TheRightNothing

We always may be who we might have been

Better world is possible

“A year ago, Trump encouraged Ukraine to hit Russian refineries harder as part of a co-ordinated effort to weaken Putin’s economy and force him to the negotiating table. At the time, he said he wanted Kyiv to ‘make them [Russians] feel the pain’ and compel the Kremlin to negotiate”

“the researchers looked back over 550 million years of evolutionary time. They found the same two-origin brain pattern in chickens; zebrafish; and, remarkably, in acorn worms, tiny creatures living on the ocean floor that share a distant common ancestor with humans” med.stanford.edu/news/all-new...

Apple “recaps” a lot closer than 3 letters from “wiretaps”

AI may be making our brains lazy. When we outsource writing, summarizing, and evaluating to tools like ChatGPT, we skip the "depth of processing" that helps us actually learn and think critically—and those cognitive muscles can atrophy from disuse.

A Cape Verde World Cup watch party in Oakland led to an emotional reunion when a former Peace Corps teacher was recognized by a student she taught in the African nation 35 years ago.

Switzerland is neutral

“.. The U.S. is now spending more on data center construction than on public transportation infrastructure, according to new Census Bureau figures out today.” @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

New, by me at this.weekinsecurity.com: Health wearable giant Oura says it has received government demands for users' information (because Oura does not use end-to-end encryption). Will Oura say how often it gets demands for user data, and how often Oura hands over users' data to authorities?

Solar on canals reduces water evaporation by 70% and algae growth by 85% #energysky -- via pv magazine usa:

The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Pollution levels in Paris after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.

But surely this will reduce crime in our communities, right?

“11 sperm whales huddled together at the surface, strangely still and taking occasional shallow dives. After about an hour, the animals seemed to start thrashing, and a plume of blood reddened the water. The researchers feared trouble, maybe a shark attack. But it was something else.” WHALE DOULAS!

Norway 🇳🇴 advocating for consumer rights (with a h/t to Cory Doctorow) m.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

washingtonmonthly.com/2026/03/17/t...

Quote from Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein: “I think about horses. They used to pull carriages, but when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free... It would be weird if horses revolted and said ‘no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.’”

There are now Mardi Gras beads made of biodegradable materials and have okra seeds in them that you can plant. The future can still look bright!

Fascinating chart with one outlier: Warren Buffett. At the low end, giving 0.06% of one's wealth is equivalent to: Net worth -> Lifetime Giving 50K->$30 100K->$60 500K->$300 $1M->$600 Most folks give far more by % in a *single year*. www.forbes.com/sites/forbes...

Meta's plan for launching glasses that people can use to secretly identify strangers on the street is to do it "during a dynamic political environment" when people who care about why that's bad are "focused on other concerns." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

A dresser inside a museum in New York City has been discovered as a secret stop on the Underground Railroad — the first of its kind discovered in Manhattan in over 100 years

The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023. The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets. https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3

As of 12/24/25, USPS changed policy on when they postmark mail. Mail dropped off is no longer guaranteed a same-day postmark. Tax returns & other time-sensitive items are now stamped when they reach a regional processing center, which may be days later. Plan deadlines accordingly to avoid penalties.

Brown has over 1,200 cameras and it wasn’t enough because cameras are a security blanket we’ve all been sold. They don’t prevent crimes and they barely solve crimes but in the meantime surveillance companies got rich and no one had to address the societal root causes of crime and violence.

Meta halted internal research that purportedly showed (young) people who stopped using Facebook became less depressed and anxious, according to an unredacted legal filing released on Friday. www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/m...

I finally got around to reading this. You should read it too. "We are exporting the very labor of teaching and learning—the slow work of wrestling with ideas, the enduring of discomfort, doubt and confusion, the struggle of finding one’s own voice." www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

British and Australian chemists have discovered a powerful new antibiotic called pre-methylenomycin C lactone, hiding in a well-known soil bacterium. This molecule kills drug-resistant bacteria without triggering resistance. buff.ly/YlXaONo #ShareGoodNewsToo

“The prohibited activities would include joint research, co-authorship on papers, and advising a foreign graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. The language is retroactive, meaning any interactions during the previous 5 years could make a scientist ineligible for future federal funding.”

After 232 years, the U.S. Mint has produced its last-ever penny

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

A reminder that less than two months ago, the Trump administration abruptly ended the federal government's 27-year practice of collecting data on hunger and food insecurity.

Authorities Investigating Explosion at Harvard Medical School, Believed To Be Intentional www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

GWOT+AI error = -civil rights

Sunday Reading: A Constant Torrent of Authoritarian Arrogance, Corruption, and Complicity American politics is an exasperating, frenzied, and acutely dangerous mess. Let’s sort through the events of the past week to separate what matters from what does not.   Some thoughts from my new piece:

Our military is being paid by an anonymous donor. Our WH East Wing was demolished for a ballroom - paid for by donors. These aren’t acts of benevolence or patriotism. This is the oligarchy assuming control, insidiously becoming part of how we function. Every American should reject it.

Extraordinary NEW story: We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. @nicolefoy.bsky.social w/ photos by @sbmaneyphoto.bsky.social

Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs

Revlimid has its origin in a pill that cost patients $7.50 each. Decades later, the cancer drug costs more than $18,000 for a month’s supply — even though it still only costs about 25 cents to manufacture. Read @davidarmstrongx.bsky.social's award-winning investigation:

NEW: ICE is planning to hire a team of nearly 30 people to surveil social media 24/7, build dossiers on people, and flag them for arrest and deportation. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/ice-so...

Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Our story: usa.streetsblog.org/2025/09/22/h...

NEW: Air Force jets are doing ICE flights to Africa with transponders turned off, making them nearly un-trackable. This includes the third-country removal to Ghana and another secret flight. We figured out where it landed. From me for @rollingstone.com: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Scoop: Business Insider informed its staff this week that they are allowed to use ChatGPT to generate first drafts of their stories, while also indicating the newsroom will not disclose such A.I. use to readers. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/business-i...

The Right Wants a Reichstag Fire   The military patrolling in the streets, an assassination, and a movement longing for escalation. America is teetering on the brink. Some thoughts from my new piece: