Robert Reich

Ineptitude, incompetence, stupidity, and chaos
Trump is fundamentally incapable of governing. 




Friends,

Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.

But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.

In his first term, not only did his advisers and Cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.

A sampling from recent weeks:

1. The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disaster. Hegseth didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of The Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group, including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

READ MORE...

At A Glance

See the shortlist of the year's best food photography.

Meet Japan's 97-year-old cherry blossom guardian.

... and Japanese robots from the 17th century.

A map of this year's cicada hot spots.

Little League is undergoing a fashion revolution.

How bad data created the myth of the "blue zones."

All the NFL Draft No. 1 picks since 1983.

Letter reveals Shakespeare did not, in fact, abandon his wife.

Clickbait: Google AI attempts to define imaginary idioms.

Good Morning

 

25 Unique Healthy Habits I Wish I Knew at 25

Quick Clips

 

In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> WWE's WrestleMania 41, which was broadcast on Peacock and Netflix over two nights, saw 114% increase in viewership over 2024's event (More) | Professional wrestling 101 (More)

> Mike Patrick, play-by-play commentator and voice of ESPN's "Sunday Night Football" for 18 seasons, dies at age 80 (More) | NCAA conditionally approves rule to allow direct payment to athletes, pending House of Representatives settlement (More)

> "60 Minutes" executive producer Bill Owens resigns after 37 years with CBS News, citing inability to make "independent decisions" about the show's programming (More) | Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) loses retrial of defamation lawsuit against The New York Times (More)


Science & Technology
> Astronomers discover rapidly disintegrating planet, producing a comet-like tail as it orbits; Mercury-sized planet loses amount of material equivalent to Mount Everest roughly every 30 hours (More)

> Genomic analysis reveals 60-million-year evolutionary history of domesticated and wild apples; results may lead to more resilient and flavorful varieties (More)

> Study of 2016 bird flu strain reveals the virus was a single mutation from being able to bind to receptors in human cells, becoming much more transmissible; variant is no longer in circulation (More) | How zoonotic diseases work (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close higher (S&P 500 +2.5%, Dow +2.7%, Nasdaq +2.7%) after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said trade talks with China will likely lead to de-escalation (More)

> Tesla reports 20% drop in auto revenue as Q1 results miss estimates; company reports $409M in net income on $19.3B in revenue, a 71% drop in profit from same period last year (More) | Everything you want to know about Tesla (More) | Elon Musk says he will scale back DOGE work starting in May (More)

> Boeing to sell parts of its digital aviation business to private equity firm Thoma Bravo in all-cash deal valued at over $10B (More) | RTX and GE Aerospace expect estimated $850M and $500M losses from US import tariffs, respectively (More)


Politics & World Affairs
> Food and Drug Administration to phase out the use of eight petroleum-based artificial dyes from US food supplies and medications by end of 2026; comes three months after the FDA ordered a ban on Red Dye No. 3 by January 2027 (More)

> Three federal prosecutors who worked on now-dropped criminal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) resign, say they won't admit to any wrongdoing as a condition for their reinstatement from administrative leave (More)

> At least 26 tourists at a resort in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed after gunmen open fire in region known for separatist violence; India and Pakistan divided control of the Kashmir region in 1947, but both claim the entire territory (More)

SOURCE:  1440 NEWS

Illegal Immigrants

 Today, we live in a country that questions its own right to remain FREE...  Our families are questioned, our laws are questioned, our rights are questioned, our politics are questioned, our education is questioned, and our religious freedoms are questioned.

Sooner or later, this was bound to happen because of all those freedoms that we give ourselves.

Illegal Immigrants have been allowed to enter our homeland, and by definition they broke our laws to get here, now they are using the law to remain here...  

These people may have had good intentions for themselves and their families, but they are ruining our country by imposing their wills and desires on us.

What will they do when they realize they are no better off here than they were where they were before? Will they continue to break our laws to survive?  How will they contribute to the advancement of our society or will they be a restraint on that advancement?

The liberals only want them here to pick our crops, clean our homes, maintenance our yards, do all the jobs that Americans refuse to do and vote DEMOCRATIC.

Liberals are willing to ruin our country to try and remain in power.

Somewhat Political

 

Researcher proposes first-time model that replaces dark energy and dark matter in explaining nature of the universe

Dr. Richard Lieu, a physics professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a paper in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity that proposes a universe built on steps of multiple singularities rather than the Big Bang alone to account for the expansion of the cosmos.

The new model forgoes the need for either dark matter or dark energy as explanations for the universe's acceleration and how structures like galaxies are generated.

The researcher's work builds on an earlier model hypothesizing that gravity can exist without mass.

READ MORE...

miriam makeba, Zimbabwe concert (paul simon - graceland land

Good Evening

 

VINCE

 

The Amber May Show

 

Robert Reich

The view from the right
Conservative condemnation of the Trump regime is almost as vehement as is progressive condemnation. Will they give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?




Friends,

There is an unfortunate tendency for those of us on the so-called “left” to assume that thinkers and pundits on the “right” disagree with us about Trump.

But what is occurring these days transcends left or right. It is now a matter of democracy or tyranny. More and more of those on the so-called “right” are condemning the Trump regime with almost as much vehemence as you and I condemn it.

Will this give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?

A recent sample of condemnation of Trump from the “right.”

READ MORE...

At A Glance

New study finds chimps sharing alcoholic drink.

"Please" and "thank you" in ChatGPT cost OpenAI millions.

Why Finland tops the world's happiest countries list.

See photos of the UK's largest self-build town.

The 77-year-old as fit as a 25-year-old.

How to delete yourself from the internet.

Rare smiley face to appear in night sky this week.

Enjoy photos from the 2025 Corgi Derby.

Clickbait: A quicksand romance.

Good Morning

 

How to *ACTUALLY* Start a Healthy Lifestyle in 2025

Quick Clips

 

In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Pro Football Hall of Famer and podcaster Shannon Sharpe accused in $50M civil lawsuit of sexual assault and battery (More)

> Duke star freshman Cooper Flagg confirms he will enter NBA Draft, is widely projected to be top pick (More) | ... and NBA playoffs are ongoing; see latest bracket (More) | ... as are the NHL's Stanley Cup playoffs; see complete schedule (More) | Hockey 101 (More)

> Ill-fated 2017 Fyre Festival to be turned into music streaming service that includes a subscription video-on-demand platform; Fyre Festival 2 was recently postponed indefinitely (More)


Science & Technology
> NASA's Lucy mission makes flyby of 150-million-year-old asteroid fragment; images expected to shed light on the collision processes during the early formation of the solar system (More) | The history of NASA (More)

> Engineers develop hyper-resilient lithium-ion battery that can be stretched and twisted and can continue to power devices after being cut in half (More)

> Lemur study reveals evolutionary changes to the way their brains respond to oxytocin determine whether females are highly aggressive or amiable; results shed light on how hormones influence behavior in humans (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close lower (S&P 500 -2.4%, Dow -2.5%, Nasdaq -2.6%) as US dollar drops to three-year low after President Donald Trump pressures Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates immediately (More) | Learn more about markets, taxes, and much more with 1440 Business & Finance (More)

> FTC sues Uber for alleged deceptive billing and cancellation practices tied to its Uber One subscription service (More) | Justice Department asks federal judge to address Google's monopoly in internet search by forcing the $1.8T tech giant to sell Chrome, among other measures, as three-week hearing on remedy kicks off (More)

> Walgreens to pay up to $350M to settle federal claims over allegedly filling millions of invalid prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances from August 2012 to March 2023 (More) What you need to know about the opioid crisis (More)


Politics & World Affairs
> White House expresses support for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who reportedly shared sensitive information about US strikes in Yemen in another Signal group chat, which included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer (More)

> Nadine Menendez, wife of former US Sen. Bob Menendez (D), convicted of joining her husband in yearslong bribery scheme tied to Egypt (More) | Man pleads guilty to killing 23 people and wounding 22 others in a mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019, receives life sentence without parole (More)

> US Supreme Court hears challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insurers provide certain preventive health services at no cost (More)

SOURCE:  1440 NEWS

Indoctrination

From a very early age, human beings are being indoctrinated by someone or something.  Our parents tell us what we can do or cannot do while living under their house. 

• We wear the clothes they want us to wear
• We eat the food they want us to eat
• We go to the church they want us to attend or not
• We do what they want us to do

THEN,

• we forced to attend K-12 public education until we are old enough to free ourselves from our parent's control and the indoctrination of the government, the schools, and the teachers.
• we have little if any choice over what we want to learn while we are in K-12 public education.

THEN,

we are indoctrinated by our employers, the military if we decide to join, the highway patrol if we want to drive a vehicle and by federal, state, and local government by being forced to pay taxes.

No matter where one goes or where one wants to live, there is always someone or something that wants to indoctrinate us as to how we should live our lives.  Most of us accept that indoctrination as part of LIFE while others refuse to accept it and try to get certain laws changed.

Some laws will be changed, and new laws will be written but no matter what we believe or want, our indoctrinations will always continue.

Somewhat Political

 

Higgs boson may be driving the Universe’s expansion

Scientists may have found a solution to one of the most profound questions in cosmology: What drove the Universe’s rapid expansion immediately after the Big Bang?

“According to what we call ‘standard’ cosmology, our universe is and has been expanding at different rates throughout its history,” explained Humberto Gilmer, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University and one of the authors of the study, in an email to Advanced Science News.

“To understand this expansion, think of a muffin with some blueberries embedded in it; as the muffin bakes, these blueberries, which aren’t moving in the batter, still move relative to each other because the whole muffin is expanding. In a nutshell, that’s how our universe behaves. Inflation, then, is a period when that expansion happened extremely rapidly. But how do you get such a period? That’s an open question we sought to answer.”

Their new findings suggest that the Higgs boson, a particle discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider, might be the culprit and could have played a pivotal role in this process.

READ MORE...

Slash - Sweet Child O’ Mine - Slash

Good Evening

 

VINCE

 

Lara Logan

 

Brookings Brief

April 2025 update to TIGER: The world economy shudders and could stall

The Big THINK

The evidence for biosignatures on K2-18b is flimsy, at best

Robert Reich

The secession of the billionaire class




Friends,

Billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the drop in the stock market is nothing to be concerned about because Americans aren’t looking at the “day-to-day fluctuations” in their retirement savings.

Billionaire Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says we shouldn’t be concerned that mass layoffs in the Social Security Administration have caused delays because his mother-in-law wouldn’t be worried if she didn’t get her monthly Social Security check.

The richest person in the world, Elon Musk, whose minions are busily slashing the Social Security Administration, calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

READ MORE...

At A Glance

The science of optical illusions.

Inside Home Depot’s $20B secret garden.

Your favorite music prompts the brain to release opioids.

How Stephen King became the master of horror. (via YouTube)

... and learn more about King's career here.

Play the classic game Snake—but on a map of the world.

Users find ChatGPT too "relentlessly positive."

Meet the sifaka, nature's pogo stick.

Clickbait: An age-old question—what happens to mummies' eyeballs?