April 7, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 454

HMM: Scientists Discover a Simple Method to Reduce Mercury Levels in Tuna. “When tuna is immersed in water containing cysteine, the novel solution removed 25 to 35 percent of the mercury from the fish, according to lab tests.”

I take a cysteine supplement for anti-aging. I wonder if it does anything to mercury in my body?

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 31

A MODICUM OF SANITY PREVAILS: Supreme Court Overturns Lower Court’s Block on Venezuelan Deportations. “The Supreme Court ruled on Monday night that the Trump administration could continue to deport Venezuelan migrants based on a wartime powers act for now, overturning a lower court that had put a temporary stop to the deportations. The decision marks a victory for the Trump administration, although the ruling is narrow and focused on the proper venue for the cases, rather than on the administration’s use of a centuries-old law to justify its decision to send planeloads of Venezuelans to El Salvador with little to no due process. The justices did not address the question of whether the Trump administration improperly categorized the Venezuelans as deportable under the Alien Enemies Act, finding the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C. The justices determined that the migrants should have raised challenges in Texas, where they were being held.”

But if they hadn’t brought their challenges in DC, they wouldn’t have gotten Judge Boasberg.

Related:

Posted at 7:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds 251

JESUS’ LAST WEEK AS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD. IT: It’s “Countdown Jerusalem” by EKO on Substack. Ya gotta read this one!

Posted at 7:16 pm by Mark Tapscott 23

UNEXPECTED INSIGHT FROM UNEXPECTED SOURCE: Semafor Media’s Ben Smith Jr. looks at a National Press Club decision to reject a MAGA advocate’s membership application and offers an unexpected insight. He also appears to have muffed it on a related issue. See if you catch it. SCROLL DOWN TO “Journalism Organization’s Don’t Get it.”

Posted at 6:22 pm by Mark Tapscott 16

YES:

Related: “Actually, it’s very much an open question as to whether feminist interpretations of life make women happier. . . . Certainly, polls such as the General Social Survey suggest that women have become steadily less happy every year since 1972.”

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 240

WELL:

Related:

Posted at 5:02 pm by Glenn Reynolds 407

WHERE’S THE DOWNSIDE?

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll 91

HANG ON, THIS RIDE ISN’T FOR THE SQUEAMISH:

Europe has been playing the protectionist/mercantilist game for a long time. They might have regulated innovation nearly out of existence, but these commercial games they still know how to play.

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green 46

LINCOLN BROWN: Through a Wardrobe Dimly: Netflix’s Narnia Reboot. “So last week, the word was out that Netflix is playing host to a reboot of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia.’ On top of that, talks are apparently in the works to have none other than Meryl Streep voice Aslan. Yes, they are coming for Narnia in the same way they came for ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ A galaxy far, far, away is not safe, nor is Middle Earth; why should Narnia be sacrosanct?”

Posted at 4:19 pm by Stephen Green 166

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Joe Biden Was “a Shell of Himself” by End of Term. Hunter Biden Didn’t Help.

Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House [by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes] arrived this week, loaded with, well, insider details about how Biden, Trump, and Kamala Harris tried to win the presidency: Biden aides laying down strips of fluorescent tape to help guide the president’s walk through a New Jersey fundraiser; Trump surprisingly turning away from chaos and turning down Corey Lewandowski’s bid to oust rival campaign aides; and Harris being hamstrung by Biden’s insistence that there be “no daylight” between the two Democrats.

I spoke with Allen and Parnes at a moment when the consequences of the 2024 election were hitting hard, everywhere from Wall Street to Kyiv. In the interview, edited for length and clarity, the two described how they discovered more Democratic dysfunction than was apparent at the time, and how Trump’s team kept its candidate under control. Mostly.

Vanity Fair: The opening scene of the book describes a series of power players as they watch the fateful Biden-Trump debate. Where were the two of you that night?

Jonathan Allen: I was at Shelly’s Back Room on F Street Northwest in Washington, smoking a cigar, watching the debate, and calling and texting with sources.

Amie Parnes: I was at home. My phone was blowing up. I think I had maybe 50 text exchanges that night with freaked-out lawmakers, strategists, basically everyone—Republicans, Democrats. I often go back and look at those messages because they were surreal.

At that point, in June 2024, President Biden’s physical and mental capacities had long been a central issue in the campaign. Was his terrible debate performance still a surprise to you?

Parnes: It was just stunning to watch.

Allen: We’d been watching Biden’s decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020. And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought.

Your book describes the lengths to which the president’s longtime inner circle—including first lady Jill Biden and senior advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti—went to hide that decline. Who was most responsible?

Parnes: All of them. It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off. He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours.

—Chris Smith, Vanity Fair, Friday.

Related: Joe Biden Is Somehow in a Better Place Today Than He Was Four Years Ago.

—Chris Smith, Vanity Fair, January 9th, 2024

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 152

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Space Force Awards Up to $13.7 Billion in Launch Contracts.

The Space Force awarded three contracts April 4 for rocket launches worth up to $13.68 billion combined—and this time, Blue Origin is in the mix for the business along with longtime incumbents SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

The National Security Space Launch contracts include 54 critical missions for the military and intelligence community between 2027 and 2032. Under the contracts:

• SpaceX wins 28 missions for up to $5.9 billion
• ULA wins 19 missions for up to $5.4 billion
• Blue Origin wins 7 missions for up to $2.4 billion

The disparity reflects each company’s progress and stature in the launch market at this point: SpaceX is the dominant provider, accounting for the vast majority of U.S. launches in recent years, while ULA, long a leading provider, only recently won certification for its new Vulcan Centaur rocket to provide NSSL launches. Newcomer Blue Origin has so far only executed one launch of its New Glenn rocket, which is not yet certified.

For Blue Origin, winning any launches is a major win.

The more launch providers, the better.

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green 39

CHANGE: Apple Plans to Source More iPhones From India as Potential Tariff Fix.

The adjustments are a short-term stopgap while Apple attempts to win an exemption from President Trump’s tariffs—which Chief Executive Tim Cook obtained during the first Trump administration. The company sees the situation as too uncertain to upend long-term investments in its supply chain, the people said.

Trump’s tariff package raises levies on Chinese goods to at least 54% while imposing a 26% rate on Indian goods. On Monday, Trump threatened to add to China tariffs if the country doesn’t remove the retaliatory duties they announced after U.S. tariff plans were revealed on April 2.

India is largely friendly, China isn’t.

Although the tariffs on Vietnam strike me as short-sighted. Vietnam is a potential counterweight to China (the Vietnamese Army gave the PLA a bloody nose in 1979) and has a small enough economy that we can afford a little friendly largess.

Posted at 3:17 pm by Stephen Green 108

BAD DOGGIE: Remote Access Backdoor Discovered in Chinese Robot Dog Unitree Go1.

The discovery of the backdoor was made by cybersecurity specialists Andreas Makris (aka Bin4ry) and Kevin Finisterre (aka d0tslash), who published their findings in a detailed technical report late last week. The duo reverse-engineered firmware and conducted a hands-on analysis of the Unitree Go1 robot dog, revealing that each device ships with a preconfigured tunnel client that initiates a connection to CloudSail — a remote access platform developed by Zhexi Technology, based in China.

The researchers demonstrated that upon gaining access to the CloudSail API, which they did using a recovered API key, they could:

• List all connected devices and their IP addresses
• Establish remote tunnels to those devices
• Access the robot dog’s web interface with no authentication
• Use the robot’s cameras for live surveillance
• Log in via SSH using default credentials (pi/123)
• Move laterally within internal networks to which the robot is connected

Makris and Finisterre identified a total of 1,919 unique Unitree Go1 units that had connected to the CloudSail network. While most connections originated from Chinese IP addresses, a significant number were traced to academic and corporate networks abroad. Notable institutions included MIT, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Waterloo, among others. The researchers even observed some units connecting via Starlink, suggesting use in mobile or remote environments.

Exit quote: “Perhaps most concerning is the implication of deliberate design. The tunnel is not merely an overlooked debug utility; it appears fully integrated into the boot process and enabled by default.”

Robot dogs are just the tip of the Communist Chinese surveillance (or worse) iceberg.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green 103