curated news excerpts & citations
Ed Zitron: AI Is Too Expensive
AI is, as it stands, not economically viable for anybody involved other than the construction firms, NVIDIA, and the surrounding hardware companies benefitting from the irrational exuberance of a data center buildout that doesn’t appear to be happening at the speed we believed.
Every AI startup loses millions or billions of dollars a year, and nobody appears to have worked out a way to stop hemorrhaging cash. Hyperscalers have invested over $800 billion in the last three years, with plans to add another $700 billion or so in 2026 and another $1 trillion in 2027, meaning that they need to make at least three trillion dollars in AI specific revenue just to break even, and $6 trillion or more for AI to be anything other than a wash. I went into detail about this (albeit at a lower, pre-2026/2027 capex number) in a premium piece last year.
Sam Newman @ O’Reilly Radar: When an Agent Deletes the Production Database
Revisiting the PocketOS Incident
Medium: Software Engineer (named Vasilios Syrakis) at Atlassian was laid off on March 12 after 8 years.
Vasilios responded with a 40-minute YouTube video showing how the company’s entire tech works, free for anyone to copy.
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IPPNW: Golden Dome or Golden Scam?
IPPNW, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Back from the Brink released a scientific report on May 19, 2026 that finds a proposed U.S. missile defense system—dubbed the “Golden Dome”—would leave tens of millions of Americans vulnerable to nuclear attack while costing trillions of dollars and accelerating the global arms race.
The report notes that a comprehensive system capable of addressing modern threats could cost as much as $3.6 trillion—and yet would never be 100% effective, leaving hundreds of millions of Americans in target zones.
Key report findings include:
- Even in a best-case scenario, more than 300 warheads would penetrate the defense system
- 132 major U.S. cities could still be successfully targeted
- 75 million Americans live in areas that would be totally destroyed
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NewsNation: San Diego leader urges unity after mosque attack: ‘We are broken’
San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward says the community is grieving and struggling to process the “hate” seen in Monday’s deadly shooting at the San Diego Islamic Center.
(NewsNation more…)
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Miles Taylor: Local prosecutors warn Trump: “If you send ICE to the polls, we’ll put them in jail.”
A nationwide coalition of district attorneys has come together to protect polling places from federal agents sent to carry out voter intimidation.
(Miles Taylor more…)Rebecca Crosby, Noel Sims @ Popular Information: Inside California’s ICE facilities: deaths, denied care, and “dog food”
During the second Trump administration, the population detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ballooned. But little is known about what actually goes on inside ICE detention facilities. The California Department of Justice (Cal DOJ), however, just released a detailed accounting of conditions at ICE facilities in the state. The report, which involved inspections at seven ICE facilities that operate in the state, reveals a human rights crisis, including grossly inadequate access to medical care.
Jennifer Rubin: ‘Trust’ takes a holiday
After dozens of cases in which Department of Justice lawyers made misrepresentations to courts, defied orders, and defended arbitrary and capricious actions (and tens of thousands of instances in which courts knocked down DOJ lawyers’ defense of illegal ICE detentions), DOJ has worn out its welcome in federal courts. Long gone are the days in which courts, juries, and the public could trust the word of DOJ lawyers.
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Eric Welch, Timothy P. Johnson @ Conversation: Self‑censorship, more stress, tougher recruiting – we asked US researchers how the Trump administration’s science policies have affected them
(Eric Welch, Timothy P. Johnson @ Conversation more…)
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WSJ Editorial Board: Trump’s $1.776 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’
President Trump, his elder sons, and the family business moved Monday to dismiss their federal lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the leak of Mr. Trump’s tax returns. In exchange, the Justice Department said it will create a $1.776 billion fund to compensate targets of government “weaponization.” Could future historians ask for a better emblem of today’s warped political age?
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 19, 2026
…
The recognition that this is not a legal settlement is important. …The document that purports to be a “settlement” has the words “settlement agreement” written in capital letters across the top of it, but the important word is “agreement.” It is not the settlement of a legal case: Trump dropped the case when it looked like the judge would throw it out.
It is simply an agreement between Trump and his own appointees at the Department of Justice.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Paul Krugman: The Looting of America
MAGA corruption reaches the point of no return
Tom Latchem: Trump’s Own Handpicked Lawyer Quits Treasury in Disgust at Massive $1.8B Grift
Alan Feuer, Andrew Duehren @ NY Times: I.R.S. Must Drop Audits of Trump and Family
Joyce Vance: Almost as good as a pardon
Or maybe even better…
It’s a pardon on steroids for Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump businesses. The government agrees in this document, signed by Blanche, that it will never prosecute or pursue any civil claims against any of the Trumps, “whether presently known or unknown” that could have been brought as of the date of the settlement agreement. That date is yesterday. The IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses.Home of the Brave: Don Jr.’s $620 Million Pentagon Contract
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Dean Blundell: Trump’s Ambassador To Canada, Pete Hoekstra, At The Center Of The Doxxing Of 3 Million Canadians And Their Voter Data
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Jack Hopkins: Trump Just Sent a Chilling Message to Every Republican in America
And John Cornyn’s humiliation proves something far bigger than one Senate race in Texas.
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Ken Klippenstein: Terrorist “Body Count” Captivates the White House
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Nate Silver: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight
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Katelyn Jetelina @ Your Local Epidemiologist: Ebola international emergency, hantavirus update, ticks, heat, opioid deaths decline, and more.
Jonathan Cohn @ Bulwark: Trump Decimated Our Global Health Network. Then Ebola Hit.
Scientists and officials don’t think it’ll become a pandemic. Here’s why they’re worried anyway.
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Sierra Club: Trump to EPA: Let’s Add Arsenic, Mercury, and Lead to Our Water
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is proposing dangerous rollbacks to coal ash protections that would allow some of the nation’s dirtiest coal plants to continue dumping toxic waste into our waterways. That means arsenic, mercury, lead, and other hazardous pollutants will be released into our environment, polluting our water and threatening public health.
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Lauren Feiner @ Verge: America’s dangerous, messy deepfakes crackdown is here
The Take It Down Act is in full force, but it could be a gift to government censors — not victims of image-based sexual abuse.
[We got boosters today…]
resources tracking the “Andes” hantavirus outbreak
Apocalypse Early Warning System
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- April 16: Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt
- March 25: Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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