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Bee-ware: Truck Carrying 14M Honeybees Overturns Near US-Canada Border (Maria)
The author writes, “Officials near the U.S. border were abuzz after being relentlessly attacked on Friday morning by a swarm of fugitives: honeybees had escaped after a truck carrying hives overturned near the Canadian border. About 14 million honeybees flew free of the truck around 4 a.m. a few miles south of Canada. The truck that was transporting around 70,000 pounds of hives and honeybees rolled over on a road in northwestern Washington State. Local sheriff deputies and bee experts swarmed to the scene, where they removed the box hives to help rescue as many bees as possible. … Honeybee colonies are important and crucial to the world’s food supply by pollinating crops.”
Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans (Jeff)
The authors write, “In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power. Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.”
Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Won’t Work — but It’ll Make Elon Musk Richer (Russ)
From The New Republic: “Elon Musk, after months omnipresent in the White House, was nowhere near the Oval Office on May 20 when Donald Trump announced his new ‘Golden Dome’ space weapons system. He didn’t have to be. He had already maneuvered his companies to benefit substantially from the $25 billion Trump said he would spend immediately and the hundreds of billions in federal contracts the new effort will spawn.”
4-Year-Old Girl’s Lifesaving Treatment at Risk After Family’s Legal Immigration Status Is Revoked (Reader Steve)
The authors write, “A Mexican girl is at risk of losing access to the lifesaving treatment she has been receiving in Los Angeles after her family’s legal immigration status was abruptly revoked. Her family is now fighting to have their status reinstated. ‘If they deport us and take away my daughter’s access to her specialized care, she will die,’ Deysi Vargas, the girl’s mother, said Wednesday in her native Spanish at a news conference.”
Bill Passes Letting TN Physicians Deny Patients Based on Personal Beliefs (Sean)
The author writes, “A Republican bill allowing healthcare providers across Tennessee to deny patients some kinds of treatments, such as birth control, based on their religious, moral or ethical beliefs was signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday. The proposal was introduced by Sen. Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin). It prohibits healthcare providers from requiring medical workers to participate in or pay for healthcare procedures and treatments that they don’t agree with. The bill includes language meant to ensure healthcare providers continue following their duties to treat people, as long as those treatments ‘do not violate the healthcare provider’s conscience.’”
Why Did Burning Girls Matter in Vietnam but Not in Gaza? (Dana)
From Zeteo: “The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo shocked the world and helped end the Vietnam War — but a viral video of a child surrounded by flames and other similar images in Gaza can’t even provoke a ceasefire.”
Systems Are Crumbling — But Daily Life Continues. The Dissonance Is Real (Reader Jim)
From The Guardian: “‘Hypernormalization’ is a heady, $10 word, but it captures the weird, dire atmosphere of the US in 2025. First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction — give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.”
