Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a cable this week directing U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to launch coordinated campaigns countering foreign propaganda. The cable explicitly endorses Elon Musk's X as an "innovative" tool for the effort and instructs U.S. diplomatic posts to align their work with the Pentagon's Military Information Support Operations (MISO), known as Psyop, the military's psychological operations unit. Rubio identifies five operational goals--countering hostile messaging, expanding information access, exposing adversarial behavior, elevating local voices sympathetic to U.S. interests, and "telling America's story"--and instructs embassies to recruit local influencers and community leaders to carry U.S.-funded narratives in ways designed to feel organically local rather than centrally directed.

The idea that the State Department would issue a formal cable endorsing a specific social media platform by name as a tool of U.S. diplomacy--let alone military psychological operations--would have been, until recently, almost unthinkable. But the structural transformation that has taken place over years has made the news feel almost ordinary today. It was a transformation that dismantled, piece by piece, the legal accountability, operational independence and institutional resilience that once made such a cozy relationship between government and platforms inconceivable.

What makes this cable remarkable is the extent to which it represents a departure from how U.S. technology platforms have historically interacted with state power--including with the U.S. government. For decades, U.S.-based social media companies operated as something closer to institutional rivals of government control over online speech, foreign or domestic. Google famously clashed with the Chinese government over censorsing its search engine and ultimately redirected its Chinese operations to Hong Kong rather than comply with censorship demands. Facebook and Twitter both resisted Brazilian court orders to remove content and to identify users. Twitter--before its acquisition--went to court to resist government data requests, publishing regular transparency reports and fighting national security letters that came with gag orders. These companies were imperfect actors, but their general posture was to resist governments that sought to use their platforms as instruments of state messaging.

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An unsuspecting windsurfer collided with a gray whale on the San Francisco Bay in a startling and rare encounter captured on video.

The footage shows the moment the surfer is forcefully thrown from his board as a gray whale breaches off the California coast, plunging him into the water.

The man, identified as Eric Kramer by multiple news outlets, had been sailing near San Francisco when the whale surfaced in his path.

"It was a 'whale' of a day," he wrote on social media. "Please be cautious and respect wildlife, I had reduced my speed greatly bc I had seen a couple whales in the area but on my last run back it just popped up right in front of me. Glad we are both ok."

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Scientists have engineered tobacco plants to produce five psychedelic compounds that are normally found in a wide range of natural sources, including psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and toads, according to a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances.

The breakthrough could lead to more sustainable and scalable production of these compounds by using model plants to biosynthesize common psychedelic "tryptamines," such as psilocybin from hallucinogenic mushrooms, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from plants, and psychoactive compounds secreted by the Sonoran Desert toad.

Eventually, this research could pave the way toward--as one example--tomato plants that contain microdoses of psychedelic cocktails in each fruit. However, the study's authors emphasized that these modified plants would need to be limited to medical use in clinical settings, and should not be accessible to consumers for recreation.

"We are interested in this, not because of the recreational effects, but because of the medicinal potential," said Paula Berman, a postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science who co-led the study, in a call with 404 Media.

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james Broadnax has been locked up in a 6ft-by-10ft cell on death row in Texas for more than 16 years, and in that time he has developed coping mechanisms for passing the long and desolate days.

A favourite technique is to write spoken word poetry at his cell desk. He becomes so engrossed in the creative process that he can lose himself for hours, transfixed in what he calls a "time gap". In one of his recent poems, featured in a short death row documentary, Solitary Minds, Broadnax, who is 37, describes how he writes:

"I've been here umpteen days never forgetting

To forget the absence of my fate.

Sloppy ciphered sentences become rage,

Provoking thoughts into words spoken

Across this blank page."

Though his love of writing has remained constant, the form of Broadnax's poetry has changed over the years. Today it is spoken word, but as a teenager back in the aughts it was rap. Broadnax's dream was to become a successful rapper. He would fill entire notebooks with handwritten rap lyrics. Next month, that old habit could cost him his life.

Broadnax is set to enter the execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas, on 30 April. He will be strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital - his life snuffed out in no small part because of the prosecutorial use, or misuse, of his poetry. In 2009, Broadnax, who is African American, was convicted along with his cousin of murdering two white men, Matthew Butler and Stephen Swan, during a robbery in Garland, Texas. He was found guilty by a jury from which Dallas county prosecutors had initially excluded all Black jurors, until the trial judge stepped in and reinstated one of them.

During the sentencing phase of Broadnax's capital trial, prosecutors presented the jury with 40 pages of the defendant's notebooks found in a suitcase after his arrest. The state carefully selected rap lyrics infused with violent images of murder, robbery and drugs, to make the case that Broadnax should be sentenced to death. Its lawyers skirted over lyrics addressing peaceful narratives such as redemption and love. For the ultimate punishment to be secured under Texas law, jurors would have to be persuaded that the defendant posed a threat of "future dangerousness".

"Fade 'em, fade 'em,

Tape 'em up. I hit 'em later.

I am so high up and cloud proof, like a skyscraper."

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Anthropic's Claude Code lacks the persistent kernel access of a rootkit. But an analysis of its code shows that the agent can exercise far more control over people's computers than even the most clear-eyed reader of contractual terms might suspect. It retains lots of your data and is even willing to hide its authorship from open-source projects that reject AI.

The leak of the company's client source code - details of which have been circulating for many months among those who reverse-engineered the binary - reveals that Claude Code pretty much has the run of any device where it's installed.

Concerns about that came up in court recently in Anthropic's lawsuit against the US Defense Department (Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al) for banning the company's AI services following the company's refusal to compromise model safeguards.

As part of its justification for declaring Anthropic a supply chain threat, the US government argued [PDF], there was "substantial risk that Anthropic could attempt to disable its technology or preemptively and surreptitiously alter the behavior of the model in advance or in the middle of ongoing warfighting operations..."

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During the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump promised that if he were elected president again, he would reduce the price of a gallon of gas by 50% within a year of taking office. "12 months from January 20th... your gasoline for your car is going to be 50% cheaper," Trump declared at a speech to the Detroit Economic Club on October 10, 2024. "That's a big thing."

On January 20, 2025, the day Trump took office for a second term, the average price for a gallon of gas was $3.12. Had Trump kept his pledge, gas would now cost about $1.57 per gallon.

On Tuesday, the average price of a gallon of gas was $4.02. Instead of the 50% reduction in gas prices that Trump promised, prices have increased by more than 28%.

Trump also promised to drive down other energy costs, including electricity bills and home heating gas, by 50%. "Energy costs, all of it, air conditioning, heating, all of it, including gasoline, will drop by more than 50% within the first 12 months," Trump pledged during an August 19, 2024, rally in York, Pennsylvania.

Home heating oil has gone from $3.94 per gallon on the day of Trump's inauguration to $5.57 per gallon today, a 41% increase. Residential electricity costs averaged 15.92 cents per kilowatt-hour in January 2025. Today, Americans are paying an average of 18.05 cents per kilowatt-hour, an increase of 13%.

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"Under the Trump economic plan, we will cut your energy prices in half," Trump said at a September 21, 2024, rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. "Mark it down, and you can get very angry at me if we don't do it." Two days later, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Trump promised, "If you vote for me, I will cut your energy and electricity prices in half within 12 months."

There are many more examples, all of which are on tape. Popular Information has compiled some highlights. Watch:

(video on Popular Information site)

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Big questions are hanging in the air since whiskey tycoon Raj Peter Bhakta put the former Green Mountain College up for donation with the requirement that the recipient have a particular mission.

Green Mountain College shuttered in 2019 after declining student enrollment, leaving Vermonters wondering what would come of the Rutland County campus anchoring Poultney's downtown. The college's closure came as a blow to the town, but Poultney has since turned its focus to revitalization efforts, including hopes to make the town a hub for mountain biking and outdoor recreation.

Bhakta, known for founding the Vermont-based company Whistlepig, bought the 155-acre college campus for $4.8 million in 2020, with original plans to set up a sustainable agriculture initiative. Bhakta's goal with the campus eventually morphed into a vision for a resort with some residential development. After six years of holdups, Bhakta is leaving those plans behind.

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Bhakta gained notoriety even before his plan to donate the college received national attention. Prior to acquiring the old college campus in rural Vermont and running current business Bhakta Spirits, Bhakta was ousted from the popular whiskey business he founded, Whistlepig, after fraud allegations were levied against him. Bhakta appeared as a contestant on President Donald Trump's former reality show "The Apprentice," and ran for a Pennsylvania congressional seat in 2006. As part of his political message advocating for border security to prevent undocumented migration, Bhakta pulled a political stunt, riding an elephant with an accompanying mariachi band on the Rio Grande.

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Lil Miquela has 2.5 million Instagram followers, a high-fashion wardrobe, and a clear political voice. She has advocated for Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQI+ community, fronted major brand campaigns, and built a devoted global fanbase. She also has no pulse.

Lil Miquela is a virtual influencer, a computer-generated character designed to look, sound, and behave like a real person. And she is not alone.

In China, Liu Yexi blends traditional aesthetics with cyberpunk visuals to amass a huge following. Ling, created by Chinese AI startup Xmov, has promoted Tesla, Vogue, and luxury tea brand Nayuki.

. . .

The contrast between Lil Miquela and Liu Yexi is instructive.

Lil Miquela embodies a Western-centric aesthetic: sleek, cosmopolitan, and faintly unsettling in her near-human appearance. Liu Yexi draws on traditional Chinese cultural imagery. On the surface, they seem to represent very different visions of global identity.

But look closer and the differences dissolve.

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Introducing forest soil on an entryway doormat shifted the indoor microbiome of Finnish homes closer to bacterial profiles found outdoors, with less contribution from human-associated bacteria, a new study shows. In the future, such interventions rebalancing the home microbiome could be used for health promotion, especially in urban settings. The study was led by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and the University of Eastern Finland and is published in the journal Microbiome.

"Applying forest soil onto a rug led to a clear rise in forest soil-associated bacteria in the air. The effect was most pronounced at infant breathing height for the first two weeks after application, and the signal was also detectable in other areas of the home," says lead author, chief researcher Martin Taubel.

Childhood home microbiome may influence long-term health

Because early childhood is spent largely indoors, the home microbiome is a major source of microbial exposures that activate children's immunoregulatory pathways and may influence their long-term health. Reduced encounters with environmental microbes have been observed in urban homes and are linked to an increased risk of inflammatory diseases, including asthma and allergies. This has sparked interest in interventions to modify indoor microbial exposures toward health-promoting interactions.

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Illinois voters delivered a $13 million rebuke to the crypto lobby in the Senate and House District 7 races, which had absorbed 90% of the PACs' spending in the state. Crypto money may be starting to backfire among voters, though whether this marks the beginning of a trend or just a misstep against two strong candidates remains unclear. They're not slowing down, though -- the Coinbase-backed Stand With Crypto advocacy group has endorsed their first six candidates, and drawn targets on the backs of two more.

Despite endorsements from top White House figures and multi-billion dollar investments, prediction markets are running into serious trouble. Kalshi has accumulated 20 civil cases from states and Native American tribes and now faces a criminal case in Arizona. Lawmakers have introduced a flood of proposed legislation seeking to prohibit war- or assassination-related markets, forbid participation by elected officials, or ban sports-related markets entirely.

And in perhaps the most emblematic story of these beyond-parody times we're living in: a crypto fugitive who hasn't even been convicted yet is already shopping for a presidential pardon, and has hired two lobbyists whose previous claim to fame involved a series of spectacularly bungled attempts to frame public figures for sexual assault.

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