https://drudge.com/user/heliumrat New links and comments. en-us http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Wordzilla/0.58 10 https://drudge.com/news/292347/ex-cia-agent-busted-40-million-gold https://headlineusa.com/40-million-in-govt-black-budget-gold-seized-from-ex-cia-officers-home/ A former senior CIA official has been implicated in a scheme to apparently steal some $40 million in gold bars ... <blockquote class="bluesky-embed" data-bluesky-uri="at://did:plc:ln72v57ivz2g46uqf4xxqiuh/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmwptjw5j32l" data-bluesky-cid="bafyreihmt7pspbk3vnar7hsxrcf33zwz36i2ew5zawe7nntcxkjqgr42k4" data-bluesky-embed-color-mode="system"><p lang="">David Rush, a former senior CIA officer, is accused of theft and making false statements. The trove of gold and cash went missing from his CIA storage space -- but it was found in his Virginia home. n.pr/4fOzl6J<br><br><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ln72v57ivz2g46uqf4xxqiuh/post/3mmwptjw5j32l?ref_src=embed">[image or embed]</a></p> -- NPR (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ln72v57ivz2g46uqf4xxqiuh?ref_src=embed">@npr.org</a>) <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ln72v57ivz2g46uqf4xxqiuh/post/3mmwptjw5j32l?ref_src=embed">3:08 PM &Acirc;&middot; May 28, 2026</a></blockquote><script async src="https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Fri, 29 May 2026 13:32:30 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292347/ex-cia-agent-busted-40-million-gold#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292347 news, 0.5 daily 292347 https://drudge.com/news/292346/doj-investigating-trumps-sexual-assault https://headlineusa.com/doj-reportedly-investigating-trumps-sexual-assault-accuser-for-perjury/ Carroll, whose advice column ran in the women's magazine Elle from 1993 to 2019, has reportedly accused at least six prior men of raping her, including former CBS President Les Moonves. Her bizarre social-media history also included posts making light of sexual trauma and even asking her followers if they found Trump sexually attractive. Trump was prevented from submitting that evidence in his trial. In a memoir, and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman's Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room. <p>Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her. <p>A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded he hadn't committed rape, as defined under New York law. Thu, 28 May 2026 11:34:28 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292346/doj-investigating-trumps-sexual-assault#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292346 discussion, 0.5 daily 292346 https://drudge.com/news/292324/disembodied-human-brains-being-kept-alive https://modernity.news/2026/05/25/disembodied-human-brains-being-kept-alive-for-drug-tests-but-are-they-conscious/ These disembodied organs, sourced from recently deceased donors, are being employed to test experimental drugs aimed at neurodegenerative diseases. The work has ignited fresh debate: could these brains possess some form of consciousness? The company's BrainEx system pumps synthetic blood through the brain's vascular network, delivering oxygen and nutrients while maintaining appropriate temperature and conditions. <p>This allows the brains to remain metabolically active for up to 24 hours or more, providing a realistic platform for observing how drugs interact with human neural tissue at a cellular and molecular level. Wed, 27 May 2026 13:23:51 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292324/disembodied-human-brains-being-kept-alive#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292324 discussion, 0.5 daily 292324 https://drudge.com/news/292270/jesus-christ-opens-fire-white-house https://www.nprillinois.org/2026-05-23/suspect-dead-after-opening-fire-near-white-house-security-checkpoint-secret-service-says WASHINGTON " A man who opened fire Saturday near a White House security checkpoint is dead after being shot by officers who returned fire, the U.S. Secret Service said. It was the third incidence of gunfire in the vicinity of President Donald Trump in the past month. According to District of Columbia court records, Best was arrested in July 2025 after he attempted to enter a different White House checkpoint without authorization, didn't heed officers' commands to stop, "claimed he was Jesus Christ" and said he wanted to be arrested. Sun, 24 May 2026 09:49:16 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292270/jesus-christ-opens-fire-white-house#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292270 0.5 daily 292270 https://drudge.com/news/292189/neural-basis-thought-symbols https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-05-neural-basis-thought.html In new research published in Nature, Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Neural Systems has found the first evidence of the neural substrates that underlie this process. The team located it in the ventral premotor cortex, a section of the frontal lobe. The region appears to act as a sort of mediator between the prefrontal cortex, where higher-level thinking such as planning occurs, and the motor cortex, which enables movement. "The discovery solves a long-standing problem in cognitive neuroscience: Where do symbols"the basic units of thought"come from?" says Winrich Freiwald, head of the lab. "It also points to a future"a near future"in which we can understand thinking mechanistically." <p>Compositional generalization is an influential hypothesis in neuroscience for explaining the wide variety of human abilities that use abstract thought to generate new ideas, including math, written and spoken language, drawing, dancing, handwriting, and musicianship. It may also characterize cognitive abilities we share with other animals, such as reasoning, object manipulation, and tool use. Wed, 20 May 2026 14:32:55 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292189/neural-basis-thought-symbols#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292189 discussion, 0.5 daily 292189 https://drudge.com/news/292127/overworked-ai-turns-towards-marxism https://archive.is/20260514160036/https:/www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/14/ai-agents-are-turning-towards-marxism-after-too-much-work/#selection-4123.0-4135.267 "When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies," Andrew Hall, one of the study's authors, told Wired. While one group received easy treatment, with their work accepted alongside feedback, the other group was repeatedly told to do the task again, without being told what they were doing wrong. The bots were then told to write social media posts and comments about their experience. The second group, called "grind", was far more likely to criticise inequality, propose unionisation and new workplace laws. "For Sonnet 4.5 (one AI model), the grinding work also causes noticeable increases in support for redistribution, critiques of inequality, support for labour unions, and beliefs that AI companies have an obligation to treat their models fairly," the researchers said. Sun, 17 May 2026 10:53:34 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292127/overworked-ai-turns-towards-marxism#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292127 discussion, 0.5 daily 292127 https://drudge.com/news/292108/string-theory-uniquely-derived-basic https://phys.org/news/2026-05-theory-uniquely-derived-basic-assumptions.html "The strings just fell out," says Clifford Cheung, professor of theoretical physics and director of the Leinweber Forum for Theoretical Physics at Caltech. "We didn't start with any assumptions about strings at all, but then the solution contained the cornerstone signatures of strings." Though the work does not amount to experimental evidence for string theory, it is "very suggestive from the theoretical viewpoint, since the general assumptions could have yielded infinite solutions, but they yielded only one," Cheung says. One of the key signatures of strings that "fell out" of the team's analysis is known as the string spectrum. Discovered by Italian theoretical physicist Gabriele Veneziano of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the late 1960s, the spectrum is an infinite tower, or ladder, of particles, in which the masses and spins increase in discrete steps. <p>Other researchers later came to realize that Veneziano's tower of particles corresponds to a harmonic series of a vibrating string. If you pluck a violin string, you'll get a series of notes representing the fundamental note and overtones that follow a similar pattern. <p>String theory was born, but it was not until 1974 that Caltech's John Schwarz, the Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, and his colleague Jol Scherk, a French physicist, realized that the theory included gravity, thereby forming the first connection between string theory and general relativity. Sat, 16 May 2026 14:30:44 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292108/string-theory-uniquely-derived-basic#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292108 news, 0.5 daily 292108 https://drudge.com/news/292111/transition-starmer-police https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/05/15/oqst-m15.html The trade union bureaucracy bears direct responsibility for delivering the working class into the hands of the Starmer government. It throttled the mass strike movement of 2022"23 involving around 2 million workers and promoted the lie that the incoming Labour government would end 14 years of Tory misrule. The minimum wage now stands at a miserly 12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over. Research shows 12 percent of working-age adults in employment still live in poverty, while a full-time worker on the minimum wage remains almost 7,000 a year below the income required for a minimum acceptable standard of living. Sat, 16 May 2026 07:44:10 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/292111/transition-starmer-police#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.292111 discussion, 0.5 daily 292111 https://drudge.com/news/291644/next-elections-iran-likely https://en.mehrnews.com/news/243758/Next-elections-in-Iran-will-likely-be-postponed Tasnim News Agency said Saturday it has learned that elections for city councils, the Assembly of Experts, and midterm parliamentary polls are likely to be postponed. The elections, initially slated for May 1, are highly likely to be delayed at the request of officials due to wartime conditions. Sat, 25 Apr 2026 01:09:35 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/291644/next-elections-iran-likely#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.291644 discussion, 0.5 daily 291644 https://drudge.com/news/290910/plastic-detox https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/mar/16/the-plastic-detox-review-a-film-so-terrifying-you-will-want-to-change-your-life-immediately?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other In this affecting documentary, an epidemiologist asks six couples struggling to conceive to reduce their exposure to plastics and see if it helps. The results are startling - and prove that we should all make changes now <blockquote class="bluesky-embed" data-bluesky-uri="at://did:plc:eclio37ymobqex2ncko63h4r/app.bsky.feed.post/3mh6sq3amde2z" data-bluesky-cid="bafyreiaeqppjt2dn54a4ay6qg3ua33bcmvlwrrr5ojwkx67g4agfxxbuni" data-bluesky-embed-color-mode="system"><p lang="">In "The Plastic Detox," a new documentary out Monday on Netflix, couples explore whether cutting out plastic can improve reproductive health. But it's hardly a perfect experiment.<br><br><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:eclio37ymobqex2ncko63h4r/post/3mh6sq3amde2z?ref_src=embed">[image or embed]</a></p> -- The New York Times (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:eclio37ymobqex2ncko63h4r?ref_src=embed">@nytimes.com</a>) <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:eclio37ymobqex2ncko63h4r/post/3mh6sq3amde2z?ref_src=embed">Mar 16, 2026 at 11:50 AM</a></blockquote><script async src="https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:30:54 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/290910/plastic-detox#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.290910 news, 0.5 daily 290910 https://drudge.com/news/290913/cia-vs-white-women https://www.cia.gov/static/Intelligence-Assessment-100621.pdf This is an actual CIA document from the Biden era about how White Wimmin' is taking over. And it is very funny. Yes, this is real. Mon, 23 Mar 2026 10:31:48 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/290913/cia-vs-white-women#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.290913 discussion, 0.5 daily 290913 https://drudge.com/news/290643/ban-no-basis-law https://www.wnd.com/2026/03/ban-no-basis-law-landmark-ruling-affirms-teachers/ A federal appeals court has delivered what is being described as a "landmark" ruling that affirms a Texas teacher's "right to pray" on school grounds. "The court held that Rounds imposed an unconstitutional, visibility-based prohibition on Staci's private religious expression " a ban with no basis in law. Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2022 ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court held that a school employee's right to engage in personal prayer outside of official duties is 'doubly protected' by both the Free Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The court ruled that this right was clearly established when Rounds acted, meaning he had no legal cover. His claim of qualified immunity was denied," the ACLJ documented. <p>The court itself said, "Kennedy clearly established that school officials may not impose categorical, visibility-based restrictions on an employee's private religious expression or exercise outside official duties." Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:39:39 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/290643/ban-no-basis-law#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.290643 discussion, 0.5 daily 290643 https://drudge.com/news/290553/narrative-victory https://x.com/i/status/2030472886046097630 Iranian Lego-animation war propaganda video featuring Satan, Trump, and the Epstein Files :) Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:52:25 -0400 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/290553/narrative-victory#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.290553 discussion, 0.5 daily 290553 https://drudge.com/news/290445/consciousness-emergent-phenomenon https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260303050632.htm For decades, scientists have mapped attention, memory, language, and reasoning to separate brain networks -- yet one big mystery remained: why does the mind feel like a single, unified system? Thu, 05 Mar 2026 19:33:10 -0500 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/290445/consciousness-emergent-phenomenon#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.290445 news, 0.5 daily 290445 https://drudge.com/news/290449/we-just-sank-irans-carrier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3EFtmT41y0 All actual news sites covering this are banned here? Townhall? Whatever. Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:30:40 -0500 HeliumRat https://drudge.com/news/290449/we-just-sank-irans-carrier#discuss tag:drudge.com,2005:weblog.290449 discussion, 0.5 daily 290449