The 2025 Alaskan Tsunami That Measured 1578 Feet Tall





Daily Dose of Dust
Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Powered by His Story: Cold River





Maria Semple: “Go Gentle” | 30 years Oprah’s Book Club
RECORD STORE DAY 2026’S TOP SELLERS: Taylor Swift, Pink Floyd, Bruno Mars and More.
Vinyl releases from the likes of Taylor Swift, Pink Floyd and Bruno Mars were among the top-sellers from Record Store Day (RSD) 2026 in the United States, according to Luminate.
The yearly independent record store day celebration was held on April 18 and boasted a bevy of albums and singles (mostly vinyl titles) issued for RSD, and exclusively sold through indie record stores.
More than 350 album and single products were issued for RSD 2026, and the top-selling album was the four-LP clear vinyl release of Pink Floyd’s Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975. The project was also issued as a 2-CD set, and the CD edition was the No. 24 best-selling RSD 2026 album title.
Another two-fer on the list is the soundtrack to KPop Demon Hunters, which ranks at both Nos. 2 and 6, with two different iterations of the album on vinyl: a HUNTR/X edition and a Saja Boys edition, respectively.
Record Store Day 2026 Ambassador Bruno Mars had the No. 2-selling RSD 2026 album with Collaborations. The 11-track double vinyl compilation includes such teamings as the No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits “Nothin’ On You” (B.o.B featuring Mars) “Uptown Funk” (Mark Ronson featuring Mars) and “Die With a Smile” (Lady Gaga and Mars).
I suppose vinyl is okay for poseurs, but real audiophiles know that this is the vintage format of choice for getting the most out of music listening: 8-Tracks Are Back? They Are In My House.
I might be mean, but I have a good heart.
When I tell someone to go to hell, I still hope they get there safely.
Why write 25,000 blog posts? Why make a video every single day? In this video, I explain what drives my work, why I have spent
Read the full article…
NONE TOO SOON: Humans May Be Able to Grow New Teeth Within Just 4 Years
World-First Study Reveals Human Hearts Can Regenerate After a Heart Attack
For his latest video essay, Evan Puschak tells us about Un Chien Andalou, the pioneering surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The film is particularly notable for a shocking shot in the opening scene, which, if you’ve seen it, you’ve likely never forgotten. Said Buñuel of the film:
This film has no intention of attracting nor pleasing the spectator; indeed, on the contrary, it attacks him, to the degree that he belongs to a society with which surrealism is at war.
You can watch Un Chien Andalou on YouTube
An Amazing character not far from the VI’s abode …
How Donald on his walker became Centennial Park’s favourite local celebrity
Claire Isaac May 8, 2026
A car turns the corner on Cook Road in Sydney’s Centennial Park and gives a quick toot of the horn. Sitting outside his home, perched on a walker in the morning sun, Donald Shrubb lifts a hand in greeting.
Another car passes, another toot. Shrubb waves again, this time with both hands. This happens dozens of times a day. On the footpath, people often stop – 76-year-old Shrubb is always happy to have a chat.
After more than two years of sitting outside nearly every day, even in the depths of winter or the heat of high summer, Shrubb has become a familiar presence on the street – the man in the chair who seems to know everyone, as much a fixture in the neighbourhood as the footy traffic or the parking inspectors.
Shrubb never set out to become a local celebrity. In fact, sitting outside his building started for a much simpler reason: to stay connected.
For 45 of the 65 years he’s lived in the suburb, he worked as a supervisor on Australia’s interstate railways, travelling the country and even living on board the Indian Pacific during long journeys. He’s also part of Australian history as one of the original 78ers, the activists who marched in Sydney’s first Mardi Gras protest in 1978. He’s had a rich, colourful time: “I’m very lucky, what I’ve got out of life.”
However, just over four years ago, everything changed.
“I went to bed one night quite normally … I woke up in the morning, put my left foot on the floor and my right one just went bang,” he recalls. “The pain was so bad I cannot describe it.”
Doctors found four damaged discs in his spine. The situation was so serious that his neurosurgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital told him he needed emergency surgery.
The operation was complicated – a second one was needed – and recovery was hard. At one point, doctors told him he would never walk again. They suggested a nursing home might be the only realistic option, but Shrubb had other ideas.
“They said, ‘How do you get to your home?’ I said ‘I’ve got probably 40 stairs’. They said, ‘You won’t be going there. You’re going to a nursing home.’ I said, ‘No way.’
“If it takes me all day, I’ll get up there,” he says now. “And I’ll never give up.”
And so, in 2024, he started sitting outside, as a way to keep himself entertained without constant coming and going. Today he can walk a little, assisted by his walker, mostly around the block or up to bustling Oxford Street for lunch. But it’s slow-going and he feels every step.
At first, just a few people waved as they drove by. One of the earliest was plumber Chris Bazely.
“I used to drive past him all the time, so one day I waved at him,” says Bazely. “Now I stop and speak to him whenever I go past. And if I don’t see him on the street for a few days, I wonder if he’s alright.”
More and more people started waving, tooting or checking in as time went on. Now Cook Road has become something of Shrubb’s extended front yard. Neighbours bring him tea and snacks. A couple opposite sometimes arrive with muffins. Even the priest from local church St Francis of Assisi comes by to offer the occasional blessing.
Sisters Genevieve and Barbara Daly live across the road and often bring Shrubb food or remind him to put on sunscreen.
“He’s an iconic figure,” says Genevieve. “He’s an enjoyable, sociable, lovely gentleman, and he’s our neighbourhood watch. He notices everything. When I get home from work, he’ll say, ‘That courier arrived, it’s on the front porch’.”
“He knows everyone and everything that goes on,” adds local postman Julian Lowe, who stops by most days, popping Shrubb’s deliveries directly into his waiting hands. Sometimes, Lowe jokes, when they’re chatting, he feels that Shrubb would rather he moved on because “I’m cramping his style”.
When Shrubb disappeared for 10 days during a hospital stay, the entire neighbourhood noticed.
“People were quite concerned about my wellbeing,” he says. Someone even posted online asking if anyone had seen him. “I didn’t realise I had such a close connection to the public.”
But there really is a connection. For many locals, Shrubb has become a small but meaningful part of daily life, a reassuring presence and, in an increasingly disconnected world, a simple moment of human contact.
Shrubb, however, doesn’t see himself as anything special. In fact, he says he doesn’t know what people get out of seeing him sitting there every day. What he does know, though, is that he’ll keep doing it.
“I’ll do it ’til the end,” he laughs. “What else would I do?”
Chippendale Restorations At Rozelle
The Verge – no paywall: “In the days that followed the US and Israel’s joint military strike on Iran on Saturday, floods of images and videos that supposedly document the war have appeared online.
Some are old or depict unrelated conflicts, are made or manipulated with AI, and in some cases, are actually taken from military-themed video games like War Thunder. With misinformation spreading like wildfire, many people have placed their trust in reputable digital investigators. Organizations like The New York Times, Indicator, and Bellingcat have extensive verification procedures to avoid publishing synthetic or misleading content.
“Audiences can turn to trusted, independent news organizations that take the time and effort to authenticate visuals and clearly explain sourcing,” Charlie Stadtlander, executive director for media relations and communications at The Times, told The Verge.
Media authentication methods are rarely foolproof, but standards are extremely high, and experts have years of experience with evading fake news. This process is no easy task, especially given the lack of reliable deepfake detection tools. But learning from the experts can help us to better protect ourselves when news events are dominating digital spaces — so here are some of the tricks they use…”
"Once is a mistake. Twice is jazz."
- Miles Davis
Greg Sargent writing for The New Republic:
There’s no clean way to hive off terms like fascism or authoritarianism from Trump’s policies. Even if you disagree that the words apply, their use is backed up by a genuine attempt at intellectual justification for it. The use of these terms just is deeply linked to assessments of Trump’s actual policies, from the lawless renditions to foreign gulags to the unleashing of heavily armed militias in American cities to the naked intimidation of large swaths of civil society.
By contrast, when Trump and MAGA media figures call Democrats “Communists” or “antifa,” all of that is entirely disconnected from any policy realities. Many press figures would like it if there were an Archimedean midpoint between the two parties on all these matters. But there isn’t. At the most basic level, one party continues to function as an actor in a liberal democracy, whereas Trump and much of his movement, with the eager participation of many Republicans, simply do not. Dispensing with harsh but accurate descriptions of his real goals would whitewash them.
See also Republican Extremism and the Myth of “Both Sides” in American Politics.
The Daily Docket – A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw: “Reuters uncovered a broader‑than‑previously known Trump administration effort to gain federal control over elections, historically run locally, in at least eight states – using investigations, raids and demands for access to balloting systems and voter ID.
“A new report from Democracy Forward, The Second Front: The Escalating Right-Wing Legal Threats Beyond the White House, reveals the perilous threats to American democracy represented by the far-right legal movement.
The report, part of Democracy Forward’s work to track the far-right legal movement, focuses attention on ways that extremists continue to deprive Americans of their rights in an attempt to concentrate power in the hands of a privileged few people and corporations. “The pro-democracy community is fighting extreme, authoritarian forces on at least two fronts,” reads the report.
“The first front consists of the president’s often unlawful use of executive power, which continues to throw communities across America into crisis and garner significant national attention.
On a second, less visible front, a coordinated right-wing legal movement, operating both alongside and independent of the administration, is advancing an ideological agenda while dismantling pro-democracy protections at the federal, state, and local levels.” The Second Front breaks down the far-right legal movement’s key lines of attack into four categories:
The report explains each line of attack, describes illustrative cases, and analyzes the impact each case could have if the right-wing legal movement wins in the courts.”
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
–Justice Louis Brandeis
Why Almost Everyone Loses—Except a Few Sharks—on Prediction Markets WSJ.
The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI. “If universal basic income enables even one more Einstein to become Einstein over the course of the next century, it will have paid for itself a thousand times over.”
The Secret to Success Is ‘Monotasking’. “We find that in real‑world work, the more switches in attention a person makes, the lower is their end‑of‑day assessed productivity.”
“It’s easy for me to write characters that are way smarter than I am, because I can spend two weeks working on a problem and say the character solved it in five minutes." Andy Weir talks to Rolling Stone about writing 'Project Hail Mary'
The Conversation: “The U.S. government “is able to purchase Americans’ sensitive data because the information it buys is not subject to the same restrictions as information it collects directly.
The federal government is also ramping up its abilities to directly collect data through partnerships with private tech companies. These surveillance tech partnerships are becoming entrenched, domestically and abroad, as advances in AI take surveillance to unprecedented levels… “Congressional funding is supercharging huge government investments in surveillance tech and data analytics driven by AI, which automates analysis of very large amounts of data.
The massive 2025 tax-and-spending law netted the Department of Homeland Security an unprecedented US$165 billion in yearly funding. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, got about $86 billion. Disclosure of documents allegedly hacked from Homeland Security reveal a massive surveillance web that has all Americans in its scope. DHS is expanding its AI surveillance capabilities with a surge in contracts to private companies.
It is reportedly funding companies that provide more AI-automated surveillance in airports; adapters to convert agents’ phones into biometric scanners; and an AI platform that acquires all 911 call center data to build geospatial heat maps to predict incident trends. Predicting incident trends can be a form of predictive policing, which uses data to anticipate where, when and how crime may occur…
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s national policy framework for artificial intelligence, released on March 20, 2026, urges Congress to use grants and tax incentives to fund “wider deployment of AI tools across American industry” and to allow industry and academia to use federal datasets to train AI. Using federal datasets this way raises privacy lawconcerns because they contain a lifetime of sensitive details about you, including biographical, employment and taxinformation…. On March 18, 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed to Congress that the FBI is buying Americans’ data from data brokers, including location histories, to track American citizens…. But in buying your data in bulk on the commercial market, the government is circumventing the Constitution, Supreme Court decisions and federal lawsdesigned to protect your privacy from unwarranted government overreach… Supreme Court cases require police to get a warrant to search a phone or use cellular or GPS location information to tracksomeone. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act‘s Wiretap Act prohibits unauthorized interception of wire, oral and electronic communications.Despite some efforts, Congress has failed to enact legislation to protect data privacy, the use of sensitive data by AI systems or to restore the intent of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Courts have allowed the broad electronic privacy protections in the federal Wiretap Act to be eviscerated by companies claiming consent. In my opinion, the way to begin to address these problems is to restore the Wiretap Act and related laws to their intended purposes of protecting Americans’ privacy in communications, and for Congress to follow through on its promises and effortsby passing legislation that secures Americans’ data privacy and protects them from AI harms…”
The Conversation: “Most people know the basics of healthy living that become more important as you grow older: Eat plenty of vegetables, exercise regularly, sleep well, have a social life, limit your alcohol consumption and don’t smoke.
As an economist and social psychologist who study altruism and health, we wondered whether civic engagement might play a role as well. In 2022, the American Medical Association, an organization representing doctors, noted that voting could potentially have health benefits. So we conducted a study that directly tested this idea:
We examined whether older Americans – people who are 65 and up – who vote live longer than nonvoters. Older adults vote at a higher rate than younger adults in the United States. In Wisconsin, the focus of our study, the voting rate of older adults is even higher…”