DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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Many years ago, I was watching a nature show. It was about some hunter-gatherers on some Pacific island. The film crew went right up and talked to one of the hunter-gatherers about his life — hunting, gathering, finding and killing witches among his fellow tribesmen, and so on. But as they talked, I realized that there must be a giant video camera right in the face of this tribesman. And he wasn’t even reacting to it. What was this strange, unnaturally shaped object, made of strange unknown materials, and potentially possessing magical powers? Didn’t he wonder? And didn’t he ask himself if he could get something like it, and use it for whatever these strange foreigners were using it to do?

I often think about the example of the tribesman and the video camera. It’s a small version of a story that happens again and again, on a far grander scale, determining the fate of entire nations and geopolitical systems of power: absorption of foreign technology. Most of the things you use on a day-to-day basis were not invented in the country in which you live (even if you live in America). They were invented all over the world, and one crucial reason you have access to them is that your society deemed it fitting to allow those technologies into the country.

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The most effective way to destroy an organization is to make it more bureaucratic. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, was aware of this. What they didn’t know was that their blueprint for sabotaging Nazi operations would become the operating manual for modern corporations.

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College degrees don’t offer the job security they once did. Is blue-collar work the answer?

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What is unfolding across parts of Europe, particularly in the UK under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, should serve as a warning to every Western democracy wrestling with questions of immigration, national identity, social cohesion, and the limits of political tolerance.

A nation can be compassionate without becoming careless. It can welcome newcomers while still expecting assimilation, civic responsibility, and respect for the laws and traditions that hold a society together. But when governments become so consumed with appearing morally virtuous that they neglect order, border enforcement, public safety, and cultural confidence, the social fabric eventually begins to fray.

Across Europe, many citizens increasingly feel that they are watching this happen in real time.

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Are you aware? Really aware? Or are you like me, struggling to keep up with the blizzard of social and political awareness events that bring a rich texture to our lives?

Do you worry that you can’t recall if Black History Month – that time when I approach my BAME colleagues with even more reverence than usual – is in June or July? Are you confused as to whether Pride Month and LGBT History Month are the same or distinct entities? Have you kept pace with the latest incarnation of their life-affirming, multicoloured flag? Does your wife frown at you because Menstrual Hygiene Day has passed you by? Have you forgotten World Alzheimer’s Day again?

Then worry no more – help is finally at hand, in the shape of the Awareness Calendar, your one-stop source of those important dates that can be handily pinned to your fridge door.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Wednesday that aims to shield California elections from federal interference, saying he expected President Donald Trump’s administration to try to meddle in the midterms this year.

“They can steal this election! Only we can steal this election!”

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Israel’s military has just taken out a high-value target, with the confirmed death of the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Odeh.

He was targeted in a a strike on the Gaza Strip Tuesday, in an operation which injured dozens more bystanders, given a residential building in a very busy market area of Gaza City was obliterated.

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Over this past week, we’ve been subjected to a flurry of pandemic warnings. It’s like the disease of the day: Bird flu, novavirus, m-pox, hantavirus, slap rash (did you miss that one?), and Ebola. A former director of the CDC just warned that this Ebola outbreak could become a pandemic.

It sounds scary but that is literally impossible for reasons I will explain. My hope is that this article will allow you to know this too. My point is to rescue basic knowledge of infectious disease that every person knew in my grandmother’s generation. The postwar period put huge emphasis on this in schooling. It was called public health in those days.

They knew much more than certified experts today.

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Germany’s Left Party is calling for a major expansion of voting rights that would allow long-term foreign residents to participate in elections. The change would apply after five years of legal residence, regardless of nationality.

The proposal, submitted to the Bundestag, also urges cooperation between federal and state authorities to extend similar rights to regional and local elections.

The party argues that Germany faces a ‘democratic deficit,’ as millions of people who live, work, and pay taxes in the country remain excluded from political participation. According to figures cited in the proposal, around 14 million foreign nationals currently live in Germany, including roughly five million European Union citizens. Many have resided in the country for years, with the average length of stay estimated at around 15 years, yet still lack voting rights in most elections.

Easily fixed: Become citizens. If you’ve lived in a country for five years or more and you have made no effort to become a citizen, then you’re not committed enough to that country to be trusted with the vote. It’s just that simple.

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What does not make sense is the relentless campaign to portray every health challenge as another symptom of the ‘carbon dioxide crisis’, even as the IPCC retreats from its most apocalyptic scenarios and real-world data show humanity becoming far more resilient to environmental extremes.

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I’m not a Texan. This week’s Republican senatorial primary wasn’t my rodeo, circus, or fashion show… Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, James Talarico are not my ponies, monkeys, or models, respectively.

But if you follow the news, you’ve been forced to consider the ramifications of the race. Even the math of the race.

I heard time and time again (often from Jim Geraghty on The Three Martini Lunch) that if Paxton was the nominee, the RNC would have to spend tons of money for Paxton to defeat Talarico. Many conservative commentators are very concerned about money that will need to go to Texas rather than for other tight senate races. But I also heard that $100 million was spent on Cornyn’s unsuccessful campaign to be the nominee. What if that money had been saved for the November race?

Another math problem comes courtesy of John Cornyn. In the recent race, he asked voters to look at what he’d done in the previous six months. He’s been in the Senate for 24 years. So what percentage of 24 years is six months? I believe it’s a small percentage.

There’s another math problem we can’t work out because we don’t have the figures. What percentage of senators actually support the SAVE Act? We don’t know, because it hasn’t been brought to a vote. Senator Cornyn assures us he supports it. Paxton was willing to drop out of the race if it was passed. But even if John Thune “doesn’t have the votes”, why can’t he do a vote anyway so we’ll know what percentage of senators oppose the will of 80% of the American people?

There is one math problem I can do. Jimmy Talarico says there are six genders. What percentage of those genders are imaginary? The answer is two thirds of Talarico’s genders aren’t real.

So a math problem for y’all. What are the odds of James Talarico being the next senator from Texas?

I am a Texan, so I’ll give you a hint: Zero.

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California Assembly Bill 2624, dubbed by critics the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” passed the California Assembly on Tuesday, raising concerns among opponents that undercover journalism and fraud investigations could be restricted—including investigations conducted by independent journalist Nick Shirley.

Shirley, who uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars of day care fraud in Minnesota and hospice fraud in California, took to X to share his thoughts on the vote.

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In September 2025, then-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr Marty Makary publicly acknowledged that the agency was investigating reports of child deaths following Covid-19 vaccination.

“We do know at the FDA…that there had been children who have died from the COVID vaccine,” Makary said during a CNN interview.

By that stage, however, a fierce internal dispute had already emerged inside the FDA over what investigators believed the evidence showed – and whether the public should ever see the full findings.

“It really did feel like there was some sort of cover-up going on about the Covid-19 vaccines,” said one individual familiar with the discussions.

MD Reports spoke with several current/former agency officials, advisers, and individuals briefed on the discussions, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss internal FDA deliberations.

Don’t call them ‘conspiracy theories’—call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

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Fed up with years of gun violence and repeated shootings near Aurora Avenue, some residents in North Seattle have started installing their own street barricades in an effort to protect their neighborhoods, KOMO News writes.

Neighbors living near North 97th, 98th, and 102nd streets recently placed large planter boxes, piles of dirt, and gravel across parts of residential roads that connect to Aurora Avenue North. The goal, residents say, is to make it harder for shooters to speed through side streets during violent incidents linked to ongoing prostitution and human trafficking activity in the area.

Tensions escalated again over the weekend after another shooting near Aurora Avenue N and N 98th Street. Seattle police said officers found around 40 shell casings at the scene after multiple people exchanged gunfire. Security footage reportedly captured several seconds of rapid shooting, with bullets hitting nearby apartments, homes, and parked cars. In one recent case, a stray bullet entered a family’s home and came to rest near the bassinet of a 6-week-old baby.

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Australian company Hyperion Systems has revealed a compact uncrewed surface drone dubbed the Astra 460, featuring a 3D-printed hull at this week’s Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference (IODS) 2026 in Perth, Western Australia. Hyperion specialises in additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, in conjunction with portable robotics for civilian and military applications.

In this context the WA-based company also displayed its “Titan Cell” containerised 3D printing solution which Hyperion dubs “factory-in-a-box” due to its small infrastructure footprint and transportability.

For those worried about AI taking their jobs, the improvements in additive manufacturing will, I think, rapidly bring the capital requirements needed to set up one’s own shop to blue-collar-affordable levels. We may be on the verge of an explosion in custom-job entrepreneurship.

The New Neo.

I’ve written this previous post about Somaliland. Since then, I’ve been wondering what makes Somaliland so different from its neighbor, Somalia, and so many other states in the region. I think the answer is probably complicated and probably contains many elements of which I’m unaware. But one is probably its different colonial history; Somaliland was a British colony and Somalia was an Italian colony. This can make a world of difference.

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The stereotype here is so on the nose that The Babylon Bee couldn’t have written it better.

This week is the Islamic slaughter day of Eid al-Adha, where a goat is killed to cover their sins. They connect this to the biblical story in Genesis 22 where Abraham is asked by God to offer his son as a sacrifice.

Muslims, however, believe God offered up a ram to replace Ishmael, ignoring the fact that God’s provision and promises were made through Isaac. The ram – just like the lamb’s blood the Israelites would later paint on their doorposts in Egypt – signified that God would Himself pay the price for humanity’s evil deeds.

Sarah Hoyt:

Socialism is Communism on the installment plan, having surrendered the idea that they’ll eventually get to that magical state withering away and instead believing it’s possible to stay suspended in that place where everyone gets what he needs and everyone contributes what she can. Like communism, in its most functional form, it is an oligarchy, nepotistic and brittle in the face of any new technology. For its failure mode, see the sh*tshow of Europe these days. Or the way we were headed two years ago. Eventually the nepo oligarchy becomes an open kakistocracy that can stay in power only by brutal repression. Next verse, same as the first, welcome to the end stage of various dictatorships as the velvet glove comes off and the steel clad boot comes down.

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Years ago, I wrote a column denouncing the decision of the University of California system to drop standardized testing in the cause of greater racial diversity. Now, hundreds of UC mathematics faculty have called for a return to such testing after reports showing a thirtyfold increase in students with math skills below high school level.

As written earlier, the University of California system was an early supporter of this disastrous move.

It was heralded as a way to preserve diversity after voters in California repeatedly rejected race-based admissions and the Supreme Court appeared ready to bar such practices (commonly proven with reference to standardized test differentials among applicants).

Now, many professors in the California system have come to the same conclusion as some of us who denounced the move years ago. They have witnessed the drop in academic skills and abilities among incoming students.

These tests not only have the most significant predictive value for performance but also play an important role in the advancement of minority students. Former University of California President Janet Napolitano, however, overrode those conclusions.

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Food stamps and food pantries are intended to keep struggling Americans fed.

What we found is that, in some communities, that food never reaches an American table. Instead, it gets shipped overseas and sold for profit.

The Foundry.

The Democratic Party did not merely drift left over the decades, as some still politely maintain. It was captured, body and soul, by its radical socialist wing—hijacked, thrown into the trunk, and driven straight off the cliff into the ideological abyss.

The old moderates are extinct, reduced to fossils of a bygone order that once valued pragmatism and compromise. The Blue Dogs have been buried in the backyard, their instincts for fiscal restraint and cultural common sense now dismissed as embarrassing relics.

What was once safely relegated to the “extreme Left”—the province of campus radicals, fringe activists, and academic theorists—has become the party’s beating core, its driving force, its new normal. And they no longer even pretend otherwise.

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Reform UK councillors in Birmingham have called for council meetings to be conducted only in English after an Islamic prayer was read aloud in Arabic during a mayoral ceremony in the city.

Newly-appointed Lord Mayor Zaker Choudhry invited imam Muhammad Abdali to recite a verse from the Koran in Arabic as he was sworn in. The verse was later repeated in English.

In a letter to Choudhry, Reform councillors said the council should remain “inclusive and accessible to all residents regardless of religion or culture” and argued that all proceedings should be held in English.

Group leader Jex Parkin said only English should be used in public meetings “to promote and protect the language, culture, and values of the United Kingdom.”

The move prompted criticism from Labour councillors. Majid Mahmood described the warning as “nonsense” and said Birmingham’s diversity should not be “feared or politicised.”

The imam said the prayer promoted harmony, cooperation, and opposition to “all forms of extremism and terrorism.” A council spokesman said Lord Mayors traditionally have the option to invite a religious leader of their choice to open proceedings.

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Suspected Iranian operatives are attempting to recruit people in Britain to organise anti-Israel protests, according to a report that has intensified criticism of the Labour government’s response to Tehran.

The Times reported that an undercover journalist was offered money by a suspected Iranian agent to organise demonstrations in London and recruit others sympathetic to Tehran’s anti-Israel messaging.

Elsewhere across Europe, documents suggest officers from the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are also working in the EU under diplomatic cover, and that Tehran is hoping to expand covert operations further once its war with the U.S. and Israel is over.

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Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.

Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

“Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” but “trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as ‘persons’ in the Delaware Code,” the judge said.

The dispute over municipal voting in a tiny coastal community represents an unusual flashpoint in the decades-long fight over the free speech rights of corporations and the dark money flooding the American electoral system. The US Supreme Court held in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that political spending counts as constitutionally protected speech.

Ever since that ruling effectively ended corporate campaign finance regulation, the prospect of outright voting by business entities has served as fodder for both critics and comedians.

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Regulation follows regulation. On August 12, the so-called EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) will enter into force, reorganizing the recycling framework for packaging across Europe. Adopted last year, the regulation becomes binding for all EU member states and companies on August 12 and, as an EU regulation, does not require transposition into national law. The PPWR will replace the current patchwork of national packaging recycling laws with a unified framework for the EU single market. Until then, Germany’s existing Packaging Act (VerpackG) remains in effect.

Brussels always tells the same story: regulation is supposed to strengthen the European single market and harmonize economic and environmental objectives. A beautiful narrative — especially for those who stand to profit from it. Similar dynamics have already emerged in other sectors, such as carbon emissions trading. In the end, compliance costs for affected businesses rise, the bureaucratic apparatus expands through new control and sanctioning mechanisms, and the overall economy loses competitiveness.

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The widened scope and quickened pace of the Islamic State’s military operations in the Sahel region — just below North Africa, roughly from Senegal to Sudan — threatens to alter the strategic orientation of the African continent. Efforts at countering terrorist operations in the Sahel, such as they were, have evidently failed. As all roads to Mali’s capital of Bamoko are now blocked, that country might be the first state to “go under.”

On April 25, during a coordinated attack on several Malian cities, Muslim terrorists killed the country’s Minister of Defense. The terrorists then drove the Malian Army and its allied Russian mercenaries out of the country’s north.

The military juntas ruling Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have proven themselves as ineffective at combatting Islamic terrorist operations as the democracies that they overthrew. The increasing terrorist assaults across the Sahel and the jihadists’s determined efforts to take over Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have eroded the sovereignty of these states.

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There’s being rejected by voters, then there’s being absolutely embarrassed.

That’s what we saw in Texas last night. John Cornyn, who outspent his opponent Texas AG Ken Paxton 10-1, was absolutely wrecked at the polls.

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Far-left Turkish-American millionaire and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker appears to have committed an operational-security mistake by publicly identifying American Marxist tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly been living in China and has been linked by The New York Times to CCP-aligned propaganda networks, as a major financier of pro-Marxist revolutionary NGOs operating inside the U.S.

On Sunday, Piker discussed the U.S. Treasury’s “Requests for Information” subpoena related to his “humanitarian trip” to Cuba with pro-China CodePink cofounder Susan Medea Benjamin. That story was first published by Fox News’ lead NGO investigator, Asra Nomani, on Saturday.

Piker pointed out that the Treasury likely has a broader target, is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and “anything that he has ever financed.”

He then acknowledged that Roy Singham lives in China and has been “a funding vehicle” for political movements and activism in the U.S.

We’re sure Singham network comrades are absolutely furious with Piker because, as NGO investigator Stu Smith wrote on X, “Hasan didn’t refute the network. He mapped it.”

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“What the judge did was double harm,” former Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said, commenting on the arrest of a man who wouldn’t have been free to go on a second shooting spree if a judge hadn’t ignored her sentencing request in 2020.

The second shooting spree took place on May 11 of this year, as CBS News Boston details, noting that a private citizen helped a state trooper end the threat:

“The shooting on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts Monday left two men in critical condition Tuesday as police tried to piece together what happened.

“Investigators said 46-year-old Tyler Brown of Boston walked down the street with a rifle and randomly shot 50-to-60 rounds at people and cars. He was later shot by a state trooper and a Marine veteran.”

In 2021, since-retired Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders ignored requests by Rollins and police for Brown to be given a 10-12 year sentence after he was convicted for attempting to kill Boston police officers by firing 17 rounds at them during a shootout – while he was out on parole from his 2014 sentence for a knife attack and just days after he had been released from a psychiatric hospital.

Brown, who also had a cocaine conviction in 2008, pleaded guilty to eight charges, including armed assault with intent to murder and attempted assault and battery by means of discharging a firearm.

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A Belgian court has ruled that even “factually correct” statements can constitute criminal hate speech if used to “incite hatred.”

The ruling came as anti-migration activist Dries Van Langenhove was convicted for a second time over remarks linking mass migration to crime.

This is Van Langenhove’s second such conviction, following a speech he delivered at a university in Leuven in February 2024, in which he linked mass migration to crime.

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Sweden’s parliament has approved a new law banning marriages between cousins and other close relatives, with the measure set to take effect on July 1, 2026.

The reform, passed by the Swedish Riksdag on Tuesday, will also mean that such marriages conducted abroad will generally no longer be recognised in Sweden.

The legislation was introduced by the government following an investigation into consanguineous marriages and their links to forced marriage, family pressure, and so-called “honour”-related violence. The initiative was backed by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party.

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Israel claims to have killed Mohammed Odeh—commander of Hamas’s military wing—in an airstrike on Tuesday, May 26th.

The Shin Bet security service identified the target as a hideout used by the recently promoted Odeh, resulting in an attack—in which at least three Palestinians were killed—on the residential al-Kayali building, hitting the upper three floors of the structure.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet in a joint statement:

As part of the joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet to eliminate the terrorist Mohammed Odeh, several buildings in the heart of Gaza City that served as a hideout for him were attacked, after months of intelligence surveillance in order to track his movements and the movements of his assistants in the organisation.

Israel also released an intensive strike wave across eastern and southern Lebanon on Tuesday, reportedly killing dozens of people. This follows Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to “crush” the Iranian proxy terror group Hezbollah.

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On December 3rd last year, 18-year-old Henry Nowak, a first-year student at the University of Southampton, was stabbed four times by his alleged attacker, Vickrum Digwa. As a Sikh, Digwa was permitted to carry a ceremonial kirpan knife. Perhaps this wasn’t butch enough, however, so he decided to complete his arsenal with an 8-inch blade or shastar (a Punjabi word for ‘weapon’ or ‘knife’), just to be on the safe side. The trial at Southampton Crown Court has heard how Digwa “aggressively pursued” his victim, inflicted the fatal wounds, and stood over him as he bled. In Snapchat footage recorded moments before the attack, Nowak taunted Digwa to say he was a bad man. Digwa replied: “I am a bad man.” He did not call for help.

Here’s the problem for Nowak: he was white; his assailant was not. Which means Digwa was perfectly within his rights to play the race card and did so to maximum effect.

When the police arrived at the scene, they handcuffed the collapsed victim (which must have been a relief to those concerned about where his blood was going). According to bodycam footage played in court, Nowak repeatedly told the officers that he had been stabbed and “couldn’t breathe.” They still handcuffed him. The police eventually decided to render first aid, shortly before Nowak lost consciousness. The ironic parallels with George Floyd are so obvious I feel I need comment no further.

Digwa, meanwhile, claimed he acted in “self-defence,” faced with the unspeakable violence of Nowak’s alleged “racial abuse.” Despite the four fatal stab wounds, the fact that Nowak’s phone was later discovered in Digwa’s pocket, and the revelation that Digwa’s mother was allegedly filmed removing and disposing of the knife, Digwa’s barrister shamefully instructed jurors to decide whether the murderer acted “in the heat of the moment.”

Science Daily.

Researchers at Texas A&M have developed a nasal spray that appears to reverse brain aging by calming inflammation and restoring the brain’s energy systems. After just two doses, memory and cognitive function improved for months, raising hopes for future treatments targeting dementia and brain fog.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surpised.

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Most of us are already quite comfortable recycling our household waste. In Spain, for instance, millions of tonnes of packaging are processed every year, but did you know that buildings and their materials can also be recycled, or that an entire building could be completely dismantled and reassembled?

Formula 1, often a laboratory for innovation, offers us a real-world example of this in the form of the Red Bull team’s “pit box”, known as the F1Holzhaus – literally, “the wooden house”. It made its debut at the 2019 Spanish Grand Prix and has been the team’s “home” in Europe ever since. Before every Grand Prix, fourteen workers assemble its 1,221 square metres in just 32 hours, and then dismantle it in less than a day.

This building reflects a change in the conception of construction, which has to be increasingly committed to sustainable buildings that can be adapted, modified and reused.

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For Beijing, Taiwan is the unfinished chapter of the Chinese civil war and the symbolic wound of national division. But it is also a military-geographic problem. As long as Taiwan remains outside the control of the People’s Republic of China, China’s navy faces a barrier along the first island chain. Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines form a maritime arc that limits China’s free access to the wider Pacific. If Taiwan fell under Beijing’s control, that barrier would be broken.

For Taiwan, geography is both shield and vulnerability. The sea protects it from easy invasion, but the same sea makes it dependent on trade, shipping, imported energy, and open maritime routes. As noted in a recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Taiwan’s island status and dependence on maritime supply chains make blockade scenarios strategically dangerous even without a direct invasion.

Energy remains one of Taiwan’s deepest structural vulnerabilities. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Taiwan relies heavily on imported LNG and coal for electricity generation, making maritime security inseparable from energy security. This dependence means that any prolonged disruption in shipping lanes could rapidly become an economic and social crisis.

This is why a Taiwan crisis would not necessarily begin with amphibious landings or missile strikes. It could begin with pressure: inspection zones, cyberattacks, port disruption, gray-zone naval operations, airspace intimidation, or partial maritime restrictions. The objective would not necessarily be immediate conquest, but psychological exhaustion and economic destabilization.

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How do we learn to remember? At the most fundamental level, it’s all about chemicals and electricity. Beyond their roles in diet and nutrition, calcium and magnesium work as ions, or charged particles, in the brain. Magnesium can block a channel found within brain receptors known as NMDARs. When the blockade lifts, calcium can pass through the channel. These processes enable the brain to perform essential functions, like learning and remembering.

Scientists have known all of this for a while. What they couldn’t figure out was how NMDARs tell calcium from magnesium. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Hiro Furukawa, postdoc Rubin Steigerwald, and colleagues have found an answer that could have implications for brain development and disease. It involves water, dehydration, and a molecular cage captured across 50,000 movies.

WIRED.

For more than 80 years, the principle of “the surface of an object must be smooth” has been the basic premise of aeronautical engineering throughout the world in order to suppress the transition to turbulence and reduce aerodynamic drag. This premise was based on the results of a 1940 study by Ichiro Tani, a Japanese aerodynamicist who quantitatively demonstrated the relationship between “surface roughness” (an indicator of the state of the machined surface) and turbulent transition, arguing that surface roughness, which was unavoidable with the manufacturing technology of the time, prevented laminar flow from being realized.

However, in 1989 Tani reinterpreted the experimental data on rough-surface pipes obtained by fluid engineer Johann Nikulase in the 1930s, bringing a new perspective that “roughness may not necessarily only promote turbulent transition and increase fluid resistance.” Inheriting this idea, a research group led by Yasuaki Kohama of Tohoku University experimentally demonstrated in the 1990s that fibrous rough surfaces, which have fine fibrous irregularities on their surface, have the effect of delaying transition under certain conditions.

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Virginians were promised affordability. Instead, they’re getting an energy agenda that risks making electricity more expensive and less reliable.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger has consistently sided with the climate-policy wing of her party even when its proposals threaten higher energy costs for consumers.

One such proposal is rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). In 2023, Virginia withdrew from RGGI, the regional cap-and-trade scheme that imposes a carbon tax in 11 states. As one of her first acts as governor, Spanberger signed legislation to rejoin RGGI, forcing the commonwealth back into the costly compact.

But Pennsylvania provides an interesting case study for Virginians to consider. After six years of legal battles and lost investment, the Keystone State abandoned RGGI—and the commonwealth had a lot of good reasons to do so.

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This is called a normal holiday weekend in Chicago.

Time to leave.

Babylon Bee.

Parents of high school graduate David Simpson helped their son sound out the words on his diploma after the teen expressed frustration at not being able to read the words on the piece of paper.

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The owner of a heavily decorated pro-Trump home in Southern California has died days after he was beaten outside his residence, according to reports.

Kerry Sheron, a 69-year-old Army veteran known in Escondido for covering his home with pro-Trump banners and American flags, died Sunday night after spending nearly a week in critical condition following the May 20 attack, FOX 5 reported.

Authorities say Thomas Caleb Butler, 32, allegedly attacked Sheron outside the home in what prosecutors described as an unprovoked assault.

Butler has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, elder abuse, criminal threats, and battery charges.

Deputy District Attorney Ross Garcia told the court Sheron suffered devastating injuries after being punched to the ground and repeatedly struck in the head.

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Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a message on May 26 calling for greater unity across the Muslim world against the United States and Israel, saying that the chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” will become the rallying slogans of Muslims and “the oppressed of the world.”

It’s already a common slogan—among Muslims.

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They keep doing it because the consequences are not harsh enough yet, and they enjoy the protection of Democrat politicians and NGO-backed funding. Without support from the Democrat Party and global non-profits, the Anti-ICE movement would not exist. In other words, they’re astroturf.

Of course, that doesn’t stop them from causing all kinds of trouble. Federal agents moved within the past 48 hours to break down a make-shift “autonomous zone” built by leftist activists around the New Jersey Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark.

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Apparently some minorities are more equal that others.

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Conservatives have every right to feel betrayed by the Republican Congress’ recent antics.

Free marketeers, from the U.S. House to homes across America, were told in April to accept Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s emaciated Reconciliation 2.0 bill. The South Dakotan employed a limited-use budget procedure that obviates that pesky 60-vote filibuster threshold and permits passage via simple majority.

These special bills typically deliver the sponsoring party’s leading initiatives. This is how President Donald Trump and Republicans enacted the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” in 2025 and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. Reconciliation was the needle through which former President Barack Obama and Democrats injected the poison of Obamacare into America’s body politic in 2010.

The dangerously cautious Thune had no such ambitions. Rather than a freight train, Reconciliation 2.0 was a rusty caboose. It funded little more than Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol salaries.

Conservatives, eager for a bill packed with Trump/MAGA reforms, were suspicious. “I don’t think Border Patrol and ICE should be isolated,” warned Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the House Freedom Caucus’s policy chairman. “House Republicans are concerned about giving up their best tool to pressure the Senate to pass legislation dealing with affordability ahead of the November elections,” the Washington Examiner reported.