A Bug's Life

Pete Hegseth either has no idea what a pocket square is and/or what it’s for, or he uses the American flag as facial tissue, for blowing his nose. You might point this out to any flag patriots who still worship the shitstain and his minions:

Normally, I probably wouldn’t bother with something this stupid and petty, but they’re trying so hard – so hard – to pretend to be old money and yet have no fucking idea what any of the symbolism means that this basically became a small but perfect snapshot of the sick delusional fraud encompassing literally every aspect of their worthless, filthy lives.

There are nearly infinite reasons to want to punch this cretin directly in the face the moment you see him, this is merely one of many.

But it’s just so completely on the nose, isn’t it?

Just like someone’s fist should be.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

And I don't think I've had Edna before??

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

I talk with my hands. This amuses A. to no end: She's the one who's part-Italian and yet I'm the one who can't talk without gesticulating. Whether I'm talking about sending an email (fingers typing on a keyboard), sending a fax (hands palm-down, fingertips guiding the paper into the machine), or chopping vegetables (left hand moving the knife up and down, right hand advancing the the vegetable toward it), I don't even think about it, but my hands accompany my words.

Yesterday, we got some small cucumbers and I was talking about using some of them to make oi muchim (a Korean cucumber salad with thinly sliced cucumbers in a gochugaru-seasoned dressing). I was talking about slicing the cucumbers, and she looked at my hands and asked "What's that?" I looked at my hands and saw that my right hand was flat, palm-up, while my left hand was palm-down, in a claw grip, moving back and forth over my right hand. And then it hit me: When I make oi muchim, I don't slice the cucumbers with a knife. I slice them with a mandoline. And without even thinking about it, my hands were doing to the correct motion for the action I would be doing.

I don't even notice that I'm doing this until she points it out, so I don't know if I could stop it if I tried.

Posted by John Timmer

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/we-keep-finding-the-raw-material-of-dna-in-asteroids-whats-it-telling-us/

On Monday, a paper announcing that all four DNA bases had been found on an asteroid sparked a lot of headlines. But many of the headlines omitted a key word needed to put the discovery in context: "again." The paper itself cited similar results dating back to 2011, and the ensuing years have seen various confirmations and more rigorous studies. The new work was less notable for showing that we had found these bases in Ryugu than for solving a previous mystery: earlier studies had failed to detect them there, despite their presence in many other asteroid samples.

Outside the headlines, though, the new work provides some interesting details, as it may answer an important question: how these bases got there in the first place. Understanding that better may be critical for getting a better picture of how the raw materials for life ended up on Earth in the first place.

Searching for bases

Let's start with a description of what the researchers found. Both DNA and RNA, the two nucleic acids used by life, share a similar structure. That includes the backbone, a chain that alternates between sugars and phosphates that are all chemically linked together. While the specific sugar differs between DNA and RNA, the chain itself varies only in length; otherwise, the backbone of every DNA or RNA molecule is identical.

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https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/we-keep-finding-the-raw-material-of-dna-in-asteroids-whats-it-telling-us/

Posted by Avi Asher-Schapiro

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/doge-goes-nuclear-how-trump-invited-silicon-valley-into-americas-nuclear-power-regulator/

Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the US government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology.

On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant experience in nuclear law or policy; he had just entered government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.

As Cohen led the group through a technical conversation about licensing nuclear reactor designs, he repeatedly downplayed health and safety concerns. When staff brought up the topic of radiation exposure from nuclear test sites, Cohen broke in.

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https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/doge-goes-nuclear-how-trump-invited-silicon-valley-into-americas-nuclear-power-regulator/

Have you noticed that the middle is gone from everything? Restaurants, companies, careers, music, retail, the economy itself. What replaced it is a barbell: one enormous weight on each end, nothing in the center, and most of us trying not to get crushed by the bar.

And the replacement does look better every single time, I grant you that. The A24 film is better than the $40 million adult drama from 2007, yeah, we can all agree on that. The Sweetgreen bowl is better than the Applebee’s chicken parm, sure. Your favorite Substack is sharper than the mid-list magazine that folded in 2019. Every replacement is a genuine upgrade. But every replacement serves fewer and fewer people.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260320.html

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260320.html

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/20/view-from-a-hotel-window-3-20-26-san-diego/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59840

There is a parking lot visible in the photo, I will note. That said, this is not the usual parking lot photo from when I travel.

San Diego is lovely. But then, when is it not. We will be in it only briefly before setting sail on this year’s installment of the JoCo Cruise. Try to have fun without us for a week.

Oh, and happy equinox! Spring is here. Thank God.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/20/view-from-a-hotel-window-3-20-26-san-diego/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59840

Posted by John Timmer

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/jury-agrees-that-musks-tweets-during-twitter-takeover-constituted-fraud/

On Friday, a jury in California determined that Elon Musk had misled investors in Twitter via public statements that depressed the price of the company's stock ahead of Musk's purchase of the service. Because this was a class action lawsuit, Musk is likely to owe damages to a huge range of investors—payments that may ultimately reach billions of dollars.

In the lead-up to Musk's ultimate purchase of the social media platform, he made a number of comments on the platform itself and while appearing as a guest on a podcast, largely focused on the alleged prevalence of bot accounts on the platform. This raised fears that the deal wouldn't go through and depressed the price of Twitter's shares, causing some investors to sell shares at a depressed price during this period.

A number of those investors started a suit that was certified as a class action, claiming that the statements defrauded them and that Musk made them intentionally as part of a larger scheme. The jury rejected arguments about this larger scheme but found Musk liable for the tweets.

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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/jury-agrees-that-musks-tweets-during-twitter-takeover-constituted-fraud/