Read it.

While Sacramento legislators debate how to extract more money from residents who are already leaving, Tallahassee legislators are moving in the opposite direction. The fiscal philosophies now playing out in California and Florida represent the starkest tax policy divergence in modern American history—and the numbers tell the story.

In California, there is a $12 billion budget deficit, the product of spending commitments that expanded faster than the revenue base meant to fund them. The legislative response, rather than spending restraint, has been a parade of wealth tax proposals. The latest—Initiative 25-0024, the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act—would impose a one-time 5 percent excise tax on the net worth of California residents exceeding $1 billion as of Jan. 1, 2026. Applied to the state’s approximately 200 billionaires, the measure is projected to raise roughly $100 billion, with 90 percent directed to Medi-Cal.

…

Now consider Florida, in which the policy signals are vastly different. The state already has no income tax—a structural advantage that has driven a decade of net migration from high-tax states. Governor Ron DeSantis is now pushing further: a constitutional amendment on the November 2026 ballot that would eliminate property taxes on homesteaded primary residences. The Florida House passed HJR 203 on Feb. 19, 2025, by an 80–30 party-line vote. If the Senate concurs and 60 percent of voters approve, Florida would become the first state in American history with neither an income tax nor property taxes on primary residences.

Read it.

A 59-year field experiment in northern China suggests that seeding desert dunes with cyanobacteria can reduce soil recovery time from 15 years to as little as one or two.

The method, based on induced biological soil crusts, offers a new way to slow desertification without relying only on trees.

For years, the response to advancing deserts has been straightforward: plant more vegetation. China has done exactly that along the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, building green belts to anchor shifting sand. The results are visible, though the approach demands time and resources.

Cornyn, Paxton in ugly runoff: 5 takeaways from Texas, North Carolina primaries (KRON4)

Texas warning signs: 4 takeaways from the first primaries of 2026 (Axios)

Big Senate race takes shape in North Carolina, and other primary night takeaways (Washingtoon Poop)

Just call this the Takeaway Election. (You want fries with that?)

The Telegraph (UK).

An Iranian warship has been sunk by a submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka.

At least 101 people are missing, with one dead and 78 injured, Sri Lanka’s navy and defence ministry said.

It was not immediately clear who had attacked the ship, which the Sri Lankan authorities identified as the IRIS Dena.

The vessel was armed with heavy guns, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles and torpedoes and could carry a helicopter.

Earlier, the US military said it had already destroyed 17 Iranian vessels and that its goal was sinking “the entire navy”.

Sri Lanka’s foreign minister said its navy had responded to a ?distress call from the ship and launched rescue operations at 6am (12.30am UK).

UPDATE: US submarine sank Iran’s warship off Sri Lanka coast, says Hegseth

Read it.

That’s “Iron Beam”, not Eyebeam.

Read it.

Hundreds of Iranian nationals gathered in the centre of The Hague and on the Dam in Amsterdam over the weekend to celebrate the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in attacks carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces. In Amsterdam, bottles of champagne were opened and sweets were distributed among the crowd.

Many participants carried the Persian flag bearing the ancient Lion and Sun symbol, removed by the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution.

“We’re not happy about war, of course, but this is the only option,” activist Nastaran Beik Pourian said, adding “We need other countries.”

Read it.

For the past half century, successive Presidential administrations and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have thwarted the development of advanced reactor designs that might fulfill President Eisenhower’s vision for the “peaceful uses of atomic energy.”

That all changed last May, when President Trump issued four executive orders aimed at reinvigorating the U.S. nuclear energy industry. The Trump orders addressed advance reactor technologies – from microreactors to small modular reactors all the way up to advanced tech versions of the water-cooled reactors that power every active U.S. nuclear power plant.

Trump also pledged to revamp the NRC to cut costs and timeframes for bringing new nuclear energy facilities – of all sizes – into production. This revolutionary move ended decades of bureaucratic overkill that choked off what could have long been a preeminent energy driver.

They just ought to buy the reactors that power U.S. nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Proven technology, compact, never had any problems, ever.

The War Zone.

Details remain very limited at this time, but an F-15 went down in the Middle East. Accounts online claim it occurred over Kuwait. Videos show the aircraft in a flat spin while ablaze, with its vertical tails missing and fire coming from its empennage, before crashing into the ground. At least one crewman safely ejected.

…

U.S. Central Command has confirmed that, on March 1, three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles flying in support of Operation Epic Fury went down over Kuwait due to an apparent friendly fire incident. The CENTCOM statement continued:

“During active combat — that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones — the U.S. Air Force fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses.”

CENTCOM said that all six aircrew ejected safely, have been safely recovered, and are in a stable condition.

“Kuwait has acknowledged this incident, and we are grateful for the efforts of the Kuwaiti defense forces and their support in this ongoing operation,” the statement added. The cause of the incident is under investigation.

ScienceDaily.

I wonder whether it works on progressives….

Read it.

Old friends may remember the farce we experienced last May, when outgoing Marshmallow Interior Minister Nancy Faeser pushed her gaggle of goons in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to upgrade their political classification of Alternative für Deutschland.

No longer did the BfV consider the national political party to lurk under mere “suspicion of right-wing extremism,” oh no. They announced suddenly and with much establishment fanfare that they had determined the AfD to be “confirmed right-wing extremists.”

Faeser and her goons hoped this new designation would edge the AfD more firmly into Evil Nazi Fascist Hitler territory in the popular mind, thereby preparing the way for banning the party. According to the dumb Gender Studies-tier retards unassailable and unbiased experts of the BfV, the AfD were more definitely Evil, more definitely Nazi, more definitely Fascist and more definitely Hitler than ever before. They had such clear proofs of all the Evil Nazi Fascist Hitlerism lurking within the AfD that they could not even reveal them. Doing so, Faeser said, would compromise the mysterious sources and methods of her highly sophisticated political spy agency. Instead, the Interior Ministry leaked a classified dossier supporting the upgrade to sympathetic media like Der Spiegel, and these media promptly published earnest articles telling us all how absolutely Fascist and Evil and Nazi and Hitler all the secret evidence showed the AfD to be, because trust us bro.

The War Zone.

The joint U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran has entered its second day. The Iranians, as well as their regional proxies, continue to retaliate in kind against multiple countries in the region.

Readers can catch up first on the events of the first day of the war with our initial rolling coverage here.

The death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now confirmed by Iranian authorities, has created a new dimension to the conflict. The regime in Tehran has pledged to avenge Khamenei, and has also announced 40 days of public mourning.

The War Zone.

Satellite imagery from Vantor shows what it assesses to be an Iranian Alvand class frigate, one of three seen in port in the photo, billowing dark smoke after being struck as part of the U.S. and Israeli air campaign against the country. It’s also possible it’s another class of ship, but satellite imagery taken the day prior shows an Alvand in that berth. The image is the first confirmation of heavy damage or a loss of an Iranian warship since the strikes began. You can read the latest on the conflict in our live coverage here.

The burning frigate is seen sitting pier-side in Konarak, a port city in Iran’s southeastern corner, that sits along the Gulf of Oman and near the Pakistani border.

The location gives Iran closer access to the Indian Ocean, and it’s also an area known to be a hotbed of drone and missile capabilities, especially the anti-shipping kind, that can be launched from there to reach far out beyond the Gulf of Oman, putting ships at risk in the Indian Ocean.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of members of the military attending some of the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities on Friday, beginning academic year 2026-27, arguing the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies” to service members.

Hegseth, who attended Harvard University for postgraduate studies, said the move would affect institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Yale University and “others.”

“We demand that senior service colleges work to sharpen our war fighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism. We demand curriculums grounded in the founding principles of this republic, principles that champion the enduring ideals of peace through strength and putting American interests first,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social platform X.

“We demand universities that invest back into our nation’s prosperity rather than our greatest adversaries,” the Pentagon chief said in the four-minute clip. “It’s common sense.”

Earlier this month, Hegseth announced the Pentagon would cut all academic ties with Harvard starting in the 2026-27 school year, contending the country’s oldest university is “one of the red-hot centers of hate-America activism.”

The move marks another chapter in Hegseth’s culture war against academia since taking the helm at the Pentagon.

The War Zone.

With the U.S. Air Force now in the process of transitioning from the aging EC-130H Compass Call to the brand-new, bizjet-based EA-37B Compass Call, TWZ caught up with top executives from the two co-primes on the electronic attack aircraft program. In the process, we learned more about its capabilities, related platforms, and other prospects for the future. We spoke with Jason Lambert, president of the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sector (ISR) at L3Harris Technologies, and Dave Harrold, who leads the Countermeasure & Electromagnetic Attack (CEMA) Solutions business area at BAE Systems.

The War Zone.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio updated U.S. legislators on Iran just hours before President Donald Trump issued warnings over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in his State of the Union address. In the past days, U.S. military forces in the region have grown to the highest levels seen since the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. New assets that have arrived include U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors, reportedly in Israel, while F-16s have been deployed to Diego Garcia to protect the Indian Ocean outpost against potential Iranian attacks.

Rubio provided a rare intelligence briefing for congressional leaders — the so-called “gang of eight” — which includes the senior lawmakers from both parties in the House and Senate, as well as the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The contents of the briefing are classified, but it underscores the wider preparations for potential significant military action against Iran.

PsyPost—”The latest psychology and neuroscience discoveries”.

Oh, ya think?

Check it out.

Allegedly.

Read it.

The commander of the Navy destroyer USS Truxtun was removed from the ship on Sunday, “due to a loss of confidence” in his ability to command, following the ship colliding with a supply vessel earlier this month.

This afternoon the Navy said that the head of Naval Forces Southern Command, Rear Adm. Carlos Sardiello, relieved Cmdr. James Koffi of command of the Truxtun. Cmdr. Taylor Auclair, previously with the U.S. Fleet Forces Command was named the interim commander of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Koffi has been reassigned to Commander, Naval Surface Group Middle Atlantic.

As i predicted.

The USS Truxtun is only a few weeks into its deployment to the Caribbean, having left Naval Station Norfolk near the beginning of February (after a brief return to port for repairs). On Feb. 11, the ship was being replenished at sea by the oil supply ship the USNS Supply. Video taken onboard the Supply, and verified by the BBC, showed the Truxtun veering to starboard during the replenishment, hitting the oiler. The crash remains under investigation, the Navy said on Sunday.

Read it.

As the world watches unchecked immigration fundamentally transform the West, a growing backlash has gained a foothold – and it’s made it to the ballot box.

In Alberta, Canada, Premier Danielle Smith announced a referendum this fall to decide whether the province should limit the number of new international, temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers – as Alberta seeks to take charge of the issue amid a surge of proud Canadians who do not embrace change.

…

Meanwhile in Switzerland, a landmark vote is set for June 14 that would cap the nation’s population at 10 million from its current 9.1 million.

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
‘Til Turd World migrants swarm us all and murder in the street.

Read it.

This will one day link with the existing “military Schengen” between the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland, which Belgium and France plan to join, for creating a contiguous zone of free military movement between the Pyrenees and the approach to St. Petersburg.

The Baltic States’ Defense Ministers signed a statement of intent in late January for forming their own “military Schengen”, which refers to the agreement signed two years ago in January 2024 between the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland for expediting the flow of troops and equipment. Belgium and France are also expected to join the original “military Schengen”, whose members aim to slash to 3-5 days the estimated 45 days that it currently takes to send the aforesaid from the Atlantic to the Eastern Flank.

Upon their modernization, both in terms of infrastructure and legal coordination, the two “military Schengens” will form a contiguous zone of free military movement between the Pyrenees and the approach to St. Petersburg. To be sure, this is a work in progress that won’t be completed anytime soon, especially its Baltic portion. Poland only just opened the portion of the “Via Baltica” highway between itself and Lithuania, while the “Rail Baltica” between them and Estonia is even further behind schedule.

The Verge.

Accessory maker Elecom has announced what it’s claiming to be the first consumer-ready power bank that uses a sodium-ion battery instead of a lithium-ion one, as spotted by Notebookcheck. In addition to being more environmentally friendly to manufacture, the 9,000mAh Na Plus can be used in extreme temperatures with less risk of overheating, and has — Elecom claims — a lifespan of almost 5,000 charges. Even if you’re recharging it every single day, after 13 years it should still be providing power.

Read it.

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

The Foundry.

Last month, over 6,000 public employees broke free from union fees—a record-setting surge that signals a nationwide shift in teacher and public worker empowerment.

Helping lead the charge is the Freedom Foundation, which helps educators reclaim their paychecks from politically driven union agendas. This year, the group plans to help 60,000 workers leave unions and push legislation in multiple states to curb taxpayer funding for unions.

The Freedom Foundation plans to introduce legislation in Idaho, Florida, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, removing or limiting taxpayer support for unions. This bill would cost unions hundreds of millions of dollars.

Read it.

Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite helped rescue six skiers after an avalanche near Lake Tahoe on February 18, according to California emergency officials.

Authorities said the group maintained contact with rescuers for roughly four hours despite having no cellular coverage in backcountry terrain. The rescue offers a clear real-world example of Apple’s satellite emergency system in a life-threatening situation.

An avalanche hit a guided ski group in Nevada County, California, near Lake Tahoe, leaving six survivors stranded without cell service. They managed to contact rescuers using Apple’s Emergency SOS feature on the iPhone and a separate emergency beacon.

This is why I use an iPhone. Apple has features that you don’t often need but, when you do, you need them badly.

I haven’t worn a watch since I got my first cellphone in 1998, but I’m seriously contemplating getting an Apple Watch just for the health monitoring capabilities.

Smithsonian

In 2019, archaeologists unearthed a strange bone alongside a trove of ancient catapult projectiles in Córdoba, Spain. According to a study published this month in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, the bone may be from one of Hannibal’s war elephants, which the Carthaginian general used against Romans in the Second Punic War.

The bone “could prove to be a landmark,” lead author Rafael Martínez Sánchez, an archaeologist at the University of Cordoba, tells Live Science’s Tom Metcalfe. Until now, “there has been no direct archaeological testimony for the use of these animals.”

The dig was conducted ahead of construction for a medical facility on the Colina de los Quemados archaeological site. Archaeologists documented evidence of occupation at the site across hundreds of years beginning around the Late Bronze Age. However, their most intriguing discoveries date to the late Iron Age.

One thing about which I am curious, and which I have never seen discussed, is how they got the elephants across the Pillars of Hercules into Europe. It wasn’t as if the Carthaginians had LSTs.

The War Zone.

Russia is developing a new balloon-borne system that could provide battlefield access to high-speed data communications at a time when its forces are desperate to keep connected. The testing of the Barrage-1 balloon comes as Ukrainian troops are taking advantage of Russia’s loss of access to the SpaceX Starlink satellite constellation network. Both sides have become dependent on the SpaceX system for daily wartime operations, but the restrictions on Russia’s use of Starlink are allowing Kyiv’s forces to fend off attacks in some areas while advancing in others. You can read more about Russia’s Starlink troubles in our initial story here.

As we previously noted, the introduction of Starlink to the battlefield in Ukraine revolutionized how war is waged, giving users high bandwidth, relatively secure communications basically anywhere, all in a small, off-the-shelf package. Though Elon Musk’s SpaceX company provided them to Ukraine, Russians soon came to rely on them as well. However, earlier this month, the company created a list of verified users, cutting Russia off from the system and throwing its troops into disarray. We will talk more about that later in this story.

The War Zone.

The construction of new silos for the U.S. Air Force’s future LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) means that units charged with defending them will have to update their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Air Force Security Forces personnel regularly train to protect existing silos housing LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBMs, as well as associated launch facilities, or even recapture them if necessary. The need for totally new silos and other infrastructure has been a major issue for the Sentinel program, contributing significantly to delays and cost overruns that triggered a total restructuring that is still ongoing.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional watchdog, highlighted how Sentinel will impact Air Force Security Forces units in a brief report released earlier today. This comes a day after the Air Force put out its own update on the new ICBM program, stating that the current goal is for the restructuring effort to wrap up before the end of the year and for the first launch of a prototype LGM-35A to occur in 2027. The hope now is that Sentinel will begin entering operational service sometime in the early 2030s. The original schedule had called for the missiles to reach initial operational capability in 2029.

Watch it.

I know practically nothing about Canada. This guy lives in British Columbia and has some very interesting things to say aobut the Alberta situation.

Stratechery.

If you wanted to make a case for thin clients, you could argue that mobile devices are a hybrid; after all, the rise of mobile benefited from and drove the rise of the cloud: nearly every app on a phone connects to a server somewhere. Ultimately, however, mobile devices are themselves thick clients: they are very capable computers in their own right, that certainly benefit from being connected to a server, but are useful without it. Critically, the server component is just data: the actual interface is entirely local.

You can make the same argument about SaaS apps: on one hand, yes, they operate in the cloud and are usually accessed via a browser; on the other hand, the modern browser is basically an operating system in its own right, and the innovations that made SaaS apps possible were the fact that interactive web apps could be downloaded and run locally. Granted, this isn’t far off from Sun’s vision (although the language ended up being JavaScript, not Java), but you still need a lot of local compute to make these apps work.

Ben Thompson’s STRATECHERY is one of the best technology sites around. If you have any interest in what’s going on in tech, this is the place to go.

Watch it.

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

The Telegraph (UK).

I know the feeling.

Read it.

Aluminum foil is made by rolling sheets of 98.5 percent pure aluminum metal between pairs of polished, lubricated steel rollers.

Successive passes through the rollers squeeze the foil thinner.

Household aluminum foil is so thin (0.0005 of an inch) that the rollers can’t handle it without tearing it.

The final rolling is therefore done on a sandwich of two sheets, face to face.

The outer surfaces emerge with a finish as smooth as the rollers, while the two face-to-face inner surfaces emerge with a matte finish.

The two sheets are then separated.

Hence, a shiny side and a duller side.

When you use the foil, it makes no difference which side is up, down or sideways.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Never say we don’t have useful stuff here.

The War Zone.

Looking like a scene in a sci-fi movie, and in what is clearly a unique mission, dubbed Operation Windlord, USAF C-17s have been tasked with transporting a micro nuclear reactor. The U.S. military’s role is to transport the elements of the Ward250 reactor, made by Valar Atomics, from March Air Reserve Base in Southern California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Once on the ground in Utah, it will be moved to Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (USREL) in Orangeville for extensive testing. Beyond its direct utility, this operation may very well serve as a glimpse of what’s to come as the Department of Defense looks to integrate micro nuclear reactors into the power grids of critical installations.

A total of three C-17s will bring the components of the Ward250, eight modules in total, to Utah. This is said to be the first time a nuclear reactor has been moved via Globemaster III. The delivery of the Ward250 to USREL is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, established in response to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14301 last year.

Read it.

Alberta separatists are ramping up a petition drive to trigger an independence referendum, while President Donald Trump’s administration and allies draw scrutiny for contacts with the movement, but recent polling shows most Albertans still oppose leaving Canada.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, a separatist-aligned group, aims to collect by May 2 about 177,000 signatures, or 10% of Alberta’s registered voters — the threshold to launch a citizen-led referendum on separation.

Organizers and supporters told Reuters they want an independent Alberta, not U.S. statehood, even as some expressed admiration for Trump.

Read it.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s name no longer appears on the official list of speakers for the UN Human Rights Council’s opening session on February 23. His removal resulted from a petition by a Canadian civil society organisation, which asked Swiss authorities to investigate him for suspected crimes against humanity.

The UN Human Rights Council will meet on February 23, at which, according to preliminary plans, the Iranian Foreign Minister was scheduled to speak. The international organisation has not yet confirmed that he has been officially banned from speaking—the final list is under constant review. If his name does not appear on the final list, he will not speak at the Council’s meetings.

The removal came after the Canadian civil society organisation Dignity Initiative collected more than 100,000 signatures demanding that the minister be disinvited and called on the Swiss authorities to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity.

In its letter, Dignity emphasised that the minister does not represent the Iranian people, but rather the oppressive regime to which he belongs. According to the organisation, allowing him to participate in the Human Rights Council is tantamount to giving representatives of regimes that have committed some of history’s greatest atrocities a legitimate platform in an international forum.

Of course, historically the U.N. hasn’t hesitated to put nations notorious for their violation of human rights on the Human Rights Council, as demonstrated by their official web site. Like most Woke organizations, the U.N. prioritizes Diversity and Inclusion over Actually Doing What They’re Supposed to Be Doing.

The Foundry.

It’s hard to wrap your head around the massive news President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Thursday.

Trump and Zeldin estimated that the EPA will save taxpayers over $1.3 trillion by eliminating the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which served as the bedrock for a host of greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles in model years 2012 to 2027.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 directed the EPA to regulate “any air pollutant” that could “endanger public health or welfare.”

In 2006, Massachusetts and 11 other states sued the agency, demanding that it regulate greenhouse gas emissions on the theory that the emissions contribute to climate change and therefore endanger public health. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA must consider “whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change,” and the Obama administration issued the Endangerment Finding in 2009.

The Telegraph (UK).

Kim Jong-un has chosen his teenaged daughter to be his heir, South Korea has claimed.

Seoul’s spy agency told parliament on Thursday that Kim Ju-ae had been selected to lead North Korea when her father dies.

Ju-ae, the only publicly known child of Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju, has become an increasingly present figure during tightly choreographed official appearances, provoking suspicion that she was being groomed to be her father’s successor.

I wonder whether she’ll need to get a Stalin haircut like her dad.

The War Zone.

An AeroVironment LOCUST laser directed energy weapon owned by the U.S. Army was central to the chain of events that led to the recent shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, according to Reuters. Though many questions still remain to be answered about how the flight restrictions came to be imposed, LOCUST was designed to respond to exactly the kinds of drones that regularly fly across the southern border from Mexico.

Multiple outlets had already reported yesterday that the use of a laser counter-drone system was a key factor in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) sudden decision to impose the temporary flight restrictions over El Paso. Reuters‘ report says “two people briefed on the situation” identified the laser system in question as LOCUST. TWZ has reached out to AeroVironment and the U.S. Army for more information. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which oversees U.S. military operations in and around the homeland, declined to comment.

Last July, the U.S. military released a picture, seen below, showing Army personnel assigned to Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) conducting sling-load training with a LOCUST mounted on a 4×4 M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) at Fort Bliss. This had prompted some speculation that LOCUST systems might be in use along the U.S. border with Mexico. JTF-SB was established in March 2025 to oversee a surge in U.S. military support to the border security mission. Fort Bliss, situated in El Paso, is a major hub for those operations. It is also home to the 1st Armored Division and a significant number of Army air defense units.

Read it.

Domestic robots have been a fixture in science fiction novels for more than a century, but in the real world we’re still all doing our own domestic chores barring vacuuming.

While a number of companies are working on humanoid robots, with Apple reportedly among them, all we’ve really had so far are promises and extremely limited demos. But you can (maybe) buy a laundry-folding robot today for $8,000 or rent it for $450 a month …

Isaac 0 is available to purchase, with delivery promised for this month – but only if you live in the Bay Area of California.

Doing things badly at great expense is pretty much the California way these days.

Read it.

The Swiss government and parliament both oppose a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million until 2050 by limiting migration. But voters will have their own say this June after a petition linked to the ‘No to a 10 million Switzerland’ initiative crossed the 100,000-signature threshold needed to initiate a nationwide referendum in record time.

Establishment media outlets, including those outside of Switzerland, have focused in particular on the opposition from big business to this significant measure. But referendum backers from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party stressed on Wednesday that while “a small economic elite profits from uncontrolled immigration, the majority of the Swiss population suffers.”

Gee, where have we heard that before?

The New Neo.

Now the Fifth Circuit has said it’s not a requirement to send them back to the community while waiting deportation. The decision was 2-1.

…

Basically, the idea is that the government has the authority to do this under statute, even if many previous governments declined to do it. The dissenting judge noted that, “some of the people detained are ‘the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.’” For a substantial portion of that group, that would almost certainly be because their American-citizen children and grandchildren were born here after the parents or grandparents had entered illegally. If Congress wants to exempt the older generations and grandfather (literally) them in to citizenship or amnesty, all Congress has to do is pass a law to that effect.

Watch it.

Steven Crowder covers a topic that the Narrative Media don’t want you to know anything about.

Read it.

Spotify announced today a beta feature called About the Song, which adds swappable cards to the Now Playing View containing information about the track you’re currently listening to.

The future is available in English to Premium subscribers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. It summarizes information from third-party sources, including publications such as Variety and TIME.

Read it.

It’s no lightweight matter. DARPA is putting about $35 million in total funding on the table in the hope that it will spur researchers to work around fundamental physical constraints and build much larger-scale photonic circuits that do more of the computing with light, not electronics.

A recent solicitation from the Department of Defense’s research arm – the Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives (PICASSO) – aims to scale photonics beyond today’s narrow demonstrations. Citing the need for more capable photonic systems, including those relevant to artificial intelligence workloads, DARPA is calling on researchers to submit proposals showing how circuit-level design can overcome the fundamental limitations that constrain current photonic computing approaches, using today’s photonic components rather than waiting for new ones to be invented.

For those unfamiliar with photonic computing, it’s the use of light instead of electrons to process and transmit data. If that sounds far-fetched, it’s not, as DARPA points out – there are already photonic circuits around today, albeit in limited form.

Using light to process data signals has advantages that are ideal for heavy workloads like AI due to greater bandwidth, less latency, and improved energy efficiency. Unfortunately, as DARPA points out, “systems incorporating photonic circuits struggle to show significant system-level performance advantages over electronic systems.”

CNBC, a Voice of the Crust.

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the launch of TrumpRx — a direct-to-consumer website that is key to his administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs in the U.S.

The site is not selling drugs directly to American patients, but will act as a central hub that points them to drugmakers that are offering discounts on certain products on their own direct-to-consumer sites.

It’s still unclear if all patients, particularly those with insurance coverage, will see more cost savings from using that site to buy their medicines.

This is the sort of things that Democrats would, in the Good Old Days, form an NGO to do to benefit people and ‘stick it to the man’. That is, of course, before they BECAME ‘the man’ and went all in on collecting campaign contributions from Big Pharma, allowing them to jack up prices to the point where the only recourse was to vote for Democrats so that they could get government (i.e.taxpayer) subsidies to be able to afford the same.

Trump is not only a better Republican than the Republicans, he’s a better Democrat than the Democrats.

ABC News. 

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has announced it will cease publishing the World Factbook, a free online resource used by millions around the globe.

Frequently cited by journalists and academics, the Factbook offered regularly updated statistics and information about countries and communities all over the world, in an easily understood and searchable format.

A statement on the CIA’s website did not include a reason for the decision, simply stating that the publication had “sunset” while encouraging readers to “stay curious about the world and find ways to explore it … in person or virtually”.

I can reach out with my right hand and comfortably touch my copy of the CIA World Factbook 2024-2025. It has been an invaluable resource.

Read it.

A digital billboard near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is cycling through pro-Immigration and Customs Enforcement messages ahead of Super Bowl LX, drawing sharp criticism from some immigrant advocates as the region prepares for the NFL’s biggest weekend.

Read it.

Last October, Dubai-based billionaire and Emaar Properties founder Mohammed Alabbar unveiled an audacious $400 billion proposal to help solve America’s worsening housing shortage by building millions of housing units, describing it as both a humanitarian and economic opportunity that could “reshape the U.S. market” and create up to 20 million jobs.

According to Alabbar, the United States is experiencing a significant housing-supply shortfall, which has led to a crushing lack of affordable housing. Analysts estimate a gap of about 4.7 million to nearly 5 million housing units currently exists in the US. This shortage is the result of many years of underconstruction, soaring costs, regulatory and labor constraints. The effects are broad: higher home and rent prices, fewer first-time buyers, and mobility barriers for workers. In short: a weak supply side has become a drag on affordability, economic growth and inflation control. In response, Alabbar – who now runs the largest real estate developer in the UAE – proposed a $400 billion “fix” at the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi, capital which he claimed could be raised in as little as one week if the right partners are assembled.

But while Alabbar’s proposal was unlikely to be taken seriously – as it benefits his company as much as it does US homebuyers – the logic behind it is sound – build much more housing – and has seemingly impressed the Trump admin.

It does explains why, as Bloomberg reports, US homebuilders are working on a plan for a massive program to develop up to a million “Trump Homes” that would address the US affordability crisis while allowing private capital to deploy many billions of dollars.

Read it.

water supply pipes and, most significantly, tailpipe emissions. A dangerous neurotoxin that accumulates in human tissues and is linked to developmental deficits in children, environmental lead levels have come way down in the years since, and so have human exposures.

The proof is in your hair.

An analysis of hair samples conducted by University of Utah scientists shows precipitous reductions in lead levels since 1916.

“We were able to show through our hair samples what the lead concentrations are before and after the establishment of regulations by the EPA,” said demographer Ken Smith, a distinguished professor emeritus of family and consumer studies. “We have hair samples spanning about 100 years. And back when the regulations were absent, the lead levels were about 100 times higher than they are after the regulations.”