kind of crime, in the wrong places, and at enormous cost relative to what a targeted approach could achieve. Property crime deterrence through visible uniformed presence in public spaces is real. But violence in D.C.’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods requires something more targeted, more sustained, and more strategically aligned with the actual geography of harm.
One thing worth noting is that the Bloomberg/Bowser school of public safety is predicated around making areas that are visited by out-of-city workers and tourists appear safe because police scare away ‘undesirables.’ This can have some beneficial side effects (e.g., fewer car-related crimes), but it doesn’t necessarily make the rest of the city safer without other policy changes. This is one reason why we see the National Guard patrolling some of the safest neighborhoods in D.C.
Anyway, food for thought. And get the Guard out of the D.C.
"On June 9, 2025, after the [NY State] Assembly approved the bill, Ms. Netherland was in the State Senate chamber, watching the aye votes mount, and seeing it pass.Gov. Kathy Hochul signedan amended version in February; it is scheduled to take effect Aug. 5.
“A breakthrough moment,” said Kevin Díaz, president of Compassion & Choices, which has spearheaded the long campaign for such laws. After almost 30 years — Oregon’s law, the first in the country, was enacted in 1997 — the addition of two populous states means that almost a third of Americans will live in one where medical aid in dying is legally available. “It shows that there’s broad support for this model,” Mr. Díaz said.
Polls consistently back that claim. APew Research Center surveylast spring found that almost two-thirds of respondents didn’t consider the practice “morally wrong,” either because they thought it was acceptable or not a moral issue."
We are now well into the post-Voting Rights Act period, with ruthless attempts at racial gerrymandering unfolding across the South. The latest development came yesterday evening, when the Supreme Court deployed a twisted logic to effectively halt an Alabama election already in progress so state officials can hold it under a map that dilutes the Black vote.
Against that backdrop, we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss this TPM story, from about two weeks ago now, in which the families of civil rights activists who died in the months before and immediately after the passage of the Voting Rights Act talked to us about what the Supreme Court’s April ruling eviscerating it means to them. This kind of work is not always the splashiest political reporting, but we think it’s important. It’s the kind of thing your memberships make possible. So thank you.
As the son of Viola Liuzzo, who was shot dead by Klansmen while driving to Selma, tells us in the piece:
“My mother did not give her life. Her life was taken and it shocked the nation enough that they passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965,” he said, adding that the Supreme Court and Trump administration were “working tirelessly to go back to the ‘60s.”
While the AP has not yet called the race, it now appears clear that Democrats have avoided a nightmare scenario they contemplated in the days after Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor dramatically imploded: That some two dozen Democratic gubernatorial candidates might split the vote, creating room for two Trump-aligned Republicans to advance to the general election in the state’s top-two primary system. The state is notoriously slow to count votes, but, this morning, Trump-endorsed Fox commentator Steve Hilton (R) and former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (D) currently have the top two spots. The other major Republican in the race, Sheriff Chad Bianco, trails as a distant fourth.
The great joy of having built a successful business that employs a broad team of talented people is that I get to fish for exactly the kind of problems that most interest me, most of the time.
Usually, this coincides well with the needs of the business. When we moved out of the cloud, I spent months getting Kamal off the ground, so we didn't have to get mired in the complexity of Kubernetes. Fun problem to solve!
And of course, the origin story of Ruby on Rails is that Basecamp gave birth to it all back in 2003. Because I simply wanted Ruby to work well for the web, and we needed a platform to build the business.
But sometimes it's also a bit further afield. We had our big clash with Apple over the App Store's monopoly abuses back in 2020, but it wasn't until 2024 that I severed our exclusivity with the Mac on the engineering side by moving to Linux, and ultimately building Omarchy.
I don't always get to choose, of course. There are occasionally urgent problems that just need our, and therefore my, full attention as a company, or humdrum issues that I just happen to be best qualified to tackle. But this is increasingly rare because of all those great people we've managed to assemble at 37signals.
And that's how it should be! Building a successful business should yield dividends beyond just the financial ones. It should afford you more opportunity to press your comparative advantage, so you spend most of your time on the projects that stimulate a little Call of the Wild.
Never to the point of being too good for anything, mind you. Taking out the trash is still everyone's job some of the time. But mostly, I want to be sitting by the pond of interesting problems, fishing for the ones that catch my eye and hook my motivation.
In 2019, there were about 150,000 people working in autism therapy. Six years later, there were 654,000—more than the number of people who work in mining and logging, or telecommunications, or at the US Postal Service.
At Compleat Kidz, a fast-growing chain of autism clinics based in North Carolina, the policy is firm: Naps cannot be longer than seven minutes before children are awakened to resume therapy. The company says this is necessary to prevent fraud since clinics can be paid only when children are awake and getting services. But it also allows the clinic to bill insurers or Medicaid for more hours.
This paper examines how expanding the legal definition of sexual assault affects fertility and sexual behavior, using a panel of European countries. I find that switching to tacit consent-based legislation reduces fertility by about 4% relative to the mean. This effect is driven by a decrease in couple formation and an increase in abortion rates. Supporting evidence is consistent with a behavioral channel in which more risk-averse individuals withdraw from dating and partner markets following the reform, altering the composition of those who remain active toward a pool that is less precautionary. Consistent with this compositional shift, contraceptive use rises among younger women but declines among older age groups, while condom use falls among young men. Finally, an analysis of appeals court verdicts in Sweden following the adoption of consent-based legislation shows a decline in unanimous guilty verdicts, indicating challenges in assessing tacit consent. These results are consistent with a simple framework in which heterogeneity in risk perceptions and precautionary behavior in dating and partner markets, including reduced participation by some individuals, helps explain the observed decline in fertility following the reform.
From late May into early June 2026, a broad, slow-spinning storm churned north-northwest over the Philippine Sea toward southern Japan. Typhoon Jangmi’s rainbands unleashed torrential rainfall across a vast swath of the region, triggering flooding concerns in several areas.
The VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime image (above) of the storm at about 16:40 Universal Time on May 30 (1:40 a.m. Japan Standard Time on May 31). Around that time, the typhoon produced sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour, based on 1-minute averages reported by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC). That’s equivalent to a category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.
The image shows a detailed view of the eyewall and eye, with a diameter that is on the larger end of the spectrum, according to Scott Braun, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. There is also an area of low-level rotation on the southeastern side of the eye, producing a feature known as a “mesocyclone” that is partially obscured by high-level clouds. Though they appear striking, the features are fairly typical, Braun noted.
The second image shows a wider view of the same storm one day later. The VIIRS on the NOAA-20 satellite acquired this image at about 16:40 Universal Time on May 31 (1:40 a.m. Japan Standard Time on June 1), when the storm was a slightly stronger typhoon with sustained winds of 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour.
In both images, Jangmi’s eye was still located south of Okinawa. However, the storm’s outer cloud bands already reached over land as the storm moved north. Forecasts called for the storm to make a close approach to Okinawa and then turn northeast toward the Amami region around June 1-2. It was expected to continue delivering large amounts of rain, especially along the nation’s Pacific coast, according to news reports.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars away from Vandenberg Space Force Base during the Starlink 17-47 mission on June 3, 2026. Image: SpaceX
Update June 3, 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 UTC): SpaceX confirmed deployment of the 24 Starlink satellites.
SpaceX is set to launch a batch of its Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base Wednesday morning.
The Starlink 17-47 mission added another 24 broadband internet to its low Earth orbit constellation. There are currently more than 10,000 satellites in orbit.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 8:40:39 a.m. PDT (11:40:39 a.m. EDT / 1540:39 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket will fly on a south-southwesterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.
SpaceX will launch the mission with the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1088. This will be its 16th flight after launching missions, like NASA’s SPHEREx, Transporter-12 and NROl-126.
More than eight minutes after liftoff, B1088 will target a landing on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, this will be the 200th landing on this vessel and the 618th booster landing to date.
An aerial view of launch complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station showing the aftermath of the New Glenn explosion last Thursday. The rocket itself virtually disintegrated in the blast leaving its transporter-erector in wreckage on the concrete pad’s surface. The large gantry suffered structural damage near its base while the mangled remains of a lightning tower are visible to the right of the pad surface. A large processing hangar (at left) came through the blast without major damage, as did propellant tanks and distribution systems. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
Despite a spectacular launch pad explosion last week, Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin said Tuesday the damage was not as severe as initially feared and that the company plans to resume New Glenn rocket launches by the end of the year.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, in an overnight post on the social media platform X, said propellant tanks at launch pad 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station made it through the blast in good shape, as did a nearby processing hangar. The main support gantry, while damaged, can be repaired in place.
“Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news,” Limp said. “The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG [cryogenic methane] tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items.
“The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced.”
The New Glenn rocket, mounted atop its transporter-erector, is moved to launch pad 36 for final launch preparations ahead of the NG-3 flight. The transporter-erector and the rocket, without its nose cone and satellite payload, were destroyed last week in a launch pad explosion. Image: Blue Origin
The New Glenn rocket that blew up on pad 36 last Thursday was destroyed along with its transporter-erector, used to move the rocket to the pad surface and then rotate it to vertical. But Limp said another New Glen first stage booster and three upper stages housed in a large hangar-like “integration facility” at the base of the pad “look good.”
‘We had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical (rocket assembly capability), and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector.”
No word yet on what might have caused the explosion, but Limp closed his post by declaring: “We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.” The Latin expression, Blue Origin’s motto, means “step by step, ferociously.”
Blue Origin was preparing to launch it’s third New Glenn later this month to put a batch of Amazon Leo internet satellites into orbit. Last Thursday, engineers loaded both stages with supercold liquid methane and oxygen for a first stage engine test firing to verify its readiness for flight. The Leo satellites were not aboard.
Such “hot-fire” tests are fairly routine in the rocket industry, giving engineers a chance to test launch-day fueling procedures, a booster’s propulsion system and critical ground and flight software while the rocket remains securely bolted to its launch pad.
But it was far from routine last Thursday.
As the New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines began igniting and throttling up, a fire broke out at the base of the booster and moments later, now engulfed in flames, the rocket exploded in a tremendous fireball, shaking the ground for miles around in a conflagration visible all the way across the Florida peninsula.
Footage captured by photo journalists from a helicopter the next day showed the rocket and its transporter-erector had been destroyed, at least some support beams at the base of the main gantry were either bent or blown away and a separate lightning tower had collapsed in a tangle of debris.
Unlike rival SpaceX, which has two operation pads in Florida and one in California, Blue Origin only has pad 36. The company already had plans to build a second pad at the Cape and another at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. But in the near term, New Glenns cannot fly until pad 36 is repaired.
That’s a problem for NASA’s Artemis moon program and the agency’s drive to beat the Chinese to the lunar surface. Chinese officials have said they plan to land their own “taikonauts” on the moon by the end of the decade.
To win this self-declared “space race,” NASA is relying on both SpaceX and Blue Origin to launch new moon landers into Earth orbit next yet for rendezvous and docking tests with Artemis astronauts in an Orion capsule.
If those tests go well, NASA hopes to launch one, and possibly two, astronaut moon landing missions in 2028, soon followed by two flights per year thereafter before beginning assembly of a moon base near the lunar south pole where astronauts can live and work for months at a time.
An artist’s impression of Blue Origin’s lunar lander on the moon’s surface. Graphic: Blue Origin/NASA
Blue Origin’s lander would give NASA an alternative to SpaceX’s, a variant of the company’s Starship rocket. SpaceX has had its own problems perfecting the Super Heavy-Starship rocket needed to launch its lander, and it’s not yet clear if they will be ready for the Artemis III Earth-orbit test flight next year as currently planned.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn also is needed to launch prototype rovers and other science experiments to the moon aboard an unpiloted cargo lander under contracts announced two days before last week’s explosion.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman remains optimistic about landing Artemis astronauts on the moon in 2028 using whatever landing craft is available.
“Blue Origin leadership has responded incredibly quickly, and NASA will do all we can to help with root cause analysis and accelerate pad recovery timeframes while staying extremely focused on progressing the lander,” he said on X.
Kennedy Space Center Director Brian Hughes, appointed to the post just last month, told the Space Florida board of directors Tuesday that NASA is “doubling down on the lunar lander.”
“We’ll be working with Blue and X lunar lander technology, and all of that is designed to keep us on path, meet the President’s goal, which is to have American boots back on the moon before the end of 2028,” he said. “Again, that’s not just something to tout, it’s an important demonstration of our nation’s abilities.”
A view of the New Glenn rocket in the ready for launch configuration. The lightning tower at left was destroyed when the rocket blew up last week during an engine test firing, along with the transporter-erector holding the New Glenn in place. The large gantry at right was damaged in the blast but officials say it can be repaired in place. Image: Blue Origin
Limp’s vow to resume flights by the end of the year might imply the “root cause” of the explosion might not have been an engine problem that would take months to correct and then test. Or at least, not a major design flaw.
That would be good news for United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. ULA uses Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines in the first stage of its new Vulcan rocket. A drawn-out engine failure investigation would be a setback for ULA, but the BE-4s have not yet been blamed for the New Glenn mishap.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the Starlink 10-43 mission on June 4, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
Update June 4, 6:54 a.m. EDT (1054 UTC): SpaceX landed its booster on the drone ship.
Update June 3, 7:24 a.m. EDT (1124 UTC): SpaceX scrubbed the launch.
The second time proved to be the charm as SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday morning. It came about 24 hours after a scrub on Wednesday due to poor weather that proved insurmountable.
The Starlink 10-43 mission will add 29 broadband internet satellites to the company’s low Earth orbit constellation. It consists of more than 10,000 spacecraft.
Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 happened at Thursday, June 4, 6:26:30 a.m. EDT (1026:30 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket flew on a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 95 percent chance for favorable weather during the launch window on Thursday. Meteorologists were tracking a small chance for interference from cumulus clouds.
“Mid to upper-level clouds will persist but will most likely be too high to pose an LLCC concern. Latest model guidance has become drier behind the front with the latest runs, leading to a drop in POV for the initial launch window Thursday morning,” launch weather officers wrote.
SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1090. This was its 12th flight after launching missions, like NASA’s Crew-10, CRS-33 and Bandwagon-3.
Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1090 landed on the drone ship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ positioned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. This was the 153rd landing on this vessel and the 619th booster landing to date.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on the Starlink 10-43 mission on June 4, 2026. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now
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