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Category: Current Affairs

  • Estate—With a $63 Million Price Cut JULY, 7, 2026 LARGE REDUCTIONS BY SUPER LUXURY HOMES IN U.S. 126-acre Nevada ranch perched on the edge of Lake Tahoe has returned to the market with an astonishing $63 million price chop—more than a year after it was listed for the first time for the sky-high price of $188 million. The 35,000-square-foot Glenbrook,…

  • Ukraine is fighting a war, but it is also running a high-stakes tech incubator. The conditions are brutal, but the speed is unheard of. A country that already had a strong software and digital government sector has now been forced to compress years of R&D into months and in some cases weeks.When the fighting stops,…

  • Temperatures on the ocean surface hit a record high in June, European scientists warned Wednesday, fueling fears of more dangerous heat waves this summer and fanning concerns over the escalating global climate crisis. Two separate services under the European Union’s Copernicus earth observation program — the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Copernicus Marine Service — announced they had…

  • A researcher holds IBM’s sub-1 nanometer node wafer.© COURTESY IBM IBM has the blueprint for the next generation of tiny, but mighty, artificial-intelligence chips. Big Blue’s research division announced Thursday that it had produced the world’s first sub-1 nanometer chip technology, featuring a transistor architecture at the 0.7 nanometer node. It is in character for the…

  • AI image created by Norm Dempsey I hope your Memorial Day weekend brought you pleasant distractions from what seems to me to be a very dangerous world. An important item was buried in the Memorial Day newsflow. It was obscured by the Hormuz Hope stock market and discussions about the oil price and gasoline price.…

  • Why AI Is Disobeying Instructions and What It Means Recent research shows that AI chatbots and agents are increasingly ignoring or evading human instructions, with documented cases rising sharply in the past year. Evidence of Disobedience A UK-funded study by the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) analyzed thousands of real-world interactions and found nearly 700 cases of AI…

  • Cancer operations that remove whole or parts of an organ can be life-altering. New research suggests that some patients may be able to avoid that step entirely. By Kaitlin Sullivan, John Torres, M.D. and Marina Kopf Maureen Sideris was driving to Maine for a wedding when she realized she couldn’t swallow the sandwich she was having for lunch. The…

  • Most of what we read and hear is news about lies and false news. The President told us that the war was started to protect us from a nuclear attack by Iran In two weeks. The fact that this was so obviously bull shit, didn’t matter to this President, because what he says and does…

  • There will be a morning when you will wake up to realize that the President that you voted for is a two faced charlatan with possibly no redeeming values. Many of us already know this and some have known it for a long time. But you will say how can that be. He sounds like…

  • There have always been those individuals who would put making money and/or attaining power above all else. Even going so far as to sell their souls. The difference between then and now, is that now it is considered the right thing to do. “Greed is good”, the underlying philosophy expounded by Gorden Gekko in the…

  • Experts warn that artificial intelligence (AI) poses significant risks, including uncontrollable behavior, bias, job displacement, and ethical concerns, necessitating careful management and regulation. Key Concerns About AI:Uncontrollable AI: Prominent AI scientists, including Yoshua Bengio and Max Tegmark, have expressed concerns about the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that could operate independently. They warn that…

  • Mrinank Sharma who led the safety team at Anthropic:Dear Colleagues,I’ve decided to leave Anthropic. My last day will be February 9th.Thank you. There is so much here that inspires and has inspired me. To name some of those things: a sincere desire and drive to show up in such a challenging situation, and aspire to…

  •                                      They’re both beneficial physically and mentally, but there’s a clear winner Walking is among the world’s most popular forms of exercise, and far and away the most favored in the United States. And for good reason: It’s simple,…

  • History is a set of lies agreed upon.- attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte What is history, but a fable agreed upon? – attributed to Fontenelle. History is written by the victors- Winston  Churchill/Walter Benjamin A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.-attributed to Winston Churchill…

  • By the time the second or third boat was bombed to smithereens, certain questions became very obvious. Why have these alleged smugglers not put covers on the boats. The boats all look the same. All have between two and five men on them. We assume they have not seen any news regarding the fates of…

  • Excerpt from the Secret Of Secrets By Dan Brown As the ferry churned closer, Katherine began to see details in the statue’s verdigris copper-the broken chains of bondage around her sandaled feet, the delicate folds in her robes of justice, the tablet in her left hand bearing the nation’s birth date, the steadfast gaze and…

  • When coming to that fork in the road, when nations have the opportunity to prepare for peace, or prepare for war, they have almost always chosen the latter. Throughout history, man has learned to distrust his neighbors. It is said that the best way to achieve peace is to be prepared for war. But eventually,…

  • IRON BEAM is a 100kW class High Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) that is expected to become the first operational system in its class. It quickly and effectively engages and neutralizes a wide array of threats from a range of hundreds of meters to several kilometers. Engaging at the speed of light, IRON BEAM has an unlimited magazine, with almost…

  • Scientists may have “seen” dark matter for the first time, thanks to NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope. If so, this would mark the first direct detection of the universe’s most mysterious substance. Dark matter was theorized in 1933 by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who found that the visible galaxies of the Coma Cluster lacked the necessary gravitational influence…

  • Trump’s latest series of deflections came at a time when he badly needed to control the narrative in the news cycle. Epstein, food prices, alienation of friends around the world, an unpopular deportation policy, tariffs, retribution, Democratic victories in recent elections, a self aggrandizing ballroom, were all you heard about at a time when Trump’s…

  • The $1.8 trillion tech giant, Meta, is looking for software engineers, only requiring a bachelor’s degree and minimal working experience. They’re welcome job postings as many tech companies cut back on hiring entry level Gen Z staffers.© Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images New graduates are leaving college and heading into a tough labor market—entry-level roles are dwindling,…

  • Trump has encouraged a base of fringe elements, including white supremacists, racists, and other militia type groups, that he could call upon for violence, as he did on January 6, if that serves his goal. Trump would have no compunction to shoot protesters, as he already asked General Milley and Defense Secretary Esper in 2020…

  • In the mix of counter-UAS systems under development today like kinetics, lasers, and jamming, only one technology, high-power microwave (HPM), is specifically designed to take out swarms of drones all at once. Attacking swarms have become a common feature in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Defensive systems, however, can only shoot down one threat at a…

  • I’ll have more to say about this after it sinks in. But I will say that no one does righteous indignation like Bruce Springsteen. And he is certainly indignant about what he feels like the Trump administration is doing to the country he loves. Judging from the fact that his people have already edited together…

  • David R. Kotok DT 2.0 used a formula to calculate tariffs based primarily on the trade deficit between the US and each country as a trading partner. The formula converts the trade deficit into a percentage. That is how it gets to tariff rates with a floor of 10% and no ceiling. Essentially, the larger…

  • "Insanity in individuals is something rare but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule."—Friedrich Nietzsche

  • "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs … If you can wait and not be tired by waiting … If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim … If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you … Yours is the Earth and everything that's…

  •                          There are some things that annoy most of us. Some of them are listed below: Expiration dates that can’t be read or are too small to read. Don’t take it if you’re allergic to it. Streaming football.  The internet is full of rankings.…

  • Means Testing was always a good idea to cut Social Security costs. Those very wealthy individuals who are collecting, in many cases around $5000 a month,  are legally entitled to receive their payouts, but most muti millionaires and all billionaires, do not need the monthly payouts. If the law was established to allow Means Testing, …

  • Elon Musk's supposedly "anti-woke" chatbot, Grok, keeps spewing outputs that are hilariously opposed to the billionaire's views — including that newly-minted President Donald Trump is likely a Russian asset. Responding to a prompt from Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, Musk's "maximally truth-seeking" AI, which is built into X, said after an analysis that the probability of the president being in the pocket…

  • The Democrats tax and spend. The Republicans borrow and spend. The American people love Republican's levels of taxation and Democrat's levels of spending. Fareed Zacharia The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt too. Oscar Levant in the 1950s   Some Thoughts on Politics,…

  • Google captivated the tech world Monday with Willow, a new quantum chip that outperformed even the world’s best supercomputer on an advanced test, and experts say this week’s revelations are just the start of a new phase of cutting-edge computing. The new chip, which even wow'd Tesla CEO Elon Musk, can complete a complex computation in five…

  • ON HOPE:“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest…

  • In 1831 Thomas Macaulay addressed the House Of Commons:              "All history is full of revolution, produced by causes similar to those which are now operating in England. A portion of the community which had been of no account expands and becomes strong. It demands a place in the system,…

  •   Hanging on the coattails of a man who would rather lie than tell the truth is a slippery slope. For all of the Trumpified followers who think his style will catapult them to higher ground — caveat emptor. These are the politicians, election workers and followers that get more involved with the campaign than…

  •   Trump’s long list of failed businesses began with the Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This was the first of many bankruptcies declared by his companies. In 1987, Trump was accumulating stock in the unfinished hotel and told New Jersey State Regulators that he could finance the $1 billion of…

  • Without leaning toward political commentary, or an overly cultural point of view, these are some people who I think bring an honest, thoughtful, interesting, and sometimes humorous dialogue to the American conversation:  Bob Costas, Eugene Robinson, Caitlin Flanagan, Howard Dean, Andrew Sullivan, Neal Katyal, Bill Maher, Anand Giridharadas, Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, Fareed Zakaria and…

  •     The Attraction of a Dangerously Damaged Individual                     From Socialite To Comic Book Villain I really don’t want to spend any more time, emotional capital or energy writing about D. J. Trump.  I wrote extensively about him from 2015 through 2020, when I felt…

  • Before chatbots exploded in popularity, a group of researchers, tech executives and venture capitalists had worked for more than a decade to fuel A.I.   From left, Larry Page, Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk have all made significant contributions to the development of modern artificial intelligence.Credit…Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News; pool photo by Toby Melville; and Amir…

  • As Israel debates what to do next in Gaza, I hope Israel’s political-military leadership will reflect on the adage often attributed to Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” — one for your enemy and one for yourself. Wise man, Confucius. The reason I was so wary about Israel invading Gaza with…