Empty Waymos invade Atlanta neighborhood, circle cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers
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@wtg
Posts
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A Waymo "routing problem" -
The 2024 DNC autopsy report -
The 2024 DNC autopsy reportFinally released. Story:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/21/democrats-2024-election-autopsy
The report:
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/May-20-2026.pdf
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Faunascrolling--what's visiting where you are?The waxwings are back this morning! What a sweet group of birds. They don't fight each other in the bird bath; they just all happily plotz around in the water.
Need to look them up. I assume they are migratory and just passing through our area right now.
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EbolaAn American infected with Ebola is being treated in Berlin, while another exposed to the deadly virus is being sent to Prague after the White House reportedly resisted allowing citizens to return to the US for care and monitoring.
According to The Washington Post, five people close to the Ebola response said that, over the weekend, the Trump administration resisted allowing the return of Peter Stafford, a 39-year-old surgeon working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid a raging Ebola outbreak. The resistance allegedly delayed Stafford’s evacuation and care, risking his health, as experts note that early treatment is critical for Ebola, which can turn deadly in days.
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EbolaMarco Rubio’s comments on Ebola show he doesn’t understand what the World Health Organization does, the agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus suggested Wednesday.
The U.S. secretary of state had claimed Tuesday night that the WHO was “a little late” to detect the deadly outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is spreading rapidly through the war-torn country.
“We don’t replace the countries’ work, we only support them,” Tedros told reporters at WHO headquarters. “It could be from lack of understanding of how [the International Health Regulations] work and [the] responsibilities of WHO and other entities,” he said of Rubio’s comments.
The exchange marks a further deterioration in relations between the WHO and its once-largest funder after the U.S. withdrew from the United Nations global health agency in January.
But it wasn't the only message the WHO had for its former member.
The agency also pushed back on the prospect of travel bans after the U.S. on Monday closed its border to non-U.S. travelers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Uganda, in an attempt to prevent the deadly Bundibugyo virus from entering its territory.
https://www.politico.eu/article/who-marco-rubio-ebola-comments-congo-outbreak-travel-bans/
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A radioactive Garden of EdenAnimals thriving in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Hard to believe it's been 40 years.
https://www.sciencealert.com/animals-are-thriving-in-chornobyls-human-free-zone-study-finds
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Solving a flooding problem in the UK -
The next generation of weight loss drugsEli Lilly
on Thursday said its next-generation drug cleared a crucial late-stage trial in patients with obesity, delivering significant weight loss across doses.
The results bring Lilly one step closer to filing for approval of the weekly injection, called retatrutide, which works differently from existing shots and pills from both Lilly and Novo Nordisk. It also appears to be more effective than those options.
The highest dose of retatrutide helped patients lose 28.3% of their weight — or 70.3 pounds — on average over 80 weeks, compared with 2.2% with placebo, when evaluating only patients who stayed on the drug.
Roughly 45% of the 2,500 patients in the Phase 3 trial achieved 30% or more weight loss, Lilly said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/21/eli-lilly-weight-loss-drug-retatrutide-clears-obesity-trial.html
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Will the World Cup be a flop?Empty rooms and Fifa cancellations - US hotels fear World Cup washout
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The truth about Trump's sanityFrom someone who has known him for decades.
https://time.com/article/2026/05/20/the-truth-about-donald-trump-s-sanity/
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Converting old oil and gas wellsAs states seek out much-needed supplies of clean, reliable energy, some are looking to an unconventional source: abandoned oil and gas wells harnessed for geothermal heat.
Millions of inactive wells are littered across the United States, the relics of earlier eras of fossil fuel production. A large number of the sites have no official owner, and many are still polluting groundwater and leaking heat-trapping methane. The country has barely scratched the surface in dealing with this problem.
Policymakers in both Republican- and Democratic-led states are exploring whether these sites could instead be converted into new wells for producing geothermal energy. The holes are already drilled in the ground, after all. And regions with widespread oil and gas development have rich subsurface data that geothermal firms need in order to determine where and how to build their carbon-free systems.
The concept is relatively new and largely untested, though scientists and startups are working to change that. States are also laying the groundwork for action by lifting regulatory hurdles and launching in-depth studies
.https://www.wired.com/story/oil-wells-second-life-clean-energy/
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Google Search gets overhaulThe era of the “ten blue links” is officially over.
At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined “intelligent search box” — what the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago.
Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
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A book about AI misinformation contains fake quotes about AIReally.
Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.
Steven Rosenbaum, author of “The Future of Truth,” said he had started his own investigation after The New York Times asked about the fake quotes.
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Artificial eggshellsColossal Biosciences is growing chickens in a 3D-printed artificial eggshell
In an early step towards artificial wombs, a biotech company claims it’s developed a “fully artificial” chicken egg.
What could possibly go wrong?
In order to create a moa, Colossal will have to genetically alter another type of bird, changing potentially thousands of DNA letters. But so far, chickens are the only bird species that can be genetically engineered. And that’s via a tricky process of editing stem cells that produce egg and sperm. Scientists have to add or delete DNA letters from these cells and then inject them back into an egg. The resulting bird will carry the genetic changes in its gonads—and then be able to pass them on.
Pask says Colossal’s idea is that it could modify avian stem cells enough to produce moa-like sperm or eggs. But then you might have the odd situation of a chicken laying an egg with a moa embryo inside it. “You would have chickens making moa egg and moa sperm. But it’s still a chicken egg,” he says.
Helen Sang, a professor emeritus at the Roslin Institute in the United Kingdom, says she’s not sure a moa embryo could survive on the yolk of a chicken egg, given evolutionary differences. “There are significant challenges to overcome to grow an embryo of a different species in artificial eggs,” says Sang.
I think I like the original equipment version better:
Link to video -
Remarkable use of our tax dollarsMore ethically questionable activity:
U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosures show that he or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter, a flurry totaling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration.
The transactions, spelled out in more than 100 pages of documents filed Thursday with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, list purchases and sales in broad ranges, making it hard to calculate an exact value. But the volume of trading — more than 40 per day over a three-month period — stands out as much as the potential dollar value.
“This is an insane amount of trades,” said Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, in an interview, adding that it looks more like something done by “a hedge fund with massive algo trades” that buys and shorts securities than a personal account.
In the first quarter, the president bought at least $1 million each in companies including Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing and Costco Wholesale, according to the documents. Other trades involved eBay, Abbott Laboratories, Uber Technologies, AT&T and discount store Dollar Tree.
The disclosure reignites conflict-of-interest concerns that have shadowed Trump’s terms in the White House. Critics have regularly accused him of mixing his official duties with his business interests. Unlike his predecessors, Trump didn’t divest or move his assets into a blind trust with an independent overseer. His sprawling business empire is managed by two of his sons and operates in several areas that intersect with presidential policy.
At the same time, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner helps manage billions in investments for Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates while simultaneously serving as a “volunteer” envoy for the president on issues affecting the war in Iran and the Middle East in general.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/05/18/markets/trump-3700-trades-wall-street/
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After Colorado's warm dry winter, will it be a summer of wildfires?Matthew Mueller spends a lot of time thinking about doomsday scenarios. After all, it’s his job.
Mueller is the director of Denver’s Office of Emergency Management, but it wasn’t until recently that he had to start considering the reality of how wildfires could threaten the Denver metro area, which prompted his office to create a new kind of plan.
The office is drafting a mass evacuation plan, which Mueller said is a first for the city because it takes into account wildfire threats. While previous plans included evacuation protocols in the event of a hazardous materials disaster or a failure at Cherry Creek Dam, wildfires were a blind spot.
“We have not had a plan for something like that in Denver because we have frankly, historically not had wildfire risks,” said Mueller. “In the city of Denver, that’s not something we’ve had to deal with before.”
But 2021’s Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County, necessitated a new plan, Mueller said.
The Marshall Fire didn't affect Denver directly, but it made Mueller realize that parts of Denver —like the region close to the airport and the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge — could experience similar grass fires.
“We would need not just a few blocks, but an entire neighborhood evacuated,” said Mueller.
Colorado experienced one of the driest and hottest winters on record, raising concerns about summer wildfires. Earlier this month, the Clear Creek and Jefferson County Sheriff's Offices practiced evacuations in case of fires.
https://rmpbs.org/news/science-environment/denver-mass-evacuation-plan-wildfire
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Remarkable use of our tax dollarsIt just keeps getting better.
The Justice Department on Tuesday expanded the just-announced settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns to include a pledge that the IRS will no longer pursue any claims it may have against Trump, his family members and his companies over unpaid taxes.
The nine-page settlement agreement DOJ released Monday, setting up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of alleged weaponization of law enforcement, did not mention any resolution of disputes over Trump’s tax returns, which he has repeatedly claimed were under protracted audits by the IRS.
However, a one-page document posted on the DOJ website early Tuesday includes a sweeping release under which the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” and related trusts and businesses.
The waiver specifically encompasses “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement, which was Monday.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed the addendum, dated Tuesday. It does not bear the signature of any representative of the IRS or any current Trump lawyers. Metadata attached to the document indicates it was prepared or scanned at 7:50 a.m.
Tuesday.https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/19/trump-irs-settlement-tax-returns-00927911
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Remarkable use of our tax dollarsWonder if Kelly, Comey, and Powell will apply.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday defended the Trump administration’s plans to create a $1.776 billion fund that could pay allies of the Republican president who believe they were targeted politically as he faced questions from lawmakers in his congressional appearance since taking the reins of the Justice Department.
Blanche acknowledged that the “unusual” nature of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which critics have called an illegal abuse of power designed to line the pockets of Trump supporters with taxpayer dollars. But the fund is not unprecedented, Blanche said, adding that those who benefit will not be limited to Republicans or to people who were investigated or prosecuted by the Biden administration.
Blanche also left open the possibility that people charged with committing violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol will be eligible for compensation.
“As was made plain yesterday, anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they were a victim of weaponization,” Blanche told a Senate appropriations subcommittee. The decisions on payouts will be made a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general.
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One of the consequences of aging...
