Month: April 2026

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FBI is looking into the suspicious deaths of 10 top scientists

The FBI is looking for any connections among the recent deaths and disappearances of at least 10 scientists who had ties to government science projects or other sensitive information. Those who have died or disappeared include a nuclear physicist and MIT professor fatally shot outside his Massachusetts residence, a retired Air Force general missing from his New Mexico home, and an aerospace engineer who disappeared during a hike in Los Angeles. The announcement comes after the cases were highlighted by President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers; growing online speculation hinted at a link between the incidents, although there is no known evidence of any connections among the individual researchers other than the nature of their respective jobs and the fact that none of the incidents occurred before 2022. The most recent case involves retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, who disappeared, along with a gun and his wallet, in February. (via Scientific American)

Meet the 82-year-old queen of jumping rope

It was a Wednesday morning in April, and Annie Judis had transformed the kitchen of her Beverly Hills mansion into a film set. With her iPhone balanced on a stand, the 82-year-old adjusted the lighting and smoothed her costume: an aqua spandex workout set that revealed a hint of cleavage, a matching head wrap and tinted glasses. When it was showtime, her housekeeper hit play on her adopted theme song, the peppy anthem “Good Morning,” by Max Frost. Smiling from ear to ear, Ms. Judis started jumping rope and didn’t stop for a full minute. “Come on, everybody, let’s move it, let’s go!” she said to the camera. She does this routine nearly every morning, greeting her 187,000 Instagram followers and reminding them: “You’re going to need that energy for the grandkids.” Ms. Judis currently holds the Guinness World Record for oldest competitive rope skipper. She also thrives on having an audience: If she doesn’t share a workout, she said, it’s like it never happened. (via the New York Times)

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Gander Social and the debate over digital sovereignty

I recently wrote a feature piece for a new Canadian-owned media outlet called Be Giant about Gander Social, a new Canadian-owned and operated social-media app that is still in beta testing, and the broader debate around what some call “digital sovereignty.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Over the past few decades, the vast majority of our essential communications infrastructure has become entirely American. From the Slack messages we send at work to our X posts and our Instagram stories and Facebook Reels to the search engines and shopping platforms we use: all American. Even the undersea cables over which our digital communications flow were built by U.S. companies. That reality has become a lot more uncomfortable of late, and many Canadians are now thinking about what’s come to be called “digital sovereignty.” Should we have our own homegrown services? Is that even possible at this point? And if we had Canadian alternatives, would anyone use them?

You can read the rest here: https://www.begiant.ca/stories/ideas/canada-digital-sovereignty-gander-social

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A strange bank robbery with one of the great notes of all time

It was 2004. I was 31. I was up for several days on meth and drinking heavily for the past month or so. I decide to go rob a bank and take my son to Tijuana, Mexico to see my biological father – his new grandpa. I’ve recently been discharged from parole. I take this new freedom as a chance to use drugs uncontrollably and drink like a mad man. I sit down on my chair and snatch a piece of scratch paper off my desk and write a bank robbery note. Later, as we proceed with the trial, I sit in the courtroom in a suit and tie, looking as innocent as possible. The D.A. walks in with a huge poster board and easel. He turns to the audience, then back to the jury and asks the judge for permission to enter exhibit D. The judge grants this wish. It’s my banknote. Written in big bold black letters on a torn piece of a brown paper bag that I get from liquor stores. “Please give me all of your money,” it reads, “or i will tickle you to death put the money in the paper bag i have a pisol in my pocket. Have a nice day the paper bag bandit.” (via Dreamland)

Ancient damage from a kind of machine-gun discovered on the walls of Pompeii

In 89 B.C.E., Pompeii was under siege. An invading army of tens of thousands of soldiers led by Lucius Cornelius Sulla stormed the town’s walls with slings and catapults. The siege subdued the rebellious city back beneath the thumb of the Roman Republic. Recently discovered damage on Pompeii’s fortification walls likely resulted from this fateful siege — and some of it may have come from a deeply mysterious ancient “machine gun,” researchers reported recently. Excavations and surveys conducted since 2024 have revealed several clusters of gouges in Pompeii’s northern fortification walls that were pristinely preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in C.E. 79. The marks are arrayed in a way that suggests they may have been left by a repeating dart-thrower called a polybolos. “It was an antipersonnel weapon used to strike archers emerging from the battlements above and the postern below,” says study lead author Adriana Rossi. The machine “had been described in detail but had never before been unearthed in any archaeological find or material evidence.” (via Scientific American)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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The one kind of crypto that might actually be useful

Before I even get started, I know that many of you may have already tuned out. Cryptocurrency? You mean the thing that gave birth to all those stupid NFTs of Bored Apes, and innumerable “rug pulls” where the founder of a coin disappeared with millions? The same thing Donald Trump and his family have used to steal, er… generate billions of dollars in alleged value? The thing where they don’t even know who actually created it, or who controls a wallet with about $135 billion in Bitcoin still in it? (No, it’s not the guy the New York Times just said it was, or the guy who keeps claiming it was him, or the guy who was on the cover of Newsweek back in 2014 who had the same name as the creator). Crypto is for hustle bros and drug deals on the Dark Web, right? Well, yes. But I still think there is one area that actually interests me — and others — and it is known as stablecoins. I realize this isn’t the usual kind of topic for this newsletter, but please bear with me while I try to explain why I find it so interesting (I am not selling anything).

First of all, what is a “stablecoin?” Simply put, it’s a cryptocurrency that is backed by some other “fiat” currency, like the US dollar, or by some collection of assets with a stable value (such as gold). And what is the point of doing this? Well, the most obvious point is in the name: unlike most cryptocurrencies, which have no underlying value and therefore can be extremely volatile, the value of most stablecoins (theoretically at least) trades in a range determined by the underlying fiat currency. However, the hard part is that just because you issue some crypto backed by a certain amount of hard assets like US dollars doesn’t mean that your currency is going to be as stable as you might want it to be. That’s because — as with every other currency, including US dollars — the stability of a currency is based on the level of trust that investors have that the value it claims to have is going to exist in the future. In other words, what the kids like to call “vibes.”

A great example of this is the company that has become one of the biggest players in stablecoins, an outfit called Tether, which has a market capitalization of more than $100 billion, and controls an estimated 70 percent of the stablecoin market, which has been growing extremely quickly (according to a report from the International Monetary Fund, the trading volume of stablecoins increased by more than 90 percent in 2024, and that trading was worth about $23 trillion). Tether is not a new guy on the block: it was founded in 2014, and in 2019 it passed Bitcoin as the most traded cryptocurrency in the world. But despite (or perhaps because of) its size and market power, Tether has been a lot more volatile in the past than something called a stablecoin should be. Why? Because of concerns that it didn’t have enough solid assets — either dollars, gold or US treasury certificates — to back up the value of all the cryptocurrency it had already issued.

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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Anthropic’s new Mythos model: Dangerous or over-hyped?

I find it fascinating whenever Anthropic in particular comes out with either a new AI model or a note about what it has learned about an existing model, because the responses almost always fall into one of two camps: the first is the “Oh my god, we’re all going to die” camp, or some variation on that theme — in other words, expressions of amazement at how advanced AI has become, how it is basically conscious, etc. and how it will inevitably lead to the destruction of humanity as we know it. And the second is the “What a load of BS, this is ridiculous, AI is just a glorified typewriter with text prediction built in, Anthropic is drinking its own bathwater” camp, or variations on the same. The latter group will usually argue that all of the blather from Anthropic about how dangerous or interesting or intelligent its new model is amounts to a glorified marketing campaign.

This line of thinking emerged early on in the rise of modern AI: the idea being that companies like Anthropic will want to make their models sound smart and/or dangerous because that will encourage companies to buy it and also convince governments to put them in charge of regulating it. It’s a little like the Boy Who Cried Wolf fable, except the boy in this case is also trying to sell shares in Wolf Inc. to venture capitalists, because he spent $300 billion building the animatronic wolf, and he’s also hoping to sell the townsfolk on letting him handle the wolf problem on account of he’s such a wolf expert. Of course, the one thing that almost all references to this story forget to include (except Ben Thompson at Stratechery) is that the wolf actually showed — I’m sure the knowledge that they were right about the boy fibbing was very comforting as all of their sheep were eaten 🙂

The most recent argument of this kind came from David Sacks, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist and the “AI Czar” at the White House, after Anthropic exec Jack Clark — a former journalist with Bloomberg — wrote a Substack post called “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear,” in which he mused about the intellectual qualities of his company’s AI. Here’s how Clark phrased it in his post (which I discussed here):

We are growing extremely powerful systems that we do not fully understand. Each time we grow a larger system, we run tests on it. The tests show the system is much more capable at things which are economically useful. And the bigger and more complicated you make these systems, the more they seem to display awareness that they are things. It is as if you are making hammers in a hammer factory and one day the hammer that comes off the line says, “I am a hammer, how interesting!” This is very unusual!

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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When a bra maker got the job of making the first NASA spacesuit

In 1966, when seamstresses at the International Latex Corporation arrived at its new Apollo Suit shopfloor in Frederica, Delaware, they were essentially “taught to sew again from scratch.” And for good reason: Compared to the company’s bras and girdles, the craftsmanship needed to fashion a spacesuit was, in every sense, out of this world. The journey to this point had been improbable for a company whose grand name had initially belonged to a single founder and salesman, Abram Spanel, selling mail-order girdles through magazine ads. It was only thanks to one of Spanel’s first employees — his own TV repairman, MIT dropout Leonard (Lenny) Shepard — that ILC maintained a small “industrial” division researching government contracts. Shepard was optimistic that the firm’s expertise in rubber, nylon, and strapping could provide an answer to work in space. (via MIT Press)

Michael J. Fox and three other co-workers on a 1970’s TV show all got Parkinson’s

Canadian-born actor Michael J. Fox, while working on a CBC sitcom as a teenager, contracted a virus that some researchers say may have caused him to later develop Parkinson’s disease. Fox worked on show Leo and Me in Vancouver in 1977. Researchers studying the degenerative disease theorize that exposure to viruses or environmental toxins can trigger its onset years later. According to Dr. Donald Calne, director of the Neurodegenerative Disorders Centre at the University of B.C. Hospital, Parkinson’s can develop in clusters of people. Fox is one of four Leo and Me workers who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which leads to muscle rigidity, tremors and involuntary movements. Japanese researchers have established that a virulent form of the flu, caused by a virus, can make its way into the same part of the brain that Parkinson’s attacks. (via the CBC)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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Bobby Brown fried chicken in cocaine when he was 10

Brown says he was unaware his mother sold cocaine to support the family and while away, he decided to fry chicken, a meal his mother taught him to cook. He grabbed a bag of what he believed was flour to coat the chicken. His mother would later return, elated he took initiative to cook dinner, but soon realized he mistook the bag of cocaine for flour. “I was 10. So I didn’t recognize the strange smell emanating from the pan,” Brown writes. “After I had taken a few bites and feeling weirder with each bite, my mother walked in. With horror she realized what I had done,” he wrote. “I fried chicken in her cocaine — a radical new addition to the family’s culinary offerings. Cocaine chicken.” Brown says his mother never explained to him what he did, but months later he figured it out. (via Vibe)

Dancer with motor neuron disease performs again through a digital avatar

A ballerina with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) says she was able to dance again after her brainwaves were used to power an avatar live on-stage in Amsterdam. Breanna Olson, a mother of three, found out two and a half years ago she had ALS, the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND) and which, with no known cure, weakens muscles and over time affects speech, swallowing and breathing. However, using sensors to measure the electrical activity transmitted from her brain, her motor signals could be converted into an digital avatar. Breanna used an electroencephalogram (or EEG) headset to capture her brain activity and specific motor signals associated with imagining certain dance movements. A brainwave interface translating these signals into computer instructions then allowed her to convey which of these movements she wanted her mixed-reality avatar to dance in real-time. (via the BBC)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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Kentucky cops arrest man for riding a horse while drunk

The driver, Kentucky cops say, had just left a liquor store, smelled of alcohol, and was found “partially slumped over” the controls of his brown vehicle. As a result, Jorge Hernandez, 48, was arrested for galloping under the influence (GUI) through a residential neighborhood in Bowling Green. According to an arrest report, an officer spotted the sagging Hernandez atop a horse around 6 PM Thursday. When Hernandez began to ride on the sidewalk, the cop performed a traffic stop. Hernandez reportedly smelled of alcohol, had bloodshot eyes, and his speech was slurred. He told police that he had just left a liquor store and was returning home. Tied to the horse’s saddle was a liquor store bag, the report states. He was arrested for operating a non-motor vehicle under the influence of intoxicants. The paperwork describes his vehicle’s make and model as “other.” The vehicle’s year is listed as 2024 and its color as brown. The report does not indicate who took custody of the equine post-arrest. (via The Smoking Gun)

Ohio’s “Serpent Mound” still fuels debate as America’s most mysterious earthwork

Located in Adams County, Ohio, the ancient site features a massive, undulating serpent whose coiled tail and gaping jaws have stood as an impressive monument to the Buckeye State’s ancient past, prompting serious investigations by archaeologists that have spanned nearly two centuries. First documented in the landmark work Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley in 1848 by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, the famous site features many peculiarities, including the large oval-shaped feature positioned within the serpent’s open mouth. “This oval is formed by an embankment of earth, without a perceptible opening,” Squier and Davis wrote, noting that the feature “is perfectly regular in outline” and “slightly elevated” while also containing an area of “large stones, much burned once, [that] existed in its center.” (via The Debrief)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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A Masonic lodge in France harbored a mafia hit squad

Twenty-two people went on trial in France on Monday on charges of murder and other serious crimes centred on members of a Masonic lodge accused of running hit squads. Thirteen of the defendants face life imprisonment. Those in the dock include four military personnel from France’s foreign intelligence service (DGSE), two police officers, a retired domestic intelligence officer, a security guard and two business executives. They are accused of the murder of a racing driver, the attempted murders of a business coach and a trade unionist, aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy – all on behalf of a mafia network inside the former Athanor Masonic Lodge in the Paris suburb of Puteaux. Several freemasons from the 20 or so members of the lodge are in the dock. Most of the accused, aged between 30 and 73, have no previous criminal records. (via France24)

He joined Apple as a teenager in 1976 and he is still working there 50 years later

In 1976, Chris Espinosa rode his moped a mile and a half every Wednesday afternoon, parked it and went to work. Just 14 years old, he still had to go to school and didn’t have a driver’s license. But his employer, Apple Computer, had customers who wanted to try its earliest computer, and Espinosa was responsible for demonstrating it. Espinosa’s job has changed many times in the 50 years since. But he still works for Apple. At 64 he is one among an increasingly rare breed in today’s economy: people who have spent all of their lives working for one company. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak signed the documents to start Apple in 1976, Silicon Valley’s fruit orchards hadn’t yet been taken over by office parks. Espinosa became employee No. 8 at the scrappy start-up that assembled computers by hand in Mr. Jobs’s home. (via the New York Times)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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Using AI to write isn’t always wrong and other heresies

I’m a writer, as some (hopefully most) of you know. I’ve been a writer and journalist for more than 40 years now. It’s one of the few things I really know how to do, and it’s about the only way I have ever managed to make any money, so not surprisingly, I am pretty attached to it. As a writer, I think many people assume that I would belong to the “AI writing over my dead body” group in terms of the current debate over artificial intelligence and writing-slash-journalism. These are the kinds of folks behind a recent campaign to convince publishers not to deal with those who use AI: it asks writers to not only renounce AI, and promise they will never use it, but to also refuse to support or do business with writers who do use AI. There’s been a dramatic increase in that kind of sentiment recently, which isn’t surprising, since there seems to have been a pretty dramatic increase in the numbers of writers and journalist who are happy to use AI. I think the important question is: What are they using AI for? And is that defensible?

If you believe that everything AI is involved with is worthless “slop,” you should probably stop reading. As with most things (apart from a few exceptions) I think there is a place for most tools when it comes to doing the work, and to me AI is just another tool, much like the printing press or the typewriter or the internet. I’m old enough to remember when people were pretty upset about the internet and the impact it was going to have on creative pursuits or the world in general (no, I don’t remember the arrival of the printing press, contrary to what my kids might think). As one of the first staffers at the Globe and Mail‘s live news site in 2000, I wrote an inaugural column about how great the internet was for writers like me — the ability to have our work read (and commented on) by large numbers of people with little or no friction. Did I regret some of those words after a decade or so online, especially the comment part? Sure I did. But on balance I still think it was and is mostly good. After all, it makes it easy for me to send you this!

I realize that artificial intelligence and everything it involves — the training on data that AI companies don’t have the rights to, for example, or the fact that it sometimes encourages people to believe that they should kill themselves — makes it somewhat different from the printing press or even the internet (although I would argue not as much as some seem to think). Then there’s the whole “will AI kill everyone” question, which I’m not really equipped to answer. But in terms of a tool that can help with writing, or pretty much any other task, I think it makes perfect sense — in certain contexts. Is it going to pollute the internet with slop? Of course. But so have countless human beings over the past few decades. So that’s a difference of magnitude, rather than a difference in kind. Is it going to take some people’s jobs? Of course — just as countless other technologies have, from the automated loom to the colour printer or the electronic calculator. But it could also create new jobs along the way. Will they be as good? I have no idea.

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

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