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Even in his darkest time, Van Gogh was able to capture, with eerie accuracy, one of nature’s most complex and confusing concepts a century before scientists had the technology to do so. – via my dad
The Los Angeles Rams will hold a minicamp in Maui this June; players will also help build four Habitat for Humanity homes in Lahaina, a historic town destroyed by wildfires in 2023.
Self-styled prophets are claiming they have “awakened” chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.
And now: The Nations of the World, brought to you by Yakko Warner!
The Death of the Screenplay Industrial Complex – via The Dailies
People with the lowest LDL levels are less likely to develop dementia. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
- Trillion-dollar Pentagon budget proposal cuts competitors out of NASA budget and could add billions to SpaceX defense contracts.
- The new president of the University of Florida is slated to make up to $3M/year, more than any other public university president in the country and more than twice what he made at the University of Michigan, and all he has to do is be a boot-licking sycophant. I am terribly disappointed in my alma mater and fearful of what this portends.
- Senate Democrats chose not to use the leverage they had to deal with the latest POTUS crypto scam, effectively allowing politicians to speculate personally in perhaps the most fraud-riddled financial market in human history. Pathetic.
- ICE efforts in Washington, D.C. thwarted by solidarity.
- God help us all, but I <gasp> agree with Laura Loomer, regarding the POTUS nomination of Casey Means – who has no government experience and dropped out of her surgical residency program: “[W]e can’t have a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case and who didn’t go to medical school in the US,” as the surgeon general.
- I cannot believe this has happened three times now: More Troops Injured as U.S. Planes Keep Plunging into Red Sea

Gators!
- Florida rallies past Houston to win March Madness 2025 NCAA championship
- How Florida drew from back-to-back champs to stop Houston, start new reign over college hoops
- After Final Four slugfest with Auburn, Florida stands alone as the class of an all-time SEC
- Dramatic title game between Florida, Houston delivers end to greatest Final Four ever
I NY: New York public schools tell [current] administration they won’t comply with DEI order
Why Big Pharma wants you to eat more meat – via Curious About Everything
Creating and sharing deceptive AI-generated media is now a crime in New Jersey
You Can’t Always Get What You Want:
- Border Czar Tom Homan Faces Backlash in His Hometown for Locking Up a Local Family / ICE disappeared a mother and 3 children. Neighbors said hell no. / BREAKING: Third grader & family abducted by ICE will return home
- Judge says deportation of Maryland man to an El Salvador prison was wholly lawless.
- Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer’s Research Could Be Lost Forever – via meyerweb.com
- “When children die from measles, it means that adults have catastrophically failed to protect them because they have rejected basic science.” – via luckytran.com
- RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water
- Ousted Vaccine Chief Says RFK Jr.’s Team Sought Data to Justify Anti-Science Stance – via carlzimmer.com

The SNL 50th-Anniversary special drew almost 15M viewers, becoming NBC’s most-watched primetime entertainment telecast in five years. (For comparison, Super Bowl LIX had over 127M viewers.)
Republicans have reintroduced the SAVE Act, a bill that could disenfranchise millions of American voters. Feeling helpless? Email Your Senators to Vote NO. Call Your Senators to Vote NO. It’s not nothing, and it really does make a difference.
“This is a blunt-force budget cut with no clear strategy—gutting programs without considering their impact or even how services could be improved for the American people, often spinning public health into fear and chaos.”
Related: The USDA is scrambling to rehire fired workers who were involved in the government’s response to the ongoing bird flu outbreak that has devastated egg and poultry farms over the past three years.
Senate Democrats have the power to block federal contracts to Tesla and SpaceX. It’s the path to pushing [him] out of politics.
Scratch Huntington Beach, CA off your list of travel destinations. Former Minnesota Vikings player Chris Kluwe was arrested at a city council meeting there after protesting the installation of a disgusting “MAGA” plaque at a local library.
I graduated a long, long time ago and I still bleed orange and blue, but there’s something more than a little disgusting about the University of Florida begging me for cash when they have a $6B endowment and are annually paying millions of dollars to multiple football coaches they fired years ago. – via me
Is ‘Zone 2’ the Magic Effort Level for Exercise?
A new study on more than 17,000 people discovered that too little sex is linked to cardiovascular disease and a higher risk of all-cause mortality.
Major League Baseball will employ what it calls the automated ball-strike system, or ABS, in a big-league spring training game for the first time this week.
Dirpy is a handy site that lets you rip YouTube videos to mp3. (e.g. Doechii rapping about anxiety over the Gotye song Somebody That I Used To Know, Taylor Swift performing You Belong with Me and Untouchable on SNL)

#FridayFive: Brands

In which I pledge allegiance

The University of Florida Alumni Association challenged the University of Georgia Alumni Association in an epic Twitter *.gif battle using House of Cards and West Wing references.