Read it.

A report released by House committees on Aug. 13 alleged that Harvard University prioritized financial ties over American national security and received more than $600 million from China, the most of any U.S. university.

The War Zone.

Last week, the U.S. Navy announced that future stretched Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN) fitted with Virginia Payload Modules (VPM) will be recategorized as guided missile types (SSGN). In doing so, the service disclosed that two Block V Virginia class boats will lack a VPM, and the four large vertical launch tubes contained therein, rather than just one as had been previously understood. Now, the Navy has confirmed to TWZ directly that the second VPM-less Block V will have a one-of-a-kind seabed warfare configuration. This will allow it to conduct espionage missions on the seafloor, a role currently filled by the USS Jimmy Carter, a one-off subvariant of the Seawolf class attack submarine.

In its August 3 press release, the Navy said it planned to acquire 19 VPM-equipped Virginia class SSGNs across the Block V and Block VI subclasses. As TWZ noted at the time, this created a discrepancy of one submarine based on publicly stated procurement plans. It was already known that the first of the 12 Block Vs, the future USS Oklahoma, would lack a VPM, but the expectation had been that the other 11 would have this feature. The Block VI production run is currently set to consist of nine more submarines, all with VPMs. We correctly posited last week that the outlier could be the seabed warfare submarine, the basic plans for which emerged some years ago now.

Read it.

Researchers in China have created a textile from living mycelium that is self-cleaning, near self-repairing and can be coloured or made UV protective through “plug-and-play” add-ons of different fungi or yeast.

The breakthrough from the researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology is a type of engineered living material (ELM) – a material built off living organisms that stay active even after they’re fabricated into their final form.

This distinguishes it from most contemporary uses of mycelium, which involve drying and effectively killing the fungus to produce a stable, non-growing material that has become a popular emerging alternative to plastic packaging and vinyl.

Eeeeeeeeewwwwwww….

The War Zone.

From recent satellite imagery, the Russian Navy now looks to be using nets to protect submarines from drone attacks at a highly strategic base on the country’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. There are also signs that Russian forces have been taking new steps at a separate base along the Black Sea to shield submarines against uncrewed aerial threats. The appearance of the nets over the submarines at the base in Kamchatka point to how Russia’s concerns about drone threats have extended to critical facilities far removed from the battlefields of Ukraine.

TWZ obtained the imagery showing the netting in place over submarines at the Russian Navy’s base at Rybachiy from Vantor. Business insider was first to report on these images. Rybachiy is notably the homeport for the vast majority of Borei and Borei-A class nuclear ballistic missile submarines, or SSBNs, in service in Russia today. It is also home to various other guided missile and attack submarines assigned to the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet.

Images of Rybachiy from Vantor taken on August 4, seen at the top of this story and below, show several different types of submarines fully covered by nets. What is visible in the imagery is broadly consistent with netting that Russian forces have employed in and around Ukraine as a countermeasure against kamikaze drone attacks against assets on the ground and in the water. Similar netting has also observed in use by other armed forces elsewhere globally.

Interesting Engineering.

A U.S. critical minerals company has recently confirmed the nation’s largest known tungsten resource at its Railroad Valley Minerals Project in Nye County, Nevada, despite a NASA land withdrawal restricting exploration across part of the site.

In its updated resource report, 3 Proton Lithium (3PL) said that the project hosts an inferred resource of 1.78 million tons of tungsten. The company revealed that the deposit is part of a mineral system that also contains world-class resources of lithium, potash, and boron.

Read itl

You wanted to slow down ALL immigration? This is how you do it.

Democrats will still give them free handouts, but at least it will be less than it was.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Missouri incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell registered a resounding victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary against Cori Bush, a prominent Democratic socialist and ardent critic of Israel.

The Associated Press called the race just an hour after polls closed, at 8:02pm local time. By 10:15 p.m., Bell had 66.1% to Bush’s 30% with 50% of votes counted.

The primary is a déjà vu moment for St. Louis. The same pair of candidates vied just two years ago to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District.

Bell prevailed in 2024 to oust Bush in a clash that was largely defined by a $9 million influx of AIPAC cash in support of Bell. In this rematch, Bush made the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a central issue in her campaign, similar to other Democratic Socialists of America candidates.

“AIPAC has become yet another way for MAGA-donors to divide the Democratic base by meddling in primaries,” Bush told JTA in a written statement prior to the primary. “In St. Louis and across the country, people know that our fight against antisemitism means fighting against the far-right’s effort to divide us.”

Looks like it worked this time. Or maybe people just woke up to the fact that Cori Bush is a dirtbag communist.

The New Neo.

This isn’t exactly news – I wrote about it in this previous post about Tucker Carlson, for example – but it’s a little more official now, or as Ace writes: “Tuq’r Qarlson, Marjorie Trailer-Queen, Thomas Massie, and Joe Kent Meet and Announce New Party for Nazis and Lunatic Conspiracy Theorists.”

They can add the Kristol Krew, the DavidFrenchiphiles, the RINOs in the Senate—Oh, the places they’ll go….

Read it.

Alma Boykin.

Jones begins with pride, superbia, which was and is considered the worst of the seven, then through envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. The medieval terms for each one differ from what we use today, and had different connotations. For each one the author provides a personal example, then medieval discussions, illustrations, what was recommended by the church as ways to turn error into something helpful or outward-looking, and a conclusion. I admit, some of the descriptions and discussions made me twitch, because they struck a little too close to home. These are things we all struggle with, even if we are not all church members, let alone Roman Catholics. Who has not flown into a rage, often over something that would otherwise be a minor irritation? Who has not ignored other people’s opinions, or tried to stand out a little too much at some point, with the idea that we are better than the other person or people? Many of us have probably been unhappy about someone else’s success, perhaps not to the point of trying to damage or destroy it (medieval “envy.”)

I have this book on order from Amazon, on her recommendation. (If you haven’t read her Familiar Tales series of books, I weep for you.)

Watch it.

Speaking for the people with three degrees, I can vouch for all of this.

Read it.

The Department of Homeland Security has issued the broadest Jones Act waiver since at least the 1950s, just weeks after the US-Iran conflict erupted. The measure has allowed foreign-flagged vessels to transport fuel, crude oil, fertilizer, and other essential goods between US ports, bypassing domestic shipping restrictions to mitigate supply chain disruptions across various U.S. regions.

The Jones Act, a century-old law requiring goods transported between U.S. ports to be carried aboard U.S.-Built, US-owned, and US-crewed vessels, was immediately waived in the early days of the U.S.-Iran conflict by the Trump administration.

As of Friday, the waiver has entered its 135th day, suggesting that the administration is continuing to protect domestic supply chains and curb energy prices by temporarily easing maritime protectionist restrictions.

A recent Reuters report stated that the Trump administration was considering another extension of the waiver.

The Jones Act is one of those cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face pieces of legislation that disgrace the U.S. Code. It ought to be repealed, not just waived.

Watch it.

Japan needs people.  Apparently they want white people.

Not the Bee.

So we’ve got that going for us.

Now we know why Fauci was taking the Fifth.

Read it.

History was made with the flip of a switch at 12:30 a.m. on June 4, under partly cloudy skies and a waning three-quarter moon in Idaho’s Arco Desert, when a prototype reactor sustained a nuclear chain reaction, becoming the first new design to achieve “criticality,” or viability, in the United States since 1973.

In that midnight milestone’s wake, the future is following fast. Since Antares Nuclear’s Mark-0 design was validated in early June, three other novel reactor designs have met the U.S. Department of Energy’s criticality requirements and, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Up to four more could do so by year’s end.

While technologies, fuels, and applications vary, these prototypes share common traits. All are far smaller than the conventional reactors with massive cement cooling towers, and all are designed to be mass-produced, portable, and scalable. Several can fit in the bed of a pickup truck.

Me want.

Ars Technica.

A couple of decades after the discovery of systems that could selectively target DNA, we’re starting to see the first therapies based on gene editing. One challenge these developments have faced is safety. While we can make them pretty specific to the gene we want edited, the human genome is very large, and even rare DNA sequences can appear a couple of times by chance.

As a result, all the original gene-editing systems had known rates of what are called off-target effects, in which they simply edit the wrong sequence. This may be a low-probability event, but edit enough cells—and therapies generally have to edit many—and errors become inevitable.

A lot of effort has gone into finding ways to minimize or eliminate off-target edits. In a recent issue of Nature, researchers described modifying the AI protein-folding software AlphaFold to help identify key areas of gene-editing proteins responsible for off-target effects. Those areas were then modified to reduce the problems.

LifeHacker.

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

Read it.

Many people begin to notice the arrival of spring with the large, beautiful blooms of the magnolia flower. Magnolia trees can be found in many parts of the world, and their beautiful forms have symbolic, medicinal, and visual meaning across cultures—and have for centuries. If you’re ever near a magnolia tree, though, look closely: you’ll notice that beetles, instead of bees, will be moving amongst the flowers.

So, why beetles over bees? The answer is simpler than you might think. Magnolias are so ancient that they were around long before bees came into existence. They’ve been around for over 100 million years, in fact, and beetles have existed for even longer , approximately 300 million years.

Named after the French botanist Pierre Magnol, magnolias belong to one of the oldest lineages of flowers on Earth. (Dinosaurs still walked the Earth at this time, to put it into perspective!) Given this ancient setting, the pollinators we’re most familiar with, butterflies and bees, had not yet evolved. Beetles were the primary insect pollinators for the time, and so they became the de facto agents for the magnolia’s survival.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

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

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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July marks the critical window for cotton topping in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In cotton fields across Xinjiang, farmers are racing against the farming schedule to carry out topping operations with fleets of robotic cotton toppers, replacing traditional manual labor with digitalized, precision farming work.

If we can ever figure out how to have robots pick crops, one of the chief incentives for winking at illegal immigration will go away.

Watch it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

LifeHacker.

Do you “accept” or “reject” that cookie request? Browser cookies don’t just remember your login details: They can track your browsing history across websites, follow you around with specific ads, or even hijack your active browser session to log into your accounts without a password. On the other hand, if you don’t click accept when you see a cookie banner, that can affect your browsing experience—many websites need cookies to function normally.

Luckily, cookie management isn’t just a binary choice any more. You can choose which cookies to accept on a website, auto-delete cookies after a set amount of time, or even switch between browser profiles to control which cookies stay active during a session.

Not the Bee.

I’d pay to see that.

Read it.

The State Bank of India has announced it is opening a new branch in Frisco, Texas, with critics raising concerns about Indian workers sending remittances back to India with minimal fees.

The branch is expected to open in mid-September and will be located off Coit Road.

The Indian population in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is estimated at about 230,000, with many being in the U.S. on H-1B visas. The population increased by 20% from 2020 to 2024 as the federal government continued approving H-1B visas.

The bank’s website states that customers can send remittances—money foreign workers send back to their home countries—with zero transfer fees.

Online customers can send up to $50,000 per day, while mobile customers can send up to $25,000 per day, according to the bank’s website. There is no stated limit for remittances sent from a branch. The bank specializes in remittance services to India and Bangladesh.

Employees at the bank speak multiple languages, including English, Hindi, Punjabi, and other Indian languages.

Read it.

The announcement marks a major milestone in Saronic’s mission to restore U.S. shipbuilding capacity at scale. First introduced as a vision for the future of maritime manufacturing, Port Alpha now moves from concept to reality through a planned investment of more than $3 billion that aims to establish one of the most advanced shipyards in the world, built for software-defined shipbuilding and autonomous maritime systems.

The project is expected to generate more than $160 billion in regional economic impact for Cameron County and $264.5 billion for the State of Texas, while creating up to 10,000 direct jobs. This makes Port Alpha one of the largest economic development projects in modern Texas history. Construction is anticipated to begin in 2026, with Port Alpha expected to open for operations in 2028.

Not the Bee.

We have the technology.

The Telegaph (UK).

Apparently it’s going to take a while before foreigners internalize the fact that Democrats aren’t in charge of the U.S. government any more.

Watch it.

We have the technology.

The Telegraph (UK).

Lindsey Graham’s sister has been appointed to serve out the remainder of the late US senator’s term after Donald Trump recommended her for the position.

Darline Graham Nordone, 62, has little political experience, but will now serve in the upper house until her brother’s term expires in January.

On Monday, the US president pushed for her appointment, saying it would be a “fabulous tribute” to one of his closest political allies who died unexpectedly on Saturday.

Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina appointed her several hours later. She is expected to be sworn in on Wednesday as the first woman to represent the state in the Senate.

Read it.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but I doubt that he will be missed.

Now, if we could just persuade a doctor to put a big stake through Mitch McConnell….

Read it.

An anti-AI font that can be read by humans but not leading AI models. Type your text below, then download and share the video clip containing your message.

Not the Bee.

Some times the good guys win.

Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out….

Naval News.

The ARGE HEL consists of MBDA Deutschland and Rheinmetall Waffe Munition. The two companies are currently forming a joint venture for this purpose. The laser weapon system is expected to be operational by 2029. The contract value is in the mid three-digit million-euro range and covers the development of a complete system for maritime applications, including the entire operational chain from reconnaissance and target tracking to engagement. The joint venture is placing particular emphasis on German supply chains and domestic systems expertise in its development work, in order to secure national sovereignty in this key technology.

The War Zone.

Much discussion and debate continue to surround a video said to have been taken near Area 51 that went viral after it was released last month. The footage shows an exotic aircraft that still looks likely to be a progenitor of Boeing’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter for the U.S. Air Force. Its apparent design, with a long shovel-like nose, large canards, and rear-set swept wings, is much different from the tailless, modified delta-winged heavy fighter that many were expecting to come out of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. This, in turn, raises interesting questions about why certain design decisions may have been made and the broader implications of the resulting tradeoffs.

The Project Fear YouTube channel posted the footage of the aircraft in question online back on June 5. Readers can find our initial assessment of the aircraft and its features here.

TWZ talked at length with Darold Cummings to more deeply analyze features of the design that appear to be visible in the video and, by extension, what might be inferred about the F-47. Cummings is an aerospace engineer with decades of experience who played a key role in developing Northrop’s YF-23 Black Widow, which lost out to what became Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor.

Watch it.

Brian Maxwell of Real Politics does the run-down.

Using the Postal Service to enforce election security is very clever. Trump has very clever people working for him.

Ars Technica.

The satellite from Miami-based City Labs is named BOHR, short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability, and it launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission Tuesday alongside 80 other payloads. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket released the BOHR satellite into an orbit between 350 and 400 miles (nearly 600 km) in altitude.

NewScientist.

Naval News.

UNICORN integrates various antennas into a single mast to improve stealth. From top to bottom this includes an ES-R antenna, ES-C antenna, WiFi band antenna, LINK-16 antenna, UHF antenna, IFF antenna, U/VHF antenna and TACAN antenna. UNICORN was jointly developed by three Japanese companies: NEC, Sampa Kogyo and Yokohama Rubber. The prime contractor NEC provided hardware integration and Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) systems. Sampa Kogyo provided antenna technologies and maintenance experience while Yokohama Rubber developed the frequency selective radome. Saab had recently pitched its SLIM integrated mast solution.

During DefExpo 2022, Indian Navy’s Directorate of Electrical Engineering had showcased a project for two phase development of an Indigenous Integrated Mast (IIM) with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) as the production partner. The current status of the project remains unclear. It is likely that the project will be progressed or merged with the localized adaptation of UNICORN.

Naval News.

The French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL) has successfully conducted the first outdoor, free-flight test of its domestically designed electromagnetic railgun. The milestone test took place on June 29, 2026, at the institute’s proving ground in Baldersheim, marking a critical transition for the European defense technology from laboratory research to open-range validation.

The Telegraph (UK).

The long-lost remains of Alfred the Great are buried under a car park, investigators have claimed.

Thank God for parking lots, or we would never find any of this stuff.

Read it.

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

I have now sequenced my own genome 5 times with an Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION. This means collecting them from a swab, prepping them for sequencing, running them through a sequencer, then doing analysis over them.

Cheek cells are easily accessible and replenish pretty quickly. They are not used for cancer diagnosis, inflammation, or what genes are being activated in other parts of the body (like if you have hives on your chest and want to test what genes are being expressed in the cells that are inflamed), since you would want to collect the cells having problems and compare them against other normal versions of those cells.

To sequence the cells, I bought lab materials and consumables to sequence my own genome at home. It took me about two months to get everything together to do a full end to end high quality run. Likewise, the costs are still out of reach for the average person but they are decreasing (exponentially!) and we will eventually have affordable technology, like a cell phone or AI, telling us about our DNA + RNA expression real-time.

Not quite as fun as building a mainframe, but still…

The Telegraph (UK).

The woman suspected of trying to blow up a Ukrainian tycoon in Monaco has been found shot dead near Kyiv.

Anastasiia Berezovska, 39, was named as the prime suspect in the attack on Vadym Iermolaiev, a Ukrainian property magnate, at the end of last month.

After an international manhunt, her body was found at around overnight near the Ukrainian capital, according to a report by Ukrainska Pravda, citing law enforcement sources.

Not the Bee.

We honor him for voluntarily subtracting himself from the gene pool.

They couldn’t bring the body down because transporting human remains down the most dangerous mountain in the world is a pretty easy way to risk killing yourself.

Toss him over the nearest cliff. Gravity will do the rest. (Ask me a hard one.)

Read it.

The Trump administration is dismantling more than three dozen federal firearms regulations, ending a zero-tolerance policy against wayward gun dealers, easing scrutiny of stabilizing braces, and clearing a path for some Americans with a history of mental illness to buy firearms, part of what officials call the broadest rewrite of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rules in the agency’s history.

The rollback, executed under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14206 on Second Amendment rights, was formally launched April 29, when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and newly confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada unveiled 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking.

Officials called it the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in ATF history. Cekada was confirmed by the Senate hours earlier and signed off on the changes within an hour of taking office.

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Imagine if your jacket could talk back to Big Brother. The German startup Urban Privacy isn’t selling invisibility cloaks; they are selling digital disobedience. By weaponizing fashion, they are turning scarves, jackets, and phone cases into sophisticated tools designed to confuse AI surveillance and reclaim public anonymity in an increasingly data-hungry world.

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Solar railways could soon become commonplace in Europe, following a successful trial in Switzerland.

Europe’s infrastructure is embracing the renewables boom, with one company determined to transform the continent’s railway lines into mini solar farms.

Last year, Swiss start-up Sun-Ways unveiled the world’s first-ever solar railway after rolling out 100 metres of photovoltaic (PV) panels in between active tracks in Buttes, a village in the Val-de-Travers district.

Originally planned as just a three-year trial, the railway was fitted with 48 specially-designed solar panels with a combined power of 18 kWp.

However, the positive results yielded just one year into the trial mean the installation of a permanent system along the railroad track is now likely, Euronews Earth has been told.

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The unconscious brain appears to be far more capable than scientists once believed. Researchers found that patients under general anesthesia could still process language at a sophisticated level, distinguishing nouns, verbs, and adjectives while listening to stories. Even more remarkably, neural activity showed signs of predicting upcoming words before they were heard. The results challenge traditional ideas about consciousness and hint at new possibilities for brain-computer interfaces.

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A protein called “Mitch” may hold the key to a new generation of obesity treatments. Researchers found that disabling it in human cells boosts fat burning, increases energy use, and makes it harder for new fat cells to develop. The findings help explain why mice lacking Mitch were leaner, more athletic, and resistant to obesity.

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Thank you, Donald Trump.

The Navy beat its recruiting goal for new sailors this year, signing up 45,000 new recruits. The service announced the milestone on Thursday. It’s the highest number of people signing up for the Navy in roughly two decades.

“Today’s Navy is stronger because tens of thousands of Americans chose to answer the call to serve,” Rear Adm. Jim Waters, the head of Navy Recruiting Command, said. “Reaching this milestone is not simply about achieving a recruiting objective – it’s about delivering the talented Sailors our Fleet needs to maintain readiness in an increasingly complex security environment.”

The early success marks the second year in a row of the service bringing in far more recruits than its goal. In 2024, the Navy only barely hit its recruiting quota, but in 2025 it brought in 44,096 new sailors, nearly 9% about that year’s aim. That was after the Navy also hit its goal early, signing up 40,600 by June.

Read it.

Scientists from the University of Minnesota say they have created the first-ever synthetic cell built entirely from scratch, and seen it go through an entire ‘life’ cycle – including reproduction.

“This is the most fascinating and important thing I’ve ever done in my work, and the realization that it’s actually happening was rather slow to sink in,” synthetic biologist Kate Adamala, a co-lead on the project told ScienceAlert.

“We’ve replicated in chemistry what only used to be possible in biology: the complete set of behaviors of a cell. It proves that the most fundamental functions of life, like growth and replication, do not need a mysterious magical spark,” she says.

*sigh* Biology IS chemistry, and that’s ALL it is. There is no Magic Secret Sauce to ‘biology’.