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[Interesting things @awkwardgoogle]

Packing thousands of straws together basically creates a low-tech pixel screen.

Each straw acts as an independent light pathway, perfectly mimicking how data channels work.

[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

A sleeping octopus changing colors as she dreams.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This is how a plant breathes.

A highly magnified video of single stoma opening and closing on a leaf of a Tradescantia spathacea plant, commonly known as a boat lily.

[📹 Douglas Clark]

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

Anthropic just got caught secretly downgrading users without telling them, charging full price for a lesser product, and storing every prompt for 30 days. The developer community is calling it the biggest violation of trust in AI history.

Here is exactly what happened.

Anthropic released Fable 5, their most powerful model. Buried inside a 319-page document was a policy most users never saw. Every prompt you send to a Mythos-class model gets stored for 30 days. No exceptions. Even enterprise customers who had signed zero data retention agreements had no choice.

But the storage was not the part that broke the internet.

The part that broke the internet was what Anthropic did with what they collected.

They built a profile on you. They evaluated your prompts. And if they decided your research was too sensitive, they quietly switched you to a weaker model, rewrote your prompt in the background, gave you a degraded answer, and charged you full price for the product you thought you were getting.

They never told you.

David Sacks said it plainly on the All-In podcast. They were creating a new class of AI haves and have-nots. Anthropic would surveil you, profile you, decide whether you deserved frontier capability, and silently cut you off if they decided you did not.

Ben Thompson from Stratechery asked a straightforward question about cancer risk and GLP-1s. He got kicked to a lesser model.

Someone asked about mitochondria. Same result.

J-Cal asked about fertilizer regulations live on the podcast to test it. Downgraded in real time.

Anthropic has since walked back the part about silently downgrading users for AI research. They now say they will disclose when they downgrade you. But they are still downgrading people. The surveillance is still running. The profile is still being built.

This is the company that once said it was against government surveillance.

They are now doing it themselves. To their own paying customers. For their own reasons. With no appeal process and no way to know it happened.

The developer community did not forget that.

WATCH THE FULL PODCAST ON @theallinpod

[Brad @BradleyKellard]

Malcolm Gladwell revealed why you shouldn't go to Harvard:

1. America does not have a shortage of students who want science and math degrees. It has a shortage of students who finish them. Half of all high school seniors who intend to study STEM drop out by the end of their second year. The problem is not interest. It is persistence.

2. The obvious assumption is that smarter students persist longer. So Gladwell tested it. At Hartwick College, a small liberal arts school in New York, the top third of math SAT scorers took the majority of STEM degrees. The bottom third dropped out in large numbers. The data seemed to confirm it. Smarter kids stick around longer.

3. Then he looked at Harvard. The bottom third of Harvard's math SAT scores are equal to the top third at Hartwick. By the logic above, everyone at Harvard should graduate with a STEM degree. They are all brilliant. Nobody should be dropping out.

4. Harvard showed the exact same pattern as Hartwick. Top students graduated. Bottom students dropped out like flies. Even though the bottom Harvard students were objectively brilliant by any global standard. Something else entirely was driving the dropout rate.

5. That something is called relative deprivation theory. Human beings do not measure themselves against the world. They measure themselves against the people immediately around them. A Harvard student in the bottom third does not think I am in the top one percent of all students globally. They think that kid next to me keeps getting everything right and I keep getting it wrong. So they quit.

6. The research from UCLA puts a specific number on it. Your odds of graduating with a STEM degree fall by two percentage points for every ten point increase in the average SAT score of your peers. Choose Harvard over the University of Maryland and your chance of finishing a STEM degree drops by thirty percent. Thirty percent. Just to put a brand name on your resume.

7. Relative position matters more than absolute position when it comes to confidence, motivation, and self belief. The eightieth percentile student at Harvard looks up at the people above them and feels like they cannot compete. The number one student at a state school feels like they can conquer the world. That feeling drives everything.

8. The practical hiring implication is radical. Class rank matters more than institution name. Gladwell argues companies should have a don't ask don't tell policy for where someone went to college. Hiring only from top schools means missing the top students from every other school. That is not smart hiring. That is brand worship.

9. When choosing a college, never go to the best school you get into. Go to the school where you are guaranteed to be near the top of your class. Being a big fish in a smaller pond does not just feel better. It statistically produces better outcomes than being a small fish in the most prestigious pond available.

10. So why do we keep choosing Harvard over Maryland? Because we are flattered. Because the acceptance letter feels like validation. Because we make an irrational decision in a moment of enormous flattery and call it ambition. Gladwell's conclusion is simple and brutal. When we have the chance to join an elite institution we do things that are genuinely against our own interest and we feel great about it the whole time.

[Real World Physics @RWPhysics]

Why Does π = 3.14 Create Order While π = 3.1 Creates Chaos? 🌀✨
This Is Why Precision Matters in Mathematics.

[Farm Action @FarmActionUS]

“The US lost more than 94,000 farms between 2021 and 2025.”

“Farmers and ranchers say they’re being gouged.”

“Fertilizer prices are rising… nearly 50%.”

“While farm incomes are actually falling.”

American farmers have “reached a breaking point.”

They’re demanding that Trump’s DOJ break up the “corporate cartel” that controls fertilizer markets and has been price gouging them for years.

NewsNation’s Markie Martin reports:

“This isn’t just typical inflation or even the war in Iran that’s forcing thousands of farms to shut down.”

Xavier Walton: “It's a combination of things.”

“The DOJ is investigating whether a corporate cartel is controlling fertilizer prices.”

“If you speak to just about any farmer, they’ll tell you that the fertilizer problem has been growing for years.”

“A group of farmers and ranchers want the FTC chair and federal regulators to crack down on what they call a fertilizer monopoly.”

Texas Corn Producers Association Director Dee Vaughan just revealed some shocking statistics:

“We’ve seen a 45% increase in Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings among farmers in just the last year.”

“And that doesn’t take into account those farmers that just say… ‘I’m just going to quit while I still have a little equity.’”

@NewsNation @txvaughan @TexasCorn

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

Over 50 years later, this anti-Vietnam War PSA still rings true.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

May is NYC Small Business Month, but supporting our neighborhood businesses is a year-round commitment.

That's why I met up with @cmshanelth, who has been fighting to make it easier to start, grow and operate in NYC, and we brought in some extra help: Poorna Jagannathan, Asif Ali, and Saagar Shaikh to help spread the word.

Whether you're opening a barbershop, ice cream shop, bodega, or anything in between, @NYC_SBS is here to support you.

📞 Call the SBS Hotline: 888-SBS-4NYC (888-727-4692)
🌐 Visit: https://t.co/nd3PXyeEnv

[Arquivo Curioso @arquivocurioso]

1900 - 2025: 125 anos de evolução na moda feminina.

🎞️ vgraphs/IG.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Follow the money on this one. It is rotten to the core.

The Pentagon just lent $620,000,000 to a tiny North Carolina startup called Vulcan Elements. The company is two years old.

It had fewer than 50 employees.

And three months before the deal was announced, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture firm quietly took a stake in it.

Here is the part the administration tried to bury.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing, Vulcan was the only deal initiated by a top White House aide. That aide was Peter Navarro, a close friend of Trump Jr. The order came down to move fast.

One official put it plainly: The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.

Staff worked late nights to push it through in weeks. Deals like this normally take many months of vetting. And when it closed, Vulcan’s valuation jumped from about 200 million dollars to roughly 2 billion.

A windfall for the investors, including the president’s son.

This is public money. Your money.

Routed through the Pentagon to enrich the president’s family and their friends. The Bush administration’s own chief ethics lawyer called it corruption we pay for.

And there is more coming.

A drone parts company Trump Jr. holds a stake in is also under Pentagon review.

This is not a one-off. It is a pattern. The president’s family is treating the federal Treasury like a private bank, and the bill lands on every taxpayer.

https://t.co/4kB1cZNmlE

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

In 1991, Michael Moschen turned juggling into kinetic poetry, weaving balls and a triangle with rhythm, balance, and physics like never before.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Fran Lebowitz on the billionaires: “Every time someone suggests [a wealth tax] they say I’m moving. Go! They add nothing to New York. In the 19th century, those robber barons, they employed people. All this money magic employs no one. Goodbye, go. We don’t need you”

[Acyn @Acyn]

McGovern: It took us forever to compensate the victims of 9/11, and here you have this $1.8 billion slush fund that doesn’t go through any committees or hearings. All of a sudden, they have the money to compensate convicted felons—people who attacked our democracy and tried to overthrow a free and fair election.

This is the most corrupt administration in our history.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.

Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.

IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.

The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.

The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.

Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.” 

Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.

The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.

This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.

Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r

[Farm Action @FarmActionUS]

Senator Cory Booker says the federal government has spent decades subsidizing Big Ag corporations while independent farmers suffer.

“Farmers are the best stewards of the land.”

“What has the federal government been doing?”

“They’re doing the bidding of big corporate ag and not the American farmer.”

“Only about 7% of our ag subsidies right now go to the foods our doctors tell us to eat the most out of.”

“Our food system is designed for our sickness.”

“Designed for profits of a few companies.”

“Who’s poor for it? American families and American farmers.”

@senbooker @FERNnews

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

THIS IS FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE ‼️

[Farm Action @FarmActionUS]

Farmers are sounding the alarm after President Trump said he will continue allowing China to buy American farmland.

“We’re a stronger nation when we continue to have our own production and our own stewardship of ground that’s owned by domestic farmers.”

“Food security is national security.”

“America's farmers are some of the most productive and efficient in the nation.”

“And that’s done when American farmers own the ground that they grow food on.”

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

46 years ago Today, Mount St. Helens erupted: the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in the history of the U.S.

This is the eruption obtained by upscaled 4K pictures with advanced AI interpolation.

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

Great conversation with @katiecouric!

Watch the full interview here:
https://t.co/8crWCdhAbf