In case Twitter goes down, I wanted to make certain before it does that I expressed my sincere appreciation to the many wonderful people (and pets) I’ve met here over the years. Thank you for the laughs, companionship, friendship, knowledge & support. Peace!

There's an invasive tree growing across America, and it's rolling out the welcome mat for the worst new bug on the continent. It's called tree of heaven, and the name is a lie. It came over from China in the 1780s, and now it's everywhere: fast, scrappy, growing up through pavement, poisoning the soil around it so natives can't compete. One female makes over 300,000 winged seeds a year. Crush a leaf and it smells like rancid peanut butter. And it's the favorite food of the spotted lanternfly, the invasive planthopper now chewing through grapes, orchards, and hardwoods across the East. An invading tree, feeding an invading bug. Kill the tree, starve the bug. Here's the part that trips everyone up. Do not just cut it down. Cutting it, even cutting and painting the stump, makes it panic and shoot up dozens of root suckers. One tree becomes a thicket. The move that works: treat the standing tree. Hack a ring of cuts into the bark and apply triclopyr in late summer, and it carries the poison down into its own roots. Never advice I love to give, but it's the best way to end this invasion, one tree at a time.

🚨 WARNING about StubHub 🚨 We purchased 4 FIFA World Cup tickets (France vs Senegal, MetLife Stadium June 16) for $2,189 back in December. Three days before the game, the seller "couldn't deliver." StubHub's so-called FanProtect Guarantee? When we clicked the link — ZERO replacement tickets available. The same seats are now listed at DOUBLE the price. Oh, and our $300 non-refundable parking pass? Gone. This is a deliberate bait-and-switch scheme and we're filing complaints with both the NJ and MD Attorney General. Do better @StubHub. #StubHub #FIFA #WorldCup #BaitAndSwitch #ConsumerFraud

Soil is continuing to slough off into the sinkhole near a pier supporting an elevated section of Interstate 44 in downtown St. Louis. The interstate has been shut down in both directions. Full story at @stltoday. #STLtraffic

Last week we celebrated the 82nd Anniversary of D-Day. 🇨🇦 One of the Canadians who landed on Juno beach mentioning what he thought was one of his life’s greatest accomplishments. You may remember him playing the character Scotty on Star Trek. The late James Doohan a true hero

🚨JUST IN: Telemundo TV commentator: "We are one of the only networks in the world to not show ads during the World Cup cooling breaks. We prefer the old school way. We show fans, people enjoying, not the corporate direction of football."

You have been waiting for this. The physical release of "Project Hail Mary" is finally available for pre-order. It will be available on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Blu-ray. The latter two editions will include director's commentary and, most importantly, deleted scenes!

Watch @FIFAWorldCup on @Telemundo with no commercial breaks….the way a Football game is supposed to be watch…

In a theater performance of Romeo and Juliet in Russia, at the exact scene where Romeo is dying, Juliet was having an emotional moment by his side. At that very moment, the theater’s cat entered the stage and went up to Romeo, pulling his hair. Then, looking at Juliete, the cat said: “Don’t be ridiculous, he’s alive, look,” trying to wake Romeo up. This absurd moment completely broke the atmosphere of the scene. The audience, who had been crying just seconds before, suddenly burst into laughter. From that point on, the story of Romeo and Juliet turned into something completely different because of the cat… The cat, Romeo and Juliet became the story. There is no sadder story in the world than “the cat, Romeo and Juliet” 😂

Hollywood has spent nearly $600 million trying to bring Matt Damon home. Have they considered maybe he just doesn’t want to come back?

Cat said: “I told you we didn’t need a dog” 😂

Ronny Chieng had one message for Harvard grads during his commencement speech: destroy AI. "Look, a lot of other respected graduation speakers in colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future. I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI... "And I know, I know there's someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, 'Well, you know, what about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?' Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I'm not talking about that. Obviously, if you're using it for that purpose, you're not the problem. "I'm talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025. That's right, MIT. MIT did that study. I guess you guys were too busy giving each other A's. Feel free to boo MIT, by the way, and AI, and yourselves, I guess. "Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn't be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They're always like, 'Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?' Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can't do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me? I'm a dumb*ss who couldn't get into Harvard. "From what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I'm assuming you guys from Harvard have. Everyone else who can't match that is just going to get dumber, and that's when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course. "But to run up the score, you’re going to have to master your craft. And AI can be the fuel, but fuel is useless if you can't kindle the fire. For example, I recently used AI to use regression analysis to prove that a certain race of people are mathematically terrible at sports. I won't say which race, but thank you for not inviting Hasan Minhaj to Harvard. My point is, learning the fundamentals still matter. If I didn't know what a regression analysis was, and if I wasn't fundamentally racist, would I have been able to do any of that? No. "Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House, which to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI. But what they're missing is this: the creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me? "You know what problem I want AI to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like sh*t. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that? "Or how about, can AI take away the part of comedy writing where my TV pilot gets passed on and when I ask if I can pitch it to someone else, the network says, 'We don't want it, but we also don't want anyone else to have it. We just want you to be sad.' Can AI solve that? "I recently tried to introduce my friend to Buddhism through a book called Buddhism Made Simple. It was literally a book about Buddhism made simple. And instead of reading it, he used AI to summarize it in 10 seconds. Believe it or not, he didn't reach enlightenment. It turns out speed running Buddhism is completely missing the point. "And I know this platitude is almost worthy of AI, but the reason shortcuts to skip to the end aren't always good is because the journey isn't just how we acquire skills. The journey is the point of all this. It is! It turns out maybe the real Harvard was the friends we made along the way. "Look, I know this won't apply to everyone's industry, but I'm just saying whatever your chosen profession is, please don't let AI rob you of the fun part of it. "I think your generation's upcoming battle won't be humans against AI. That's at least two months away. It's going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It's going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles."

Ok, so, three artists have already dropped out and I’m going to explain WHY this continues to happen and how this all works. When these people try to hire you for an event, they go through an LLC or a promoter. That promoter isn’t told what the whole event is or the LLC is an innocuous shell 🧵

This year there will be a Tall Ships parade beginning in New Orleans May 27-June 1, 2026, traveling next to Norfolk VA then Baltimore followed by major events planned for NYC on July 4th. The ships then sail on to Boston. More info: sail250.org

A poignant image of Scorpion's sail her wreckage was located on October 31, 1968, 400 miles southwest of the Azores at a depth 10,000 feet. The below was written after the loss of Thresher, but timely today remembering Scorpion. Why They Behave That Way (Profile of a Submariner) by Dr. Joyce Brothers The tragic loss of the submarine Thresher and 129 men had a special kind of impact on the nation.....a special kind of sadness, mixed with universal admiration for the men who choose this kind of work. One could not mention the Thresher without observing, in the same breath how utterly final and alone the end is when a ship dies at the bottom of the sea.....and what a remarkable specimen of man it must be who accepts such a risk. Most of us might be moved to conclude, too, that a tragedy of this kind would have a damaging effect on the morale of the other men in the submarine service and tend to discourage future enlistments. Actually, there is no evidence that this is so. What is it, then, that lures men to careers in which they spend so much of their time in cramped quarters, under great psychological stress, with danger lurking all about them? Togetherness is an overworked term, but in no other branch of our military service is it given such full meaning as in the so-called "Silent Service." In an undersea craft, each man is totally dependent upon the skill of every other man in the crew, not only for top performance but for actual survival. Each knows that his very life depends on the others and because this is so, there is a bond among them that both challenges and comforts them. All of this gives the submariner a special feeling of pride, because he is indeed a member of an elite corps. The risks, then, are an inspiration, rather than a deterrent. The challenge of masculinity is another factor which attracts men to serve on submarines. It certainly is a test of man's prowess and power to know he can qualify for this highly selective service. However, it should be emphasized that this desire to prove masculinity is not pathological, as it might be in certain dare-devil pursuits, such as driving a motorcycle through a flaming hoop. There is nothing daredevilish about the motivations of the man who decides to dedicate his life to the submarine service. He does, indeed, take pride in demonstrating that he is quite a man, but he does not do so to practice a form of foolhardy brinksmanship, to see how close he can get to failure and still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. On the contrary, the aim in the submarine service is to battle the danger, to minimize the risk, to take every measure to make certain that safety rather than danger, is maintained at all times. Are the men in submarines braver than those in other pursuits where the possibility of sudden tragedy is not constant? The glib answer would be that they are. It is much more accurate, from a psychological point of view, to say they are not necessarily braver, but that they are men who have a little more insight into themselves and their capabilities. They know themselves a little better than the next man. This has to be so with men who have a healthy reason to volunteer for a risk. They are generally a cut healthier emotionally than others of similar age and background because of their willingness to push themselves a little bit farther and not settle for an easier kind of existence. We all have tremendous capabilities but are rarely straining at the upper level of what we can do; these men are. The country can be proud and grateful that so many of its sound, young, eager men care enough about their own status in life--and the welfare of their country--to pool their skills and match them collectively against the power of the sea.

Ohio's sales tax exemption for builders of new data centers was expected to cost ~$136 million in 2025. The Department of Taxation now says the tax break cost Ohio **$1.57** billion in lost revenue, with most the savings flowing to Big Tech. signalohio.org/ohio-data-cen…

Toru Miyazaki gave 11 cats with advanced kidney disease an experimental injection. 15 others didn’t get it. A year later, 9 of the 11 treated cats were alive. Only 3 of the 15 untreated cats survived. He just filed for approval, and the drug fixes a defect only cats have. Most cats die from one thing: their kidneys fail. By age 10, 4 in 10 cats already have chronic kidney disease, and by age 15, the rate doubles to 8 in 10. Once diagnosed, a cat has about 2 years left. The reason kidney disease hits cats so hard is a broken protein in their blood. All mammals carry a protein that helps the kidneys clean out waste. In humans and dogs, the protein floats freely and goes to work when the kidneys are in trouble. In cats, it stays stuck to another protein and can’t get loose. So the waste piles up, and the kidneys eventually give out. Miyazaki originally found the protein in 1999, back when he was at the University of Tokyo. He figured out the cat-specific glitch in 2015. The paper he published in the Veterinary Journal in February laid out the trial. The injection is a working version of the missing protein. His company, the Institute for AIM Medicine, filed the approval paperwork with Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture on April 24, 2026. If the review clears, the drug goes on sale in spring 2027. The 30-year lifespan figure in the tweet is Miyazaki’s own projection of what cats could reach without kidney disease. The trial only ran a year, and the average cat today lives 15. Most die from the same disease this injection treats. The research almost died in 2020. After running out of funding during COVID, Miyazaki went public. Cat owners across Japan responded by sending in 300 million yen, around 2 million dollars total. He resigned from the University of Tokyo and worked on the drug full time. The treatment in front of regulators today exists because cat lovers refused to let the research die.

Maj. John A. Klinner Capt. Ariana G. Savino Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt Capt. Seth R. Koval Capt. Curtis J. Angst Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien Sgt. Declan Coady Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens Capt. Cody Khork The thirteen lives lost.

I heard an interview today about AI in creative spaces and the man being interviewed said “AI is data, and Data can only look backwards. Creativity looks forwards.” And I need to sit with that in the best possible way.

I've been living in the end game for years. My blog used to get 300 uniques per day, now gets 3. Small creators are doomed. I built an old-school human-curated search engine for that reason 3 years ago, I made greppr.org

ATTENTION NORTHEAST KANSAS! Here is a picture of the exact parachute probe we launched into the Blue Rapids, Kansas #tornado. We are searching for this sensor that may have been carried 30-40 miles northeast from the launch point. The sensor may have turned into a hail stone and melted on descent Please let us know if you see a red parachute!