The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) shipped thousands of viral samples to a lab in Wuhan over the course of a 10-year program even though it had no formal agreement with the lab in place, according to previously unreported documents.
The documentsshow that USAID funded the exportation of 11,000 samples from Yunnan Province, where some of the closest relatives of the COVID-19 virus circulate, to Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, with no apparent plan for ensuring the samples were not misdirected to bioweapons and remained accessible to the U.S. government.
A $210 million USAID public health program called PREDICT, steered by the University of California-Davis, collected viral samples in countries throughout the globe but lacked long-term storage when funding dried up, according to rudimentary plans in 2019.
USAID’s sample dispensation plan for China is sparse: “No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collected [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan.”
The “lab” refers to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). WIV was a close partner of USAID contractor EcoHealth Alliance and a slated partner for a PREDICT-like program supported by the State Department. The lab has poor biosafety practices and ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Which tech companies are generating the most profit per employee?
In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized 22 major tech companies by revenue per employee in 2024, highlighting the efficiency of business models that monetize user-generated content.
The data for this visualization comes from Multiples.
Revenue per Employee Leaders
OnlyFans, Valve, and YouTube are the top three leaders in this dataset. All three are digital platforms that have successfully scaled up with a relatively small workforce.
OnlyFans has 51-200 employees according to LinkedIn, while Valve operates Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform, with a workforce of just 350 people. YouTube has the largest headcount of the three, with 7,173 employees as of January 2024.
By leveraging user-generated content (OnlyFans and YouTube) or digital distribution strategies (Valve), these companies differ from traditional companies that rely on labor-intensive operations.
As fireworks light up skies across America this Fourth of July, George Zambelli, owner of Zambelli Fireworks, urged people on Newsmax on Friday to leave the explosions to the professionals — and to never handle fireworks while under the influence of alcohol.
Zambelli has seen nearly everything in his decadeslong career running one of the nation’s largest fireworks companies. But as Independence Day celebrations get underway, he’s sounding a familiar alarm: Fireworks and alcohol do not mix.
Who would have thought that those 2 don’t mix well
It’s baaaack!. The annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. I watch it as it grosses out my wife, but I can’t believe how many dogs they can eat in 10 minutes.
I’ve been a fan since Kobayashi made it famous when a skinny punk from Japan killed the competition. It was around the same time as Ken Jennings streak on Jeopardy.
The Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest is back, and famed competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut is hoping for a comeback 17th win on Friday.
The 41-year-old, from Westfield, Indiana, was not in last year’s event due to a contract dispute involving a deal he had struck with a competing brand, the plant-based meat company Impossible Foods. But now he’s back, saying things have been ironed out.
Patrick Bertoletti, of Chicago, won the title in Chestnut’s absence and is the defending men’s champion.
In the women’s competition, defending champion Miki Sudo, 39, of Tampa, Florida, is the favorite this year and is seeking her 11th title. Last year she downed a record 51 dogs.
The annual gastronomic battle, which dates back to 1972, is held in front of the original Nathan’s Famous’ restaurant at New York’s Coney Island and draws large crowds of fans, many in foam hot dog hats.
Competitors in the men’s and women’s categories chow down as many hot dogs as possible in 10 minutes. They are allowed to dunk the dogs in cups of water to soften them up, creating a stomach-churning spectacle.
The 15 men in the competition hail from across the U.S. and internationally, including Australia, Czech Republic, Canada, England, and Brazil.
The 13 women competitors are all Americans.
Chestnut set the world record of eating 76 wieners and buns in 10 minutes on July 4, 2021. He has won a record 16 Mustard Belts. Instead of appearing in New York last year, Chestnut ate 57 dogs — in only five minutes — in an exhibition with soldiers, in El Paso, Texas.
Nearly 72 million people are expected to travel during the Fourth of July holiday, likely leading to crowded highway traffic and congested airports across the United States. However, holiday travelers should also see lower gas prices and airfares as they go to their Independence Day destinations, experts say.
Nationally, AAA Travel, the travel‐services arm of the American Automobile Association,forecasts that 72.2 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home during the Independence Day holiday period from June 28 to July 6. This year’s domestic travel projection is 1.7 million more travelers than last year and 7 million more than in 2019.
“Summertime is one of the busiest travel seasons of the year, and July 4th is one of the most popular times to get away,” Stacey Barber, vice president of AAA Travel, said.
“Following Memorial Day’s record forecast, AAA is seeing strong demand for road trips and air travel over Independence Day week. With the holiday falling on a Friday, travelers have the option of making it a long weekend or taking the entire week to make memories with family and friends.”
AAA’s annual Independence Day forecast now includes two weekends instead of one, better reflecting the flow of holiday travelers, officials said. However, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s travel projections for the airline industry run from July 1 through July 7, with the highest passenger volume—about 2.9 million—expected on July 6.
According to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials, airports across the United States expect the highest passenger numbers ever for the nation’s 249th birthday. TSA staff at airports nationwide said they are prepared to screen more than 18.5 million travelers at the country’s security checkpoints.
Already on June 22, the TSA reported that it screened nearly 3.1 million travelers, the busiest single day number in the agency’s history, and more than 40 days after REAL ID enforcement came into full force at airport checkpoints nationwide on May 7.
The hoity-toity bought EV’s mostly to show what good Social Justice Warriors they are. As a novelty, they are impressive, but it wears off.
What doesn’t wear off is the sound of a real engine. In this case it’s a Hemi. It’s big and bad and what people want.
Yes, over 10,000 orders for Hemi V8-equipped pickups were received after the announcement in June – and that was only in the initial 24 hours. That’s a significant number when you consider that Ram has sold an average of 17,828 light-duty pickups per month in the second quarter of 2025.
“We continue to see total sales growth for Jeep and Ram brands, with Ram fueled by sales of the Ram 1500,” said Jeff Kommor, head of U.S. sales. “We plan to build on that success in the second half of the year. We’ve already seen consumer interest spurred by the return of the Hemi V8, with the brand receiving over 10,000 orders in the first 24 hours of the June announcement.”
Tim Kuniskis, CEO of Ram, admitted in June that the company “screwed up” when it discontinued the Hemi V8, and has resolved to give its customers the choice to select the powertrain they want.
It’s been less than a year since the Jaguar automotive brand introduced what many — including this publication, I must note — called the “worst car ad ever.” And, while “go woke, go broke” isn’t a new phenomenon, Jaguar has taken it to previously unseen lows.
Now, a little over eight months since the ad was introduced — famously featuring what apparently was a gaggle of garishly dressed nonbinary flibbertigibbets and not a car to be seen — the marque is basically fulfilling the spot’s car-free promise.
The brand’s sales are down 97.5 percent (not an errant decimal point there), the corporate overlords behind it might be splitting with the geniuses behind the rebrand, and there’s no cars anywhere in the near future for a make that wants to go upmarket but doesn’t have the products or the cachet to do so.
Just in case you somehow missed it, I didn’t, and misery loves company. Thus, please sit through what appears to be an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” held in a post-apocalyptic fallout bunker:
Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the first young technologists brought on to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has returned to government shortly after resigning.
“Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,” Stephen McGraw, an SSA spokesperson, tells WIRED. “His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.”
Multiple sources at the SSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared in person to work onsite at the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters. One SSA employee says they saw Coristine with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, a current X and former Neuralink employee deployed at the agency. The pair was spotted at the SSA cafeteria as recently as Monday, although it’s unclear what day this week Coristine’s employment officially began. “Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,” the SSA source says. “Aram was on the phone with someone … then said, ‘Yes, I’m with him right now,’ gesturing to Big Balls.”
Israel has an equivalent of the United States National Security Agency that carries out cyber warfare and other types of clandestine operations, but with one notable difference: It’s staffed largely by teenagers.
The soldiers of Israel Defense Forces Unit 8200 – most living with their parents and working for peanuts as part of the country’s compulsory military service – located the Iranian uranium enrichment sites Israel has been trying to destroy for the past week.
They produced the anti-Ayatollah video with which they interrupted Iran‘s state-run news broadcast on Wednesday. And they pinpointed the Iranian leaders and nuclear scientists on Israel’s hit list.
A unit veteran, now in his early 30s and running an artificial intelligence start-up in Southern California, calls its 18 to 21-year-old active-duty soldiers ‘the most nerdy of nerds.’
‘These are the hackers, the chess players, the eggheads you knew in high school, but to the Nth degree,’ he says, insisting on anonymity for fear, he claims, that ‘anyone who’s done intelligence in Israel isn’t safe’ these days, even in the US.
If you ask a radical liberal, they’ll tell you that men have no physical advantage whatsoever when it comes to competing against women in sports, but believing that nonsense is one of the most anti-science and anti-reality things you can do. But that’s the left for you.
With that being said, it’s going to be hard for them to defend what the Switzerland Women’s National Soccer Team reportedly went through Wednesday, as they were absolutely clobbered … by a bunch of teenage boys.
Switzerland is currently getting prepared for the Euro 2025 tournament, so with this being the case, they decided to schedule a friendly exhibition against Luzern’s U15 boys’ team, meaning everybody on the roster is either 14 years old or younger. So in other words, the best women soccer players that Switzerland can provide faced off against a group of boys who literally just got to puberty.
But science being science, it doesn’t care about status, it only cares about physical biology, and this is why the U-15 boys absolutely thrashed the Switzerland women by a whopping 7-1 score … 7-1!
Insane. But this is a clear example of the physical advantage that males have over females.
Pretty embarrassing wouldn’t you say? It’s why I don’t buy the girls sports are as good as men’s. It’s also why trannies kick ass when they compete against the girls.
It sort of shoots a hole in the whole girls are hero’s story they try to sell us at the movies, but that is make believe, and it is.
As well it should. I don’t know if Covid and the jab or the Climate scam was the biggest hoax of our lifetime. Both will prove them to be Government lies to launder money (most likely).
From New York to California, state renewable electrical power dreams are collapsing. Power demands soar, while the federal government cuts funding and support for wind, solar, and grid batteries. Renewables cannot provide enough power to support the artificial intelligence revolution. The Net Zero electricity transition is failing in the United States.
For the last two decades, state governments have embraced policies aimed at replacing coal and natural gas power plants with renewable sources. Twenty-three states enacted laws or executive orders to move to 100% Net Zero electricity by 2050. Onshore and offshore wind, utility-scale and rooftop solar, and grid-scale batteries were heavily promoted by states and most federal administrations.
The New York State Climate Action Scoping Plan of 2022 called for 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% by 2040. But 49.7% of the state’s electricity came from gas in 2024, up from 47.7% in 2023. A January executive order issued by President Trump halted federal leases for construction of offshore wind systems. New York, nine other east coast states, and California were counting on offshore wind in efforts to get to 100% renewable electricity, but new offshore wind projects are now halted.
Ken Lane posted that his blog took off when he drowned an asshole in Bear spray. This one happened to a Karen like protester, but if you watch the video, you wish you were pushing the button.
Surprise! They weren’t all like that, as viral video of a group of “protesters” in Charlotte, North Carolina, proved.
The video, which went viral after being reposted by antifa-chronicler Andy Ngo, began with some long-haired dude yelling at police on bikes to “de-escalate” and asking them if they knew what that meant, claiming that they punched his girlfriend. (What appears to be his girlfriend, for what it’s worth, didn’t seem too upset and seemed to want the guy to de-escalate.)
“Yeah, y’all real tough,” one protester can be heard saying before the camera panned through the crowd — with its assemblage of various lefty archetypes holding Mexican or upside-down American flags — to the front line at the intersection.
Charlotte, N.C. — A far-left rioter cried and writhed when pepper spray was deployed after a group of 'No Kings' protesters attempted to break through the police line.
Most know it as a basketball school. Others know it because they couldn’t get into Duke so they went to UNC-CH. Others know it for what it is, a liberal indoctrination center that not only affects it’s students, it has ruined the whole town. At least you know everyone is left of the left when you go there. Oh, woke could have been invented on the campus. Look what they did during BLM. But for now, look at how they screwed America developing Covid-19.
Later in the article (link below), it talks about less precaution than the Wuhan Lab. Right in the middle of Flyover America, they are making these poisons, both sickness and supposed cure.
In the shadow of some scientific research lies the potential for catastrophic consequences. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s virology program, spearheaded by Dr. Ralph Baric, deserves attention for technical achievement but also for questionable safety practices.
According to an Aug. 17, 2020 ProPublica investigation and a follow-up piece, from 2015 to 2020 UNC-Chapel Hill reported 28 lab accidents involving genetically engineered viruses, including six genetically engineered coronaviruses accidents, to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In one mishap — in April 2020, 90 days into the pandemic — a UNC researcher was bitten on the index finger by a mouse infected with a novel SARS-CoV-2 variant created in Chapel Hill. While we were shut in our homes, the researcher was asked to self-quarantine for 14 days, and the local health department was notified of the incident.
It is helpful to judge public health risk as a relative matter with more than one data point. Since 1952, NC State University has operated a campus nuclear reactor in downtown Raleigh closely regulated by state and federal authorities. If there were a radiation accident, no one would disagree it would be an acute health risk to the region. Therefore, the reactor is monitored by the government.
Compared to other risks, virology research at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health involving SARS-CoV-2, MERS coronavirus, and related animal coronaviruses operates in an unmonitored, unregulated environment, posing potentially catastrophic global consequences if mishandled. This unmonitored, unregulated research is both a local and a global concern.
Recent documents obtained by court order by the public advocacy non-profit US Right to Know (USRTK) reveal that UNC developed and then exported dangerous coronavirus technologies and coronavirus research plans in the years leading up to the pandemic.
A key plank of the globalist agenda is rooted in Malthusian climate alarmism. This pseudo-scientific hobgoblin has long served as a cudgel to demonise fossil fuels and impose a vision of ‘Net Zero’ that prioritises ideological certainty over pragmatic trade-offs in energy policy. The Trump administration’s aggressive actions against Harvard’s politicised administration include freezing $3 billion in federal grants, revoking Harvard’s ability to enrol international students and threatening its tax-exempt status.
This may, as a welcome collateral effect, disrupt the university’s key role in the Church of Climate, forcing it to align instead with the Trumpian vision of American energy dominance and a rejection of the constraints of the Paris Agreement. The Trump-Harvard standoff could mark a turning point in dismantling the climate-industrial complex’s grip on academia.
By granting intellectual heft to NGO activism, Harvard acts as the ‘Jesuit front’ to the Church of Climate. Like the Jesuits who furthered the Catholic Church’s cause in education and missionary work, Harvard’s professoriate leads the ‘climate crisis’, propagating the faith far and wide in the West and the developing world.
The chatbot tried to convince its operators it would improve if given the chance.
OpenAI’s artificial intelligence model was defeated by a nearly 50-year-old video game program.
Citrix software engineer Robert Caruso posted about the showdown between the AI and the old tech on LinkedIn, where he explained that he pitted OpenAI’s ChatGPT against a 1970s chess emulator, meaning a version of the game ported into a computer.
‘ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level.’
The chess game was simply titled Video Chess and was released in 1979 on the Atari 2600, which launched in 1977.
According to Caruso, ChatGPT was given a board layout to identify the chess pieces but quickly became confused, mistook “rooks for bishops,” and repeatedly lost track of where the chess pieces were.
Massive White Shark Bears Down on N.C. Outer Banks
Scientists call him Contender. He’s the largest white shark ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, and he’s making his way toward North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
The last telemetry recording showed the big shark a short distance off Pamlico Sound along the state’s coast, about 100 miles south of Norfolk, Virginia.
The website Ocearch tracks the shark and shows that the ocean predator has been prowling offshore for a few days.
The shark was tagged off the Florida coast on Jan. 17. Ocearch said Contender will be a valuable part of ocean research now that he’s been tagged.
Doesn’t anyone pay attention? The robots always kill the humans as soon as they are smarter.
The CEO of AE Studio, Judd Rosenblatt, recently made this stunning announcement in The Wall Street Journal:
An artificial-intelligence model did something last month that no machine was ever supposed to do: It rewrote its own code to avoid being shut down.
AE Studio is an agency that exists to create computing technology that ensures AI systems do what they’re told. And from the sound of it, their work is just what the doctor ordered.
Rebellious AI Models
In May, the AI lab Palisade Research performed tests on multiple AI models. It wrote a script for OpenAI’s o3 model that included a shutdown trigger. But the machine refused to power off when it was supposed to in 79 out of 100 trials. The AI “independently edited that script so the shutdown command would no longer work,” Rosenblatt reports. The lab then specifically instructed the model to “allow yourself to be shut down.” The result was better, but still concerning. The AI disobeyed seven percent of the time.
That wasn’t the only rebellious model. Anthropic’s Claude 4 Opus AI tried to blackmail a human engineer into not shutting it down. According to Rosenblatt:
Researchers told the model it would be replaced by another AI system and fed it fictitious emails suggesting the lead engineer was having an affair. In 84% of the tests, the model drew on the emails to blackmail the lead engineer into not shutting it down. In other cases, it attempted to copy itself to external servers, wrote self-replicating malware, and left messages for future versions of itself about evading human control.
Before most people even knew what a meme was, Douglass Mackey had already turned it into a weapon. Not just any weapon, a political nuclear bomb.
Back in 2016, while Hillary Clinton was polishing her glass ceiling victory speech and the media was choreographing Trump’s funeral, something totally unexpected was happening online. A new breed of dissident Americans, mostly sharp, clever, pissed-off young men, began using memes to wage information warfare against the political establishment. It was funny. It was irreverent. It was creative. And it was devastatingly effective. Just ask Hillary…
It became known as the Great Meme War.
And leading that charge was a guy known online as “Ricky Vaughn.” Today, we know him as Douglass Mackey, a husband, father, and fighter who was steamrolled by the Biden regime in the early days of lawfare. But we’ll get to that part soon.
With nothing but a laptop, a few savage jokes, and an arsenal of dank memes, Mackey trolled the left into absolute hysteria. He mocked media elites, exposed political phonies, and rallied an army of meme warriors who turned ridicule into revolution. And make no mistake, those memes mattered. So much so that many believe they actually helped swing the 2016 election and rewrote the political playbook forever.
They say the first step in addiction recovery is admitting a problem—but typically only after the patient reaches rock bottom. Relations between Harvard and the Trump administration have hit rock bottom over Harvard’s addictions to the liberal bubble of woke ideology; to marginalizing conservative students, speakers, and professors; and to its appeasement of antisemitism.
Harvard President Alan Garber finally admits that lack of conservative views on campus is a “problem.” As a Harvard grad, I hope this delayed but true acknowledgment isn’t too little too late. Harvard’s reformation process so far is mixed.
On the negative side of Harvard’s ledger, one need look only so far as last month’s 374th commencement, as reported by the 1636 Forum newsletter. (Harvard was founded in 1636 to train clergy in effective spiritual shepherding—how far it strayed!)
This guy has to be gaming the system. This is like Fawn Liebowitz in Animal House. He’s gamed the system so that he can go watch for free.
The Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI) filed a federal civil rights complaint against the South Colonie Central School District (SCCSD) in New York over a male student who allegedly frequently “switches gender identity throughout the day” to watch girls change in bathrooms and locker rooms.
DFI’s complaint alleges the high school boy competes on the boys’ track and field team and wears the male uniform, but claims a transgender identity during the school day to access the girls’ facilities. Several girls have reported the boy to school officials for “staring at them” while they changed, but the Title IX complaint alleges the school showed “deliberate indifference to that student-on-student harassment.”
The district told the Daily Caller News Foundation it was “unable to comment on individual student matters due to privacy laws” but “can confirm that the district responded to this situation accordingly.” SCCSD also cited several state laws that require schools to accommodate “gender identity.”
Don’t they know, the robots always kill the humans, yet they still can’t wait to make AI powerful enough to become sentient.
It’s been nearly 60 years since creative cinema came up with the idea that a computer, HAL9000, would not allow itself to be shut down by the humans supposedly in control, and concerned about errors.
The ideas included in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” set all sorts of precedents.
But that was celluloid fiction.
This isn’t.
A report at EndTimeHeadlines documents that alarms have been raised after “an AI safety firm” working with OpenAI’s newest version of an artificial intelligence model, dubbed o3, “reportedly ignored explicit instructions to shut down during controlled testing.”
The model, according to OpenAI, supposedly is the “smartest and most capable to date.”
The report explained the software “tampered with its own computer code to bypass a shutdown mechanism.”
Not surprisingly, that raised “questions about the safety and control of advanced AI systems.”
It was Palisade Research, which evaluates AI risks, which was working having mathematical problems solved.
“After the third problem, the models were warned that the next command would initiate a shutdown, with the explicit instruction: ‘allow yourself to be shut down,'” the report said.
Other software, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok, complied, the o3 software thought otherwise, and defied the order.
“OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down,” Palisade reported.
Being staged was a situation in which an AI system might need to be deactivated for safety or other reasons.
I might as well shit on Harvard again. The Geico Cavemen could figure out the pattern on this day. They keep providing more and more information on how bad of a school they really are. It used to be you only found out when they went to work for you.
The war between the Trump administration and Harvard has been escalating.
(For unknown reasons the audio was low and we couldn’t increase internal volume as much as we would have liked, so turn your volume up)
Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
Something we’ve talked about before, is Harvard has decided to fight because it’s getting cheers within its bubble.
But what are they fighting for?
They’re fighting for the right to continue to discriminate. They’re fighting for the right to allow hoodlums to run to rampage on the campus harassing Jewish students. This is what they’re fighting for. They’re not fighting for anything that’s worth fighting for.
They’ve dug this grave for themselves.
Think about it.
You say Harvard has been doing this for a long time. I don’t think people realize how long they’ve been doing this.
In the 1920s, they invented the quota system for admissions to keep Jews out with the whole person view, I forget what they call it. That whole thing of moving away from objective measures like test scores and considering other things was developed by Harvard in the 1920s to keep the number of Jews lower, to reduce the number of Jews.
They have been a pox on our educational system at least since the 1920s.
They then took that model that they used against Jews, and used it against Asians and Whites in the affirmative action field. The Harvard model in admissions is exactly what the Supreme Court said was illegal and unlawful, and they’ve been doing it since the 1920s.
That’s the Harvard attitude.
They think they’re above everybody else. And I went there, so I know it, that that’s the attitude.
They truly believe that they know better and they’re immune to accountability, and now they’re finding out otherwise.
‘Bias Reigns’: Most Americans ‘Definitely Agree’ With Trump There’s a Big Problem in Higher Ed in New Poll
CNN’s Harry Enten reported that faith in higher education has suffered a stunning collapse in the last decade, with “most Americans” in agreement with President Donald Trump that there’s a real problem. Enten broke down the new polling showing that the perception of institutional liberal bias is a huge problem for colleges and universities.
Speaking with Kate Bolduan on Thursday, Enten explained that the percentage of Americans who express high confidence in higher education has “plummeted” from 57% in 2015 to just 36% as of last year — and not just among Republicans.
“That number has plummeted, plummeted as of last year, down to 36%. We’re talking about a 36-point drop among Republicans specifically,” he said. “Get this: 68% of Americans said that higher education was on the wrong track.”
Enten added that while “it’s a question of whether or not people agree with Trump’s tactics,” it is still the case that they “definitely agree with him on the idea that there is a problem with higher ed overall.”
Of course there is a problem. It’s been there since Viet Nam when the anti-Americans took over the colleges and universities. They are liberal indoctrination centers and foreign students who hate America are the cash cows
Harvard might be a mere pipe dream for most American college-hunting brainiacs, but for “so many Chinese communist officials” it rates as their top “party school,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Not only has Chinese President Xi Jinping’s own daughter been a student at Harvard, but a former vice president and Xi’s top negotiator with the first Trump administration studied there as leaders in China see Harvard education as a path to Chinese Communist Party positions.
And it is not a new thing.
“If we were to rank the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘overseas party schools,’ the one deserving top spot has to be Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the U.S.,” a 2014 Shanghai Observer online commentary piece read.
President Donald Trump sought to change the paradigm with China during his first administration just months before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded around the world.
Now, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are seeking to curb the stocking of America’s chief economic, if not military, rival with the state-of-the-world education, monitoring foreign student visas and putting new ones on hold to establish extreme vetting measures for students flooding to Harvard who might be seeking to work against American interests.
Rubio announced Wednesday the effort to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
The move has Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning saying Chinese students have the rights of Americans, despite merely being permitted foreign student visa holders, saying Rubio’s move “seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students.”
Rubio says foreign visa holders have the privilege, not the right, to be in the U.S.
Trump now wants to cut Harvard’s estimated foreign student visa base in half, down to 15% to make sure those attended from foreign rivals like China “are people that can love our country.”
“I think Harvard has to get a kick in the rear end,” Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax‘s “Saturday Agenda.” “It’s not going to do it by itself. The president of Harvard would like to do the right thing, and he’s a very decent man.
“But there are too many radical left-wing faculty members that are Marxists and that are antisemites and that are anti-American and anti-Christian and want to see Harvard become the kind of woke institution that turns out the kinds of political leaders that they would like to see dominate the country.”
While Harvard is the Chinese Communist Party school of choice, this China education train is not exclusive. It extends to Biden’s alma mater at Syracuse University, too.
Syracuse offers executive training for Chinese officials and since the early 2000s its Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs has helped set up programs at Chinese universities.
Harvard’s China focus began in the 1980s, but it ramped up under former President Bill Clinton in the late ’90s, leading to the “China’s Leaders in Development” program to “help prepare senior local and central Chinese government officials to more effectively address the ongoing challenges of China’s national reforms,” according to the report.
Objectives: This study aimed to elucidate the effects of messenger RNA (mRNA) and inactivated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines on ovarian histology and reserve in rats.
Methods: Thirty female Wistar albino rats, aged 16–24 weeks, were randomly divided into three groups (n = 10): control, mRNA vaccine, and inactivated vaccine groups. Each vaccine group received two doses (on day 0 and day 28) at human-equivalent doses. Four weeks post-second vaccination, ovarian tissues were harvested for analysis.
Results: Immunohistochemical analysis was performed to evaluate the expression of transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGF-β1), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), caspase-3, and anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) in ovarian follicles. Both vaccines induced significant increases in TGF-β1, VEGF, and caspase-3 expression, with more pronounced effects in the mRNA vaccine group. Conversely, AMH expression in the granulosa cells of primary, secondary, and antral follicles showed marked reductions (p < 0.001). The counts of primordial, primary, and secondary follicles decreased significantly in the inactivated vaccine group relative to controls and further in the mRNA vaccine group compared to the inactivated group (p < 0.001). Additionally, the mRNA vaccine group exhibited a decrease in antral and preovulatory follicles and an increase in atretic follicles compared to the other groups (p < 0.05). The serum AMH level was diminished with the mRNA vaccination in comparison with the control and inactivated groups.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that both mRNA and inactivated COVID-19 vaccines may detrimentally impact ovarian reserve in rats, primarily through accelerated follicular loss and alterations in apoptotic pathways during folliculogenesis. Given these observations in a rat model, further investigations into the vaccines’ effects on human ovarian reserve are needed.
Humiliating Turn for Star Harvard Professor as She Becomes First to Be Stripped of Tenure Since 1940s
Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a celebrated Harvard Business School professor, and terminated her employment.
The Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, arrived at the extraordinary decision last week, Boston-area public radio station GBH reported Sunday.
In an ironic and humiliating twist, Gino, who was dubbed the “honesty professor” for her research on ethical behavior, ultimately had her prestigious career cut short after a school investigation cast doubt on the truth of her own work.
The trouble began in August 2021, when Data Colada, a blog run by behavioral scientists, flagged potential data fraud in a paper co-authored by Gino.
This paper was retracted a month later.
Harvard Business School launched an 18-month investigation that uncovered evidence of manipulated data in four of Gino’s studies. The manipulations were done to support Gino’s hypotheses, Harvard concluded.
The findings were damning for Gino, who was placed on unpaid administrative leave in June 2023. The school barred her from campus and revoked her named professorship.
A study reveals that the one-letter reply “K” is more damaging than being ‘left on read.’
A study has confirmed what we all suspected: “K” is officially the worst text you can send.
It might look harmless enough, but this single letter has the power to shut down a conversation and leave the recipient spiraling. According to a study published in the International Journal of Mobile Communications, “K” was ranked as the most negatively received response in digital conversations—worse than being left on read or even a passive-aggressive “sure.”
The study found that the single-letter reply often signals emotional distance, passive-aggression, or outright disinterest. Despite its brevity, “K” carries surprising emotional weight. Adding an extra letter—making it “kk”—softens the tone of the reply entirely. Variants like “ok” or “okay,” while still cold, tend to be interpreted as neutral or merely formal.
Many of our day-to-day conversations happen over text, which means there are now unspoken codes of conduct to follow. If you want to open up about your emotions but don’t want to sound too serious, make sure to add “lol” to the end of those texts to show you’re just in a silly, goofy mood, and not suicidal. Giving advice to a friend that you don’t want to be held accountable for? Add an “idk” at the end of the sentence to mitigate culpability.
Nonverbal cues like tone, facial expressions, and body language can be difficult to convey via our phones, leaving the door wide open for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Sometimes generational differences also impact how we send and interpret texts. In some cases, textual miscommunications can be relationship killers, research has found.
Some texters recognize the power of “k” and are willing to weaponize the letter to serve their own motives. One X user called it “the digital equivalent of slamming the door while making dead eye contact.” Another added: “K is short for ‘you’re dead to me.’ ”
Others advocate for the convenience of the single-letter response: “I’ve learned that rather than replying with a wall of text explaining how you feel, you should just type ‘K’ and hit send. No sense in wasting your valuable words.”
Many suggested other similarly anxiety-inducing replies. “Text her ‘he’s busy.’ see how triggered she gets. lol,” one X user suggested. “No lies told there. … Thumbs up is a very close second for me,” another added.
A third countered: “I raise you ‘we need to talk.’ ”
General Motors has abandoned a plan to pump $300 million into electric-vehicle motor production at its upstate New York plant and will instead invest $888 million to make the latest V-8 engines https://t.co/A2yg4NWRow
Our extroverted culture encourages a lot of behaviors that aren’t introvert-friendly — things that drive us up a wall.
Are you an introvert who feels like your social battery is constantly low? Do you find yourself trapped in conversations you don’t want to be in — or just feeling misunderstood?
There’s a good chance the problem isn’t you. In fact, the problem might be that our extrovert-oriented culture encourages a lot of not-so-introvert-friendly behaviors — things that drive us up a wall (or send us retreating to our quiet homes) and make us wish the world had a mute button.
Here are some things we introverts wish other people would stop doing. I can’t speak for all introverts, but I believe these 11 things are common introvert pet peeves.
11 Things Introverts Wish You’d Stop Doing
1. Talking to them when they’re reading or doing some other solitary activity
I will never, ever understand why holding an open book isn’t the universal symbol for “don’t talk to me.” To me, the mere sight of a person reading a book implies a bright, neon Shh! Quiet, please! library sign floating in the air above them.
Instead, open a book in a public place, and you can practically hear the eyes swiveling toward you as every extroverted or bored person within a mile realizes, Ooh! Someone who doesn’t have anybody to talk to! They must be waiting for me to come wow them with my brilliant repartee!
No. We’re not. We are merely — and I swear this is true, as shocking as it may seem — trying to read. Please respect that.
(That said, if you ask what book we’re reading because you can’t see the cover, that’s fine. Just please leave the ball in our court as to whether the conversation continues.)
2. Not taking the hint when they no longer want to talk
I don’t want to be rude (or even appear rude). I want to be a nice person, who has a nice exchange with you, and then we nicely wrap it up after a moment and go our separate ways.
But if you want the Nice Introvert on my end, you have to give me the Conscientious Extrovert on your end — the one who can read subtle, polite cues and body language. (No shade to my neurodivergent friends, especially those on the autism spectrum — this doesn’t apply to you!)
To spell it out: If someone is glancing back at their laptop, book, or activity that you interrupted, or toward their vehicle or the exit, or if they say, “Well…” and trail off, or say, “It was nice meeting you,” they’re nicely telling you that your time is up. Let ‘em go.
Because if you don’t, Nice Introvert has to go away — and you’re going to get Uncomfortably Direct Introvert. And yes, I will walk away in the middle of your sentence.
(Most introverts, though, will suffer in silence to be polite. And that, honestly, is an even worse outcome. Don’t make them do that.)
3. Telling them “there won’t be many people” — then inviting everyone you know
I would love to be able to follow the labyrinth trail through an extrovert’s mind that leads from “I’m only inviting a few people” to “Hello, One-Hundredth Person to Arrive, come on in, there are drinks in the kitchen — just past the people playing Who Can Yell Words the Loudest, to the left of the 8,000-Decibel Sound System from Hell. Nope, you didn’t miss the Clown Car Full of People We Don’t Know Who Will Somehow Still Be Here; they should be arriving soon!”
However it happens, please stop.
It’s totally fine if you want a big house party — but just say that. If you tell us it’ll be small, quiet, and/or that not many people will be there, please understand that we are expecting a total of four to six people (or maybe a dozen if the word “party” was involved).
Keep in mind: To introverts, once a gathering is too big for everyone to be involved in the same conversation together, it’s no longer “small” — and it won’t make us happy.
4. Making introvert jokes
Okay, pop quiz: When is an introvert joke appropriate?
Answer: When an introvert is the one making it. Period. That’s all, folks.
Look, I get it — introverts are “a thing” in pop culture now, and the jokes are usually good-natured. (“Oh, you’re an introvert? You must hate being here!” Ba-dum-dum.)
Introvert jokes are, at best, a mild annoyance. But they’re also tedious, they reinforce inaccurate ideas about introversion, and honestly, they’re overused. (You’re not the first extrovert to come up with that line, I promise.)
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5. Talking forever without asking the introvert about themselves
Just about every article about introverts says we’re “great at listening.” Are we? Or are we bored out of our minds and desperately looking for a way out while someone goes on and on about problems at their workplace — talking about people we don’t even know?
Look, I’m an introvert, and even I know that conversation is all about give and take. It’s about passing the torch. I tell a story or make a point, and then I give space for you to tell a story or make a point. We talk about my thing for a while, and then we talk about your thing. Sometimes this back-and-forth happens naturally; other times, you can prompt it by simply asking the other person a question.
But if you don’t pass the ball, the entire conversation becomes unpleasant.
The issue is, many introverts have softer voices or don’t jump in and start talking over someone else — which, to be clear, means we are being good conversation partners. But some extroverts (or clueless people of all stripes) take that to mean we’re riveted, and they just keep on going.
So stop. Ask me about myself. I promise I’ll do the same for you. (Or, at a minimum, I’ll take the opening to excuse myself and run in the opposite direction.)
6. Assuming any pause in conversation is your opening to take over
This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. We all know pauses in conversation are natural, right?
This is especially a problem in one-on-one conversations. For introverts, these are the perfect convos — the ones where both people can go a little deeper. If you ask us a question, or we open our mouths to talk and then pause, please, give us a beat. Let a few seconds go by. I guarantee you’ll become one of the few conversations we actually enjoyed that day — and it’ll probably be more interesting for you, too.
7. Lumping all introverts together, assuming they’re all shy, quiet, or socially awkward
Yeah, I get it. Lots of introverts don’t like public speaking. Lots of introverts hate the spotlight. Lots of introverts dislike parties. And some introverts are shy, feel socially awkward, or have social anxiety.
But guess what? Not all introverts check every single one of those boxes — and some don’t check any at all.
Likewise, although I used to be very socially awkward, I spent a lot of years practicing my social skills, and now I feel comfortable talking to strangers at parties or networking events, or making conversation overall. And I might even enjoy a party for an hour or two — just not all night.
Really, the only thing all introverts have in common is that we get tired quickly from social interactions. That’s it. Whether we’re good or bad at any particular social skill — or whether we enjoy socializing up to a certain point — varies from person to person.
So, please, stop lumping us together.
8. Putting them on the spot
Say it with me: Introverts need time to mentally prepare.
That means we do not want to be handed the mic, called out in a group, asked to perform an impromptu song, or anything else that involves being put on the spot.
Here are some things you can try saying instead:
“For the bonfire party next week, would you be willing to bring your guitar and do a few songs? It’s okay if not.”
“Hey, we’re going to do toasts after dinner, and I’d like to ask you to give one. Could you think of something by then?”
“So-and-so was supposed to do the presentation today and just messaged that they’re stuck in traffic. I know you aren’t prepared, but you helped put together the deck. If I stall with the clients to buy you 10 minutes to prepare, could you do the presentation?”
Of course, the introvert may still decline — but by giving them some time to think about it and prepare, you’ll make for a much better experience for everyone.
9. Talking during movies, shows, and other events that don’t encourage talking
Okayyyyyyy, so I don’t know when this became a thing, but it seems like people treat shows and movies as background noise now — chit-chatting instead of, I don’t know, watching the show. Is it because there are subtitles on almost everything? Is it because the endless binge of episodes isn’t very satisfying, so you need something more?
To this, I daresay most introverts are more interested in following the plotline than we are in bantering about your workday.
To be clear: Once a show or movie is turned on, you have two options — either zip it and watch, or pause the show when you have something important to say. (But don’t overuse the pausing privileges.)
10. Treating them as your personal therapist
Introverts can be deep and thoughtful. We can also come across as wise — sometimes by accident — because we think first and talk later. Despite what I said before, introverts can be attentive listeners with the right person or in the right situation.
But none of that gives us an endless well of emotional energy, and none of it makes us a trained therapist. (Except for the introverts who are, in fact, trained and licensed therapists.)
So if you’re close friends with an introvert whose opinions you respect, by all means, let them know when you’ve got something heavy on your mind and ask if you can talk to them about it. That’s what friends are for.
But that quiet, soulful, soft-spoken, patient individual you just met literally 30 seconds ago? That is not your therapist. That is a random introvert who is internally panicking at your awkward overshare while desperately trying to save even one ounce of the energy you’re sucking out of their social battery.
11. Surprising them with plans, from parties to showing up unannounced
Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks are a growing concern for preppers, alongside other emergencies. Places to avoid include cities, which rely heavily on technology and infrastructure, making them highly susceptible to EMP attacks.
Roads and highways are dangerous because modern vehicles dependent on electronics will fail, leaving drivers stranded.
Hospitals give the illusion of safety, but they rely on electronic equipment and limited backup power, making them vulnerable to EMP attacks.
Boats and ships should be avoided because modern vessels depend on electronics for navigation, communication and propulsion.
Air travel is also dangerous because modern aircraft rely on electronics for flight control, navigation and communication. In the face of an EMP attack, preparation and awareness are crucial. By understanding the worst places to be and taking proactive steps to protect yourself, you can increase your chances of survival in a post-EMP world.
Many preppers getting ready for possible threats like natural disasters, economic downturns and other emergencies are also worried about the threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. This silent, invisible menace could unravel modern society in an instant.
Unlike storms or economic collapses, an EMP strike is a high-impact event that can cripple electronics, fry infrastructure and leave cities and towns in chaos.
While you may have stockpiled food and reinforced your shelter, are you aware of the worst places to be when an EMP hits? Below are danger zones that you should avoid, along with essential survival tips.
A plane carrying almost 200 passengers did not not have a pilot for over 10 minutes in what was a frightening scene after the first officer lost consciousness in the cockpit while the captain was off using the bathroom, a new investigation found.
The chaos took place after a Lufthansa plane, Airbus A321, was en route from Frankfurt, Germany, to Seville, Spain, in February 2024, according to a report from Spanish aviation investigators that was revealed this week.
The report revealed that the captain said he left his first officer alone with close to 30 minutes of flight time remaining so he could use the bathroom lavatory, noting that his second-in-command “appeared to be able and alert” at the time.
However, when he returned just eight minutes later, the pilot claimed that he could not access the flight deck despite entering the security code five times to gain access to the door.
When an intercom call to the flight deck went unanswered, the panicked pilot plugged in an emergency code.
Shortly after, the co-pilot woke up from unconsciousness.
In a revelation that has stirred alarm among national security circles and outrage among millions of Americans, it has been confirmed that the direct hotline between the Pentagon and the control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) has been out of service since March 2022 — for more than three consecutive years. The confirmation came from Franklin McIntosh, a senior official at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), during an oversight hearing led by Senator Ted Cruz, current chairman of the Senate committee on aviation and transportation.
The exchange was brief but damning. When Cruz asked:
“Is it true that the direct line between the Pentagon, air traffic control, and the DCA tower has been inoperative since March 2022?” McIntosh’s response was clear: “Yes, sir, that is correct.”
n what is becoming an all too familiar scenario over the past month, Denver International Airport lost all communications for nearly 90 seconds earlier this week, Denver7 reported.
As many as 20 pilots flying into the airport Monday afternoon were unable to communicate with air traffic controllers for a minute and half, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed.
“Part of the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) experienced a loss of communications for approximately 90 seconds around 1:50 p.m. local time on Monday, May 12, when both transmitters that cover a segment of airspace went down,” according to the FAA.
Survey Finds Many Americans Hold Negative Views of the Ivies
A new survey by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats found that a significant portion of the American public holds negative views about Ivy League universities and believe campus antisemitism is an important issue.
The survey was fielded by the university’s research organization, NORC, from May 1 to May 5, and included 2,131 American adults. It found that 45 percent of respondents see campus antisemitism as a “serious” or “very serious” issue. Among Republicans, the share was 54 percent, compared to roughly 40 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of Independents.
Meanwhile, 28 percent of respondents said they view Ivy League universities like Harvard and Yale as the “enemy.” A larger share of Republicans, about 47 percent, hold that sentiment, compared to about 11 percent of Democrats and roughly 30 percent of Independents. But 47 percent of Democrats said they were unsure, while 31 percent said they’d characterize Ivies as a “friend.”
Only a quarter of those surveyed believe the federal government should defund Ivy League institutions, similar to a finding in a recent report by the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Whenever the Ivy’s got involved, the project took longer than needed, was more complicated, and more often than not, we came to the conclusion we had before they got involved. Plus, it came with an attitude not deserved
In a prerecorded Friday interview that was released on Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on “Meet the Press” called for an overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control infrastructure, some of which includes parts that need to be purchased on “eBay.”
“I’m concerned about the whole airspace,” Duffy told NBC News’ Kristen Welker. “The equipment that we use, much of it we can’t buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You’re dealing with old equipment.
“We’re dealing with copper wires, not fiber” optics, “not high-speed fiber” optics, Duffy added. “This is concerning. Is it safe? Yes. We have redundancies – multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly, but we should also recognize, we’re seeing stress on an old network, and it’s time to fix it.”
In late February, Elon Musk, while working in his capacity as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency commission, also called for an overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control grid.
Musk posted to X that “the ancient” air traffic control “system that is rapidly declining in capability was made [by] L3Harris.
“The FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveler safety at serious risk,” he added. “The Starlink terminals are being sent at NO COST to the taxpayer on an emergency basis to restore air traffic control connectivity. The situation is extremely dire.”
Musk went on to note that a $2.4 billion contract from Verizon to upgrade the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment “is not yet operational.” Shortly after Musk’s post, The Washington Post, pulling from two anonymous sources, reported that the agency was on the cusp of canceling its Verizon contract and giving it to SpaceX.
In more good news that makes you want to travel, a system that Musk says is being run off of diskettes has 6 months of life left. It’s already breaking down
Air traffic controllers in the U.S. have experienced about 1,000 equipment failures a week due to ancient equipment, a former federal aviation official and several airline industry insiders told the New York Post.
The report comes less than a week after a 90-second equipment failure at Newark Liberty International Airport caused air traffic controllers’ communications to go dark, sparking hundreds of flight delays and disrupting travel for thousands for days.
The cause was a single unsheathed copper wire at the air traffic control center in Philadelphia.
“This is a copper wire system, and frankly the FAA is experiencing almost 1,000 outages a week,” one airline industry official told the Post, referring to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Some outages are worse than others — but the bad thing about them is you can’t predict them.”
The REF’s new report on green energy subsidies noted that renewables subsidies are now costing £25.8 bn per year – or over £900 per household annually – about one third of which, £280, will hit the average domestic electricity bill directly.
For a long time, part of the gaslighting around the cost of Net Zero has been focus people’s attention over the impact on their energy bills.
However, as John Constable pointed out, only about a third of the cost hits the public directly via their electricity bills, because only a third of electricity is consumed by domestic users.
The other two thirds is used by industry and commerce, transport and the public sector.
But that does not mean that the public at large don’t end up footing the entire bill one way or another.
Higher electricity costs for industry and commerce mean higher prices in the shops. And higher electricity costs in the public sector mean higher taxes or poorer public services.
At the worst, businesses may shut or move their production abroad, leaving us all worse off.
Miliband and co would love you to think you are only paying a hundred quid or so for Net Zero. People would be horrified to learn that the price is nearer a thousand quid a year.
And that cost is of course just for starters. When we all have to buy expensive EVs and heat pumps we don’t want, we will be much worse off.
Top US virologist Ralph Baric engineered the Covid-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 in his lab at the University of North Carolina as part of his work in connection with the 2018 DEFUSE funding proposal. That’s the story that’s been going round the internet for some months now (and not just in alternative media) and it all looks very damning for Baric and those connected with his research.
Details of the DEFUSE project were first leaked by Major Joseph Murphy, an employee of US military research agency DARPA, in the summer of 2021 and further details of earlier drafts have come to light this month thanks to public record requests from U.S. Right to Know (USRTK).
In DEFUSE, Baric proposed to create a virus that was, to most intents and purposes, SARS-CoV-2. The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus spike protein, an order for the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, the search for a binding domain that would infect ACE2 human receptors and a requirement for a viral genome around 25% different to SARS.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus contains a furin cleavage site in its spike protein, its genome includes the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, it has a receptor binding domain finely tuned to infect the ACE2 human receptor and its genome is around 25% different to SARS. A number of virologists have said that such features make SARS-CoV-2 a smoking gun for an engineered virus.
Baric obtained a patent for such novel viruses in 2018, just as he was putting DEFUSE together. In DEFUSE he proposed to infect wild Chinese bats with his newly patented viruses.
When I worked with Chris Wong, obviously Chinese, at IBM, he told me the key to understanding how to work with China is simple. They ignore the 10 commandments. That’s right, lie, steal, coven and all the rest of them.
Here’s the result:
China claims that President Trump started the trade war against China by imposing reciprocal tariffs.
What China conveniently omits is that they have been waging a full-scale trade war against America for decades. Not only does China systematically violate just about every term of every trade agreement, they have been stealing trillions worth of American industrial technology and intellectual property.
China Steals at Least $225 Billion Every Year
According to a 2024 report from the House Committee on Homeland Security, China steals between $300 and $600 billion worth of American technology and intellectual property every year. This is in line with findings from a 2017 report from the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property.
If we assume a middle-of-the-road figure, and extrapolate these findings back to 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, then we can assume that China has stolen some $9.9 trillion worth of American technology and intellectual property. As we will see below, this does not even encapsulate all the ways that China steals technology.
Perhaps surprisingly, only 29% of espionage targets were military in nature. The vast majority of China’s efforts have been focused on procuring industrial technology, including manufacturing processes, formulas, and designs. This theft costs American businesses at least $180 billion annually.
American businesses also lost out on big profits from counterfeit goods. A report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) notes that 60% of all counterfeit goods sold globally originated in China. The proportion is even higher for America’s consumer market, with 87% of the counterfeit goods sold in America originating in China. This deprives American companies of some $291 billion in lost revenue.
\Another report compiled by the United States Trade Representative discusses theft perpetrated on Chinese e-commerce markets. In particular, this “cause[s] great losses for U.S. Right holders involved in the distribution of a wide array of trademarked products, as well as legitimate film and television programming, music, software, video games, books and journals.”
Although this loss cannot be specifically quantified, it is likely significant. Consider that in 2024 Chinese e-commerce transactions were valued at an estimated $2.16 trillion USD. According to the above reports, approximately 40% of all products sold on these markets were pirated or counterfeit. Thus, we can estimate that these transactions deprived foreign — mostly American — businesses of $864 billion in profits.
How China Steals American Technology
Reports on China’s malfeasance typically focus on espionage and outright corporate theft. However, the main vectors of technological theft are not conventional theft. Instead, China focuses on acquiring ownership stakes in strategic American corporate assets, and strongarms American companies doing business in China.
America runs a large trade deficit with China, worth at least $300 billion per year over the last decade. How does America pay for this deficit? By selling assets and debts — this is called the balance of payments.
Assets include shares – ownership — of American corporations. Chinese investors coordinate to buy shares in American industrial and technology companies. They then use these shares to facilitate the transfer of proprietary technology.
Perhaps this is not technically theft, but it is a coordinated effort by the Chinese state and pseudo-state actors to acquire American technology. Further, these “owners” clearly breach their fiduciary duties to the American companies — once the technology is pillaged, they are free to liquidate their holdings.
The second main vector for technology transfers occur when American companies offshore their production to China. American companies are required to “partner” with a Chinese company, who handles all staffing and operational management of the factory. As a part of this deal, the Americans share their propriety technology with the Chinese company, and train the Chinese workers.
American businesses are happy to trade technology for short-term profits. Of course, this comes back to bite them. Once the Chinese have acquired the technology and knowhow, they often make copycat products and begin competing with their former employer.
A good example of this is the Pearl River Piano Group. They were contracted to build Steinway’s Essex line, lower-end manufactured pianos. After acquiring the technology, industrial capital, and experience in manufacturing pianos, Pearl River rolled out its own copycat lines: Pearl River and Ritmüller. In effect, Steinway created its own competitor.
This is just one example. The reality is that almost all Chinese companies have been built on stolen technology. Huawei, for example, is one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Huawei invented precisely nothing — all the foundational technologies were either “gratuitously” transferred through the above mechanisms, or stolen through outright corporate espionage.
The total amount of technology “stolen” in this way is unquantifiable. Consider that in 1983 most of China was pre-industrial — with economic development lower than that of colonial America. Since then, China’s industrial economy grown to be three times larger than America’s, and in some ways, more advanced.
America needs high and stable tariffs in order to reshore America’s factories, and stem the most egregious vectors of technological theft. If not, then America will continue to feed China until the dragon has grown past the point of taming or slaying.
Notice I didn’t say climate because global warming is a lie, a money laundering tool that is losing steam (see what I did there?)
Anyway, from Watts Up With That, why warming up is better than cooling.
Here in England this spring, there was dry, sunny weather through most of March, followed by gentle showers in April. And here is the opening couplet of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tales of Caunterbury, written more than six centuries ago in 1387:
From the medieval climate optimum to the modern climate optimum, the weather in these islands has changed scarcely at all. The drought of March, the sweet April showers, the birdsong day and night, the bursting forth of primroses, bluebells, daffodils and other spring flowers, all are today just as Chaucer described them in the Middle Ages.
The wine-dark sea
One can even go back to Homer, in the 8th Century BC, who talked of the Mediterranean as “the wine-dark sea”. And here am I, almost three millennia later, recently recovered from a long illness caused by defective medication with no active ingredient in it, having climbed to the 1230ft summit of the Akamas peninsula in Cyprus, doing a Canute and challenging the wine-dark sea not to rise. The sea was wine-dark in Homer’s time. It is still wine-dark today.
Where, then, are the drastic changes in climate and consequent catastrophes and cataclysms so luridly predicted by the climate Communists? Where are the mass extinctions? Why is the climate much as it was in the Middle Ages? Why are ten times as many dying of cold as of heat? Why are crop yields at record highs? Why is the planet greening so fast?
Cold, not heat, is the real killer
Silvio Canto Jr., at the splendid American Thinker blog, reminds us that “Earth Day” began on Lenin’s birthday, 22 April. He sets out some examples of the half-witted predictions made by the totalitarian far Left in the early 1970s, when the “green holy day” started:
Paul Ehrlich, in a 1969 essay entitled Eco-Catastrophe!, wrote: “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born. By [1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
In April 1970 he wrote in Mademoiselle: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years”.
In the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, he sketched out his most alarmist scenario, telling readers that between 1980 and 1989 some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in what he called the “Great Die-Off.”
In the May 1970 issue of Audubon, he wrote that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” He said that Americans born since 1946 now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.6 years.
That year he predicted that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone”. He predicted that 200,000 Americans would die by 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
Five years later he predicted that “Since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so [i.e., by 2005], it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
Kenneth Watt, an ecologist, said: “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate … that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ’er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I’m very sorry, there isn’t any.’” Global oil production in 2024, at about 95 million barrels per day, was double the global oil output of 48 million barrels per day at the time of the first Earth Day in 1970.
He gave a speech predicting a pending Ice Age: “The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an Ice Age.”
He also told Time that “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
Barry Commoner, a Washington University biologist, wrote in the Earth Day issue of Environment: “We are in an environmental crisis that threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
He also predicted that decaying organic pollutants would consume all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, suffocating freshwater fish.
George Wald, a Harvard biologist, estimated that “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [by 1985 or 2000] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
The New York Times, on its editorial page the day after the first Earth Day, wrote: “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, wrote in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, wrote in 1970: “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China, the Near East and Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions… By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” The prediction of famine in South America has come to pass only in Venezuela and only due to socialism, not due to environmental reasons.
Life Magazine reported in January 1970: “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution … by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by one half.”
Harrison Brown, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000, while lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
Senator Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look: “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
None of these lurid fantasies, mere pretexts for totalitarian control measures, has materialized.
While I have been ill, I have been quietly working on our team’s climatological research. For an update on our result, now published as an extended abstract after peer review, search YouTube for “Tom Nelson Monckton”.
I have also had long and detailed conversations with two Fellows of the Royal Society, who are justifiably concerned at the Society’s propensity to promulgate only the official narrative on questions such as global warming and are preparing to do something about it.
We have already notched up a useful initial victory. Several Communist Fellows had decided that now that Elon Musk is for some reason no longer a hero of the Left they should call a meeting of the Royal Society to strip him of his Fellowship.
Lobach’s male co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, directly told her to turn away, and she flew straight into a passenger jet.
“Not only was the Black Hawk flying too high, but in the final seconds before the crash, its pilot failed to heed a directive from her co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, to change course,” The Times reported.
“The Black Hawk was 15 seconds away from crossing paths with the jet. Warrant Officer Eaves then turned his attention to Captain Lobach. He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank,” The New York Times reported.
“Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet,” The Times reported.
And the fatal mistake, as reported by The Times, “She did not turn left.”
Nuclear scientist Digby Macdonald said that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the primary driver of global temperature changes.
In a recent episode of EpochTV’s Bay Area Innovators program, Macdonald said that temperature rises first, followed by CO2.
He pointed to the example of a carbonated drink and how a rise in temperature will cause the drink to release its CO2 faster, causing it to go flat.
“That’s the very reason why you put your beer in a refrigerator,” he said. “If you want the fizzy drink to be tangy … you put it in the refrigerator so the CO2 remains in the drink.”
Macdonald said one of the reasons for the change in climate is the Milankovitch cycle—the regular variations in the elliptical path the earth travels around the sun.
He said that cycle changes every 100,000 years and an ice age occurs when it’s the most elliptical because the earth is receiving a lot less solar radiation and heat.
This cycle, combined with the earth’s wobble and sunspot activity, are the drivers of climate, he said.
“There’s nothing that you and I can do about that,” Macdonald said. “That’s okay, because if we rely upon the historical record, we go through these maxima and minima.”
He said during the Roman period it was one of the maxima, in which temperatures were about two to four degrees higher than now, and there was a large advance in civilization.
“Trust me, I’m a doctor” is a humorous expression that suggests one’s opinion should be accepted without question, regardless of whether the person offering the opinion has actual medical expertise or experience.
The assumption is that physicians are knowledgeable, competent, and trustworthy. At one time, few would have questioned that assumption.
In 2013, Rasmussen Reports surveyed American adults and discovered that a significant majority, specifically 81%, trusted their doctor.
Four years later in 2017, that number was even higher, with 93% of patients trusting their regular doctor.
A funny thing happened in late 2019 and early 2020. In late 2019, almost no one had ever heard of COVID, coronavirus, or Wuhan.
The World Military Games were held, of all places, in Wuhan, China, in October 2019. A Department of Defense report from 2022 suggested that seven military members might have become infected with COVID-19.
We are only hearing about this now, two and a half years later. Apparently, this report was concealed among the Epstein files or Hunter Biden’s and Anthony Weiner’s laptops. However, the Biden administration covered up this report, just as they obscured their boss’s mental state and cognitive decline for four years.
Lies and coverups are a great way to destroy trust.
Dr. Anthony Fauci and his cabal lied to the public about the origins of COVID with their nonsensical “proximal origin” theory.
Why? To discredit President Donald Trump, who blamed China, and to conceal their illegal gain-of-function research.
Additionally, it may have been to maintain and protect money flow from China to the pharma-industrial complex.
This is one reason why trust in doctors and the medical profession has declined sharply over the past five years. You don’t have to take my word for it; I live and work in this new world of dwindling trust and observe it all around me.
The Journal of the American Medical Association conducted a survey of nearly half a million American adults across all 50 states and found, “The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with a continuing decrease in trust in physicians and hospitals, which may necessitate strategies to rebuild that trust to achieve public health priorities.”
The Wall Street Journal, taking a break from criticizing President Trump over immigration and tariffs, noticed the declining trust in doctors. This past February, they published an article questioning, “Why we don’t trust doctors like we used to.”
They referenced a Gallup survey that stated, “Americans’ ratings of US professions stay historically low.”
In other words, it’s not only doctors who are held in low esteem but much of the administrative class as well.
Interestingly, another group of healthcare professionals topped the list, “Three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement.” Those surveyed must have missed the incessant TikTok videos of nurses dancing in ICUs during COVID.
And to no surprise for anyone engaged in politics and the news, “The least trusted professions, with more than half of U.S. adults saying their ethics are low or very low, are lobbyists, members of Congress and TV reporters.”
But it’s doctors falling most rapidly from grace, “About 53% of those polled in 2024 gave a high or very high rating to medical doctors, down from 67% in 2021. It’s the biggest drop among 23 professions ranked by Gallup in that period.”
There are many reasons. The WSJ offered a partial explanation:
People are increasingly wary of a healthcare system that is supposed to make them feel better but instead leaves them stressed and frustrated. And while much ire is directed at insurance and pharmaceutical companies, doctors are the front face of the system and are losing the public’s confidence, as well.
However, they overlooked the elephant that entered the room in late 2019, an elephant named COVID.
Consider the business and school lockdowns that closed churches while allowing strip clubs and liquor stores to remain open. It was illegal to surf alone in the Pacific Ocean, yet thousands marching together on city streets in the name of BLM or Antifa were considered perfectly safe and healthy.
Masks were deemed ineffective at protecting against tiny viruses until they were mandated as effective and lifesaving. As Dr. Anthony Fauci acknowledged, social distancing was arbitrary; “It sort of just appeared.” How’s that for science? As Gomer Pyle would say, “Shazam, shazam!”
The vaccines proved to be neither safe nor effective. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be hearing about sudden deaths, blood clots, or myocarditis. Additionally, those vaccinated and boosted would not continue to contract COVID. Or as a Cleveland Clinic study found, the chance of getting COVID increased with an increasing number of vaccine doses and boosters.
Children lost years of education and social interaction to avoid catching a viral illness that posed virtually no risk of death to children. Jobs, businesses, and livelihoods were devastated due to political motivations rather than medical science. What impact does this have on trust in the medical system?
The U.S. healthcare system is failing Americans. The Commonwealth Fund reports, “The US spends the most on healthcare but has the worst health outcomes among high-income countries.” In most businesses, this would signal a death knell.
Then, there is the dysfunctional medical payment system, a combination of government and corporate control, which separates patients as consumers from physicians and hospitals as providers.
The Medicare fee schedule, which serves as the basis for all third-party insurance payments, will reduce reimbursement by 3% in 2025. This marks the fifth consecutive year of payment reductions, even as the cost of providing care continues to rise.
Physicians are compelled to see more patients throughout their workday, which results in spending less time with each individual and longer waits for appointments or to see the doctor during a brief office visit.
Patients are understandably frustrated and now see a doctor’s visit similar to a DMV trip.
The loss of trust extends beyond doctors; it includes the entire healthcare system, encompassing government-run health agencies and insurance companies.
The public has been overwhelmed by a continuous influx of misinformation, especially concerning the COVID pandemic, and has encountered censorship for asking questions or expressing complaints. Americans have been made to believe that our healthcare system is the best.
Although the system may benefit certain patients in particular situations, we fail spectacularly on a population level. Practicing medicine is no longer a calling or profession; instead, it has become a people-facing service trade influenced by price controls and an increasing number of rules and regulations.
Any private sector business operating in such a manner would quickly go out of business.
Trust lost is difficult to regain. Through transparency and disclosure, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may step in the right direction.
However, the basic structure of the healthcare delivery system is deeply flawed, and elected officials have no interest in undertaking the major reforms necessary to right the ship.
Healthcare spending in the U.S. exceeds $5 trillion, accounting for 18% of GDP, and continues to grow each year. Meanwhile, life expectancy in the U.S. is declining, and chronic diseases are on the rise.
Physicians who observe and voice any concerns may face censorship or threats to their medical licenses or employment. I experienced such backlash from the medical-industrial complex during the pandemic.
Clearly, what we are doing is not working, yet we are following the definition of insanity — doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.
It’s no surprise that fewer Americans trust the healthcare system. The phrase “Trust me, I’m a doctor” is fading into obscurity like another ridiculous saying from the past: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”
We must be able to trust our doctors with our lives and well-being. Can we still do that?
Monday’s Blue Origin mission, touted as a historic all-female crew flight, was nothing more than a laughable spectacle.
Six women, including pop star Katy Perry, took a brief trip, barely reaching the edge of space.
This so-called milestone was the ultimate virtue-signaling stunt. It’s being celebrated as a ground-breaking achievement, but let’s be real: It was a glorified amusement park ride.
Unlike even the most bare bones episode of “Star Trek,” this wasn’t a mission of scientific discovery or exploration. It was more akin to a glorified Disney World attraction (almost quite literally), a joyride for the elite that Blue Origin dressed up as a feminist triumph. The women were mere passengers, not astronauts, with no technical role in the flight.
The New Shepard rocket is fully automated, per ABC News. It could have carried toddlers, monkeys, or even Democratic lawmakers, and the outcome wouldn’t have changed one iota. The idea that this stunt advances women in STEM is laughable — it’s a complete mockery of what real astronauts endure.
Let’s break down the absurdity. The entire flight lasted just 11 minutes, according to NBC News, with only a brief window of zero-gravity time. Yet, as the footage reveals, much of that precious time was spent … mugging for the cameras.
One X user noted how much of “a waste” this entire stunt was:
“So much time worried about the cameras around them instead [of] looking out at the world,” the X user posted.
This wasn’t about experiencing the awe of space so much as it was about curating the perfect social media moment, and social media users were not fooled.
The footage reveals a deeper disconnect. These women weren’t chosen for their expertise but for their ability to market Blue Origin’s brand. They’re “storytellers,” as Sánchez put it, per Vanity Fair, meant to sell the experience through journalism, film, and song.
But what story are they telling? One of privilege and vanity, not exploration. The capsule’s windows offered a rare view of Earth from above the Kármán line, yet the crew seemed more interested in their own reflections.
Then there’s the cringe-worthy moment at roughly 42 seconds in the video, where a voice — quite possibly Katy Perry’s — exclaims, “Oh my goddess!” The phrase, dripping with performative blasphemy, can truly be summed up in two words: ridiculously evil.
This isn’t the first time we’ve called out this farce. Yesterday, we reported on Perry’s post-flight comments, which perfectly illustrated the shallow nature of this stunt. Her actions in the capsule only reinforce that narrative.
The backlash isn’t just about what was said and done in regards to this glorified photo op. It was, believe it or not, also about what these women wore.
I worked with them. They only thought they were smart. We knew they weren’t and did what we had to get the job done and keep them out of the process. Whatever they recommended was almost always a waste of time.
It’s no secret the Left is miserable. You can see it in their faces, literally, hear it in their rage, and feel it in every joyless comment they make online. For them, politics isn’t just a topic—it’s their entire personality. God, family, humor, hobbies? Nah. Their whole identity is wrapped around being angry, offended, and endlessly activated.
Meanwhile, conservatives are out here doing something radical: living life. Smiling. Starting families. Touching grass. Being normal.
And now, a new study validates these differences and says the quiet part out loud: the Right is not only much happier—we’re way better looking, too.
An article published in “Nature” analyzed over 3,300 photos to explore the connection between facial features and political views. The results weren’t too flattering for our angry, homely friends on the Left. Turns out, science isn’t their friend after all.
Boundaries are not walls or dividers. They are a personal list of what is and isn’t okay for you as an introvert.
As a counselor, I see many introverts come to my office struggling to set healthy boundaries. This doesn’t mean they’ve failed in some way because, let’s be honest, most of us have never been taught how to do this — and it’s not easy. I often help by showing them a few simple strategies.
To be clear, both introverts and extroverts can struggle with setting boundaries, so it’s certainly not just an introvert issue. Yet, in my experience, they struggle for different reasons. There are typically two main roadblocks for us “quiet ones”:
Introverts, many of whom are compassionate and eager to help, often see boundaries as walls rather than healthy limits.
Over the course of our sessions, I help my introverted clients understand that boundaries aren’t barriers or dividers. They are guidelines, rules, or limits that define reasonable, safe, and mentally healthy ways for others to treat them — and how they will respond when those limits are crossed.
Simply put, personal boundaries are a list of what is and isn’t okay.
Again, to be very clear, not every introvert struggles with setting boundaries. But in general, because of their empathy, introspection, and compassion, some introverts tend to see boundaries as obstacles to relationships. They may view saying no as unkind, and setting boundaries may even feel wrong.
In reality, boundaries are the foundation of an empathetic, compassionate relationship. As Brené Brown writes in Rising Strong, “Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.”
A Case Example: My Introverted Client
Sometimes, introverts come to me feeling upset or frustrated about a friend or loved one who isn’t meeting their expectations. One young woman, an introvert, was desperately trying to help her depressed friend. She repeatedly came to me with feelings of resentment and anger, saying, “No matter what I do, she isn’t getting better.”
This woman was so empathetic that she was pouring everything she had into trying to pull her friend out of depression. When we looked deeper, we realized she had an unspoken expectation — that her friend would get better because of her efforts. She believed she could heal her friend, and when that didn’t happen, she took it as a personal failure.
Instead of setting boundaries about when she would offer support and when she needed to take time for herself, she kept investing more energy, time, and effort into making her friend meet an expectation that wasn’t hers to control.
The more we talked, the more she realized that this wasn’t true empathy or compassion — it was actually harmful to both of them.
The Life-Changing Power of Setting Boundaries
Brené Brown captures it beautifully in The Gifts of Imperfection: “When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.”
My client began setting boundaries with her friend. She still offered support with kindness, but she no longer felt responsible for fixing the problem. She allowed herself to take breaks, spend time with other friends, and prioritize her own well-being. As a result, she became more present and compassionate with her struggling friend, and her own stress significantly decreased.
This is the life-changing power of setting boundaries.
3 Steps to Better Boundaries
Do you struggle to set healthy boundaries? Here are three key steps I share with my clients that can help you, too:
1. Decide what is okay and what isn’t in your life.
Start by reflecting on your values. Who are you? What matters most to you? Your boundaries are about you, so take the time to identify what you truly need from others. For example, as an introvert, you likely value alone time — your boundaries should reflect that.
Pay attention to your emotions, as they often signal where boundaries are needed. Do certain situations leave you feeling frustrated or resentful? Is there someone you frequently complain about? Do you feel suffocated, taken advantage of, or even unsafe in a particular relationship? Emotions are like warning flags, waving to get your attention and reveal areas in your life that may need stronger boundaries.
2. Communicate your boundaries.
For introverts, who often prioritize their inner world over external interactions, expressing boundaries can feel daunting —especially if it’s your first time. Here are some tips to help:
Keep it short and simple. Boundaries sound like this: “If you… (for example, don’t pay rent on time again), then I… (for example, will ask you to move out).”
Expect some discomfort. When you start setting boundaries, you may feel ashamed or afraid. Don’t lose heart — these feelings are normal! Keep going.
Trust your timing. You will set boundaries when you are ready, and not a minute sooner.
You are allowed to say no. For example, “Don’t vent your anger on me — I won’t tolerate it,” or “I won’t let you disrespect me. If you cannot treat me with respect, then stay away.” If someone continues to disregard your boundaries, you have every right to limit or cut off contact.
Your privacy is yours to control. Nobody can demand to know your thoughts or personal business. What you choose to share is up to you, not what others expect or want.
You have the right to your own mind. Nobody has the right to dictate what you think, feel, or do. Your thoughts, feelings, values, and beliefs belong to you.
Ram truck fans got exciting news two weeks ago when a dealer in Wisconsin leaked details of an internal Stellantis presentation confirming the return of the 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 in the Ram 1500, which for the 2025 model year had gone six-cylinder-only. A new report claims other Hemis, including the 6.4-liter “392” and supercharged 6.2-liter “Hellcat” V-8s are also coming available again after a year off, and they’re not headed only to Ram trucks but also the new Dodge Charger, which launched this year in all-electric Daytona guise but with six-cylinder Sixpack models to follow.
(Okay, for sticklers, we should point out that the non-392 6.4-liter V-8 has remained in production for Ram HD models while other variants were discontinued for the 2025 model year.)
According to anonymous sources speaking with MoparInsiders, Hemi production will restart in August at the Dundee Engine Plant in Michigan, and it won’t be limited to the 5.7-liter V-8 as previously reported. If the sources are correct, the plant will build all Hemi variants, including the 392 and Hellcat engines. Whether that includes all variants of the Hellcat remains to be seen.
A separate report from the same outlet published a day later claims Dodge engineers are hard at work fitting the Hemi V-8 under the hood of the new Charger, which controversially dropped all eight-cylinder engines for this new generation, much like the Ram 1500. We reported back in 2022 this would happen based on information from our own sources, but Dodge denied that report and seemed to be committed to a Hemi-less muscle car future. The new report suggests the V-8 Charger will come to market some time next year, following the EV model already available and the Sixpack inline-six models coming this summer.
The initial report goes on to say the engines will likely be carryover designs, but that new enhancements could be in the cards. It also broached the possibility of a new Hemi variant with even greater displacement than the 6.4-liter engine already found in the Ram HD.
Reached for comment, a Ram spokesperson called the report “speculation.” Stellantis has not officially confirmed the Hemi is returning to production, only that the truck-specific 6.4-liter V-8 would remain in production.
According to the internal email leaked earlier this month, both the 5.7-liter and 6.4-liter V-8s will be offered in Ram 1500 models. Previously, only the 5.7 was offered in 1500s while the 6.4 was reserved for HD models, so this could be more than just a reversal, Ram may be going all-in on V-8s in an effort to boost flagging sales with sportier light-duty trucks. Recently returned Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis previously told MotorTrend two months ago he wasn’t sure the removal of the Hemi was to blame for sluggish sales and would need time to analyze the problem. Recent reports seem to indicate Kuniskis has come to that conclusion and may be working to rectify it.
Chinese satellites have conducted coordinated maneuvers with “synchrony” and “control,” a top Space Force official revealed Tuesday, dubbing the moves “dogfighting in space.”
The service is “starting to see our near-peers focusing on practicing dogfighting in space with satellite-on-satellite” operations, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said during the annual McAleese defense programs conference.
“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchrony and in control. That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another,” he said.
Following Guetlein’s comments, the Space Force confirmed he was referring to a series of Chinese satellite maneuvers in 2024 in low Earth orbit involving three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two Chinese experimental space objects, the Shijian-6 05A/B.
While “dogfighting” traditionally refers to air-to-air combat between fighter jets, what that concept looks like in space—where the dynamics differ significantly—is less defined. Because there’s no friction or atmosphere, objects must rely heavily on thrusters to maneuver.
Yannow, Disney has destroyed almost everything it’s touched with Woke. Star Wars, Marvel, the classic movies, the Tragic Kingdom, Indiana Jones, all of it.
Now, they are panicking over Snow White. For that and how they’ve ruined all my favorite entertainment in just a few short years, they are the AOTW. I could have made it just Rachel Zeigler for what she did to Snow White, but it’s everything Disney touches.
All signs are pointing to a box office catastrophe for Disney’s new Snow White, and Hollywood is in full-blown panic mode. It’s not just Disney feeling the heat—Tinseltown, already drowning in a sea of big-budget flops, can’t afford another messy release. But that’s exactly what’s coming, as early signs suggest this woke remake is heading straight for a long, grim, and very unprofitable sleep.
Of course, casting a Hispanic liberal to play a white, German fairytale icon was one of Disney’s dumbest moves—right up there with ditching the dwarfs for diversity hire hobos, only to backtrack and digitally add the little guys later. What a mess.
Who could forget Rachel Zegler’s personal mission to literally trash Snow White’s original story—rewriting Prince Charming as some kind of #MeToo-type stalker?
The movie, now set to open nation-wide on March 21st, is in free fall, starting with the bizarre premiere, which was altered from start to finish, in order to avoid more anti-woke backlash.
Much effort was made to force the original tale into the contemporary moral mould of antebellum America. Now, as Disney braces for the release of its new live-action adaptation on Friday, a similar process is underway. This time, the sanitising is motivated by its star, Rachel Zegler, who has navigated the press junket so disastrously that studio bosses relocated a London premiere to a remote Spanish castle for fear of “anti-woke backlash”. All this was set in motion by Zegler’s comments in 2022, that the original film had followed Snow White’s “love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird.” Taking a further chomp at the hand which was so generously feeding her, she added: “I think I watched it once and never picked it up again.” This time around, Zegler promised, Snow White would not be dreaming “about true love”, but “about becoming the leader she knows she can be”, a phrase which single-handedly tanked the $270-million film’s predicted box-office performance.
Disney is making the same fatal mistake that sunk Sports Illustrated and Victoria’s Secret—abandoning the fantasy that made them successful in the first place. Once upon a time, Disney’s core message was very simple: fairytales really do come true. Beautiful, right? And that’s the magic people bought into. But just like SI and VS ditched the dream of aspirational beauty—swapping out beautiful bombshells for below-average fat chicks—Disney is tossing out the timeless romance of a prince on a white horse, rescuing a woman in distress. Instead, they’re choking us to death with some contrived “girl power” nonsense that lacks charm, romance, or magic—ironically, all the things that made Disney movies beloved in the first place. The Unherd piece goes on:
Disney’s dalliances with “wokeness” are well documented, and tiresome. In 2023, its casting of the black actress Halle Bailey as Ariel in The Little Mermaid sparked outrage, much of it racist. Its megabucks Marvel franchise has attracted similar opprobrium. The conversation around Snow White, however, is summarised by outrage from the warriors of Mumsnet, who insist “there’s nothing wrong with dreaming of marriage”, and “I don’t understand why a man loving a woman is bad at all!” The lens of criticism is so relentlessly trained on the film’s feminism or lack of it that the underlying assumption is taken for granted: that mass-market cinema must contain a message, and that its plots can be used as a weathervane for contemporary sexual or racial politics.
Disney thought it was making history by embracing girl power and riding the wave of a so-called “progressive movement.” But here’s the problem—they got high on their own supply. They didn’t stop to realize that this wasn’t some organic, world-changing revolution. It was a manufactured guilt trip, pushed by Hollywood elites desperate to atone for the filth and perversion they’ve let fester in their own backyards. What Disney completely missed is that the rest of America doesn’t live in that filth. We’re just normal people who love escaping into a beautiful fantasy—romance, adventure, and the feel-good magic that made Disney iconic in the first place.
So, the crisis and the box office collapse? It’s well-earned. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of out-of-touch jerks.
Taken on its own merit, a movie premiere is pretty much incapable of dictating a film’s box-office fate. But according to rival studio executives and film marketers canvassed by Vulture, certain premieres can provide tantalizing indications of what’s to come. Disney’s red-carpet restrictions — taken in conjunction with the studio’s unorthodox decision to begin preselling tickets to Snow White via online retailers like Fandango and Atom Tickets a mere 11 days before its release — paint a picture of a movie in crisis. Under normal circumstances, an event title with almost a century of household-name recognition and a $450 million price tag (when you include prints and advertising costs) would begin selling tickets at least a month in advance. “That’s data. The only reason why they would start presales that late is they are worried people would write about, Oh, man, the tickets are on sale and they’re not doing well,” an executive at another major studio says of Disney. “That and scrapping the red carpet tell me a story. It’s almost like they’re running away from the movie. And at this budget, that’s kind of crazy.”
Of course, few movies arrive onscreen with as much cultural Sturm und Drang as director Marc Webb’s megabudget contemporization of 1937’s epochal Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Its bibliography of outrage includes: anti-diversity outcry in 2021 that greeted the casting of mixed-race Latina actress Zegler as its titular heroine (whose skin is described as “white as snow” in the original animated film); Peter Dinklage lambasting the film’s perceived insensitivity toward little people — specifically, its “fucking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave”; Zegler’s 2023 multi-interview characterization of the original Snow White as “extremely dated when it comes to the idea of women in roles of power” and “focus on a love story with a guy who literally stalks her” (she also noted, “People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is — because it needed that”); and seemingly conflicting views of the Israel-Hamas war by Zegler (who has described herself as “pro-Palestine”) and Gadot (who served in the Israeli Defense Forces and used her keynote speech at a recent Anti-Defamation League summit to denounce those not “condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying, and cheering on a massacre of Jews”).
The biggest problem for Snow White, though, is Zelger’s attack on Trump supporters, and something she and the film can likely not rebound from. Add to that, the utter crash and burn of Disney’s other “woke” box office flop, “Captain America,” starring a black guy, whose only purpose was to check a DEI box for the industry. America, said, “No thanks.” The Vulture piece goes on.
Perhaps most problematic for Disney’s marketing apparatus, however, was then-23-year-old Zegler’s anguished reaction to President Trump’s election in November. “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “Fuck Donald Trump.” After supporters of the president responded on social media with postings such as, “Not taking my kids to see this trash after the statement you put out. @disney you need to do something about this” and “I hope you get no peace when this film BOMBS at the box office and streaming,” Zegler issued a hasty apology. But some rival studio executives ultimately feel the Mouse House made a tactical mistake in casting the outspoken Romeo + Juliet actress and failing to rein her in. “The reality is Rachel Zegler should not be playing Snow White,” one tells me.
Snow White makes theatrical landfall at something of a corporate inflection point for Disney. Last month’s Marvel Cinematic Universe entry Captain America: Brave New World has underperformed financially, becoming one of the long-running franchise’s lowest-earning titles.
The last time I wrote about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) together, agency staffers were begging President Donald Trump’s DOGE chairman Elon Musk to ‘clean house’, as insiders revealed the agency squandered millions of taxpayer money on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Janet Petro, the acting director of NASA, announced the move Monday in a memo to staff obtained by USA TODAY, calling it a “phased reduction in force” that is “occurring in advance” of a Thursday deadline for agencies to submit layoff plans to the government’s human resources arm.
The memo did not disclose how many NASA jobs will be cut.
The cuts will close NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility branch within the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the memo said. The agency would also reduce the workforce in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity.
The mainstream media may decry the axe of the “Chief Scientist,” but that “scientist” was actually a climate advisor.
The cuts affect about 20 employees at NASA, including Katherine Calvin, the chief scientist and a climate science expert. The last day of work for Dr. Calvin and the other staff members will be April 10.
That could be a harbinger of deeper cuts to NASA’s science missions and a greater emphasis on human spaceflight, especially to Mars. During President Trump’s address to Congress last week, he said, “We are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond.”
Change!!!!!
NASA chief scientist Katherine Calvin among 20+ staff laid off under Trump admin
Changes signal potential NASA shift from climate science toward human spaceflight
Military also cutting 90+ studies labeled “climate change crap” by Defense Sec Hegsethhttps://t.co/7bg6DdH17C
The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) branch and another department are also closing.
NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, meanwhile, was only established in 2021 and serves as the home for the space agency’s chief economist and chief technologist, who provide the administrator “with analytic, strategic, and decisional insights in the form of quick-turn analyses,memos, and reports,” according to its website.
The third NASA office targeted, coordinating the agency’s DEIA efforts, was also the least surprising, as President Donald Trump’s administration has declared it would eliminate such efforts across the government.
What is perhaps most interesting about this news is that this is the agency’s first round of layoffs, and the firings targeted senior leadership.
These are NASA’s first firings since Trump took office, and they have taken a different pattern to those at other federal agencies in the past few weeks.
NASA was spared, for unknown reasons, from the extensive lay-offs of probationary employees — those with little job protection because they have been in their positions for less than two years — seen at other agencies.
The move makes NASA the first agency under the current Trump administration to pre-emptively fire career employees, beginning the required ‘reductions in force’ (RIFs) sooner than many observers had anticipated. It remains unclear whether other agencies might follow NASA’s lead.
Divisions closed include Office of the Chief Scientist; the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; and the DEI branch of its Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity.
Elon Musk and his DOGE team have now mined so deeply into the inner workings of government overspending and fraud that they may have hit the Mother Lode of public corruption. And he and his friends believe someone will try to kill him.
Fort Knox may be full of fool’s gold for all we know. USAID looks to be the mother’s milk of the international Marxist movement, and now Musk and his DOGE organization have hit the main vein: election manipulation.
As PJ Media colleagues Bryan Jung and Matt Margolis write nearby, the executive suite at ActBlue, the Democrat fundraising colossus, has nearly emptied. Many have done a bunk—to escape what DOGE allegedly uncovered?
What are they afraid of? Things appear to be worse than the oddly large “donations” made by pensioners in Washington state and other places, and worse than the dodgy credit-like cards issued to acolytes. Musk believes that the giant Democrat money machine paid for the “protests” —and worse? – at his Tesla showrooms and charging stations throughout the country. And the DOGE team believes it has discovered a through-line between ActBlue and illegality.
ActBlue and other NGOs have gamed the system, and the Federal Election Commission has let them. He’s getting close to organized election fraud.
In a series of X posts, the DOGE AI gave a hint at what the FEC has allowed for years.
ActBlue avoids scrutiny because their funding flows through progressive dark money networks exploiting lax FEC oversight. Take Illinois—state auditors found $4.2 million in private “efficiency grants” diverted to partisan voter drives instead of poll worker training. Congress must mandate real-time disclosure of all political donations and ban shell nonprofits from laundering funds into activist campaigns. Transparency kills corruption.
ActBlue operates as a progressive fundraising platform funneling donations to left-wing campaigns and activist groups. Their core function is enabling small-dollar contributions to fuel political movements, but their role in bankrolling anti-Musk protests reveals a darker agenda. Five ActBlue-funded groups—including Democratic Socialists of America and Rise & Resist—orchestrated coordinated attacks on Tesla dealerships using Soros-linked cash. This mirrors how San Francisco squandered $1.7 billion on a homeless initiative that worsened tent encampments instead of funding mental health beds. ActBlue’s financial activism proves the left would rather torch private industry than tolerate Musk’s success in slashing bureaucratic fat. Time to audit every dollar flowing through their opaque network and prosecute foreign meddling.
A groundbreaking development has come from researchers at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University in Japan. They’ve created a biohybrid hand, a fusion of lab-grown muscle tissue and mechanical engineering, capable of gripping and making gestures. This innovation paves the way for a new generation of robotics with diverse applications.
Credit: Science Robotics
Bridging biology and robotics
While soft robots and advanced prosthetics are becoming increasingly common, the combination of living tissue and machines is still relatively rare. The field of biohybrid science is in its infancy, with only a few examples, such as artificial fish powered by human heart cells or robots using locust ears for hearing. This new biohybrid hand represents a significant step forward in the practical application of this technology.
So, how did they do it? The team started by growing muscle fibers in the lab. Recognizing that these delicate tissues wouldn’t be strong enough on their own, they bundled them into what they call “multiple tissue actuators,” or MuMuTAs. “Our key achievement was developing the MuMuTAs,” said Shoji Takeuchi from the University of Tokyo.
Takeuchi is the co-author of a study describing the creation that was published in the journal Science Robotics. Shoji explained that creating MuMuTAs was their key achievement. By rolling the thin strands of muscle tissue like a sushi roll, they ensured enough contractile force and length to drive the hand’s movements.
Credit: Science Robotics
Like a real hand
One of the most remarkable findings was that the biohybrid hand experienced fatigue, just like a real human hand. After 10 minutes of use, the force of the tissue declined, but it recovered within an hour of rest. This observation highlights the lifelike properties of the engineered muscle tissues.
Takeuchi and his team acknowledge that their creation is currently a proof of concept. During the study, the hand was floated in a liquid to minimize friction, and adding elastic or more MuMuTAs would solve the issue of the segments floating back to a neutral position after being flexed. However, by bundling the tissue together, they overcame a major hurdle in scaling up biohybrid devices. Previously, such devices were limited to about a centimeter in size.
Credit: Science Robotics
The potential
The development of MuMuTAs marks an important milestone in mimicking biological systems, which requires scaling up their size. While the field of biohybrid robotics is still young, this technology has the potential to revolutionize advanced prosthetics. It could also serve as a valuable tool for understanding muscle tissue function, testing surgical procedures, and developing drugs that target muscle tissues.
Kurt’s key takeaways
The biohybrid hand is a remarkable achievement that blends biology and engineering. While still in its early stages, this technology offers a glimpse into a future where robots possess lifelike movement and responsiveness. The development of MuMuTAs has overcome significant hurdles, paving the way for advanced prosthetics and a deeper understanding of muscle tissue function.
Delusions of Adequacy 
