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Nothing says ‘Merica like supermarkets with automated vending machines stocked with ammunition. A select number of supermarkets across Alabama and Oklahoma have these new machines. This means you can leave the store with milk, eggs, and boxes of 9mm and .223 rounds.

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Help to solve the mystery of a 2,200-year-old ‘computer’ has come from an unlikely source – a YouTuber.

The Antikythera Mechanism is believed to be the earliest surviving mechanical computing device.

The content creator’s research into the device’s interlocking gears was crucial in discovering the truth behind this advanced and ancient artifact.

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“We were promised the curing of cancer and all we got are so-and-so improvements in five-year cancer survival rates” would be a fair thing to say about progress in biomedical sciences in the last few decades. And cancer is one of the disease areas where we have done pretty well, relatively speaking. If we look at Alzheimer’s, the situation is much worse: up until 2021, we had gone for 20 years with no new drugs – and even the approved ones have marginal effects.

The big question is: Why? A common explanation is that biology might simply be too hard for us to manipulate successfully. Humans have come up with very clever solutions to defeat all these ailments, but despite our ingenuity, we simply cannot match what has been shaped by millions of years of evolution. Another explanation is that this is, to use a very online term, simply a “skill issue.” It’s not that biology itself is too hard, we’re just not being smart enough about understanding and manipulating it.

CNN so use with caution.

Deep inside Earth is a solid metal ball that rotates independently of our spinning planet, like a top whirling around inside a bigger top, shrouded in mystery.

This inner core has intrigued researchers since its discovery by Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann in 1936, and how it moves — its rotation speed and direction — has been at the center of a decades-long debate. A growing body of evidence suggests the core’s spin has changed dramatically in recent years, but scientists have remained divided over what exactly is happening — and what it means.

Part of the trouble is that Earth’s deep interior is impossible to observe or sample directly. Seismologists have gleaned information about the inner core’s motion by examining how waves from large earthquakes that ping this area behave. Variations between waves of similar strengths that passed through the core at different times enabled scientists to measure changes in the inner core’s position and calculate its spin.

Smithsonian.

Orderly boxes of cards once filled libraries large and small, and even the most humble of books boasted a catalog card of its own. But when the company that made the cards stopped printing them in 2015, the sun finally set on the card catalog, a book-finding system more than a century old.

…

Many of us who remember going to libraries and using the card catalog connect it with a sense of discovery. I have memories of flipping through the cards by subject and finding all the different books or other materials that had the kind of information I was looking for and those were always fun “eureka!” moments.

But it is not just about nostalgia. The card catalog was a revolutionary tool for organizing information. It was really the first search engine, so I think for younger generations it is an eye-opener to think about the written catalog and how far we have come in organizing data and making it findable.

I recall as a student going to the card catalog, looking up a book, and then just flipping through cards ahead and behind the one I had looked up to find others of the same nature. The Library of Congress web site has a ‘browse’ feature where one can look up a book and then ‘browse the self’ for books with the same (or close) classifications, which is an experience close to that of playing Myst.

Read it.

I’m often asked what my favorite weird/obscure fact about New York City was. Ironically, as the founder of Untapped New York, this question frequently proves difficult because there are just so many amazing things about this city. So I went back into my memory archives, thinking what about New York City impelled me to create Untapped New York. The pneumatic tube mail system is top on that list.

I remember pneumatic tube systems in department stores in Indianapolis when I was a child. I’ve never lost my fascination with them. The still seem very … steampunk is about the best way to describe it.

Nature.

Computational approaches are emerging as powerful tools for the discovery of antibiotics. A study now uses machine learning to discover abaucin, a potent antibiotic that targets the bacterial pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii.

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Making a graham cracker crust for your no-bake pies and cheesecakes is a bit old hat these days. Usher in this festive season with a crumb crust that’s far from ordinary, but familiar at the same time. This crust provides a unique texture, and it just might be the easiest crumb crust out there. You can make a press-in pie crust out of a single ingredient: Pop-Tarts.

Read it.

Antihistamine drugs, such as Benadryl, Allegra, and Claritin, might stave off the coronavirus, according to a recent study published by the American Society of Microbiology Journals.

Read it.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., picked a pending victory over Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., which remains in a recount, but the revenge tour is vowing to keep pressing forward against all of those who stripped him of the gavel this past January.

You’d think he was a Clinton.

To be fair, I can’t say that I wouldn’t do the same, had it happened to me.

The only thing that keeps me from being a SuperVillain is my native indolence.

Read it.

A district judge has granted Texas and Montana’s request for a preliminary injunction against the federal government’s attempt “to impose a sweeping new social policy” that allows for Title IX coverage for gender identity.

Read it.

Speaking at the WEF’s ‘Annual Meeting of the New Champions’, often dubbed the “Summer Davos,” in China, Schwab stated that in order to drive the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” forward, elites must aggressively drive their agenda home.

“To drive future economic growth we must embrace innovation and force the collaboration across sectors, regions, nations, and cultures to create a more peaceful, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient future,” Schwab proclaimed.

He added, “At this critical juncture the active participation of all stakeholders is essential to ensure a sustainable development path.”

I wonder how much it would cost to put out a contract on Klaus Schwab. Maybe we could do a Kickstarter or a GoFundMe project.

Read it.

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

Engineered mRNA has turned cells into tiny biofactories, producing medications to successfully treat an inflammatory skin condition and two types of cancer, according to a new study. The tech paves the way for therapies in which patients’ bodies make their own drugs.

Read it.

Now, if only we could get Certain People to realize that….

The full implication of the Founding Fathers’ decisions (note the plural) to break from their mother country has never fully sunk in with many Americans. This is especially true when we consider and critique the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Because, paradoxically, the court often doesn’t do its job of striking down unconstitutional laws because it is too British.

Under the British system, courts don’t judge laws on their constitutionality. But across the pond, America’s system requires them to. When the Supreme Court says it can’t strike down a law because doing so would be “undemocratic” (a frequent justification), it’s actually saying, “No judicial review please, we’re British.” For example, last year, when the court reviewed a California law that threatened to raise the cost of pork throughout the country in violation of the Constitution’s commerce clause, it politely demurred because “[i]n a functioning democracy, policy choices like these usually belong to the people and their elected representatives.” Instead of making an excuse befitting a Jane Austen dinner party, the court would have been better off remembering why it was given the power to overrule a “democratic policy choice” after the American Revolution.

Read it.

Arc Institute scientists have discovered the bridge recombinase mechanism, a revolutionary tool that enables fully programmable DNA rearrangements.

Their finding, detailed in a recent Nature publication, is the first DNA recombinase that uses a non-coding RNA for sequence-specific selection of target and donor DNA molecules. This bridge RNA is programmable, allowing the user to specify any desired genomic target sequence and any donor DNA molecule to be inserted.

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Are we on the verge of an apocalyptic global war in which billions of people could die?  Very few people anticipated that World War I would erupt, but it happened anyway.  And very few people anticipated that World War II would erupt, but it happened anyway.  All throughout human history, there have been wars.  Ever since the very beginning, it has just been a matter of time before major powers collide.  Unfortunately, even though very alarming warning signals are flashing all around us, most of the population of the western world seems absolutely clueless about what is really going on out there.  Leaders all over the planet seem to have come down with a really bad case of “war fever”, and preparations for apocalyptic showdowns are being made. 

No pressure, but….

Read it.

Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun.

In a paper appearing today in the journal Joule, the team outlines the design for a new solar desalination system that takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight.

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system.

Read it.

The answer is in—our hospitals are overwhelmed. And it has now reached a crisis point. It is killing people.

Emergency medicine doctors across the country have been sounding the alarm. Americans are noticing it too. In a recent poll, nearly half of Americans said they avoid the ER—avoid critical care they need—given the wait times.

Here’s what is happening on the front line and how to fix it.

Read it.

This story has been making the rounds on the internet with a claim that you’ve probably been told during visits to castles, but, there’s no evidence for it whatsoever.

“I thought that there were still quite a few people who actually wanted and liked conservatism. But in fact, there are hardly any. The other day I was asked to define the word, on Twitter, and came up with something like “Love of God, love of country, love of family, love of beauty, love of liberty and the rule of law, suspicion of needless change”. Given more room I’d have added all kinds of preferences for poetry and sylvan beauty over noise and concrete, for twilight over noonday, for autumn over summer and wind over calm, for the deep gleam of iron polished in use over the flashy sparkle of precious metal.” — Peter Hitchens

Read it.

North Carolina State University researchers have developed a kirigami-inspired mechanical computer that uses a complex structure of rigid, interconnected polymer cubes to store, retrieve and erase data without relying on electronic components. The system also includes a reversible feature that allows users to control when data editing is permitted and when data should be locked in place.

Remember: Corporations do not pay taxes. Corporations merely collect taxes. Taxes are an expense to a corporation, which like any other expense is folded into the price that they charge their customers. Therefore, the people who actually pay the taxes are … the customers.

‘Taxing corporations’ allow governments to take even more money from their citizens in a way such that the stupid element of the population believes that the tax is being paid by someone else.

Washington Poop.

Dozens of awe-inspiring ancient footprints left on the shores of an ice age lake have reignited a long-running debate about when the first people arrived in the Americas.

All cities run by Democrats. What a surprise.

Read it.

Cancer cells hoard iron in unusually high quantities. Scientists have discovered how to leverage this to create safer cancer drugs.

Read it.

When secession serves the needs of political homogeneity and self-determination, it might actually serve the common good.

Hand surgery and ennui. Back in a week, maybe.

UnHerd.

Is this the week that Europe’s much-anticipated far-Right wave finally crashes down upon us? As the results of France’s first-round vote trickled through yesterday, almost every media outlet — from the BBC to The New York Times — carried stories of Marine Le Pen’s “far-Right” victory. Meanwhile, just over the border in Belgium, came warnings of Viktor Orbán’s plan to form a new “far-Right” pact in the European parliament. Throw in the AfD’s “far-Right” party congress on Saturday, and it’s been a busy few days for the movement.

Yet these warnings have become ritualistic and devoid of analysis. For in truth, there is little “far-Right” about many of these movements. They are Eurosceptic, but not EuroExiters. They are hostile to mass immigration (which government is now not?), but recognise the large decline in birth rates means they’re stuck with large-scale immigration. They are suspicious of the LGBTQ+ movement, but largely accepting of homosexuality. Their aims, from housing to the economy, are mostly hard to attain, but if lawfully pursued, none is a threat to democratic government.

You wouldn’t know that from following the Narrative Media.

Read it.

In northeast Borno States female Boko Haram suicide bombers, set off their explosives at a wedding and then a funeral, leaving 32 dead and 42 wounded. Boko Haram became active in Borno during 2009 and since then have killed over 40,000 while two million were driven from their homes.

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Blacker than Lagos? I think not.

Chicago celebrated ‘Juneteenth’ with 40 shootings. The Windy City kept up a Father’s Day weekend in which 71 people were shot by fatherless young men in a city where 8 out of 10 black children are born to single mothers. And in which it’s all the fault of “systemic racism”.

Over in Daley Plaza, Mayor Brandon Johnson (pictured above) raised the ‘Juneteenth flag’ created by an activist who wanted the black parts of Boston to secede and form a new city named ‘Mandela’.

But who needs Mandela, when you’ve got Chicago?

“God bless the blackest city in the world,” Johnson, a radical who has presided over massive crime and enjoys an approval rating of 28%, declared.

Read it.

House Republicans filed a lawsuit on July 1 against Attorney General Merrick Garland, seeking to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release the audiotapes of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden in his classified documents probe.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also asks the court to require the DOJ to hand over the audio of Mr. Hur’s interview with President Biden’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who wrote two memoirs for him.

The legal action came after the House Republicans last month voted to hold Mr. Garland in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for tapes of Mr. Hur’s interview with the president. The White House has asserted executive privilege.

For those who haven’t been obsessing about all things Biden (and I can hardly blame you), Hur is the special prosecutor who decided not to indict Biden for his official-records retention (for which offense Trump is being prosecuted) because he would be too sympathetic a figure as a senile old man to get convicted.

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A woman from Seattle has now officially been charged with trying to influence the outcome of a Federal trial by dropping off $120,000 in cash at the home of a juror.

31 year old Ladan Mohamed Ali left the cash along with instructions to convince others to acquit the defendants, according to a report from KOMO.

KOMO reported that “the bribe also included a set of instructions to the juror to ‘inject racism into the case’ and to use the Feeding Our Future defendants’ status as immigrants to gain sympathy from other jurors.”

Now, she, along with her co-conspirators Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 35, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23, Said Shafii Farah, 42, and 24-year-old Abdulkarim Shafii Farah, will be defendants themselves.

I’m just guessing here, but I don’t think that Ladan Mohamed Ali and Abdiaziz Shafin Farah, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, and Abdulkarim Shafii Farah identify as Republicans.

Read it.

UPDATE: Nearly 90,000 People Fled J.B. Pritzker’s Illinois Between 2021 and 2022, Taking Billions in Income With Them

Read it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Monday issued a vow to file articles of impeachment after the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, which she described as “an assault on American democracy.”

More Trump Derangement Syndrome:

The Supreme Court Puts Trump Above the Law (The Atlantic)

The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially (The Nation)

Van Jones: ‘MAGA Hats’ SCOTUS Just Gave Presidents a ‘License to Thug’

ABC Panics SCOTUS Case Is ‘Absolute’ Win for Trump; ‘Hard to Square’ With Constitution

Read it.

It’s never too late.

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The behavior of senior officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the powerful federal agency formerly run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, is intolerable.

And the performance of the Department of Health and Human Services in response to legitimate congressional inquiries has been abysmal.

The latest evidence comes to us courtesy of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee recently released an interim staff report on its lengthy investigation into the NIAID-approved gain-of-function research into the MPXV, a virus that causes the deadly disease commonly known as monkeypox.

Gain-of-function research is laboratory research deliberately designed to enhance the virulence and the transmissibility of a pathogen. According to the House committee’s report, the National Institutes of Health and NIAID misled lawmakers for more than 17 months before handing over proof that they approved gain-of-function experiments to be performed on the monkeypox virus.

Read it.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 6-3 vote that former presidents, including Trump, enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct involving official acts during tenure in office, but he’s not immune from unofficial acts.

…

As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley notes, now “the issue is whether what constitutes official acts,” adding that the ruling will “further delay the lower court proceedings, but Trump will have to argue that his actions fall within these navigational beacons.”

UPDATE: ‘Trump Will Imprison His Political Opponents!’ Says Guy Imprisoning His Political Opponents (Babylon Bee)

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Scientists in China have synthesized spider silk from genetically modified silkworms, producing fibers six times tougher than the Kevlar used in bulletproof vests.

The study, published September 20 in the journal Matter, is the first to successfully produce full-length spider silk proteins using silkworms. The findings demonstrate a technique that could be used to manufacture an environmentally friendly alternative to synthetic commercial fibers such as nylon.

“Silkworm silk is presently the only animal silk fiber commercialized on a large scale, with well-established rearing techniques,” said Mi. “Consequently, employing genetically modified silkworms to produce spider silk fiber enables low-cost, large-scale commercialization.”

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A low-carbon cement developed by two MIT grads has officially exceeded industry standards for strength, durability, and more, clearing a major hurdle to commercialization.

Sublime Systems, a startup founded by two MIT grads, has developed a process that slashes the emissions generated during cement production.

Instead of using heat to extract lime from limestone, it uses a series of electro-chemical reactions — powered by electricity from renewables — at ambient temperatures to pull the cement ingredient from the rock.

Because the CO2 that remains is pure — that is, not diluted by other exhaust gasses — it’s easier to capture and store than the emissions from the traditional process.

Read it.

Gardening is often pitched as a relaxing, therapeutic activity—and it is relaxing and therapeutic! But it’s also a sign of how advanced society has become that we can regard growing food as a charming hobby instead of an absolute necessity. On the one hand, that’s a clear sign of mankind’s mastery over the world. On the other, it’s left us remarkably dependent on a system of farming and delivery logistics that has been shown to be distressingly fragile.

Anyone who has ever successfully grown a tomato plant in their backyard has wondered if they could go “off-grid,” grow their own food, and be done with their local supermarket. The answer is yes, but that’s the wrong question. The question isn’t whether it’s possible—the question is how. It’s all about the logistics: How much space do you need to grow enough crops to feed you and your family?

Watch it. And creak along … if you can.

Like the narrator, I suck at vocal fry. (Is that a Good Thing?)

Wall Street Journal.

In one of the most consequential decisions in decades for America’s most prominent city, Hochul soon said she was indefinitely pausing congestion pricing—less than a month before it was set to take effect on Sunday, June 30.

The abrupt reversal, which some attribute to Hochul’s reluctance to impose a new fee in an election year, leaves metro New York grappling with a historic missed opportunity and fiscal mess. There is no relief in sight for the city’s traffic congestion, which is the worst in the world, according to data published last week.

The epic collapse in New York shows how a fear of dramatic change can give the status quo stubborn power over those trying to solve some of America’s most intractable challenges. That leaves policymakers nibbling at the edges of deeply rooted problems, even after investing huge sums of money and political capital.

“The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society… The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” 

— Thomas Jefferson in his 1813 letter to John Adams

Read it.

A court in Pakistan sentenced a Christian man to death for sharing what it said was hateful content against Muslims on social media after one of the worst mob attacks on Christians in the eastern Punjab province last year, his lawyer said Monday, adding he will appeal the verdict.

In August 2023, groups of Muslim men burned dozens of homes and churches in the city of Jaranwala after some residents claimed they saw two Christian men tearing out pages from Islam’s holy book, the Quran, throwing them on the ground and writing insulting remarks on other pages, authorities said. The two men were later arrested.

No casualties were reported at the time as terrified Christians fled their homes to safer areas. Though the police arrested more than 100 suspects following the attacks, it remained unclear if any were convicted.

What would it be like if Muslims were sentenced to death for posting hateful content about Christians? Well, there would be a lot of dead Muslims….

ZMan is not impressed with Joe Biden … or his handlers.

Since the Thursday night debate at which Joe Biden looked like a hospice patient, there have been competing theories about whether it was a setup in order to push Biden out of the way or whether it was just another screwup. Basically, we have two competing theories of the crime. One says it is the work of those mysterious people in the hollowed-out volcano who control the world and the other theory says it is the work of people who are too stupid to run the machine they inherited.

The hollowed-out volcano theory side had the momentum on Thursday night as regime media started bellowing for Biden to step aside. It had the feel of that first weekend of the Ukraine war when every talking hairdo on television had a Ukraine flag lapel pin and was spasmodically saying “keev” at one another. The same people who were telling one another that Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack were suddenly competing with one another to condemn his family for rolling him out on stage.