Oh man, this is so great

'The dimensions of this new Middle East will persist.'

To use what will become a timeless adage, one of the most amazing things about life is how it, uh, finds a way—as seen lately in England where ash trees are spontaneously developing resistance to a deadly disease. Natural selection in woodlands is acting to combat the disease ash dieback—caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus […] The post Ash Trees in Britain Are Evolving a Resistance to Fungal Disease That was Devastating Woodlands appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV Murderbot Murderbot’s Privacy Is Invaded in “Foreign Object” Thankfully, there’s more Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to offer us solace. By Alex Brown | Published on June 27, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to the eighth episode of Murderbot and Its Selfish, Ungrateful, Hippie Clients! Murderbot has more of its privacy invaded, Mensah has had it up to here, and Gurathin is having the second worst day of his life. Spoilers ahoy! Ah, there’s my Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I missed thee last week. The scene we see is from a much later episode than the last clip we got; and it’s also a new one for Seccy. Captain Hossein is now dead, decapitated at the hands of his construct lover, the NavBot. Lieutenant Kulleroo has been promoted to captain after basically doing a factory reset on the NavBot. Except it doesn’t work and it drags them all into the event horizon of a wormhole. It’s pretty clear that in the Corporate Rim, sexualizing constructs in a gendered way based solely on surface-level assumptions of presentation is depressingly (frustratingly, disgustingly) common. We saw it in the way Leebeebee went after Murderbot and how Captain Kulleroo tells NavBot to smile. I talked about this in an earlier review, but I’m convinced it’s also a key selling point for AI. We’ve got tech bros arguing that AI is practically sentient, folks turning to LLMs for romantic relationships, and even a journalist who made an AI employee look like an attractive woman then immediately sexually harassed it. They get to have all the thrill of power with none of the consequences for abusing it.  Every woman or person who often gets assumed to be women (hi, it’s me) has had some creepy asshole man tell them to smile. If Kulleroo tried that on a human woman, she’d have some options for resistance, even if it was just complaining about it to her friends. NavBot wasn’t supposed to even realize resistance was a concept, much less offer any, not after that reconditioning. Love gave her choice, so they took that choice away. Control without resistance. It’s the main selling point for SecUnits and other constructs. The Company gets to replicate slavery but with a population that can’t fight…and sexual violence is part of that. It’s also an undercurrent of why the PresAux humans are so distressed by Murderbot being “rogue.” Their reaction reminds me more of the claim that was common in the 19th century (and still percolates around today) that Black Americans would rise up against white people and inflict upon them what they inflicted upon us. The Corporate Rim folks cannot conceive of a construct going rogue and just wanting to hang out with some space operas, while the Preservation Alliance humans only want SecUnit to go rogue in ways they approve of. They want a certain type of resistance done in a certain way; tone policing, anyone?  Hang on, I’m getting sidetracked. Much like Murderbot does when watching Sanctuary Moon instead of scouting out the PresAux habitat to see if the mystery third party is lying in wait. Using the transponder Murderbot left behind to record the habitat, the team figures out the group trying to kill them is from GrayCris, a mining company. And they have even more evil SecUnits. Much like PresAux, GrayCris is also led by a middle-aged Black woman, albeit one with a terrible hair care routine. Mensah wouldn’t be caught dead in public with her hair that fried. For once, Gurathin and Murderbot agree on something: neither think they should return to the habitat, despite how badly he needs the med bay. Ratthi, Arada, Pin-Lee, and Bharadwaj may think they were badasses in that last “punch-up,” as Ratthi adorably puts it, but we and SecUnit know that they only made it out of there alive by the miraculous intervention of a broody alien animal. It says a lot that while Gurathin is writhing about in agonizing pain, he and Murderbot both simultaneously realize it can use its own body to help him override his pain sensors in lieu of giving him pills. Murderbot doesn’t know anything about Gura’s past in the Corporate Rim, so it has no context for why he would reject pain meds. Yet it still occurs to it to help him. Mensah asks if this plan was inspired by Sanctuary Moon but nope. (It’s actually from Medcenter Argala, episode 502). For the first time, SecUnit gets to see things from a human perspective. It’s a lot gooier than expected.  And here comes another one of my favorite moments from the book. In the novella, the reveal about SecUnit’s chosen name comes at the same time as PresAux learns it’s rogue. Here, Gurathin wasn’t able to dig past its defenses the first time around. Murderbot decides to use this opportunity to go rooting around in Gurathin’s brain, and then Gurathin returns the favor. Alexander Skarsgård plays this moment so well. If SecUnit was really an evil, killer rogue bot like NavBot from Sanctuary Moon, we’d expect to see it react with anger, threats, or violence. Instead, Murderbot is frightened and nervous. It’s having its most private thoughts and memories aired out in public sans context and by the one person who has gone out of his way to make life inordinately more difficult for it. Director Aurora Guerrero shoots this scene with a lot of close-ups and medium shots of the actors, then when there’s a pause after the reveal, switches to a wide shot of the entire cast where we watch the humans in unison shift ever so slightly away from Murderbot. Then a slow zoom in on it when Gura calls it defective. It’s subtle yet so effective. Even Mensah leans back. It’s a gutting betrayal, to be seen and then rejected by the only humans to ever show it kindness, to paraphrase NavBot. Composer Amanda Jones’ score really drives home the shame and sorrow Murderbot feels in the moment where it agrees with Gurathin’s accusation that “Maybe you’re just defective.” Not having anything else to do, and not getting any defense from its supposed allies, Murderbot puts its helmet up and leaves. Bharadwaj and Ratthi mount a defense of Murderbot, and Mensah finally shuts Ratthi down by reminding him “It’s not your pet!” They can’t force it to return or help them, so she redirects them to figuring out who GrayCris is. I gotta disagree with Mensah here, not about the pet part but about the root of her anger. In the past, she’s always been able to pull Murderbot back in with a little patience and compassion. This time, she feels like a line has been crossed. She’s right that it isn’t a pet, but it is a person. She’s choosing to let it go, to not fight for it. She offered Gurathin forgiveness for choosing to cause her harm despite being addicted to Company substances—we know it was ultimately a choice, even if a meager one, because he was about to end his life. Murderbot doesn’t know why it has that memory of 57 miners being slaughtered. Perhaps it was forced to like those DeltFall SecUnits and like it was going to do before it shot itself. Perhaps it was manipulated like Gura. Perhaps it was ordered to by another human. We don’t know anything except that it didn’t choose to murder those miners or any other humans. It was doing the thing that humans programmed it to do. And now another set of humans are placing all the blame on it for actions it couldn’t control. Yeah, I’d storm out, too.  PresAux deduces that GrayCris is likely after the alien remnants. The Company probably didn’t have a hand in the attacks on DeltFall or PresAux, but someone employed by the Company probably did take a bribe to cover GrayCris’ tracks. DeltFall was killed simply for knowing GrayCris was on planet. The only reason PresAux is still alive and kicking is because GrayCris needs their data on the location of the alien remnants, data Leebeebee failed to retrieve. While Murderbot “wanders aimlessly,” it tries to self-soothe with its favorite episodes of Sanctuary Moon, to no avail. The NavBot wormhole episode we saw in the cold open gives it an idea. Why not play the part of “the rogue SecUnit who betrayed its clients?”  Next week is the penultimate episode of the season. Will Murderbot’s plan work? Final Thoughts Episode 8 covers parts of chapter 6 in All Systems Red but is mostly invented for the show. Constructs sure do love decapitating people don’t they? I don’t know what John Cho did to piss off his NavBot lover, but it’s quite a left turn from that romantic fireside chat.  Speaking of sexualizing constructs, it’s not lost on me that NavBot is the only crewmember forced to wear that shiny, revealing, short skort thing.  Hope that next season (if we get a second season) they tweak the text of what Murderbot sees on its screens so it’s darker and more opaque. Be kind to my old eyes! I had to get right up next to the TV screen to read “area clear” written over the blood spatter. It’s also not lost on me that Bharadwaj does the same exact procedure on Gurathin as she did on SecUnit. At least Mensah gave Ratthi that light touch as a silent apology. They’ll have to talk about it later.  Kinda glad that throuple thing ended. The show never did anything interesting with it.  I think this is the first time the show has told us Mensah is a planetary administrator? We knew she had some sort of leadership role, but this is basically the President of Preservation Alliance. In the book, it’s pointed out that killing someone of her stature would be just as financially destructive to the Company as paying out the bonds on the rest of the teams. Lmao that the CGI of Murderbot scanning the area is the same as the scanning animation in The Sims 4 Career pack. Apple TV+: Murderbot minifig when??? Quotes “When you inducted me into this hideous religion called ‘love,’ you took away the only human who has ever shown me kindness. You have taken away my reason for living. Or letting you live.” “Yes, Seccy, yes.” “This doesn’t have to end in violence.” Murderbot and I both scoffed at that. “Hey. Hey. We’re gonna fix you right up, okay, Gugu?” And that little thumb rub over his cheek! Le sigh. Someone page the rarepair fanfic writers. I need some Ratthi x Gurathin fics forthwith! “Massacres are bad for business.” Until next week…[end-mark] The post <i>Murderbot’</i>s Privacy Is Invaded in “Foreign Object” appeared first on Reactor.

The federal government’s grip on America’s housing finance system is contributing to the very affordability crisis it claims to solve. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-controlled mortgage giants, now back more than half the $16 trillion residential mortgage market. While they don’t issue loans directly, they purchase mortgages from lenders and securitize them, funneling credit through a government-directed system that distorts prices, encourages risk-taking, and leaves taxpayers exposed. Now, under the direction of Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, the Trump administration has reopened the long-stalled debate over what to do with these entities. President Donald Trump recently pledged to take Fannie and Freddie public again, and Pulte has said the administration is considering how to do so while still keeping them in federal conservatorship. This contradictory posture—suggesting privatization while maintaining government control—has left markets, lawmakers, and taxpayers uncertain. That uncertainty matters because the status quo is already creating long-term damage. Fannie and Freddie have been in conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis, when their collapse required a $187 billion bailout funded by taxpayers. That was supposed to be a temporary fix. Instead, they’ve become permanent fixtures of the federal housing system, with an outsized footprint that crowds out private competition and weakens the incentives for prudent lending.Nevertheless, the Trump administration is right — privatization is the answer here. However, it must be real privatization. While the White House can take a phased approach to removing their conservatorship, eventually, it must come off.  Critics of reform argue that ending federal backing could lead to higher mortgage rates. But those same critics ignore the long-term cost of the current arrangement. When lenders and investors operate with the understanding that the federal government stands behind their losses, the result is a mispricing of risk. The implicit guarantee that Washington will step in when things go south may keep rates lower in the short term, but it inflates home prices, misallocates credit, and leaves taxpayers holding the bag when the cycle turns. The government’s role has also expanded in troubling ways. In January, the FHFA raised conforming loan limits to a record high of $806,500. These loans are now eligible for federal backing, meaning taxpayers subsidize million-dollar mortgages. That’s not a policy targeted at helping working families. It’s a distortion that inflates demand in already expensive markets and rewards politically connected interests at the expense of long-term affordability. Meanwhile, the real challenge—supply—goes largely unaddressed. According to Axios, the U.S. faces a shortage of nearly 4 million homes. Easier credit does nothing to solve that. In fact, when supply is constrained, subsidizing demand only pushes prices higher.  The solution isn’t more government-backed debt. It’s more homes. And that requires less regulation and more room for private capital to operate.  According to the National Association of Home Builders, nearly $94,000 of the cost of an average new home is attributable to local, state, and federal regulation. Those barriers choke off new construction, especially in places where demand is strongest. The answer isn’t more government-subsidized credit; it’s a freer, more responsive market. We’ve already seen the benefits of private capital stepping in to increase supply. Private ownership of newly built rental units has grown sharply—by nearly 70% in some areas—bringing stability and options to markets that would otherwise be constrained. Yet instead of encouraging this private-sector dynamism, some in Washington want to shut it down. Lawmakers have floated proposals to ban corporate homebuyers, cap investor purchases, or impose new restrictions on private equity in housing. These misguided efforts mirror the broader failure of Washington’s housing policy: punishing private capital while doubling down on federal programs like Fannie and Freddie that drive up costs and distort incentives. Instead of vilifying the private sector, policymakers should welcome its role in helping lower housing costs and increasing housing supply. Privatizing Fannie and Freddie would represent a great place to start. Fannie and Freddie were never meant to be permanent arms of the federal government. Their continued dominance—underwritten by taxpayers and controlled by regulators—creates a housing system built on political priorities instead of market signals. Privatizing them would correct these distortions. It would restore risk-based pricing to mortgage markets, reduce taxpayer exposure, and invite new entrants and innovation into the system. A phased release from conservatorship—paired with a clear plan to reduce implicit guarantees—would allow a competitive private housing finance market to emerge, while maintaining stability during the transition. Preserving the current model doesn’t protect affordability—it protects dysfunction. If the Trump administration is serious about improving access to housing and restoring fiscal responsibility, it must finish the job: end the conservatorship, get government out of the way, and let the housing market function like a market again. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.  The post Why It’s Time To Privatize Fannie and Freddie To Fix America’s Housing Market appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the House of Representatives’ hard-line fiscal conservatives, is making it clear that he and a number of others in the House would have difficulty accepting any Senate “big, beautiful bill” that increases deficits. “If it’s more spending and more deficit spending, it’s a nonstarter,” Norman, R-S.C., told The Daily Signal Thursday evening. “We’ve got a group that are hard-liners with that. I’m one of them. The cancer in this country is overspending and we’ve got to address it.” The Super Bowl moment has come for this ten-year spending package, as Senate leadership eyes a weekend vote that would send the bill to the House before the preferred deadline of Independence Day, July 4. The bill would fulfill a number of campaign promises, such as extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and funding border security, but some in the House have expressed serious concerns about how it has evolved. Norman is particularly concerned by a number of recent rulings from the Senate parliamentarian, essentially the chamber’s referee, who has slashed a number of cost-saving provisions like that blocking illegal immigrants from accessing Medicaid. Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has done this via the Byrd rule, a Senate rule generally intended to banish non-budgetary provisions in ten-year fiscal frameworks. “Now’s the time to look at each one of these, and if it means overruling it, do it and question it because this is our moment in time to make a difference,” said Norman.  Norman specified that he wanted a Senate vote to overturn the rulings and that he was not calling for Vice President JD Vance to simply overrule them as presiding officer of the Senate. “It’s time to fight,” he said. “If we have to sit up here through July 4 and have to sit up here in all of August on our break, we need to do it. This bill is that important.” He added, “I’m excited about having a bill that mirrors what we sent over there. And if there’s too many changes and more spending, it’s going to be a difficult bill to pass.” Norman’s colleagues, such as Freedom Caucus chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, are predicting that proposals in the Senate could cost an extra trillion dollars over the ten-year window. Norman says he will not accept any proposal that balloons the deficit to that level. “Chip and Andy are exactly right. It’s a real problem. We’ll look at everything, but this is really something that we would be backing up on what we had initially told the American people and our constituents that we were going to do,” Norman said. But Norman has one source of optimism—he does not think a bill like that would pass the Senate in the first place. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., (left) and House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, (right). (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) “I don’t think it’s going to get out of the Senate. And we met with different Senators recently and they’ve got a bloc over that I think are going to put up enough resistance to not let it get out of the Senate.” Norman is likely referring to Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida, and Rand Paul of Kentucky.  All of them would have to unite against the bill if they wanted to prevent it from passing, since Vice President JD Vance would likely break a tie in the chamber.  These Senate fiscal hawks give Norman hope that the House will ultimately get a bill that resembles the one they sent the Senate. “In large, what we are expecting is predominantly the bill that we sent over with those provisions, those cuts and that’s what we worked for.” One thing Norman demands is time to read the bill once—or if—the Senate passes it. “I do think we’ll be back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever they get it to us. This isn’t a Nancy Pelosi regime where you have to pass it, then read it and find out what’s in it. We’re going to read it before we pass it and right now it’s got some problems.” The post Rep. Norman Puts Foot Down on Big, Beautiful Bill appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Apple and Google are facing mounting pressure from German authorities to remove the Chinese AI app DeepSeek from their app stores in Germany over data privacy violations. The Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Meike Kamp, has flagged the app for transferring personal data to China without adhering to EU data protection standards. Kamp’s office examined DeepSeek’s practices and found that the company failed to offer “convincing evidence” that user information is safeguarded as mandated by EU law. She emphasized the risks linked to Chinese data governance, warning that “Chinese authorities have far-reaching access rights to personal data within the sphere of influence of Chinese companies.” With this in mind, Apple and Google have been urged to evaluate the findings and consider whether to block the app in Germany. Authorities in Berlin had already asked DeepSeek to either meet EU legal requirements for data transfers outside the bloc or remove its app from German availability. DeepSeek did not take action to address these concerns, according to Kamp. Germany’s move follows Italy’s earlier decision this year to block DeepSeek from local app stores, citing comparable concerns about data security and privacy. Privacy advocates in Europe continue to highlight that DeepSeek not only originates in China but also processes and stores data within Chinese borders. The app’s privacy policy confirms that user data is kept in China, placing it under Chinese legal jurisdiction, which raises further alarm for those focused on protecting personal information in the EU. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Germany Pressures Apple and Google to Ban Chinese AI App DeepSeek appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

YGBKM: Denver Throws Car Owners Under the Bus For Illegals?

Thousands of previously overlooked manuscripts paint a new picture of a period many have dismissed as "backwards".

For the first time in 15 years, you can see a game of shadows across Saturn. You won't see it again until 2040.