Wednesday, July 9
Headlines
Meta, Apple
Meta poached Apple’s top AI executive. This will make the Sun Valley welcome reception a bit awkward. Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s foundational models team and was considered the iPhone-maker’s top AI researcher, is leaving to work on Meta’s new AI “superintelligence” team, Bloomberg reported. The loss is a major blow to Apple’s already struggling AI efforts, with the company reportedly now considering outsourcing the model that powers Siri. For Meta, it’s another sign of how serious CEO Mark Zuckerberg is about competing in AI and developing robots that are smarter than humans. According to Bloomberg, Pang was offered a package worth “tens of millions” of dollars per year to defect.
Trump says the US will resume sending weapons to Ukraine. Just days after the White House announced it was pausing military aid to Ukraine while the Pentagon reviewed stockpiles, President Trump said the US would in fact restart shipments to the country to help it defend itself against Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he was not the one who ordered the pause in deliveries. The reversal comes as Russia intensifies its attacks on Kyiv and Trump grows more publicly frustrated with Vladimir Putin stonewalling attempts at a ceasefire. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said this week.
The IRS will allow churches to endorse political candidates. In a reversal of a 70-year-old policy, the Internal Revenue Service said yesterday that it will permit churches to make endorsements from the pulpit without losing their tax-exempt status. Previously, the prevailing interpretation of the tax code barred houses of worship from keeping their tax-exempt status if they formally backed political candidates, although the rule was rarely enforced. A group of churches sued the IRS last year, arguing that the rule violated their constitutional rights. First Amendment advocates applauded the news, while some experts warned that it could open the door for political campaigns to funnel money through nonprofits.—AE
Robert Reich
What will it take for most Americans to demand an end to Trump’s dictatorship?
Friends,
I keep asking myself when Trump’s authoritarian fascism will become so intolerable to the vast majority of Americans that they rise up against it — not only massively protest but put enough pressure on Republicans in Congress that they join with Democrats in impeaching and convicting him.
In other words, what’s the tipping point for ridding us of this menace?
I thought we’d reached that tipping point when he went to war with Iran without congressional approval. Or when he sent active military troops into Los Angeles. Or when he imposed tariffs on all products imported to the United States, essentially raising taxes on Americans. Or when he forced out the president of the University of Virginia for insufficiently rooting out DEI. Or when he attacked major law firms for employing lawyers who once tried to hold him legally accountable.
Obviously, we haven’t reached the tipping point yet. So what will it take? Several possibilities come to mind:
At A Glance
Earth is spinning unusually fast today.
What happens when you flush an airplane toilet.
See photos from Spain’s Running of the Bulls festival.
Meet the team of four keeping this Disney art form alive. (w/video)
An up-and-coming Canadian band was an AI hoax.
Woman earns world record for collection of 15,485 egg cups.
Ranking the world’s most colorful destinations.
Hundreds of people just opened the world’s largest time capsule.
Clickbait: Bad Bunny and Adidas are hiring.
In The NEWS
Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> 2025 FIFA Club World Cup semifinals kick off with Fluminense taking on Chelsea tonight (3 pm ET, DAZN) and Paris Saint-Germain pitted against Real Madrid tomorrow (3 pm ET, DAZN) (More)
> Brad Pitt's "F1" nears $300M at global box office, becoming highest-grossing Apple-produced theatrical film ever (More)
> 2025 Wimbledon quarterfinals begin today; see updated scores, schedule, and brackets for women's and men's tournaments (More)
Science & Technology
> Twitter and Block founder Jack Dorsey launches Bitchat, a WhatsApp-style messaging service that works entirely over Bluetooth; application doesn't use centralized servers or require personal information (More)
> Researchers enhance a key molecule involved in photosynthesis in plants, boosting its chemical reaction efficiency by up to 25%; results may lead to improved crop yields in certain species (More) | 1440 Science & Technology: Today's deep dive on memory comes out at 8:30 am ET (Join here)
> Oldest known pterosaur in North America discovered; the reptiles coexisted with dinosaurs, current specimen pushes their timeline back to about 209 million years ago (More)
Business & Markets
> US stock markets close down (S&P 500 -0.8%, Dow -0.9%, Nasdaq -0.9%) after President Donald Trump announces a slew of new tariffs taking effect Aug. 1 (More) | Tesla shares drop 6.8% after Elon Musk announces plans to form a new political party (More) | See previous write-up (More)
> Amazon Prime Day begins today and runs through Friday, July 11, extending to four days for the first time; shoppers expected to spend nearly $24B (More) | Amazon explained (1440 Topics)
> AI company CoreWeave to acquire data center infrastructure provider Core Scientific for about $9B; shares subsequently drop 3.3% and 17.6%, respectively (More) | ExxonMobil and Qatar Energy find new natural gas deposit off the coast of Cyprus, bolstering the region's energy exporting potential (More)
Politics & World Affairs
> Death toll from Texas floods rises to at least 104 people, including at least 28 children (More) | See previous write-up (More) | Twenty-seven-year-old gunman killed after opening fire at US Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, injuring police officer (More)
> Justice Department finds no evidence the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein kept a so-called "client list" or blackmailed high-profile associates; department confirms he died by suicide, citing video footage near Epstein's prison cell (More) | Read the memo (More)
> President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss potential ceasefire in Gaza (More) | Lebanon signals openness to disarming Hezbollah in exchange for Israeli withdrawal (More)
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
Tennessee
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The state of Tennessee has a few major cities, among them are:
- Bristol/Johnson City/Kingsport
- Knoxville
- Chattanooga
- Nashville
- Memphis
The state of Tennessee is divided into three sections:
- East
- Bristol-Knoxville-Chattanooga
- Middle
- Nashville
- West
- Memphis
The Tennessee Valley Authority created (during the depression) and manages a series of recreational lakes that include:
- Fort Loudoun Lake
- Watts Bar Lake
- Chickamauga Lake
- Nickajack Lake
- Guntersville Lake
- Wheeler Lake
- Wilson Lake
- Pickwick Lake
- Kentucky Lake
- Cherokee Lake
- Douglas Lake
- Fontana Lake
- Fort Patrick Henry Lake
- Melton Hill Lake
- Davy Crockett Lake
- Norris Lake
- Lake Nottely
- Ocoee Lakes
- South Holston Lake
- Tellico Lake
- Tims Ford Lake
- Watauga Lake
East Tennessee, not only has these lakes but they have the Bristol Motor Speedway (NASCAR) and the Great Smoky Mountains which is home to:
- Sevierville (Outlets)
- Pigeon Forge (Dollywood)
- Gatlinburg (Mountain Resorts)
Oak Ridge is also located in East Tennessee and was considered to be the SECRET CITY during WWII because it was one of three places that was responsible for creating the Atomic Bomb that ended the war. Now Oak Ridge is home to OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABS that receives money from DOE and is currently working on creating a portable nuclear reactor (among other things) that will one day power a spaceship.
Since I am a resident of East Tennessee, I am rather fond of my location and prefer it to the Piedmont of North Carolina where I used to live over thirty years ago.
Scientists achieve teleportation between quantum computers for the first time ever
The promise of quantum computing come with a hitch: the more qubits you load into a single machine, the harder they are to keep in line. Scientists have tried shielding, error correction, even stacking qubits on top of one another, yet stability keeps slipping through their fingers.
A fresh demonstration now points to a different strategy – spreading the workload across several small processors and letting quantum teleportation knit them together in real time.
Tuesday, July 8
The Possibility of War
When I was younger, I worried about being drafted into the Army or the Marines because of the Vietnam War. I went to college to keep from being drafted but after two and a half years, dropped out and enlisted in the Navy.
Today, high school students and college students no longer have to worry about the draft, which to some degree is good, but with the world as it is presently, WORLD WAR III could be right around the corner.
It is that right around the corner that should bother young people today. I know that Americans, especially those between the ages of 18-35, have NO DESIRE for the USA to get involved in the wars of other countries. I can understand why they feel that way.
However, there are certain countries in the world today that HATE THE USA for the sins of previous administrations, some of which were around before we were born... like after WWII.
Countries like:
- Iran
- Middle eastern countries
- Countries of BRICS
- North Korea
want the USA gone and have no problems annihilating us completely.
Most Americans simply do not understand nor do they believe that other countries hate us as much as they do... and, honestly, I hope they never find out the truth of that hate.
Americans have been lucky that wars have not been fought inside the borders of the 48 states because not only would our outlook be different, but we would be living under the FEAR that war might happen again.
A WWIII would more than likely be fought outside the USA, but the impact of that war would touch everything we do, like:
- Education
- Prices
- Gasoline
- Travel
- Internet
- Recreation
- Food
just to name a few...
Whether we get pulled into a WWIII is doubtful to many and a certainty to some, but I doubt it will result in a military draft. Bear in mind that wars happen because leaders don't have the courage to BACK DOWN.
Right now those fears of war are concentrated around:
- Russia
- China
- Iran
- Israel
- North Korea
It is believed by our military strategists that none of the leaders of those five countries, except for Israel, actually values human life.
Headlines
Ali Safarov/Adobe Stock
Trump extends tariff deadline and starts revealing steep new levies. The White House confirmed yesterday that President Trump planned to delay imposing new tariffs on trade partners that haven’t reached deals with the US until Aug. 1, ahead of the original date (tomorrow) when the 90-day tariff pause would have ended. However, the president also began sending letters to other countries threatening high duties on their goods unless a deal is secured. These threats included 25% on imports from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan, 30% on South African goods, and 40% on products from Laos and Myanmar.
Search for survivors continues as death toll from Texas floods rises. Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls, said 27 campers and counselors had died due to the flash flooding over the weekend, with 10 more campers and a counselor reportedly still missing. In all, authorities said yesterday that more than 100 people were known to have died in the flooding, and that the number was likely to go up as searching continued. They declined to answer questions about weather warnings and didn’t clarify why more areas were not evacuated as searches continued with more rain expected. Meanwhile, facing criticism from Democrats, President Trump denied that staffing cuts at the National Weather Service had hindered weather forecasting before the sudden flooding.
AI company to buy crypto miner for $9b to meet power needs. That very 2025 sentence comes as AI companies race to scoop up energy and data centers to power their tech. CoreWeave is doing it by acquiring Core Scientific, a Bitcoin miner that was already providing data center infrastructure to the company and has access to lots of energy. It’ll nab those centers for itself in an all-stock deal valued at $9 billion that’s expected to close in Q4. But investors weren’t energized by the deal—both companies’ stocks fell after it was announced.—AR
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