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NASA’s Stuck Astronauts Finally Homeward Bound (Maria)
The author writes, “NASA’s two stuck astronauts headed back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to close out a dramatic marathon mission that began with a bungled Boeing test flight more than nine months ago. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams bid farewell to the International Space Station — their home since last spring — departing aboard a SpaceX capsule alongside two other astronauts. The capsule undocked in the wee hours, aimed for a splashdown off the Florida coast by early evening.”
Black Medal of Honor Recipient Removed From US Department of Defense Website (Milicent)
From The Guardian: “The US defense department webpage celebrating an army general who served in the Vietnam war and was awarded the country’s highest military decoration has been removed and the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address. On Saturday, US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a ‘404’ error message. The URL was also changed, with the word ‘medal’ changed to ‘deimedal.’ Rogers, who was awarded the Medal of Honor by then president Richard Nixon in 1970, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base.”
French MEP Demands the US ‘Give Us Back the Statue of Liberty’ (Sean)
The author writes, France should take back the Statue of Liberty because the US no longer represents the values that led France to offer the statue, a French Euro-deputy said Sunday. ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty,’ center-left politician Raphael Glucksmann said at a convention of his Place Publique center-left movement. ‘We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty,’ he told cheering supporters. ‘We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home,’ he added.”
Scientists Say NIH Officials Told Them To Scrub mRNA References on Grants (Dana)
The author writes, “National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research. The mRNA technology is under study at the NIH for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including flu and AIDS, and also cancer. It was deployed in the development of covid-19 vaccines credited with saving 3 million lives in the US alone — an accomplishment President Donald Trump bragged about in his first term.”
‘Smokescreen Antisemitism’: How the Trump-fueled Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil Endangers Jews (Sean)
From Haaretz: “Everything about this incident is nightmarish, but the White House’s decision to announce his arrest with “Shalom” must not be ignored. The message is abundantly clear: U.S. President Donald Trump wants the world to know that he’s pursued this unconscionable act on behalf of Jews. This is just one piece of this administration’s plans to use the false promise of Jewish safety as a smokescreen to carry out their repressive and dangerous agenda. Indeed, the White House has made it terrifyingly clear that this is only the beginning of the administration’s assault on activists – all in the name of fighting antisemitism.”
AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality (Laryn)
The author writes, “Human-created content is getting almost entirely drowned out by AI-generated content because of the sheer amount of it. On top of the quantity of AI slop, because AI-generated content can be easily tailored to whatever is performing on a platform at any given moment, there is a near total collapse of the information ecosystem and thus of ‘reality’ online. I no longer see almost anything real on my Instagram Reels anymore, and, as I have often reported, many users seem to have completely lost the ability to tell what is real and what is fake, or simply do not care anymore.”
The Company Trying to Engineer Woolly Mammoths Has Made a Woolly Mouse (Dana)
From Texas Monthly: “The two mice on display in Colossal Bioscience’s Dallas headquarters are noticeably woolly, covered in leonine tufts of light hair. Otherwise, they appear to be regular, albeit fancy and Disney-like, mice. But they are a milestone for the company. Colossal, cofounded by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church in 2021, has pledged, to much fanfare, to bring woolly mammoths (‘cold-tolerant elephant mammoth hybrids,’ actually) back to the Arctic, where their grazing habits might help prevent the thaw of permafrost and the release of greenhouse gases stored within it.”
