Check it out.

WhatCable explains cable speed, charging limits, e-marker data, and connected devices in plain English. No more guessing why a cable charges slow or refuses to drive your display.

The War Zone.

The U.S. carried out new attacks on Iranian targets today, striking several empty oil tankers trying to break the blockade, according to a post on X by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). This latest incident comes as the UAE says it was attacked again by Iran today and hours after the U.S. and Iran exchanged blows in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. forces “disabled M/T Sea Star III and M/T Sevda, May 8, prior to both vessels entering an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman in violation of the ongoing U.S. blockade, CENTCOM stated. “A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet from USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) disabled both tankers after firing precision munitions into their smokestacks, preventing the non-compliant ships from entering Iran.”

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States won by President Donald Trump in the 2024 election collectively gained more than $2.2 trillion in adjusted gross income from interstate migration between 2012 and 2023, while states won by Vice President Kamala Harris lost nearly $2 trillion during the same period.

ScienceDaily.

A test designed to push the limits of single cell DNA sequencing ended up revealing something far more surprising: a microscopic organism from a pond at Oxford University Parks appears to use the genetic code in a way scientists had not seen before.

Naval News.

Russia is investing heavily in a new generation of “super weapons” designed to bypass and potentially nullify conventional defenses. Foremost among them is Poseidon, an autonomous, nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed underwater weapon with effectively intercontinental range. Details about its newest dedicated carrier submarine, Khabarovsk, are only gradually coming into focus.

Babylon Bee.

A federal judge ordered the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s purported suicide note, which oddly appears to have been written on Hillary Clinton’s personal stationery.

Nothin’ to see here—move along, move along….

CBS, a Voice of the Crust.

President Trump’s gambit to push out of office several of the Indiana Republicans who defied his redistricting efforts appeared to largely succeed on Tuesday.

Five of the Indiana state senators who voted against redrawing the state’s House maps last year lost their Republican primaries on Tuesday, ousted by Trump-endorsed primary challengers, The Associated Press projected. A sixth Trump-supported candidate also won the GOP primary in an open seat where a Republican who rejected redistricting decided not to run for reelection.

One senator survived a primary challenge backed by the president on Tuesday. One primary between an anti-redistricting Republican and a Trump endorsee did not have a projected winner as of late Tuesday, with the two candidates separated by a razor-thin margin.

The Statehouse revenge campaign served as a test of Mr. Trump’s influence over his party in a set of normally low-profile races where Oval Office intervention is virtually unheard of — and highlighted Mr. Trump’s intense interest in the nationwide redistricting scramble.

ATQUE: PRIMARY BLOODBATH: The Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict their map are now unemployed

Read it.

In a major break with tradition, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle has directed that the Navy ships that transport Marines into war zones be commanded by surface warfare officers instead of aviators.

The change applies to amphibious assault ships, transport docks, and dock landing ships, Caudle wrote in an April 24 memo that has been shared on Reddit. The Navy confirmed to Task & Purpose that the memo is authentic.

The Navy currently has a total of 32 amphibious warfare ships, including nine big deck amphibious assault ships, which carry Marines and vertical-take off aircraft like the MV-22B Osprey, helicopters and F-35 fighters.

In the memo, Caudle wrote that his decision is tied to Navy efforts to improve amphibious warfare ships’ readiness.

Read it.

Researchers at Harvard have developed a fleet of robotic ants that mimic the self-organizing behavior of social insects to build and dismantle structures without blueprints or central leadership.

How very Progressive.

These are simple, decentralized robots that can spontaneously organize to build — and just as easily destroy — complex structures.

Instead of chemical pheromones, these robots use light fields (photormones) to communicate.

“Our new study shows how simple, local rules can lead to the emergence of complex task completion that is self-organized and thus robust and adaptive,” said Professor L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics at SEAS and FAS.

“We also introduce the concept of exbodied intelligence, where collective cognition arises not solely from individual agents, but from their ongoing interaction with an evolving environment,” Mahadevan added.

Automated activists. That ought to save Democrats some money.

Read it.

Apple’s Vision Pro has hit another medical-use milestone, with a New York ophthalmologist becoming the first surgeon to perform cataract surgery using the spatial computing headset.

Dr. Eric Rosenberg of SightMD completed the initial procedure in October 2025 and has since performed hundreds of additional cases using ScopeXR, a surgical platform he co-developed for Apple’s mixed reality device.

ScopeXR streams live feeds from 3D digital surgical microscopes directly into the Vision Pro, which lets the surgeon view the operative field in stereoscopic 3D while overlaying preoperative diagnostic data. The platform also supports real-time remote collaboration, allowing surgeons to virtually join procedures and see exactly what the operating surgeon sees.

BBC, a Voice of the Crust.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is quitting the Opec and Opec+ groups of major oil producing nations next month after nearly 60 years of membership.

The UAE said its decision would help it meet growing global energy demand in the long term after recent investments to boost its production capacity.

It is seen as a blow to the cartel, with one analyst describing the exit as “the beginning of the end of OPEC”.

The Gulf state’s energy minister said being a country with no obligation under the groups would give it more flexibility.

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The race to build global satellite internet networks is entering a new phase. On April 27, 2026, United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched 29 satellites into orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, marking the first full-scale deployment of the constellation and a major milestone for one of the most ambitious challengers to SpaceX’s Starlink. While other major projects have also recently been launched, this development signals that competition in low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband is intensifying rapidly.

As our chart shows, Starlink remains by far the dominant player at the moment. Operated by SpaceX, the constellation had already deployed more than 10,300 satellites as of April 2026, with regulatory approval for around 15,000 and plans to deploy up to 42,000. The network is already providing broadband services in more than 100 countries and territories worldwide and continues to expand. Its U.S. rival, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, is now moving from testing to deployment. With 239 satellites already launched and a planned constellation of 3,236 satellites, the company aims to leverage its cloud infrastructure (AWS) and partnerships with launch providers such as ULA to compete in the global broadband market.

China is emerging as the main challenger in this sector, with multiple large-scale constellations underway. The state-backed Qianfan project, led by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), has already deployed more than 100 satellites and aims to reach around 15,000 in the long term. At the same time, the Xingwang constellation, overseen by the China Satellite Network Group (CSNC), is scaling up, with nearly 200 satellites in orbit as of April 2026 and plans for about 13,000 in total. Together, these initiatives highlight Beijing’s strategic push to build a sovereign satellite internet infrastructure.

The War Zone.

A day after President Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces to destroy Iranian ships laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday said efforts to prevent mining are already underway.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) “has a variety of smaller Boston Whaler-size boats,” Air Force Gen. Dan Caine told reporters, including from The War Zone, during a Friday morning media briefing. “We have forces up there deterring and preventing them from continuing to [lay mines], and will continue to do so pursuant to the orders of the Secretary and the President.”

Babylon Bee.

Sounds like a good move.

Naval News.

Hanwha Ocean and Leidos Gibbs & Cox are designing a high-capacity vessel capable of carrying up to half a brigade combat team and conducting drone mothership or arsenal ship roles ahead of the company’s plans to expand its American operations.

The South Korean defense firm presented the Global Fast Sealift during their debut at Sea-Air-Space (SAS) 2026. On the surface, the 31,000-ton vessel appears to be a civilian transport vessel with its large container and vehicle storage capacity – amounting up to 800 containers and Car Equivalent Units according to a concept sheet. However, Hanwha and Leidos have also prepared the design to accommodate military missions in the event of conflict.

According to a Hanwha factsheet, the design allows for “optimization for high-capacity commercial shipping during peacetime and rapid military sealift during wartime, ensuring both economic and strategic value.”

Read it.

For years, the privacy advice was simple: clear your cookies, use incognito mode, or click “Reject All” on those annoying consent banners. That advice is now outdated.

A groundbreaking study published last year has delivered the first peer-reviewed proof that the $600 billion online advertising industry has moved on from cookies. The new tracking method is called browser fingerprinting, and it works even if you never log in, never accept cookies, and have legally opted out under privacy laws.

Researchers from Texas A&M University and Johns Hopkins University built a tool named FPTrace to measure exactly how this works in the wild. They simulated real user sessions, systematically altered browser fingerprints, and watched what happened to the ads being served and the bids advertisers placed in real time. The results were clear: when the fingerprint changed, the price advertisers were willing to pay to target that “user” changed with it. Tracking signals dropped. The system was actively using the fingerprint to follow people across sessions and sites.

And crucially, this happened even in tests where cookies were fully deleted and users were in “opt-out” mode under GDPR and CCPA rules. The law’s exit door for cookies does not cover fingerprinting.

New Atlas.

Engineers at Rice University have cracked one of printed electronics’ most stubborn problems: how to cure freshly printed conductive ink without destroying the delicate surface underneath.

Their solution, published in Science Advances, uses a custom device that concentrates microwave energy into an area smaller than 200 micrometers (0.008 in) – heating only the newly deposited material to above 160 °C (320 °F) while everything around it stays cool.

Read it.

U.S. Marines took custody of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to get past the U.S. naval blockade, President Donald announced Sunday afternoon.

In a post on social media, Trump announced that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer the USS Spruance disabled the Iranian-flagged vessel Touska, a ship under U.S. Treasury sanctions, and fired a direct hit on it. The Spruance, one of the ships operating near or in the Strait of Hormuz, told the ship to stop and turn back, Trump said.

The tracking side MarineTraffic reported that the Touska was sailing in the Persian Gulf earlier on Sunday. In a statement Sunday afternoon, U.S. Central Command said the Touska was sailing towards Bandar Abbas, Iran. The Touska reportedly ignored several direct messages from the USS Spruance.

“After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room. Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch MK 45 Gun into Touska’s engine room,” CENTCOM said in its statement.

Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit then boarded the Touska. They now have “full custody” of the ship, Trump wrote. It’s not clear what is next for the cargo ship and its crew. CENTCOM shared a brief clip of footage taken from the USS Spruance, showing the destroyer sailing near the cargo ship and eventually firing its guns at the Touska.

FA, FO.

ATQUE: U.S. Navy Destroyer Disables Iranian-Flagged Cargo Vessel (Naval News)

The Register.

Every now and then, a researcher comes up with something that sounds either wrong or unoriginal to outsiders – yet carries just enough of a chance of being correct, novel, and consequential to demand a closer look.

On this occasion, the honor goes to Andrzej Odrzywo?ek, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Jagiellonian University, Kraków.

In a recently updated, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, Odrzywo?ek says he has, in essence, developed a two-button calculator that can compute the standard repertoire of a scientific calculator familiar to a high school math and science student. You might have to push the buttons a number of times, but the point is the underlying simplicity.

A single two-input gate already suffices for all Boolean logic in digital hardware; Odrzywo?ek’s claim is that continuous mathematics may have an analogous primitive. It can generate elementary functions from a single operator that would otherwise require multiple distinct operations. These include trigonometric functions such as sine, cosine, and tangent; algebraic functions; and arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The two-input gate also produces constants including ?, e (Euler’s number, 2.71828…), and i (the square root of minus one).

The proposed operator is eml(x, y) = exp(x) – ln(y). Eml is the exponential-minus-log function, exp is the exponential function, and ln is the natural logarithm (or the logarithm to the base e).

“A calculator with just two buttons, EML and the digit 1, can compute everything a full scientific calculator does. This is not a mere mathematical trick. Because one repeatable element suffices, mathematical expressions become uniform circuits, much like electronics built from identical transistors, opening new ways to encoding, evaluating, and discovering formulas across scientific computing,” the paper says.

It even has a diagram showing how the functions cascade from the proposed operator.

Read it.

Science Daily.

A newly discovered molecule could reshape the future of weight loss treatments by mimicking the powerful appetite-suppressing effects of drugs like Ozempic — but without many of the unpleasant side effects. Identified using artificial intelligence, this tiny peptide, called BRP, appears to act directly on the brain’s appetite-control center, helping animals eat less and lose fat without nausea or muscle loss.

The War Zone.

A day into the U.S.-imposed military blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, several ships have apparently transited the narrow waterway, including at least two that reportedly had previously stopped at Iranian ports. However, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is pushing back against claims that vessels ran the blockade. As we noted yesterday, CENTCOM said the maritime exclusion operation would be “enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.”

Meanwhile, there are indications that the U.S. and Iran may continue seeking a diplomatic offramp to the crisis, which began Feb. 28 when America and Israel began bombarding the Islamic Republic. We will discuss that in greater detail later in this story.

Associated Press, a Voice of the Crust.

A federal judge must end his “intrusive” contempt investigation of the Trump administration for failing to comply with an order over flights carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last year, a divided appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.

Chief Judge James Boasberg abused his discretion in forging ahead with criminal contempt proceedings stemming from the March 2025 deportation flights, according to the majority opinion by a three-judge panel from U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The ruling is the latest twist in a yearlong legal saga that has became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The White House has portrayed Boasberg as a biased judge who overstepped his authority.

Trump’s administration has a “clear and indisputable” right to the termination of the contempt proceedings, Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Huffington Post, a Voice of the Crust.

I guess they didn’t get the Narrative Memo.

Read it.

So you say you want a revolution? Well, take a look at what’s happening in Ireland right now. Tens of thousands of farmers, truckers, and other fed-up “normies” are taking to the streets of Dublin to protest fuel taxes, mass immigration, and poverty-inducing “climate change” policies. For the most part, corporate news propagandists in both Europe and North America are intentionally ignoring the combustible situation. Just when I had begun to think that all the “fighting Irish” had moved to America, the Old Country has started to show signs of life. Perhaps there are still a few irascible pugilists willing to bash heads and take on the globalist empire after all.

Babylon Bee.

As you’ve probably heard, there is a chimpanzee civil war in Uganda.

The Babylon Bee is here with what you need to know so you sound educated when the chimp civil war comes up in daily conversation.

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Back in 2017, when I started working in venture capital, AVs were one of the hottest themes in “tech”. Perhaps this had something to do with Elon Musk proclaiming in December 2015 that Tesla would deliver “full autonomy” within two years. (Musk has earned himself a reputation for repeatedly jumping the gun on this topic.) This frenzy was also fueled by Uber, which was flying high at the time, and talking a big game about self-driving cars. In any case, a substantial share of the tech community was convinced that AVs were right around the corner.

In hindsight, this level of excitement was clearly premature. Tech leaders were generally way too bullish about the prospect for AV commercialization in 2017, and 2018, and 2019 (and 2020, and 2021…) Yet, in the scheme of human history, it turns out that AVs were, in fact, approximately “right around the corner”. AVs are finally real now, and most people I know have not yet fully contended with the transformational potential of this technology.

That’s partially because of the way that Waymo, the leading American AV company, has rolled out its services: gradually, and then all at once… one city at a time. This initial approach to the market was driven by the need to train machine learning models on real city streets, and establish a track record of safety in order to earn public acceptance. If you haven’t spent time recently in either of the company’s launch markets — Phoenix or San Francisco — you may not be aware of just how rapidly Waymo has made progress towards both of those objectives.

The American Mind.

The administration’s prioritization of the “worst first” has unintentionally created a de facto enforcement amnesty for aliens unlawfully present in the United States who have not committed a subsequent crime. DHS data indicate that in 2025, ICE deported fewer than 350,000 illegal aliens. This is not the mass deportation agenda the American people voted for.

President Trump deserves credit for securing the southwest border and all but stopping the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. But much more needs to be done on interior enforcement to effectuate an actual mass deportation agenda that the president promised on the campaign trail.

Enter the Mass Deportation Coalition. This coalition was organized in February 2026 in response to political, operational, legal, and physical attacks on deportation operations. Our purpose is to support President Trump’s signature campaign promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. The Mass Deportation Coalition is composed of immigration law and policy experts (including those affiliated with The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life), former senior and rank-and-file law enforcement officials, advocates, and supporters of immigration enforcement. We are growing and regularly adding new members to the coalition.

The Foundry.

he days of peak DOGE may be over, but Trump’s quiet transformation of the federal bureaucracy continues.

The Trump administration shrank the federal workforce to its smallest number since the launch of LBJ’s Great Society. This incredible stat, little remarked upon by the media, was dredged up by X user Christian Heiens.

“Since Trump took office, over 352,000 Federal employees have been fired, resigned, or retired and were not replaced,” Heiens wrote on X. “The Federal workforce is smaller today than at any point since 1966.”

Read it.

A woman who lived with three life-threatening autoimmune diseases for more than a decade has returned to a near-normal life after a cell therapy reset her wayward immune system.

The 47-year-old had had nine different treatments, none of which had a lasting impact, before receiving the therapy last year at University Hospital Erlangen in Germany. At the time, she required daily blood transfusions and permanent blood thinning medication to control her illness.

Within weeks of having the cell therapy, doctors noticed that all three diseases had responded, marking a world first and a striking improvement in the woman’s condition. For the past 14 months she has been in treatment-free remission and largely able to return to normal life.

Read it.

It takes some people longer to wake up than others.

The Register.

An enthusiast has built a digital 3D model of the SG-41 cipher machine, replete with wheels, levers, and stepping logic, accessible via a browser.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

The War Zone.

Bleeding from injuries incurred ejecting from his F-15E Strike Eagle fighter and climbing a craggy mountain to escape, the U.S. Air Force Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) hid out in a crevice as both rescuers and Iranians frantically searched for him. Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered new details about the complex and dangerous missions to rescue the WSO and pilot – call signs DUDE44 Bravo and DUDE44 Alpha – whose Strike Eagle had been shot down April 3, the first loss of crewed aircraft to enemy fire during Epic Fury. While they offered the government’s narrative of events, and it should it should be treated as such, other details emerged that we will address later in this story.

These rescue missions involved hundreds of troops, scores of aircraft and diversion operations over more than a half dozen different parts of Iran. It required risking the lives of many of those personnel to recover the two airmen.

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The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for the Justice Department to move forward with dismissing a criminal case in which Steve Bannon, an influential ally of President Donald Trump, was convicted after defying a congressional subpoena.

Bannon was convicted by a jury in Washington in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents or testimony to a Democratic-led House of Representatives panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court’s decision to uphold Bannon’s conviction.

Trump’s Justice Department, in urging the Supreme Court to toss the lower court’s decision, told the justices in court papers it has determined that dismissal of Bannon’s case “is in the interests of justice.” The department already had filed a motion to dismiss the case at the trial court level.

More accurately Trump groupie Steve Bannon. I’m sure Bannon thinks that the relationship is closer than Trump does.

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Silicon is king in the semiconductor technology that underpins smartphones, computers, electric vehicles and more, but its crown may be slipping, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State. In a world first, they used two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only an atom thick and retain their properties at that scale, unlike silicon, to develop a computer capable of simple operations.

The development, published today (June 11) in Nature, represents a major leap toward the realization of thinner, faster and more energy-efficient electronics, the researchers said. They created a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) computer — technology at the heart of nearly every modern electronic device — without relying on silicon. Instead, they used two different 2D materials to develop both types of transistors needed to control the electric current flow in CMOS computers: molybdenum disulfide for n-type transistors and tungsten diselenide for p-type transistors.

“Silicon has driven remarkable advances in electronics for decades by enabling continuous miniaturization of field-effect transistors (FETs),” said Saptarshi Das, the Ackley Professor of Engineering and professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, who led the research. FETs control current flow using an electric field, which is produced when a voltage is applied. “However, as silicon devices shrink, their performance begins to degrade. Two-dimensional materials, by contrast, maintain their exceptional electronic properties at atomic thickness, offering a promising path forward.”

The War Zone.

The F-15E Weapons System Officer (WSO), missing since his plane was shot down on Friday, has been rescued after a very risky combat search and rescue operation and fierce firefight in southern Iran. The pilot had already been retrieved during the rescue operation in which two HH-60H Jolly Green II combat search and rescue (CSAR) helicopters were reportedly damaged by incoming fire, injuring several troops.

So that’s a load off of everyone’s mind.

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On a humid morning in Fukuoka, a coastal city in southern Japan, a new kind of power came online. Japan has launched Asia’s first osmotic power plant, which generates electricity by mixing fresh water with salt water.

“It’s a meaningful plan—the start of a plan, perhaps—in our response against climate change,” said Kenji Hirokawa, director of the Seawater Desalination Center, which runs the facility, as per Gizmodo.

Fukuoka’s plant is only the second of its kind worldwide, following one in Denmark that opened in 2023. Japan’s version is larger and marks a step forward for this little-used but promising renewable energy source.

The plant will generate about 880,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year—enough to help run a nearby desalination facility and supply around 220 homes. That equals the output of two soccer fields of solar panels, but osmotic power keeps running day and night, in any weather.

The War Zone.

The A-10 may be in the twilight of its career, but that doesn’t mean it’s done proving new capabilities, some of which could impact the USAF’s larger tactical airpower force. In particular, it just tested one capability we have been highlighting as a huge opportunity and potential necessity for a future fight in the Pacific.

A test A-10, looking like it borrowed its nose from an A-6 Intruder, flew for the first time equipped with a refueling probe in place of its nose-mounted aerial refueling receptacle earlier this week. The program has been ongoing for some time. Within days of that first flight, the test ‘Hog’ successfully plugged into a C-130 equipped with aerial refueling drogues. An image, circulating on social media, shows the A-10 in question connected to a drogue trailing behind a Hercules.

This is very odd, since the A-10 is an Air Force plane and ordinarily uses the boom-and-socket Air Force refueling method. The drogue-and-probe method is used by Navy planes. Perhaps they’re readying the A-10s to refuel from the FA-18 tankers often used by carrier jets.

Read it.

Read it.

Not just that, but according to the Financial Times, the Alberta separatists have met with Trump officials a few times over the past year.

This could prove amusing.

Read it.

A federal judge has ordered California to pay more than $4.52 million in attorneys’ fees to a coalition of parents and teachers who successfully challenged the state’s anti-parent public school policies on student gender transitions.

U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez issued the fee award on March 30 in the long-running case, citing the plaintiffs’ prevailing status after winning summary judgment and a class-wide injunction last year.

The ruling came as the underlying dispute continues in the federal appeals court.

Read it.

A new report from researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia, published in Carcinogenesis, finds that nicotine-based e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung and oral cancers, a finding that may alarm the millions of young people, from high school through college, and into the professional world, who use them heavily.

Researchers examined human studies, animal experiments, and lab tests. Together, they found signs that vaping can damage DNA, cause inflammation and oxidative stress, and expose users to harmful chemicals considered drivers of cancer. Some rodent studies also found lung tumors after vape exposure.

“Nicotine-based e-cigarettes are likely to be carcinogenic to humans who use them, causing an indeterminate burden of oral cancer and lung cancer,” the researchers wrote in the report.

Most attempts to adjust one’s mood through recreational chemicals appear to be a bad idea.

Read it.

Despite the complicated and heartbreaking situation, Sasha has been able to reconnect with her biological family, which has been an unexpected blessing.

Sasha said that meeting her family was,

…like walking into a house you’ve never been in, but knowing where the light switches are, like I know how to talk to these people.

The connection also extended to Sasha’s young children, who have instantly bonded with their biological grandparents.

Well, this pretty much settles the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate.

Read it.

On Thursday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg delivered what many are calling one of the most significant setbacks in recent memory for the EU’s traditional bureaucratic and centrist consensus.

In a single day, MEPs advanced stricter mass deportation rules, rejected controversial mass surveillance of private communications (known as “Chat Control”), and moved forward on dropping tariffs on key U.S. goods as part of a broader transatlantic trade reset.

These outcomes reflect a pragmatic and unprecedented alliance between the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and right-wing to so-called ‘far-right’ groups such as the Patriots for Europe (PfE), European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), and others. For the first time in years, traditional “firewalls” isolating nationalist voices have cracked, forcing Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s agenda into retreat on sovereignty, borders, digital rights, and economic realism.

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The Trump administration scored a victory on Wednesday as an appeals court ruled that it can detain illegal immigrants without bond.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of the Department of Homeland Security’s detention policy, in the case of illegal immigrant Joaquin Herrera Avila.

All three judges on the 8th Circuit panel were Republican appointees, one appointed by President George W. Bush and two by President Donald Trump.

Read it.

Growth rates in U.S. metro areas dropped the steepest in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border last year because of declines in immigrants while counties along Florida’s Gulf Coast lost residents due to a series of hurricanes, according to new population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The estimates showed that a majority of metro areas and counties had slower population gains last year, which the bureau attributed primarily to a slowdown in international migration, compared to the previous year when an influx of immigrants had helped urban areas recover from the COVID-19 pandemic a few years earlier.

The average growth rate for metro areas fell from 1.1% in 2024 to 0.6% in 2025.

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One week ago, when fears that the Strait of Hormuz blockade would mean a permanent collapse in oil supply (we have since seen that Iran is allowing “friendly” ships to cross the strait, especially if they grease the toll-keeper with $2 million per crossing) hit a fever pitch and pushed the price of Brent to $120, we said that “Saudi Arabia Has Already Revived More Than Half Its Oil Exports Via Hormuz Bypass.”

With Iran blocking Saudi ships from cross Hormuz for the time being, the Kingdom had drastically ramped up its oil exports to more than half of normal levels despite the disruptions from the Iran war, a successful sign for the kingdom’s ambitious contingency plan to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. To do this, Saudi Arabia has ramped up crude shipments from Yanbu export terminals on the Red Sea coast as it diverted supplies away from the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz via the East-West pipeline.

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Researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Lehigh University have developed a groundbreaking nanostructured copper alloy that could redefine high-temperature materials for aerospace, defense and industrial applications.

Their findings, published in the journal Science, introduce a Cu-Ta-Li (Copper-Tantalum-Lithium) alloy with exceptional thermal stability and mechanical strength, making it one of the most resilient copper-based materials ever created.

Read it.

In 2021, dermatologist David Ozog was on holiday with his family in the Bahamas, when his 18-year-old son had a massive stroke. The teenager was airlifted to Florida, and then to Chicago for surgery. As his son was lying partially paralysed in a hospital bed, Ozog got a call from a colleague who had an unconventional suggestion.

The colleague, a dermatologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, told Ozog about research he was conducting with the US Department of Defense. Early results hinted that red and near-infrared light applied to the head might protect neural tissue after brain injury. He urged Ozog to consider trying it on his son.

Ozog stayed up until 4 a.m. that night reading scientific papers and, ultimately, ordering several panels made of red and near-infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs). “I started sneaking them into the hospital,” says Ozog, who works at Henry Ford Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Today, his son is walking and back in university. Ozog cannot prove that light therapy made a difference, but he thinks that it helped. He has since become a convert to an idea that, at the time, was considered fringe. “I thought the same thing,” he says, “How could shining this thing on you possibly have any biologic effect?”