More from the article ...

... Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has installed 59 natural gas turbines for its Colossus 2 data center project in Tennessee without securing federal clean air permits, according to communications between regulators and xAI representatives.

Potential emissions from the turbines are far beyond the threshold that would require a federal permit, and would be released near predominantly Black communities already estimated to be suffering disproportionately high rates of lung disease, according to a Reuters analysis based on government data and information in the correspondence with regulators.

The findings, which have not been previously reported, reflect how exploding electricity demand from AI data centers is driving companies to build off-grid power plants at a pace outstripping environmental oversight, with potentially big risks to public health.

The number of unpermitted turbines identified by Reuters is about double what xAI has publicly acknowledged. ...

More from the article ...

... Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been compromising routers for years, sometimes in prolonged tugs-of-war to wrest control of devices the other has already commandeered. The US government has occasionally issued covert commands and taken other steps to disinfect routers. Google and other companies have also worked to disrupt the massive botnets that control compromised routers in lockstep. The actions to date are little more than whack-a-mole exercises as the operators simply replace their botnets with new ones.
Proxy networks: The go-to tool

"Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16 cyber actors continue to exploit poorly configured and vulnerable networking devices worldwide, opportunistically compromising multiple critical infrastructure sector networks," the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Monday. The hacking groups are tracked under various names, including Berserk Bear, Energetic Bear, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Ghost Blizzard, and Static Tundra. The advisory was co-issued by governments from around the world, including Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and the UK.

The primary means of compromise the agency warned about was hackers scanning IP ranges with active Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents that accept common or default authentication credentials. ...

More from the article ...

... A U.S. health secretary prepared to spend billions to seek a link between vaccines and autism. Vaccine skeptics shaping policy. A proposal to eliminate the entire federal immunization schedule for American children.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought a series of once-unthinkable public-health proposals to the highest levels of the Trump administration since becoming health secretary early last year, according to Reuters interviews with 16 current and former officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.

The officials, from the U.S. health department and White House, shared details of internal discussions on condition of anonymity. Their first-hand accounts of Kennedy's previously unreported efforts reveal a tenacious activist who has pushed through some of the biggest changes to U.S. vaccine policy in decades -- and who sought to go much further than previously known to dismantle the status quo.

"He's an anti-vaccine activist. That's who he is. That's who he's been for 20 years. To expect that as secretary of Health and Human Services he'd be anything other than that is wishful thinking," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a long-time immunization adviser to the CDC. ...

... I don't see a lot of evil there. ...

Would Pres Trump recognize evil if he saw it?

@#7 ...
It's not called Trump's Epstein Cover-Up for nothing.

It's a cover-up.

Of files related to extremely well-connected pedo Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein and Trump were best buds once.

During the time for which Epstein is infamous.
...

Worth a repeat.

@#1 ... viral moments like this one can have deadly consequences for alligators. ...

What might the possible consequences be for those people trying to touch the alligators?

@#5 ... Oil is flowing like never before ...

130 ships per day are passing through the Strait?

@#1 ... The Cover-Up is alive and well in New Mexico. ...

Looks that way.

The cover-up spread westward ...

Finally.

More from the article ...

... What appear to be tire tracks have become visible on the floor of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after the landmark was drained for a second round of repairs, adding another point of intrigue to the Trump administration's troubled renovation project. ...

[images in the article]

imo, he will be confirmed.

More from the article ...

... The board game Monopoly has always taught some important economic lessons: The benefits of owning real estate. The profit potential of railroad mergers. The value of a get-out-of-jail-free card.
President Trump hopes to encourage more U.S. manufacturing with his import taxes on foreign goods. But an online experiment suggests most people aren't willing to pay a premium for a "Made in the USA" product.
Economy
What a Texas showerhead salesman discovered about 'Made in the USA' labels

Now a special edition of the board game is teaching a new lesson"about how hard it is to make things in the USA.

The game is being marketed by the WS Game Company, which produces most of its high-end board games in China, just like almost every other toy maker.

After getting hit with a seven-figure tariff bill last year, CEO Jonathan Silva decided to see if it was possible to produce a profitable board game in the United States.

He opted for a custom version of Monopoly, pegged to the country's 250th birthday. But the experiment almost didn't pass go. One big problem: No dice.

"We turned over every single leaf trying to find someone who would make 10,000 dice for us in the U.S.," Silva says. "It requires special machinery. It requires investment. And that type of stuff just can't happen on a random Tuesday and be ready in a couple of months."

Silva ultimately had to settle for imported dice.

He was able to find the rest of what he needed domestically, but it wasn't easy. A former Hasbro factory in Massachusetts prints the Monopoly board. A company called Pioneer Packaging makes the tray that holds the Monopoly money. And a small business in Indiana cranked out custom metal game tokens, in all-American shapes like a cowboy hat, a covered wagon and an apple pie.

Just assembling all those different players took more than a year, so Silva missed the first half of the 250th birthday selling season. And the cost to manufacture the games -- which retail for $80 -- was at least double what it would have been in China. ...

More from the article ...

... U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused Trump of having manipulated the court system when he sued a federal agency under his control, bypassing a requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests and laying the groundwork for a settlement last spring that granted him immunity from tax audits and created a fund to compensate allies of the president who say they were unjustly persecuted.

Though the practical impacts of the ruling may be limited given the administration's public pronouncements that the so-called $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund has been abandoned, the judge's ruling nonetheless amounts to a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration and resurfaces a politically damaging storyline for Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche just as he prepares to face the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing on Wednesday. ...

More from the article ...

... More than a quarter of working-age adults who relied on credit cards to buy groceries were either unable to pay their balance in full or missed their minimum payment, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. About one in 10 adults relied on so-called "buy now, pay later" loans to cover their groceries -- of those, about a third missed a payment last year, the analysis found.

About 20% of working-age adults said they had tapped long-term savings that weren't intended for everyday expenses, such as an emergency fund, at least once in the last 12 months to pay for groceries, the researchers said.

"Families still need to eat. They will still need to pay for their basic needs," Kassandra Martinchek, a co-author of the study and public policy expert at the Urban Institute, told CBS News. "Now they have the additional burden of also needing to repay debt -- it could constrain their ability to meet their basic needs in the future and get back on their financial feet."

Over the past five years, grocery prices have jumped 32%, making food affordability a top concern for many Americans, the Urban Institute said. The group's findings are based on a December survey of 7,500 adults ages 18-64.

The findings underscore the growing affordability pinch that many households are experiencing after five years of elevated inflation. In 2026, price increases have reaccelerated due to the Iran war, which has driven up energy costs and pushed consumer prices to their highest level in more than three years.

In a May CBS News poll, more than three-quarters of Americans said their incomes aren't keeping up with inflation. ...

@#2 ... Ummmmm they've turned literally everything into investor return over any true purpose or rationale. ...

Similar to turning healthcare from "healthcare for patients" into "healthcare for profits," this seems to be doing a similar thing to youth sports.

Going from "youth sports for participants" to "youth sports for profit."

More from the article ...

... Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, a former professional football player, expressed concern that private investment in youth sports could lead to a focus on investor return rather than youth opportunity. ...

Lawmakers from both political parties expressed alarm at the trend, while appearing to look for solutions to avoid price hikes to youth participation in sports.

"In some markets, consolidation is driving up costs for families while limiting access to more affordable, community-based options," said Rep. Kevin Kiley, chair of the House Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education subcommittee. "The consequences are clear: A widening participation gap."

"The simple reality is that too many children are being priced out. It's not that they lack talent or determination; it's that their families simply cannot afford the rising costs," said Kiley, an independent from California who caucuses with Republicans. ...

@#3

Not in my view.

Especially when Pres Trump started asking for billions of dollars to fund it and no apparent transparency of where the money would be going.

@#16 ... Depends on who you ask. ...

So, no one really seems to know. That's what I figured.

... Yes, it's called infrastucture and every company has operational costs. ...

Yes, every company has operational costs. Duh.

But, and it is a big Trump-sized but... the operational costs of AI are quite significant. Starting with electrical and water usage costs.

Again, will the revenue be able to catch up? I'll say again, I cannot predict the future.

@#101 ... Then you should except the possibility Obama actually said it. ...

I only indicated that it was "unproven" that he said it.

I have never denied that he might have said it.

Do try harder.

It seems as if Pres Trump's war is stuck in a Schrödinger's cat type of place.

We don't know if it is a full-out war or a cease-fire.

Update ...

@#14 ... Cost of AI token is NOT the cost per transaction. ...

The AI token is what is being used to charge companies for their usage. Maybe it is a single transaction, maybe it is a request. Regardless, rising token costs have emerged as a major pain point for businesses and put a strain on AI budgets, leading some CEOs to question whether or not the use of AI is worth it.

The question in my mind currently is...

Will AI's huge CapEx debt ever be recovered?

And then, debt aside, there are things like ...

@#3 ... 5th on in 6 months. ...

I have one physical exam per year.

Is there some ongoing condition that requires Pres Trump to have so many physicals?

thx for the correction on the other thread.