“The Protein Shortage Is Coming”.
“At least 97 of the more than 1,500 individuals granted clemency by President Trump for their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack have been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from Jan. 6 since their participation in the Jan. 6 riot.”
“Website traffic from AI agents and bots has eclipsed its human-generated counterpart for the first time, according to Cloudflare, an earlier-than-expected milestone that speaks to AI’s rapid advance and impact.”
RIP Stacey King, former NBA player who won three championships with the Chicago Bulls, current broadcaster for the Bulls.
“Congress should pass the Judiciary Accountability Act and extend federal anti-discrimination protections to judicial employees, so judges are no longer immune from suit, and employees can blow the whistle without fear of retaliation.”
“Players in the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup in June and July face an even greater risk of unsafe temperatures than they did in 1994, the last time the World Cup was held in the United States, according to estimates from researchers at Imperial College London.”
I didn’t know there were such things as fluorescent spiders, but there are.
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for Pete Hegseth tells me so”.
“Pratt’s electoral performance, strong in the city’s wealthy Westside, geographically tracked that of the billionaire Republican mayoral candidate Rick Caruso from 2022. But Caruso cleared his June primary with 36 percent of the vote; Pratt is currently at 26 percent and may fade some more as the final ballots are tallied. AI videos did not give Pratt a boost, just the opposite.”
RIP, Bob Packwood, former Senator from Oregon.
“But what worries me about the generative-AI future is that those previous “democratizing” developments were on the whole aesthetically diversifying: Anyone could make anything, for better, and much more often, for worse. Amateur and untrained designers could violate the laws of good taste at will, often creating enduring forms and aesthetics that would eventually be absorbed into the language of “good” design—”bootleg t-shirt graphics” among them. Generative AI, on the other hand, has become homogenizing: It “professionalizes” the vernacular designer’s richly weird instincts into a bland RLHF’d sameness. This, I think, is the source of consumer-facing AI tools’ swaglessness—how familiar and inescapable the product already is; how unable it is to surprise for the better or the worse. “AI could never design a Dieter Rams alarm clock” is true. But it could also never design, say, a Dr. Zizmor ad!”
“How the Flamingo Became a Potent Protest Symbol”.
“I will not participate in the pretense that colorblindness is a vision for our country grounded in our Constitution. It has become a weapon designed to cloak the Court’s decisions dismantling our civil rights infrastructure with a veneer of principled nobility. It represents at best, the wishful thinking of justices who have declared their sensibilities to be too delicate to concern themselves with, as Chief Justice Roberts once put it, “this sordid business” of “dividing people by race.” At worst, it is a cynical ploy designed to erase the work of activists, lawyers, and Congress who built a civil rights infrastructure to advance Black equality. Or perhaps a long game effort to tie the hands of future Congresses that might be inclined, as Congress was during the Civil Rights Movement, to respond to demands for equality and justice by passing civil rights laws.”
“Landmark German ruling declares Google’s AI Overviews are Google’s own words and makes it liable for false answers” (via Scalzi).
“Welcome to “Lucha Libro,” a high-energy, action-packed story time that is bringing live wrestling matches to libraries across the U.S. to promote literacy. Founded in 2024, “Lucha Libro” plays off the name of the popular Mexican-inspired sport of Lucha Libre.”
Bumblebees are smarter than you think.
“Voting is utilitarian. It is not like flashing a gang sign. In a contest between a bad candidate and a worse one, voting for the bad candidate is like expressing the moral intuition that someone should amputate a gangrenous leg rather than allow the patient to die. To take a more familiar example, a ballot does not ask you whether to pull the lever that sends the trolley onto the new track; it asks you which of two people you want in the conductor’s seat when the dilemma arises. You can’t know exactly what the future holds—maybe pulling the lever causes the trolley to derail—but for that reason you are not attached to subsequent failures morally, so long as all you did is vote on the basis of sound judgment.”
“The CFTC, in a notice filed Wednesday, is specifically asking for comments on whether prediction market bets on “game shows, reality show competitions, pageants” should be permitted as is.”
RIP, David Hockney, artist known for his colorful paintings in and of California.
RIP, Jane Yolen, prolific author and Grand Master in the Science Fiction Writers Association.
“Trump Bought Tobacco Stocks and Raked In Industry Donations as FDA Eased Standards”.
RIP, Gene Shalit, longtime film critic and arts reporter for the Today Show.
Most Merikkkans eat too damned much protein. It’s the ultimate version of a supplements crave, and it’s been further fueled by the MAHA world. In addition, eating too damn much protein is hard on your kidneys.
I can’t believe the Ett-Lantic wrote about this without mentioning either of these issues. This is like Mona Charen last week trying to pretend that medical advice that even moderate drinking can be dangerous is something new, and something Trumpian dastardly.