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Forget DeepSeek. China’s real ‘Sputnik moment’ is happening on campus as U.S. universities lose their advantage

Forget DeepSeek. China’s real ‘Sputnik moment’ is happening on campus as U.S. universities lose their advantage

Fortune reports: When DeepSeek unveiled an AI model last year that rivaled America’s best at a fraction of the cost, or when a Chinese hypersonic missile test caught U.S. intelligence off guard to the point where a top U.S. general called it “very close” to a “Sputnik moment”, the reaction each time was the same: that a handful of Chinese firms had suddenly pulled ahead. But a sweeping new National Bureau of Economic Research study of nearly 14 million Chinese…

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Backlash: The more familiar with AI Americans become, the more they hate it

Backlash: The more familiar with AI Americans become, the more they hate it

Reece Rogers writes: I was recently digging through my Instagram settings, trying to disable Meta’s now-defunct feature that allowed anyone to create AI deepfakes of me without consent. Anger bubbled up inside as I tapped through the Kafkaesque opt-out process. Rather than throwing my phone across the room, I blurted to my partner that we should leave San Francisco behind and be off-grid sheep farmers. Something analog. In that moment, anything sounded better than this ongoing, generative-AI-induced hell. Many Americans…

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Iran insists Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until U.S. complies with demands

Iran insists Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until U.S. complies with demands

The New York Times reports: Iran said on Monday that any deal with Oman on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz would not lead to the waterway being fully reopened and that the route would remain closed until the United States agreed to demands including lifting a naval blockade. The comments were the latest sign that Iran sees its grip on the strait — which has driven up global energy prices, creating a political headache for President Trump — as…

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There’s no ‘middle’ between neofascist corporatism and democracy

There’s no ‘middle’ between neofascist corporatism and democracy

Robert Reich writes: The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day. “We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan. Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.” Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply…

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Global warming is triggering earthquakes

Global warming is triggering earthquakes

Science reports: Climate change is worsening many natural hazards, including droughts, heat waves, and storm surges. Now, a new one has joined the list: earthquakes. Researchers have found that as global warming accelerates melting of mountaintop glaciers, the meltwater, percolating underground, increases the risk of damaging earthquakes. The evidence comes from beneath Grandes Jorasses, a glacier-clad peak in the Alps that is part of the Mont Blanc massif, home to Western Europe’s tallest mountains. Precise seismic records show a heat…

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More than half of Earth’s migratory bird species are declining – here’s how we can still save them

More than half of Earth’s migratory bird species are declining – here’s how we can still save them

The spoon-billed sandpiper, a small wading bird, flies nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) on its annual migration. Tareq’s Photography/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA By Peter P. Marra, Georgetown University and Nathan W. Cooper, Smithsonian Institution Every year, billions of migratory birds connect the world’s continents, oceans and ecosystems as they undertake epic journeys between their foraging habitats and their breeding grounds. A bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) leaves its breeding grasslands of North America for the Pampas of South America. A Newell’s shearwater (Puffinus…

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This is what happens when the world is on fire

This is what happens when the world is on fire

John Valliant writes: Water bombers, the air cavalry of wildfire fighting, buzz the treetops like air show stunt pilots as they save the day with surgical drops of water or orange retardant. But what happens when those drops have no effect? When, as a pilot working the massive Gironde Fire just west of Bordeaux, France, described it, “The environment above the fire is so hot that my payload of 10,000 liters of water evaporates in the air.”? Mathieu Jomain, a…

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Amazon’s ‘climate pledge’ rings hollow as data center will have the most polluting power plant in the U.S.

Amazon’s ‘climate pledge’ rings hollow as data center will have the most polluting power plant in the U.S.

The New York Times reports: Amazon is investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant, as part of a huge data center in Texas, that could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States, the company confirmed Friday. The new gas-burning plant, if built to specifications, would be permitted to release more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in the country. Amazon has been struggling to meet its promise that it would effectively eliminate its planet-warming emissions…

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Money laundering: Trump crypto took $100 million from a shady businessman under investigation

Money laundering: Trump crypto took $100 million from a shady businessman under investigation

The New York Times reports: During the World Cup soccer final in New Jersey last month, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of President Trump’s cryptocurrency company, took in the action from a luxury suite. Joining him was a man who had made the president, and all the company’s co-founders, much richer. Two years earlier, the man, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, was a failed hardwood flooring retailer in Britain who had come under investigation there for money laundering and presided over the collapse of…

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Impotent cycle of empty threats has turned Iran war into Trump’s own Groundhog Day

Impotent cycle of empty threats has turned Iran war into Trump’s own Groundhog Day

Robert Tait writes: Being the subject of mockery may be the most intense of all Donald Trump’s known aversions. Yet more than five months after embarking on a war of choice against Iran, the US president risks attracting ridicule as he struggles to secure a military victory – while repeatedly threatening devastating bombardment against the Tehran regime, only to back down on the pretext of renewed negotiations. Critics suggest the ultimatum-climbdown sequence has acquired a Groundhog Day quality. By one…

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Netanyahu rejects U.S.-led 15-point Gaza peace plan in rare public break with Trump

Netanyahu rejects U.S.-led 15-point Gaza peace plan in rare public break with Trump

The Guardian reports: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed 15-point peace plan for Gaza in a rare public break with Donald Trump. In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu said that he was confronting a “wave of rumours about Israeli weakness and Israeli withdrawals on all fronts” and rebuked US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in. On Gaza, he said: “Israel does not accept the 15-point document. The IDF will not carry…

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‘Work boots and Subarus’: Local officials say the backlash against Flock cameras is becoming bipartisan

‘Work boots and Subarus’: Local officials say the backlash against Flock cameras is becoming bipartisan

Politico reports: Communities across the U.S. are cutting ties with Flock Safety, one of the country’s leading producers of license plate readers and other surveillance systems, over concerns around mass surveillance and data privacy — and fears over how data could be used in immigration crackdowns. Residents have swarmed city council meetings in states where Flock cameras have cropped up to urge elected officials to cancel contracts or deactivate Flock cameras — arguing that the technology could be used to…

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On the origin of feces: How animal poo drove Earth’s greatest evolutionary event

On the origin of feces: How animal poo drove Earth’s greatest evolutionary event

Kimmig & Bicknell / Trends in Ecology & Evolution, CC BY By Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Flinders University and Julien Kimmig As all children learn, everyone poos. But when did this begin? And what evolutionary and environmental changes accompanied the dawn of dung? Going further, is the evolution of excrement the reason we exist? Our new research suggests the evolution of fecal matter helped fuel one of the most important events in the history of life on Earth: the Cambrian…

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Iran issues list of demands, complicating efforts to reopen Strait of Hormuz

Iran issues list of demands, complicating efforts to reopen Strait of Hormuz

The New York Times reports: A top Iranian national security official delivered a sweeping set of demands on Saturday that he said the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can reopen to maritime traffic, throwing the fate of the critical trade waterway into question. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, issued a statement carried by state media laying out multiple requirements for reopening the strait. He called for the United States to…

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