Read it.

Dillard’s Inc., one of the largest department store chains in the United States, has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking shareholder approval to relocate its corporate domicile from Delaware to Texas.

The board’s decision, disclosed in a recent regulatory filing, marks a significant step in a growing trend of companies abandoning Delaware as their state of incorporation due to increasing concerns over shareholder litigation and court rulings unfavorable to corporate leadership.

Dillard’s, which operates about 270 stores in 30 states, employs around 40,000 workers and generates over $7 billion in annual revenue. The company has long been a staple in American retail, offering fashion apparel, cosmetics, and home furnishings.

According to the SEC filing, the company cited “certain high-profile litigation outcomes in Delaware that involved companies with controlling stockholders” as a primary reason for the proposed move.

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The Department of Defense (DOD) is looking to restructure current promotion systems to ensure that personnel directly engaged in military and combat operations get top positions, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in an announcement posted to X on July 20.

“America’s sons and daughters who serve in our military deserve the best leaders commanding them, which is why we need to reform the promotion system at DOD, how we get those leaders,” Hegseth said.

Stuart Scheller, senior adviser to the DOD undersecretary in personnel and readiness, who joined Hegseth in the announcement, has been tasked with “looking at the entirety of the selection and retention process for our military’s officer corps,” Hegseth said.

Well, we used to do that….

SciTechDaily.

New research indicates that erythritol, a sugar substitute commonly recommended for individuals with obesity or diabetes, may carry unexpected health risks.

From low-carb ice creams and keto-friendly protein snacks to “sugar-free” sodas, erythritol is a widely used sweetener found in countless diet and specialty food items.

However, new findings from the University of Colorado Boulder suggest that this commonly used sugar substitute may carry unexpected health risks. According to the research, erythritol can affect brain cells in ways that may increase the likelihood of stroke.

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology

Just use sugar … or, better yet, don’t.

Read it.

What if you could inject a drug into a “problem area” – like abdominal fat – that could kill off fat cells and reduce fat stores in that localized spot? That’s what a novel drug from Taiwan’s Caliway Pharmaceuticals offers, the world’s very first injection that triggers programmed fat-cell death in a targeted area, like the belly or the thighs.

Known as CBL-514, this small-molecule drug induces adipocyte apoptosis, which kills fat cells rather than starves them, meaning different regions of subcutaneous fat stores can be rapidly reduced in just a few weeks after a single dose. It’s currently being tested for three uses: Non-surgical fat reduction, Dercum’s disease – which causes painful fatty tumors to build up around the body, and cellulite.

“Administered via subcutaneous injection, CBL-514 has demonstrated a favorable safety and tolerability profile, enabling significant localized fat reduction without surgery and delivering results comparable to liposuction,” Caliway has stated.

While it’s being investigated for various applications, the leading one – and the one expected to be on the market first – is for the non-surgical reduction of problematic abdominal fat.

And, in about twenty years, we’ll discover that it has some appalling side effects.

New Atlas.

Following on from their breakthrough human trial that successfully reprogrammed the immune system to overpower glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor, the same scientists have now further developed the mRNA vaccine to fight not one but any cancer. It has the potential to do away with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation treatment.

University of Florida (UF) scientists have developed an experimental vaccine that dramatically boosts the immune system’s ability to fight tumors – even without targeting a specific cancer type. This “general purpose” mRNA jab works in a similar way to a Covid-19 vaccine but with a different target; it instructs the body’s immune cells to rally and hit any kind of tumor in the same way they would attack a viral spike protein.

“This paper describes a very unexpected and exciting observation: that even a vaccine not specific to any particular tumor or virus – so long as it is an mRNA vaccine – could lead to tumor-specific effects,” said Elias Sayour, a pediatric oncologist and principal investigator at the RNA Engineering Laboratory at UF. “This finding is a proof of concept that these vaccines potentially could be commercialized as universal cancer vaccines to sensitize the immune system against a patient’s individual tumor.”

Don’t hold your breath expecting it to show up at your local doctor any time soon.

Government is the reason we can’t ever have nice things.

Victor Davis Hanson.

In less than six months, the entire world has been turned upside down. There is no longer such a thing as conventional wisdom or the status quo.

The unthinkable has become the banal.

Take illegal immigration—remember the 10,000 daily illegal entries under former President Joe Biden?

Recall the only solution was supposedly “comprehensive immigration reform”—a euphemism for mass amnesties.

Now, there is no such thing as daily new illegal immigration. It simply disappeared with commonsense enforcement of existing immigration laws—and a new president.

How about the 40,000-50,000 shortfall in military recruitment?

Remember all the causes that the generals cited for their inability to enlist soldiers: generational gangs, obesity, drugs, and stiff competition with private industry?

And now?

In just six months, recruitment targets are already met; the issue is mostly moot.

Read it.

RMIT University researchers created the new metamaterial – a term used to describe an artificial material with unique properties not observed in nature – from common titanium alloy.

But it’s the material’s unique lattice structure design, recently revealed in the Advanced Materials journal, that makes it anything but common: tests show it’s 50% stronger than the next strongest alloy of similar density used in aerospace applications.

Read it.

Don’t hold your breath expecting to see it at your local doctor any time soon.

Government is the reason why we can never have nice things.

Read it.

A paradigm shift is sweeping across Europe. From Finland to Portugal, from Greece to Ireland, countries across the continent are steadily tightening their immigration policies. What progressive elites used to denounce as ‘xenophobic rhetoric’ barely a decade ago is now being implemented as laws, decrees, and police operations in response to mounting public pressure led by the social and political Right. Reality, pushed forward by popular discontent, has crashed into the immigration debate with full force.

The facts speak for themselves. Austria has become the first EU country to deport a Syrian national back to his country of origin, and Germany has already announced its intention to follow suit—whether it follows through remains to be seen. Greece, meanwhile, has temporarily suspended asylum applications from North African nationals, a decision prompted by a surge in illegal arrivals on the island of Crete. In an unprecedented move, Italy has established migrant centers in Albania, where rejected asylum seekers are detained until deportation.

This tightening also extends to the regularization of migrants. Portugal has overturned a 2018 regulation that allowed tourists to legalize their status after a year of employment and social security contributions. Greece has gone even further, abolishing the possibility for illegal immigrants to apply for residency altogether, even after seven years in the country.

The Proglodyte Plan of Invade the World, Invite the World appears to be losing steam.

Read it.

The in-depth study of Santander employees using advanced medical imaging equipment soon revealed another shocking finding: atherosclerosis was ubiquitous. The volunteers were apparently healthy, aged between 40 and 55, but 63% of the participants showed signs of the disease. The new results show that some gut bacteria, in certain states, produce imidazole propionate, a simple molecule with six carbon atoms, eight hydrogen atoms, two nitrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms (C?H?N?O?). This compound enters the blood, interacts with immature white blood cells, and triggers an inflammatory reaction in the arteries, which promotes the buildup of fatty plaques.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to reach your local doctor.

Read it.

All three members of the United Nations’ anti-Israel inquiry have resigned, citing personal—or, in one case, no—reasons.

The commission’s most recent report was released in May and made what Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration described as “abhorrent and immoral accusations” against Israel, including that it was carrying out acts of “extermination” in Gaza.

Monitoring group UN Watch has celebrated the resignations, expressing hope that “the dominoes are falling.” Hillel Neuer, the group’s executive director, said the emptying of these positions was “long overdue.”

Read it.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Monday said he would reissue his criminal referral to the Department of Justice for Dr. Anthony Fauci after his pardon was confirmed to be issued by a late-night autopen.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Of course, were Biden (or Harris) President instead of Trump, this wouldn’t be anything to worry about.

Read it.

Vance Boelter, the man accused in the political assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shootings of another lawmaker and his wife, refused to discuss a potential motive but insisted his case “didn’t involve” either President Donald Trump or abortion.

“You are fishing and I can’t talk about my case,” he wrote to The New York Post in an exchange of messages, using the jail’s internal messaging system from his cell at the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minnesota.

“I am pro-life personaly [sic] but it wasn’t those,” Boelter added. “I will just say there is a lot of information that will come out in future that people will look at and judge for themselves that goes back 24 months before the 14th. If the gov ever let’s [sic] it get out.”

So much for the Narrative.

Read it.

Psilocybin, the active compound derived from psychedelic mushrooms, significantly delayed cellular aging and extended lifespan in a preclinical study. Researchers observed a 50% increase in the lifespan of human skin and lung cells and a 30% increase in survival in aged mice treated with psilocybin.

The compound appeared to reduce oxidative stress, preserve telomeres, and improve DNA repair, all key to slowing aging. These findings suggest psilocybin may one day enhance not just lifespan but also quality of life in aging populations.

Which is why its use is now illegal except with government permission.

Government is the primary reason why we can’t have nice things.

Read it.

They look like an ordinary pair of glasses – but these are tech-packed specs.
On a Zoom call, Niko Eiden, chief executive and co-founder of Finnish eyewear firm IXI, holds up the frames with lenses containing liquid crystals, meaning their vision-correcting properties can change on the fly.
This one pair could correct the vision of someone who normally uses totally different pairs of glasses for seeing near or far.
“These liquid crystals… we can rotate them with an electrical field,” explains Mr Eiden.
“It’s totally, freely tuneable.” The position of those crystals affects the passage of light through the lenses. A built-in eye-tracker allows the glasses to respond to whatever correction the wearer needs at a given moment.
However, tech-laden eyewear has a troubled history – take Google’s ill-fated “Glass” smart glasses.
Consumer acceptability is key, acknowledges Mr Eiden. Most people don’t want to look like cyborgs: “We need to make our products actually look like existing eyewear.”

Read it.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is rescinding a 1998 interpretation of a law that allowed illegal immigrants to access certain government-funded programs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on July 10.

The health secretary is rescinding the interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), a law that said illegal immigrants cannot obtain “federal public benefits.”

The 1998 interpretation by the HHS said the law’s definition of benefits “does not provide sufficient guidance for benefit providers” and that HHS was stepping in “to facilitate compliance” with a requirement in the law for providers to verify a person’s qualifications for benefits.

It said that certain programs, including Head Start, which provides child care for lower-income families, were accessible to illegal immigrants.

That interpretation improperly narrowed the scope of the law, letting illegal immigrants access programs that lawmakers intended only for Americans and qualified immigrants, such as immigrants granted asylum, HHS said on Thursday.

Read it.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) posted on X Wednesday, exposing how Communist billionaire Neville Roy Singham—who operates a dark-money NGO network allegedly tied to funding anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and resides in China with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—has suddenly vanished.

“Neville Singham— the billionaire communist with ties to the CCP, who funded the LA riots and used immigration & Mexicans as a Trojan horse for communism— is hiding from our letter requesting testimony,” Rep. Luna wrote on X.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning….

Instead of calling them ‘conspiracy theories’ we ought to call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

It sounds as if Justice Jackson is embracing her inner AOC.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a judge’s order preventing the Trump administration from conducting mass layoffs across the federal bureaucracy, for now.

The court in its unsigned ruling said Trump’s February executive order directing federal agencies to prepare for reductions in force (RIFs) is likely lawful.

It enables federal agencies to resume implementing Trump’s directive, though the high court left the door open for plaintiffs to challenge any agency’s specific plan down the road.

UPDATE: Now it’s Sotomayor who schools Ketanji Brown Jackson on the law

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U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture will curb farmland purchases by ‘foreign adversaries’ including China.

Rollins also said she will be a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, “as of this afternoon.”

Read it.

As a mother of nine in Tennessee, Sarah Fagerburg tried a variety of different schooling types, from public schools to homeschooling, but she always felt there had to be something better. In the spring of 2023, she discovered Acton Academy from listening to a podcast, and knew that this was the educational model she had been seeking.

“My mind was blown,” said Fagerburg. “I had no idea education could be this good.”

She applied to open her own Acton Academy, and was accepted into the fast-growing network of approximately 300 independently operated schools, emphasizing learner-driven education. Fagerburg launched Acton Academy Johnson City last fall with 13 students, including four of her own children. Today, she has 26 K-6 students enrolled in her secular microschool, with plans to add a middle school and high school program in the coming years. “Parents want this. They love it,” said Fagerburg, adding that some families drive up to 45 minutes each way for their children to attend her program.

She says she sees enormous demand for the Acton Academy model, and hopes to open more locations in Tennessee, but access is a key concern. “I grew up poor,” said Fagerburg. “I never would have been able to attend a school like this.”

Read it.

It turns out that the appendix appears to have two related functions. The first function is supporting the immune system. The appendix has a high concentration of immune tissue, so it’s acting to help the immune system fight any bad things in the gut.

The second function that it serves is what we refer to as the safe house. So this was a hypothesis that was put forward by a team from Duke University in 2007. And they argued that the appendix may serve as a safe reservoir for the beneficial gut bacteria that we have.

Naval News.

U.S. Navy budget documentation released last week is adding a series of new capabilities to the current AN/SLQ-25 Nixie countermeasures suite, including a new hard-kill capability via deck launchers, set to be deployed to over 168 different front-line ships in coming years.

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Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have developed a new, easily manufacturable solid-state thermoelectric refrigeration technology with nano-engineered materials that is twice as efficient as devices made with commercially available bulk thermoelectric materials. As global demand grows for more energy-efficient, reliable and compact cooling solutions, this advancement offers a scalable alternative to traditional compressor-based refrigeration.

In a paper published in Nature Communications on May 21, 2025, a team of researchers from APL and refrigeration engineers from Samsung Research demonstrated improved heat-pumping efficiency and capacity in refrigeration systems attributable to high-performance nano-engineered thermoelectric materials invented at APL known as controlled hierarchically engineered superlattice structures (CHESS).

The CHESS technology is the result of 10 years of APL research in advanced nano-engineered thermoelectric materials and applications development. Initially developed for national security applications, the material has also been used for noninvasive cooling therapies for prosthetics and won an R&D 100 award in 2023.

Read it.

MIT researchers have invented a new water-harvesting device — a high-tech version of “bubble wrap” — that can pull safe drinking water straight from the air, even in extreme environments like Death Valley, the driest desert in North America, according to LiveScience.
In a study published June 11 in Nature Water, the team described how their innovation could help address global water scarcity. “It works wherever you may find water vapor in the air,” the researchers wrote.
The device is built from hydrogel, a material that can absorb large amounts of water, sandwiched between two glass layers resembling a window. At night, the hydrogel draws moisture from the air. During the day, a special coating on the glass keeps it cool, allowing water to condense and drip into a collection system.
The hydrogel is molded into dome shapes — likened to “a sheet of bubble wrap” — that swell when absorbing moisture. These domes increase surface area, helping the material absorb more water.

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New pictures have emerged showing work being done on the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ prototype electromagnetic railgun currently installed on the test warship JS Asuka. An at-sea test of the weapon in this configuration is expected to come before the end of the month, if it has not occurred already. Japan’s continued developments in this realm stand in notable contrast to the U.S. Navy’s shelving of its promising pursuit of this category of weapons in the early 2020s after major technical hurdles emerged.

The images of Asuka and its railgun in port in Yokosuka, seen at the top of this story and below, come from @HNlEHupY4Nr6hRM on X who originally posted online. All of the images were taken on June 30. Additional photos of the ship taken recently are also circulating online. Asuka, a 6,200-ton-displacement dedicated testbed with a warship-like design, first emerged with the turreted railgun on its stern flight deck in April.

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The Trump administration’s border czar Tom Homan announced on X Tuesday evening that not a single person detained at the border in June was released into the country.

Note that they do not say that none snuck in. They merely say that they didn’t play catch-and-release the way Democrats do.

ScienceAlert.

As if sequencing a full human genome wasn’t tricky enough, scientists are now attempting to reconstruct our species’ genetic material from the ground up.

It’s an ambitious and controversial project called the Synthetic Human Genome (SynHG) project, and work has already begun on a proof-of-concept.

The goal of this crucial first step is to use the human genome blueprint to write the genetic code for a single, enormously long strand of DNA in just one of our chromosomes – making up approximately 2 percent of our total genome.

The entire DNA content will be digitally designed before it is then built in the lab.

According to proponents, this project could kickstart a genetic revolution, profoundly changing our understanding of human DNA and possibly enabling designer cell-based therapies and virus-resistant tissue transplantation.

Nick Norwitz.

Nick was valedictorian of his class at Dartmouth, and went on to take a PhD in Metabolism at Oxford, then returned to Harvard Med school to get an MD.

ScienceDirect.

Abstract
Intrasexual competition between women is often covert, and targets rivals’ appearance. Here we investigate appearance advice as a vector for female intrasexual competition. Across two studies (N = 192, N = 258) women indicated how much hair they would recommend hypothetical clients have cut off in their hypothetical salon. Clients varied in their facial attractiveness (depicted pictorially), the condition of their hair, and how much hair they wished to have cut off. Participants also provided self-report measures of their own mate value and intrasexual competitiveness. In both studies, participants’ intrasexual competitiveness positively predicted how much hair they recommended clients have cut off, especially when the hair was in good condition and the clients reported wanting as little as possible cut off – circumstances wherein cutting off too much hair is most likely to indicate sabotage. Considering data across both collectively, women tended to recommend cutting the most hair off clients they perceived to be as attractive as themselves. These data suggest that just like mating, intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate value. They also demonstrate that competitive motives can impact female-female interactions even in scenarios which feature no prospective mates, and are nominally unrelated to mate guarding or mating competition.

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The left-wing Ford Foundation has a new president: Heather Gerken, the scandal-plagued dean of Yale Law School whose tenure attracted national attention when administrators threatened the professional prospects of a second-year student for his use of the term “trap house” in an email.

Both Yale and the Ford Foundation announced the move in Monday morning emails. Ford Foundation board chair Francisco Cigarroa called Gerken “a thoughtful and innovative leader and a tireless advocate for equity, justice, and values of democracy,” while Yale president Maurie McInnis praised her work “to foster discourse across the political and ideological spectrum.” Neither message mentioned the free speech and anti-Semitism scandals that defined Gerken’s tenure and led Yale to pass her over when it named a new president in the spring of 2024.

Gerken made headlines in 2021 when Yale Law School administrators who reported to her spent weeks threatening a Native American law student for sending a lighthearted email invitation to classmates, asking them to a party at his “trap house” apartment for a Constitution Day celebration. Yale Law School diversity director Yaseen Eldik called the language “triggering” and suggested the student’s decision to serve fried chicken at the party could be “used to undermine arguments that structural and systemic racism has contributed to health disparities in the U.S.,” according to leaked audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon at the time. Eldik also suggested the student’s membership in the conservative Federalist Society could feel “oppressive to certain communities.” The blowback was so intense that Gerken was reportedly in danger of losing her job.

The Crust take care of their own.

NBC News, a Voice of the Crust.

The Supreme Court on Friday handed a major win to the Trump administration by allowing it to take steps to implement its proposal to end automatic birthright citizenship.

In a 6-3 vote, the court granted a request by the Trump administration to narrow the scope of nationwide injunctions imposed by judges so that they apply only to states, groups and individuals that sued. That means the birthright citizenship proposal can likely move forward at least in part in the states that challenged it as well as those that did not.

The ruling immediately sparked a response from plaintiffs who have sued to block the executive order, with their lawyers vowing to continue the legal fight.

It has long been widely accepted, including by legal scholars on left and right, that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers automatic citizenship to almost anyone born in the United States.

But they were wrong. It was designed to give citizenship to freed slaves after the Civil War, not foreigners pursuing anchor babies.

Read it.

The Trump administration announced a Gulf of America oil and gas lease sale that would span roughly 80 million acres, an area that is larger than the United Kingdom.

The behemoth lease sale, which will be the first offshore lease sale since President Donald Trump took office, is scheduled for December 2025 and will offer 15,000 blocks of federal waters across the entire gulf. Companies with winning bids will be subject to a reduced royalty rate, something that could potentially drive greater industry interest and participation in the sale, according to the Department of the Interior (DOI).

It is the latest action the Trump administration has taken in pursuit of its aggressive energy dominance and “drill, baby, drill” agenda. The announcement also represents a U-turn from the Biden administration’s approach to drilling, which involved shutting down oil production, canceling offshore lease sales, and hiking royalty fees for producers.

The Telegraph (UK).

Reform UK would win the most seats of any party if a general election were held today, a poll has found.

The first large-scale MRP poll conducted by YouGov since Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10 last year shows that Nigel Farage’s party would win 271 seats if voters went to the polls now.

Britain would face a hung parliament, with Reform not returning enough MPs to govern on its own. But it would make Mr Farage the leading contender to become the next prime minister.

The YouGov model, which makes projections for results in every parliamentary constituency, puts Labour in second place with 178 seats and the Liberal Democrats in third with 81 seats.

The Conservatives would suffer further collapse if the country went to the polls again, winning just 46 seats, down from 121.

Read it.

Belarus opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was released following an appeal from the White House, said on Sunday, June 22nd, that U.S. President Donald Trump could secure the freedom of all Belarusian political prisoners.

Tikhanovsky spoke to reporters in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius a day after he was released from several years of prison with more than a dozen others. He said he hoped to return to Belarus, “but when, I don’t know yet.”

Tikhanovsky was joined at the news conference by his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition movement after he was jailed.

The prisoner release on Saturday came just hours after U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg met Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, the highest-profile U.S. visit in years.

Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years. The popular YouTuber had planned to run against Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election, but was arrested and detained weeks before the vote.

Tikhanovskaya—a political novice at the time of her husband’s arrest—ran against Lukashenko in his place but lost after what the opposition described as widespread falsification. She later fled Belarus.

The eastern European country still holds more than 1,000 political prisoners in its jails, according to Belarusian human rights group Viasna.

Belarus, ruled by Lukashenko since 1994, has outlawed all genuine opposition parties.

Will Trump get any credit for this victory on the part of the Usual Suspects? Of course not.

Read it.

The U.S. has directly entered the war against Iran, striking three nuclear facilities, President Donald Trump announced via social media. The attack came on the ninth day of the Israel-Iran war in which Israeli forces have been attacking Iranian nuclear weapons facilities among other targets, including ballistic missile launchers, air defense systems, military leaders, and nuclear scientists.

…

Trump did not say how the facilities were attacked. However, as we explained earlier today, at least two separate groups of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were heading westward across the Pacific Ocean. The destination was unclear, and it’s possible other B-2s were sent clandestinely to hit the targets. Other aircraft could also have been involved. However, B-2s carrying 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs are widely seen as the only readily available conventional option for targeting the deeply-buried enrichment facility at Fordo, in particular, short of a ground raid.

…

Sean Hannity, Fox News commentator and close friend to Trump, has stated that the strike included six weapons dropped from B-2s on Fordow, and the other two sites were struck by Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles. We cannot confirm this, but it’s the first thing we have heard detailing the assets used.

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President Donald Trump announced Saturday evening that the U.S. had dropped bombs on three major nuclear sites in Iran.

“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” the president posted on Truth Social. “All planes are now outside of Iran air space.”

“A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” he added. “All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this.”

“NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump concluded.

Cue Narrative Media meltdown.

Read it.

The remains of captain Cook’s ship, HMS Endeavour, has been located off the US coast after sinking 250 years ago.

Between 1768 and 1771, the ship became the first European vessel to reach eastern Australia. It was then sold and renamed the Lord Sandwich before sinking off the US coast during the American War of Independence in 1778.

For centuries the ship was lost, but now the wreck has been found in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island.

Read it.

he 2009 discovery of footprints (human and animal) left behind in layers of clay and silt at New Mexico’s White Sands National Park sparked a contentious debate about when, exactly, human cultures first developed in North America. Until about a decade ago, it seemed as if the first Americans arrived near the end of the last Ice Age and were part of the Clovis culture, named for the distinctive projectile points they left behind near what’s now Clovis, New Mexico. But various dating methods indicated the White Sands footprints are 10,000 years older. Now there is a fresh independent analysis that agrees with those earlier findings, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances.

Daily Mail (UK).

Wyoming is rapidly establishing itself as a top destination for ultra-wealthy individuals and businesses, drawn by its tax advantages and high-end real estate market.

As one of nine US states with no state income tax, Wyoming offers significant financial incentives for affluent residents.

Additionally, the state’s Dynasty Trust laws allow families to transfer wealth across generations while avoiding estate, inheritance and state income taxes – further solidifying its status as a tax shelter.

The state’s appeal is amplified by its business-friendly environment and low property taxes, attracting both individuals and companies seeking to minimize their tax burdens.

‘Wyoming is the most tax-friendly state,’ Latham Jenkins, a real estate agent with Live Water Jackson Hole told Realtor.com. ‘Retirement benefits are not taxed at the state level, and it’s one of the most business-friendly states in the nation.’

It would be even better if it weren’t shackled to our dysfunctional Federal regime.

Read it.

For centuries, humans have searched for ways to extend life. Alchemists never found the philosopher’s stone, but scientists have consistently shown that a longer life can be attained by eating less – at least in certain lab animals. But can we find a way to live longer while still enjoying our food?

Compounds that mimic the biological effects of dieting could be the answer, and the two most popular diet-mimicking drugs are rapamycin and metformin. In a new study, my colleagues and I found that rapamycin prolongs life almost as consistently as eating less, whereas metformin does not.

Huey Lewis, call your office.

Read it.

The Department of Interior (DOI) released a draft analysis that proposes reopening up to 82 percent of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) to oil and gas leasing and development, the agency said in a June 17 statement.

NPR-A was set aside as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy by President Warren Harding in 1923. In 1976, the reserve was transferred to the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

In 2022, the Biden administration announced the closure of almost half of the NPR-A reserve to oil and gas drilling, overturning a policy from the first Trump administration that sought to boost oil development in the region.

The latest proposal reverses the Biden-era restrictions, “consistent with the Trump administration’s commitment to Energy Dominance and regulatory reform,” the DOI said.

The proposal supports a presidential action, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025.

Read it.

Israel’s campaign against Iranian ballistic missiles and their launchers appears to be having an effect. On Tuesday, Iran was able to fire 20 ballistic missiles. That is far fewer than in previous days, which had seen around 370 ballistic missiles unleashed at Israel in total, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). A spokesman for the IDF on Tuesday said this campaign has resulted in Iran pushing back its launchers further from Israel. Operation Rising Lion, Israel’s effort to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and dismantling its military, is now in its fifth day.

“We have delivered significant blows to the Iranian regime, and as such, they have been pushed back into central Iran. They are now focusing their efforts on conducting missile fire from the area of Isfahan,” said Brig Gen. Effie Defrin. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) added that on Tuesday, it “conducted intelligence-based strikes on 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities. These missiles were aimed at Israeli civilians.”

All told, Israel said it has destroyed over 200 ballistic missile launchers, “which is a significant portion of Iran’s arsenal, according to the military,” Times of Israel reporter Emanuel Fabian stated on X. “The strikes on the launchers have disrupted Iran’s attempts to fire more missiles at Israel, but the IDF assesses that Iran still has the capability to launch attacks and cause devastating harm in Israel. “

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Hooray! Repealing the Jones Act is the best thing we can do for profitable international trade.

It will also stick a thumb in the eye of the unions, who are in the pocket of the Democrats.

Next up: Davis-Bacon Act. I hope, I hope, I hope….

Read it.

For months, many, most, if not all economists have been predicting a re-inflation due to the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. They are not small increases but dramatic increases that shattered a 70-year postwar run of low tariffs. Every bit of economic theory would suggest that the new taxes paid on imports by American businesses and consumers would feed into price increases.

Those price increases keep not happening.

The consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) data came out last week. They once again underscored the point. Inflation is not dead but it has hit new lows relative to what we’ve been through for four years. Tariffs seem not to have made any difference at all.

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Down syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, which leads to a range of developmental differences. Researchers have long sought strategies to correct this duplication, because current interventions do not address the added genetic material at its source.

Recent work points to a promising approach with CRISPR-based methods.

Ryotaro Hashizume and colleagues from Mie University in Japan report that it is possible to cut away the surplus chromosome in affected cells, which appears to bring their behavior closer to typical function.

Armada Of USAF Tankers Just Deployed East Over Atlantic Spurring Speculation

IAF Destroys Iranian Aerial Tanker 1,400 miles From Israel, Farthest Strike Yet

Israel Escalates To Attacking Iranian Energy Targets After Ballistic Missiles Hit Tel Aviv

Leftist Protesters Attempting “Global March To Gaza” Get Beaten And Arrested In Egypt

Trump vetoed Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader, US official tells AP (Aamer Madhani/Associated Press)

Over 200 Dead as Israel, Iran Trade Strikes for 3rd Day

‘Strategic Decapitation’: Israel Expands Operations, Targeting Iranian Political Institutions as Netanyahu Taunts ‘Weak’ Regime in Tehran

Iran Launches Fresh Missile Attack On Tel Aviv

Iranian Missile Strikes Leave Fiery Aftermath In Haifa

Rescuers Search Ruins In Israel’s Petah Tikva After Iranian Strike

Israel’s Military Gives Statement Amid Iran Missile Attack

The Register.

The function of archival storage is to keep data for the long term – decades and beyond – reliably and affordably. Currently, the main medium for this is LTO tape and it is slow, has a limited life, and not enough capacity considering the implications of ever-increasing image and video resolution and AI-infused data generation. However, there is as yet no viable tape replacement technology at scale, only possibilities, with optical storage more practical and nearer to productization than DNA or other molecular storage.

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The Classic Learning Test, an alternative to standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, has scored recent legislative victories in Texas and Oklahoma, with another win expected in Louisiana. These changes allow students to use their CLT score when applying for college.

Jeremy Tate, a former schoolteacher who created the CLT in 2015, spoke with The Daily Signal about the legislative victories and future goals of the Classic Learning Test. As its CEO, he is passionate about offering students an alternative college entrance exam.