What's the saying? 'The fish rots from the head down?'

 What's the saying? 'The fish rots from the head down?'

Fascism is a form of madness. Psychosis, if you like. And it is now the Fascist States of America. With an American madman, sans the little mustache.

It has been clear for a long time that President Trump is a person with a disorganized mind and a disordered personality. What the past few months and especially the past few weeks have brought into focus is how his pathologies have cascaded downward and outward through his administration. They have become institutionalized. The reason the administration so often does not act coherently is that it cannot. The world faces something new and baffling and frightening in Mr. Trump’s second term: a psychotic state.

This does not mean that every individual in the government is emotionally or psychologically unstable. Nor is it a clinical diagnosis of the president. The issue is that the administration as a whole lacks a consistent attachment to reality and the ability to organize its thinking coherently. Mr. Trump’s grandiosity, impulsivity, inconsistency and outright breaks with reality have become state policy.

In that respect, Mr. Trump’s second term is different from his first. In 2020 he could confabulate about the election result or babble about treating Covid with injections of disinfectant. But he could not translate his fantasies into reality — at least not usually. In the second term, by contrast, institutional psychosis has been on display since Day 

The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State

Trees don’t actually grow from the ground, scientists find

The Brighter Side – Understanding where a tree’s mass comes from reshapes how you think about growth, food, and the environment. “Trees are not just passive recipients of soil nutrients. A Different Reading of Familiar Material. The practical implications of this are easy to underappreciate. Wood is not geological material shaped by roots. It is atmospheric carbon reorganized into polymer chains by solar energy. A plank of lumber, a sheet of paper, a forest canopy: each represents carbon that was once suspended as gas, captured by leaf tissue, chemically reduced, and locked into a solid matrix. Forests, viewed through this lens, are not simply biological communities rooted in landscape. They are reservoirs of atmospheric carbon made physical. 

Bluesky’s new AI is being rejected by users, blocked more than White House account

Mashable: “Mere days after Bluesky announced its new AI product, Attie, the coding helper has already become the second most blocked account on the platform.

 The Attie profile was given the cold shoulder by 125,000 users already, TechCrunch reported. With just 1,500 followers, that means 83 times more users blocked Attie than followed it — that number is higher than the official White House account, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) profile, and is second only to Vice President JD Vance, according to open source data…Attie is an agentic app that lets users “vibe code” their own social feeds. It’s a tool that the platform believes will help cut down on low-quality, AI-generated slop and misinformation that is proliferating across the internet…”

When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality

Just Security: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” posted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday. In case one thought that was an impulsive utterance, it’s notable that the president in apparently prepared remarks a few days earlier said, “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.” 

Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place servicemembers in a profoundly challenging situation. As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the presidents’ words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return….

• First, such threats undermine U.S. legitimacy and global standing, as they demonstrate a rejection of binding international agreements and core commitments to the laws of war. Indeed, the U.S. military doubled downon its commitment to the law of war following Vietnam War-era atrocities, requiring our Armed Forces to follow the law regardless how any conflict is characterized. An operation that followed through on Trump’s rhetoric would be one of infamy in the history of modern warfare.
• Second, they pose a significant risk of moral and psychic injury for servicemembers.  National soul-searching regarding how Americans fight followed the long U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which both civilian casualties and detainee abuse undermined strategic objectives and weighed heavily on soldiers’ consciences long after the fighting stopped.  This reflection led to initiatives such as the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation program and new laws regarding detention and interrogation practices, strengthening U.S. commitment to fighting honorably and effectively through adherence to the law.
• Finally, the public record of intent to commit war crimes puts soldiers at risk of later liability. In any future war crimes or U.C.M.J. investigation—for which there may be no statute of limitations—their actions will be judged based on the reasonably available information at the time of the strikes.  See, e.g., Executive Summary of the Investigation of the Alleged Civilian Casualty Incident in the al Jadidah District, Mosul, May 8, 2017.  Long after the Secretary of Defense receives his anticipated pardon from the president, it is not unlikely that both his and Trump’s expressly stated intent to commit acts that amount to clear war crimes and to dispense with “stupid rules of engagement” may be considered evidence of notice and scienter on the part of servicemembers’ during any future congressional or criminal investigations.

The U.S. military trains to fight with precision and lethality according to the law of war – precision meaning attacking only lawful military objectives while doing our utmost to protect innocent civilians caught up in the fight. 

The legal hurdle to convert a civilian object such as a power plant into a lawful military objective is a high one because the United States and its allies vigorously rejected “total war” after the massive suffering endured by millions during World War II.  

What President Trump threatens is exactly that, from a civilian targeting perspective – total war against Iran, a complete rejection of the legal limits the United States has incorporated into the law governing U.S. military operations for both pragmatic and moral reasons…”

Epstein Child Sex Trafficking At Least 1,114 Victims Only 138 Victim Interviews Release

Follow up to Searchable database for the Epstein Files – Only Fraction of Files Released – See Why Are FBI and DOJ Hiding 976 Victim Interviews??? Compiled by Joseph Elfelt. Version 1 April 2, 2026. Download this PDF – “Recently I finished making a list of the unique FD-302 victim interviews that have been released. I only included EFTA links to FD302s that are firsthand reports alleging sexual abuse. There are no duplicate reports in the list. My goal was to find out how many unique FD-302 victim interviews have been released. 

This analysis shows that FBI/DOJ only released 138 unique FD-302 victim interviews that are firsthand reports alleging sexual abuse. 1,114 – 138 = 976. The FBI/DOJ are hiding at least 976 victim interviews. By intentionally refusing to make all the victim interviews and all the other Epstein data public, the FBI and DOJ have decided to protect wealthy and powerful pedophiles instead of obeying the Epstein Files Transparency Act…

See also Compiled by Joseph Elfelt. List of Document Serial Numbers For Key Victim Documents the FBI is Hiding Version 10 April 2, 2026 Download this PDF – This report provides the FBI’s own “serial” number (1, 2, 3, 4 … 700+) for just over 200 documents the FBI has failed to make public. Each combination of case #3027571 and serial number identifies a specific document that is part of the FBI’s investigation into Epstein’s child sex trafficking. 

It is a virtual certainty that those ~200 documents contain numerous allegations of sexual abuse by wealthy and powerful men **other than** Epstein. Those documents, that the FBI is so intent on hiding from the public and from congress, are the ‘holy grail’ that will blow this whole child sex trafficking thing wide open. Note that these serial numbers are not the same as the EFTA numbers the FBI is assigning to documents that are released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The FBI ran a tip line. For each tip the FBI produced a Crisis Intake document with notes about the tip. 

If the tip was deemed sufficiently meritorious then apparently the FBI attempted to conduct at least one interview. For each interview the FBI produced an FD-302 document with notes about what the person being interviewed had to say. The FBI released many Crisis Intake documents and FD-302 documents alleging abuse by Epstein. This report has a list of serial numbers identifying about 200 of these documents which the FBI is refusing to release. 

Why? What is so special about these 200 documents? Why release documents alleging abuse by one man, Epstein, while refusing to release documents alleging abuse by other men? How is withholding those 200 documents consistent with the Epstein Files Transparency Act? The following table summarizes the findings that are detailed further below in this report. “Firstperson” refers to a statement by a person alleging that they were abused…”

 

Embrace the mundane: small talk is more fun and important than we think

Even chit-chat on ‘boring’ topics such as onions and maths can be pleasurable and good for our mental health, scientists find

Kaya Burgess

, Science Correspondent

Monday April 13 2026, 9.45pm BST, The Times

Do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris? A Royale with Cheese. A Big Mac’s a Big Mac. But they call it Le Big Mac.

How fast-food menus translate into French may not, on the face of it, seem like the most thrilling of conversation topics.

But just as the dialogue between Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta turned out to be one of the most memorable scenes in Pulp Fiction, engaging in small talk on a seemingly mundane matter may turn out to be the highlight of your day.

This is true even if you end up nattering about cats, diets, Pokémon or even onions, a study has found.

Researchers have cited the exchange between the characters Vincent and Jules in the Quentin Tarantino film as an example of how small talk with a colleague or friend on an apparently trivial topic may seem boring or even like a chore, but is actually much more enjoyable — and important for our mental health — than we expect.

The scene in Pulp Fiction and the “conversations about nothing in Seinfeldillustrate how ordinary topics can become unexpectedly captivating once the conversation gets under way”, researchers from the University of Michigan said.

When it comes to general chit-chat around the water cooler or coffee machine, people tend to think the most important thing in judging whether a conversation is going to be enjoyable is whether the topic being discussed is particularly exciting or compelling. 

But this may be the conversational equivalent of judging a book by its cover. We should not be so quick to run away from someone who wants to ask how our weekend was, discuss the weather or tell us about their cat.

What matters most is having a pleasant moment of social interaction with another person, hearing about their life, telling them about yours, and simply enjoying a “small moment of connection”, research has shown.

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, asked 1,800 participants to rate how enjoyable they expected a conversation to be on certain seemingly mundane topics.

“Topics were many and varied,” researchers said, “including World Wars One and Two, non-fiction books, the stock market, cats and vegan diets. In some cases, participants were asked to suggest a topic they found boring.” Responses included such topics as maths, onions and Pokémon.

The participants consistently expected conversations on such topics to be “fairly dull”. They were then encouraged to discuss them with another person. The pairs discussed topics deemed interesting by one party but not the other, as well as matters that both had told researchers they found dull.

• The art of small talk — and how to be the king of it

Their chats involved “free-flowing” conversation about the selected topic, conducted over Zoom with cameras on and limited to five minutes’ duration.

The results were surprising.

“Afterward, they reported enjoying them much more than they had predicted,” the researchers found.

“This pattern held even when both parties agreed the topic was boring.”

It suggests that the writers of great novels and television shows have perhaps been a little harsh to compulsive small-talkers such as Miss Bates in Jane Austen’s Emma, a good-natured woman who chatters on from one mundane domestic topic to another before falling foul of Emma’s lack of patience.

Keith Bishop, the character known as “Big Keith” in The Office, was also gently mocked in the sitcom for his habit of engaging in mundane chit-chat at the Wernham Hogg paper company branch in Slough, warning one colleague before a trip to America: “You want to keep your travellers’ cheques in a bumbag. Out there they call them fanny packs.”

In the Irish sitcom Father Ted, the character Father Purcell was also mocked for his conversational ability, dubbed “the most boring priest in the world” for his propensity to prattle on without interruption.

• French speed-daters skip small talk to get to sexual fantasies

In Abigail’s Party, written by Mike Leigh for stage and television, Angela and Beverly engage in excruciating suburban small talk which seems agonisingly mundane on the surface, but masks a darker undercurrent of class and marital tensions between the characters.

Elizabeth Trinh, a doctoral student who led the study, said: “We tend to assume that if a topic sounds dull, the conversation will be dull too. But that’s not what people actually experience.

“We were both surprised and excited by how robust the effect was. People consistently expected conversations about seemingly boring topics to be less interesting than they turned out to be.”

It is not what you are talking about that matters — it’s who you are talking to, she suggested.

“What really drives enjoyment is engagement,” Trinh said. “Feeling heard, responding to each other and discovering unexpected details about someone’s life can make even a mundane topic meaningful.

“If we skip talking to a coworker at the coffee machine, a neighbour in the elevator or a stranger at an event, we may be missing small moments of connection. Even a brief conversation about everyday life may be more rewarding than we expect.”

A closer look at small talk “reveals that conversations about seemingly boring topics can be surprisingly enjoyable for those involved”, the study notes. “People can find themselves unexpectedly absorbed in casual exchanges about daily routines, small annoyances or trivial observations, conversations that, in hindsight, may feel more interesting than anticipated.”

‘Everyone is Replaceable’ … Palantir CEO says AI ‘will destroy’ humanities jobs

I’m so old I remember when Amazon wasn’t evil.

Expecting people to carry on working around the body of a dead colleague is egregious and unacceptable.

"For more than an hour, several employees said, Amazon workers in the facility were instructed to continue fetching totes, picking items off shelves and loading them onto trucks for delivery as the man lay dead" 

 For more than a week, Amazon has managed to keep a death at its Troutdale, Oregon, facility out of public view. 

‘Everyone is Replaceable’: Death Rattles Oregon Amazon Facility

 

Elizabeth Warren Calls Amazon MGM’s $40 Million ‘Melania’ Bid ‘Bribery in Plain Sight,’ but Studio Says It Did Nothing ‘Improper’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Palantir CEO says AI ‘will destroy’ humanities jobs but there will be ‘more than enough jobs’ for peoplewith vocational training

More people will retire with housing debt – and that’s a problem

More people will retire with housing debt – and that’s a problem 

Lucy Slade Apr 13, 2026

 A growing cohort of Australians who buy later in life and are facing rising interest rates and cost-of-living pressures will retire with outstanding housing debt, increasing the pressure on policymakers to reform the pension system and to increase housing supply.

Refinancing inquiries among those aged 55 and over surged 12 per cent year-on-year in February, the fastest growth in any cohort, according to credit bureau Equifax. Among borrowers aged 46 to 55, inquiries rose 8 per cent.

First home buyers Cameron and Chantelle Hill, pictured with their duck Peanut and dogs Loki and Lexi, feared being forced to rent for life so they made huge sacrifices to buy a house. Dan Peled

Australians are paying off mortgages much later in life, and an increasing number do not expect to retire mortgage-free. More than 40 per cent of those surveyed by Loan Market Group, a brokerage that claims a 25 per cent national market share, do not expect to have paid off their loans before retirement. Almost one-quarter do not even have a financial retirement strategy.

Australia’s aged pension system was designed with the idea that people would retire owning their home. The family home is not counted in means-testing for pension eligibility while financial assets are, and pension payments are too low to cover private rental market costs.

Boosting ownership, which has fallen from a peak of 71 per cent in 1966 to 67 per cent at the last census in 2021, is one argument for reformsto curb tax breaks on housing investment.

Another is to reform pension eligibility, says Matthew Bowes, a senior associate in Grattan Institute’s Economic Prosperity and Democracy Program

“We’re going to see more renters retiring in future,” Bowes said. “At the moment, they are disadvantaged if they have savings outside the family compared with people having savings in the family home.”

The think tank advocates for the value of a family home above a threshold of $750,000 to be included in the pension means test, a measure it estimates could save the budget about $4 billion annually.

“We’re seeing increasing concern by Australians about intergenerational equity and this is one reform that could go towards alleviating that,” Bowes said.

Without major changes, the trend of older home buyers is likely to continue.

The average age of a first home buyer is 34, with one in five first home buyer loans issued last year going to people aged over 40, according to Westpac, suggesting that fewer Australians will be free of their 30-year housing debt at the end of their working life.

‘We were just desperate’

Chantelle Hill and her husband, Cameron, rushed in February to buy a three-bedroom house in the semi-rural suburb of Bellmere, on the outskirts of Brisbane’s north, for $825,000.

The couple, both 30, compromised on property size and location, moving more than an hour away from their family and friends, so they could get into the market before house prices rose above their borrowing capacity.

“We had to get into the market now or else we wouldn’t be getting into it. We were just desperate to find what we could get into. This isn’t really going to be our long-term house,” Chantelle Hill said.

“I just felt like, if we didn’t get in now, then we weren’t going to get in and we were just going to be left behind and be stuck renting for the rest of our lives.”

The national median dwelling value is $930,000,according to Cotality. There are no affordable entry-level houses in any Australian capital city, the type suitable for first home buyers looking to start a family. In Sydney, 55 per cent of suburbshave medians more than nine times higher than the median household income.

The generational divide is clear in the declining home ownership figures. Baby Boomers are three times more likely to have bought a house before turning 40 than Millennials, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

The decrease in home ownership and increase in Australians retiring with home loan debt will have knock-on effects for wealth planning and the superannuation system.

Hill said she and her husband had not thought about retirement when they bought their home.

“We just believe we’re still young, and that’s something for maybe 10 or so years down the track to think about,” she said.

Grattan Institute’s Bowes said people with high super balances could use some of that to pay off outstanding mortgage debt when they retired.

“As Australians retire with ever larger super balances, it’s appropriate that some of those savings are used to pay for housing,” he said.

But the big housing challenge that governments needed to tackle were ensuring there was greater choice of housing available for downsizers in cities, boosting rent assistance to support retirees who rent, and shifting away from stamp duty as a tax base, he said.

The pitfalls of only relying on super

Wealth adviser Patricia Howard said getting into the property market was the most important step to having a financially secure retirement, even if it meant making compromises.

“It’s really important, even for people in their 40s, if they can take that first step on the property ladder, to do that,” said Howard, managing director at Howard Osmond Financial Services.

“The worst situation you could find yourself in is if you decide, ‘I’m never going to buy the house of my dreams, so I’m just going to ignore the property market and just going to let my super accumulate and hope that it will look after me’.”

The people likely to struggle most in retirement would be those receiving the full aged pension and Commonwealth Rent Assistance, she said.

“The rental supplement in this country is so insufficient that no age pensioner can survive on it, even living in a caravan park. It is just that bad.” 

RELATED

• Housing affordability

‘Everyone’s happy’: Why multigenerational living is on the rise

• Property investment

Don’t make this major property mistake when you retire

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Lucy Slade covers real estate for The Australian Financial Review, based in the Sydney newsroom. She was previously the breaking news reporter. Email Lucyat lslade@afr.com

 

Russian government hackers broke into thousands of home routers to steal passwords TechCrunch. Help me. Fancy Bear was debunked LONG ago regarding having any actual Russians involved, let alone the government. So propaganda inflation

LinkedIn secretly scans for 6,000+ Chrome extensions, collects data

Follow up to What is BrowserGate? See alsoBleeping Computer: “A new report dubbed “BrowserGate” warns that Microsoft’s LinkedIn is using hidden JavaScript scripts on its website to scan visitors’ browsers for installed extensions and collect device data. BleepingComputer has independently confirmed part of these claims through our own testing, during which we observed a JavaScript file with a randomized filename being loaded by LinkedIn’s website. This script checked for 6,236 browser extensions by attempting to access file resources associated with a specific extension ID, a known technique for detecting whether extensions are installed. This fingerprinting script was previously reported in 2025, but it was only detecting approximately 2,000 extensions at that time. A different GitHub repository from two months ago shows 3,000 extensions being detected, demonstrating that the number of detected extensions continues to grow….LinkedIn’s site uses a fingerprinting script that detects over 6,000 extensions running in a Chromium browser, along with other data about a visitor’s system.

This is not the first time that companies have used aggressive fingerprinting scripts to detect programs running on a visitor’s device. In 2021, eBay was found to use JavaScript to perform automated port scans on visitors’ devices to determine whether they were running various remote support software. While eBay never confirmed why they were using these scripts, it was widely believed that they were used to block fraud on compromised devices. It was later discovered that numerous other companieswere using the same fingerprinting script, including Citibank, TD Bank, Ameriprise, Chick-fil-A, Lendup, BeachBody, Equifax IQ connect, TIAA-CREF, Sky, GumTree, and WePay…”