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DrBob, 🧠 Mechanic
@drrjv@vmst.io
“A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law,
must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power:
the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice;
his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness”
— Edward Gibbon
(who wrote ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’)
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Joined November 19, 2022
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If you read 1 thing daily, read this🙏:
So much for Android being 'Open'
Starting September 2026, #Google will require every #Android app developer to register centrally, provide government ID, and submit signing keys.
Apps from unregistered developers will be blocked on all certified devices worldwide. This threatens F-Droid, open-source distribution, and user autonomy.
@keepandroidopen@techhub.social #KeepAndroidOpen
https://keepandroidopen.org
“May 6, 2026” https://bit.ly/42oqe4X #trump #bananarepublic #kashpatel #iran #dementia #hegseth #rubio
Silver lining to #Trump‘s war with #Iran?
Renewables overtake natural gas in US power generation for first time
Renewable energy sources generated more electricity than natural gas in the United States for the first time last month, marking a significant milestone in the transition to clean energy.
According to data from Ember, renewables including #solar, #wind, #hydropower and bioenergy became the largest source of US electricity in March. Combined with #nuclear power, they supplied more than half of total generation.
Apple isn’t behind in AI, it’s shifting the stack.
While others scale metered cloud inference, Apple is optimizing for on-device models, local inference, and hardware-software co-design. Lower marginal cost, tighter integration, different moat.
This creates a bifurcated AI economy, while most builders are still cloud-native.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaAFquzj5B8
#apple #timcook #ternus
What Physical ‘Life Force’ Turns Biology’s Wheels?
Evolution has created the flagellar motor, a combination propeller/brain that enables single-celled bacteria to move toward food sources. It’s an electric motor that rotates at several hundred revolutions per second — faster than the flywheel in a race car engine — to twirl a tail-like flagellum that pushes the cell along.
When the flagellar motor rotates counterclockwise, it propels the cell through the water 10 or more times its own length in a second.
https://bit.ly/4vISKM5
#Evolution #creationalism #biology
We may see regime change in Washington before we see it in Iran 😳
https://bit.ly/4vHaW8G
The Onion: At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours
“I believe that with the new #InfoWars, we can alchemize the pioneering spirit of amateur inquiry, the profit-maximizing drive of corporations, and the cold mental clarity that comes only with disciplined daily ingestion of mind- and body-altering chemicals. If we can do that, what other great things can we do together?”
Medical Breakthrough: Pancreatic Cancer Vaccine Shows Lasting Results in Early Trial
“An experimental, individualized therapeutic cancer #vaccine that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to treat #pancreaticcancer continues to show potential in a small patient group. Follow-up results from a phase 1 clinical trial show that nearly 90% of people whose immune systems responded to the vaccine were still alive up to six years after receiving the last treatment”
Very Good Analysis: John Mearsheimer: We have Just Suffered Irreversible Damage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6SO07ruXPY&t=370s
#iran #war #trump #hormuz #StraitOfHormuz
5 intoxicatingly funny cartoons about #KashPatel
Permanent TACOS for everyone 😳
Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will extend its cease-fire with Iran and continue the blockade of the country’s ports until its leaders could present “a unified proposal,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: “It was a starkly different tone from the American president, who just this morning had threatened a military attack if #Iran did not agree to U.S. demands.”
Said #Trump just this morning: “I expect to be bombing. The military is raring to go.”
Ternus leading the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon was a high-stakes gamble that required a total overhaul of hardware, software, and the developer ecosystem. In the tech world, shifts this massive usually break things. Ternus made it look effortless.
As he takes the helm, here is why that “full-stack” victory changed everything for Apple’s future.
https://neurodoctor.com/2026/04/21/why-apples-new-ceo-is-a-bet-on-system-level-power/ #apple #ternus #iphone
Florida loses its ‘Citrus Capital of the World’ moniker
Blame the Chinese?
It Was on Your Table Every Morning Growing Up. It’s Dying Before Our Eyes. No One Wants to Face It.
In 2003, the mighty #Florida orange industry produced 242 million boxes of fruit, with 90 pounds of #oranges per box, most of which went on to become orange juice. Now, not even 25 years later, the United States Department of Agriculture was forecasting a pitiful 12 million boxes of oranges, the least in more than 100 years, the worst year since last. A decline of more than 95 percent.
Must See: The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s next film, a mythic action epic, brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX® film screens for the first time and opens in theaters on July 17
https://youtu.be/f_bKjZeJBBI
The only silver lining in this fiasco is the chance that it prompts a serious rethink of America’s use of military force and the president’s ability to deploy it without meaningful checks
What Really Changed Yesterday—The U.S. Lost More Control of Gulf Oil
“Yesterday looked like confusion—It wasn’t
Iran didn’t just threaten Hormuz—it hit the system’s last safety valve, the pipeline carrying nearly 2 million barrels a day out of the Gulf
That single shift changes the logic of the war: the odds of a favorable U.S. deal are now near zero, and the chances this pause holds for two weeks are well under 20%.”
https://bit.ly/4d7utqC
Replying to
8/ Why didn't Trump act on his deadline threat?
Because the next step is qualitatively different.
Moving from economic coercion to decisive military action, especially ground operations, requires a pretext to generate:
- Domestic political support
- Allied backing
- A credible reason the risks are necessary
Right now, none are in place.
Samsung has an Android problem — and it’s getting worse. Hundreds of millions of Galaxy owners await its latest upgrade bringing critical security updates, with no confirmation yet as to when and where it comes. Google’s Pixel benefits from this, but the real winner is #iPhone — and that’s bad news for #Samsung.
As I’ve warned before, this is a fundamental disconnect in #Android, with #Google owning the OS but also growing #Pixel in competition with its OEMs. Samsung outsells Pixel more than 15-1. And yet it’s Pixel that’s first to everything, including the new Android 17 beta update
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/05/04/googles-android-update-iphone-wins-as-samsung-falls-behind/
Flashback Quote
“I want to tell you what I really think of Donald #Trump. This man is a pathological liar… He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth… The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.”
— Sen. #TedCruz (R-TX), 10 years ago today.
Plan to Abolish Electoral College Gets Closer to Reality
(Or just increase the size of the Congress)
“The #ElectoralCollege — our nation’s bizarre system that hands a few narrowly-divided states the privilege to choose our presidents — has been entrenched for two centuries,” Vox reports. “But a long-game effort from reformers, which has played out quietly in blue states across the country over the past 20 years, has gotten it surprisingly close to toppling.” “And a blue wave in the 2026 midterms could finish the job.”
https://politicalwire.com/2026/05/05/plan-to-abolish-electoral-college-gets-closer-to-reality/
The AI RoboDoctor Will See You Now
A Harvard-led study just dropped a result that will make every #ER doctor’s stethoscope twitch.
In a head-to-head against attending physicians at a Boston hospital, #OpenAI’s o1-preview reasoning model diagnosed patients more accurately at the moment of triage, just when information is sparse, time is short, and getting it wrong can kill someone.
https://bit.ly/4n5bf9t #Healthcare #emergencymedicine #AI #artificialintelligence
Replying to
6/ What is Iran's endgame, and why delay?
The most important question in the set.
Iran isn't trying to win quickly. It's trying to change the structure of the game.
Delay serves three purposes:
- Raises the global economic cost
- Tests the political limits of US escalation
- Creates space for parallel channels (Pakistan, Russia, Oman)
A Tipping Point At Last?
“what happens when a president who campaigned on lowering inflation and never going to war in the Middle East … decides to go to war in the Middle East and thereby fuel inflation. What happens when a president who became his party’s nominee three times because he spurned neocon wars … turns around and embraces the regime-change war the neocons have been pushing for decades?”
Replying to
Apple's entire entry-level product lineup now costs less than a single 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip.
The ten products that now define Apple's lowest-cost tier are as follows:
- iPhone 17e: $599
- MacBook Neo: $599
- iPad (11th generation): $349
- Magic Keyboard Folio: $249
- Apple Pencil (USB-C): $79
- Apple Watch SE 3: $249
- AirPods 4: $129
- Apple TV 4K: $129
- HomePod mini: $99
- AirTag: $29
The total comes to $2,510, which is $189 less than the $2,699 starting price of the 16-inch MacBook Pro. And don't forget another 10% off with student discount.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/23/apple-ecosystem-now-costs-less-than-macbook-pro/
Yikes, forget about Linux security
Copy Fail: 732 Bytes to Root on Every Major #Linux Distribution
“A single 732-byte #Python script can edit a setuid binary and obtain root on essentially all Linux distributions shipped since 2017.
The kernel never marks the corrupted page dirty for writeback, so the file on disk remains unchanged and ordinary on-disk checksum comparisons miss the modification.”
https://bit.ly/4w1TWu3 #ubuntu
Trump goes down as the 'environmental president'?
Will we end up thanking Trump for accelerating the shift to EVs, an accidental environmental legacy.
Even my son, who has been on the fence about getting an EV, submitted to the economic reality last week.
March car sales up 11%, but all growth came from electric. EVs +42% YoY (Germany +66%, Italy +72%). Hybrids + EVs = 70% of registrations. Gas down 10%, diesel 14%.
Like Norway shows, once adoption tips, it snowballs fast.
This is how it ends...
Six of the Magnificent Seven bet everything on cloud AI, pouring billions into warehouses of NVIDIA GPUs, sucking electricity and guzzling water.
Apple didn't go this way, and in this video I make the case that #Apple has already won the AI race, and explain why a Medium piece by Michal Malewicz argues the catalyst that bursts the bubble won't be an #NVIDIA earnings miss or an #OpenAI funding crunch, it'll be a 128GB Mac Mini.
https://youtu.be/SmuX-Al7DUs?si=jp1uGvcd-LXss_L6 #ai #llm
Interesting Polymarket prediction if you’re into that:
Will Trump be impeached before his term ends?
Yes 66% chance 😳
Shakespeare Plays Ranked
-
Henry IV Parts One and Two
-
Twelfth Night
-
Hamlet
-
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
-
Macbeth
-
King Lear
-
Love’s Labour’s Lost
-
Coriolanus
-
The Winter’s Tale
-
Henry V
Check the link for the whole list of 35
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/ng-interactive/2026/apr/22/every-shakespeare-play-ranked-lear-antony-cleopatra-hamlet #Shakespeare #Hamlet
Replying to
7/ Delay isn't stalling. It's strategy.
The longer the war continues without decisive US success, the more plausible a new equilibrium becomes, one where Iran retains leverage over Hormuz and gains recognition as a durable regional, and emerging 4th global power center.
Replying to
2/ Will China pressure Iran into a settlement?
Plausible at first glance China benefits from stable energy flows.
But China's priority isn't stability. It's leverage: future relative power and wealth.
A prolonged Gulf crisis weakens US credibility, strains alliances, and accelerates alternatives to the dollar system.
Those are structural gains.
U.S. intelligence says #Iran can outlast Trump’s #Hormuz blockade for months
“A confidential #CIA analysis delivered to administration policymakers this week concludes that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship, four people familiar with the document said, a finding that appears to raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s optimism on ending the war.”
https://wapo.st/3R0FNgI
Polls Suggest Trump‘s frontal temporal dementia is getting a hold on him 🤯
“According to a new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans believe President Donald J. Trump does not have the mental sharpness necessary to lead the country
Fifty-five percent think he does not have the physical health to serve as president
Fifty-four percent say they don’t think Trump is a strong leader
Sixty-seven percent think #Trump doesn’t carefully consider important decisions.”
https://bit.ly/3QOi3MU
Replying to
4/ Why aren't markets pricing this in?
They're not ignoring the war—they're discounting its timing.
Investors assume either a near-term deal or a contained conflict that avoids systemic disruption.
Those assumptions rest on a belief that economic pressure works quickly.
Historically, it doesn't.
Tick-Borne Disease Are Rising: Take These Steps to Stay Safe
“Most people bitten by a Lone Star tick won’t develop an alpha-gal allergy, though some will still test positive in a blood test. Because of this, clinicians typically don’t recommend getting tested unless there’s a strong suspicion that alpha-gal allergy is causing problems. People who can avoid getting bitten again may lose the allergy after about three to five years, though it could happen quicker—or not at all”
https://bit.ly/4vSecy8
#ticks #lyme
Replying to
3/ China will push Iran away from catastrophic escalation—new strikes on Gulf oil infrastructure, unless in retaliation for US strikes on Iran's energy.
But not toward meaningful concessions on enriched uranium or surrendering control of Hormuz.
That's a ceiling, not an off-ramp.
Watch Walter White meet Dexter in this AI-generated TV crossover clip.
#breakingbad #dexter #ai #artificialintelligence #video
I wish Trump was reading this column, although doubtful he would understand the intricacies presented.
The only quick way out of this war is if Trump chokes on a Big Mac or is (appropriately) removed from office under the 25th Amendment (doubtful with the sycophants in the cabinet and congress.)
https://escalationtrap.substack.com/p/from-breakdown-to-trajectory-why #iran #war #politics #trump #pape
Replying to
5/ There's a lag between physical disruption (shipping, insurance, rerouting flows) and visible macro impact (inflation, unemployment, earnings).
That lag can be weeks.
Markets are pricing the first stage of the war. They aren't pricing the second.
Timing is trader psychology—but realities have a way of presenting themselves.