Fire burns Google Cloud India’s network, which remains slow a week later
He profits off raw milk that’s making people sick. The government isn’t stopping him.
With Raw Farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, Mark McAfee has capitalized on a once-fringe product that’s been thrust into the mainstream in recent years and backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. By Annie Waldman for ProPublica A white Ford pickup truck broke through a thick curtain of fog one morning in February, winding its way down a muddy farm road in…
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Trump Wants Reporters to Know He’s Very Mad at Netanyahu
President Donald Trump is telling reporters that he expects an Iran peace deal to be signed this afternoon, giving him ample time to make it to his UFC fight beneath the White House claw this evening. The war began on February 28, when the US and Israeli militaries launched a series of coordinated strikes against Iran, including the bombardment of a girl’s school, which killed at least 168 children.
Since then, Trump has announced imminent ceasefires and peace deals many times. Few have held for long. And today, Israel threw a wrench in the latest plans for a ceasefire, by failing to cease fire. Instead of standing down, Israel launched an attack on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, supposedly in retaliation for drone- and rocket-fire from the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. The Israeli operation killed at least three people.
Trump, now, wants reporters to know he’s very, very mad at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “This morning’s attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social. “This could be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace — Let’s not blow it!”
Axios reporter Barak Ravid spoke to the president today and learned the following: “President Trump told me: ‘Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack? I was so pissee [sic] off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement. I let him know that.’”
President Trump told me: "Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack? I was so pissee off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement. I let him know that" https://t.co/qkMkbkNYxJ
Trump made similar comments to Fox News’ Trey Yingst.
Spoke with President Trump. He says the deal with Iran is expected to be signed in the next 2-3 hours.
President Trump said he asked Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “what the fu*k are you doing?” on a call after the Israeli strikes against Beirut. He told Netanyahu not to…
Trump, lately, has been making a habit of not-so-secretly directing profanities at Netanyahu. Earlier this month, Ravid reported that Trump told Netanyahu: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel.”
Having enthusiastically started this disastrous war alongside Israel, Trump now seems frustrated that Netanyahu is making it difficult for him to declare victory and go home. But as president of the United States, Trump actually has the power to change this situation, beyond his latest barrage of expletives and thank yous for your attention to this matter—he’s just choosing not to use that power.
The US is a major funder of Israel, having given the Israeli military well over $300 billion since its 1948 founding. And that material aid to Israel, which allows the country to bomb its neighbors with impunity, shows no sign of slowing. There’s currently a proposal to essentially merge the US and Israeli defense-tech systems in the National Defense Authorization Act making its way through Congress. The proposal, called the “Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is just one Israel-supporting provision in the NDAA; a cluster of others would provide an additional $850 million in military aid to Netanyahu’s government. Trump has not spoken on any of these measures, which would help fund strikes of the sort Israel just carried out in Beirut. Instead, he’s posting about Netanyahu.
Performatively angry rhetoric, coupled with total material support, is a familiar tactic. President Joe Biden, too, told reporters he was really, truly, steaming mad at Netanyahu—all while ensuring the flow of weaponry to Israel stayed consistent. He called Netanyahu an “asshole” back in February of 2024, which did nothing to prevent Israel’s mass killing in Gaza. And despite Trump’s erstwhile attempt to brand himself as an antiwar leader, he’s nothing of the sort. Between administrations, the rhetoric stays frustrated—but the unconditional support for Israel’s military stays the same.
THE VAMPIRE LESTAT: Sam Reid on Lestat/Armand’s Complex Relationship, ‘I Love Their Dynamic’
- Star Sam Reid and showrunner Rolin Jones discuss the dynamic between Lestat and Armand in The Vampire Lestat.
- Sam Reid notes that “hate is too strong a word” for them and that they have “a flirty, sexy vibe,” but also can be vicious to one another at the drop of a hat.
- Rolin Jones notes that Lestat does respect Armand.
In the world of Interview with the Vampire, now known as The Vampire Lestat, there exists a tangle of complicated relationships that are some of the most winding, twisted, dark, and deliciously queer to ever appear on our screens. That’s because when you have a set of immortal vampires whose humanity is not withered, but heightened, by their endless lives, and who have little choice but to spend forever with one another, things tend to get messy. Of course, when we think of The Vampire Lestat, some obvious relationships spring to mind: Louis and Lestat, Claudia and Madeleine, and Armand and Daniel, to name a few. But, as a lifelong enjoyer of what you might call “the rare pair,” the relationship between Armand and Lestat (what some call “Lesmand”) also piques my interest.
In prior seasons, we’ve gotten glimpses of the two in Armand’s recollections of the past, however apocryphal they may be. And this year, we’ll likely see more from the past, but also some of the present relationship between Lestat and Armand. In The Vampire Lestat book by Anne Rice, Armand and Lestat have somewhat of an oscillating relationship between love and hate, but how does that manifest in the series? Here’s what Sam Reid had to say about what exists between Lestat and Armand in The Vampire Lestat.
AMCReid shared of Lesmand, “I don’t know if there’s a lot of… I mean, hate is such a strong word. I think that their dynamic is actually pretty accurate to the books. I think there’s like a flirty, sexy vibe that they’ve got that goes on between the two of them. Lestat thinks he’s a joke, like he thinks he is in the book. But Armand can come back and fucking own Lestat and destroy his life at a moment’s notice when he wants to. And Lestat’s aware of that. And I think the dynamic is their dynamic. I love the Armand and Lestat scenes in this season. So I think we’re doing it. Yeah.”
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THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Is Unlike Anything Else on TV (Review)Showrunner Rolin Jones added, “And I think Lestat is actually incredibly respectful. There’s a bit of VO [in one of the episodes] when Lestat introduces Armand that might be one of the most accurate descriptions of Armand yet. So there is some inherent respect too about his power.”
AMCLestat, of course, is largely so irreverent that his respect is no small thing. And even though he can be vicious to Armand, who can be wholly awful right back, we love the idea of this undercurrent of understanding between them. A relationship with naunce and complexity keeps us coming back for more, one that was all hate wouldn’t be interesting at all. As for the “flirty, sexy vibe,” we can confirm it’s strong. And we can’t wait for you all to see what Armand and Lestat get up to this season on The Vampire Lestat.
The Vampire Lestat (or season three of Interview with the Vampire) is currently streaming on AMC and AMC+. New episodes arrive Sundays at 9 pm PT/ET on AMC and at midnight on AMC+.
The post THE VAMPIRE LESTAT: Sam Reid on Lestat/Armand’s Complex Relationship, ‘I Love Their Dynamic’ appeared first on Nerdist.
Republicans cry fraud in Los Angeles because they’re sore losers
Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions. Republicans lost the Los Angeles mayoral election this week when their MAGA-aligned, D-List reality TV personality Spencer Pratt failed to advance to the general election—a predictable outcome in a city that…
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ALT FDA’s greenlight of old chemical offers chance to restore faith in sunscreen
By Michael Scaturro for KFF Officials, environmental health advocates, and skin care industry groups are expressing hope that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a sunscreen ingredient on June 9 — after consideration for two decades, and global use for nearly as long — will help restore Americans’ wavering faith in sunscreen. “Bemotrizinol has been used safely in Europe…
Trump’s time warp
If there’s one thing President Donald Trump hates, it’s the First Amendment. From his sexist attacks against women journalists to his MAGA makeover of legacy media, the free press is a thing of the past in Trump’s America. The fallout couldn’t be more clear than at CBS, which is now owned by Trump pals David and Larry Ellison, where reporters are fleeing as CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss…
The Oligarchy Attends a Cage Fight
While New Yorkers nurse Knicks-championship hangovers in Donald Trump’s hometown, the president is celebrating his 80th birthday tonight by inviting his friends to a party designed to honor himself: a multimillion-dollar cage fight on the White House grounds. The UFC Freedom 250 event is being billed (by its promoters, anyway) as “the most historic sporting event of all time.”
“From the Revolution to the Octagon,” the extravaganza’s Crytpo.com-sponsored website declares, “this historic event will connect fans through cinematic storytelling and unrivaled competition on the world’s greatest proving ground.” According to the Guardian, fighters will earn bonuses to be paid out in a digital asset issued by the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial.
Yesterday’s scenes—motocross dirtbikers doing flips against a backdrop of the White House, on a lawn torn up to become a fight stage—were surreal. There were parachute team performances and at least one bald eagle.
Maryland native Travis Pastrana and the Nitro Circus stunt team performed a dirt bike backflip over the octagon on the White House South Lawn, celebrating America’s 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s birthday.
: Jeffrey Bill pic.twitter.com/9JAffwQn65
One particularly notable aspect of tonight’s fights will be who is in the audience. David Ellison, whose $111 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. merger was approved by Trump’s Justice Department late last week, will be there. The president and top Republican officials are also expected to personally attend, even as Trump attempts to negotiate a long-awaited agreement with Iran.
“We are very close to a Deal that will bring peace to the region, including to Lebanon, and all sides should stand down,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at 10:46 am, as he criticized Israel for striking Lebanon “on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal.”
Whatever happens abroad, Trump will spend the evening watching the title fight between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje. On the off chance that you weren’t invited, it’ll be streamed on Ellison’s Paramount+.
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She broke barriers as a priest. She spends retirement organizing against ‘Christofascism.’
From her ordination to organizing with the NAACP, Rev. Carter Heyward has always set a ‘place at the table’ for those previously denied. By Cassidy Klein for The 19th On “Moral Mondays,” a group of locals — sometimes 10, sometimes 100 — gather on the town square in Brevard, North Carolina, holding signs advocating for voting rights, economic justice and more. Carter Heyward…
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Celebrating Juneteenth with sax master Junior Walker
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 300 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new. As Juneteenth approaches on June 19, it’s time to put together a soulful playlist for those barbecue family…
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Nature No Longer Smells So Natural—and That’s Our Fault
This story was originally published by Yale e360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Across the globe, human activities are changing the way our planet smells. In Egypt, increasing temperatures are shrinking yields of aromatic jasmine flowers; in France, extreme drought has reduced the production of fragrant, night-blooming tuberose, a major ingredient in many perfumes; in Italy, climatic extremes are altering the characteristic floral, citrusy scent of bergamot.
But anthropogenic factors are also reshaping environmental smellscapes, a word coined in the 1980s to describe the totality of scents in a given geographic area, in ways that are far more subtle—and potentially much more harmful.
While humans largely rely on sight and sound in our interactions with each other and with the world around us, many other creatures rely on smells. Ants, for example, require scents for colony cohesion; turkey vultures let scent guide them to far-away carrion; and male moths use scent to find females hundreds of meters away. “Scent is very important because it mediates so many interactions within an ecosystem,” says James Blande, a chemical ecologist at the University of Eastern Finland.
A growing number of scientists are documenting how humans are changing the chemical signals of plants and animals.
These scent-based interactions are crucial for the maintenance of ecosystem services that directly benefit humans, from the bees and moths that pollinate crops to the flies and dung beetles that recycle the nutrients from dead and decomposing matter. Intact channels of scent communication are likely also important for the preservation of biodiversity. For example, many rare orchid species use scent to attract the co-evolved pollinators they need in order to reproduce, and scent helps guide monarch butterflies to the single type of plant on which they lay their eggs.
But just as we are discovering how important these chemical communication channels are to the fabric of the natural world—and the many benefits we reap from it—we are also learning how drastically they can be disrupted by our activities, including climate change and air pollution.
Now, scientists are working to document human-induced changes in smellscapes across the planet—to understand how these changes affect communication between different organisms, and to try to figure out which systems are capable of adaptation and which may be at risk of failure.
Historically, researchers in the field of sensory pollution have been largely focused on noise and light, says Jeff Riffell, a sensory biologist at the University of Washington. Odor pollution, on the other hand, “is really hard to get a handle on because you need these big chemical analysis devices that [cost] hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to characterize it.” Plus, he says, “we’re just not very olfactory.”
Despite these challenges, a growing number of scientists are documenting how humans are changing the chemical signals of plants and animals. For example, researchers have discovered that air pollution degrades many of the volatile organic compounds that make up lavender’s characteristic scent, and increasing temperatures dramatically decrease the floral perfumes released by strawberry plants and wild white petunias. Agricultural chemicals, like fertilizers and fungicides, add additional VOCs to the air in fields and orchards around the world.
A bee pollinates lavender at Castle Farm in Eynsford, England.Dan Kitwood via Getty
But figuring out how these changes affect communication between organisms— and whether this impairs their ability to pollinate, procreate, or otherwise survive—can be a tricky task, as objective differences in the chemical makeup of a scent don’t always predict differences in how they are perceived.
To get inside the mind of a pollinator and parse how much a smell has to change before it becomes unrecognizable, researchers often use a simple test called the proboscis extension response—a sort of Pavlov’s dog for bees. While Pavlov taught dogs to associate food with the sound of a bell, triggering them to drool, researchers teach bees to associate particular scents with the taste of sugar. Once they learn the association, the bees stick out their proboscis—the insect equivalent of a tongue.
In heavily polluted regions, the distance from which a moth can sense a flower is a quarter of what it was in preindustrial times.
Using this paradigm, Stony Brook University pollination biologist Jordanna Sprayberry and her colleagues taught bumblebees to recognize a particular floral odor, then tested how three different fungicides affected the bees’ ability to recognize this odor. “We found negative effects of every fungicide we tested,” she says. One fungicide was disruptive at every concentration tested. This could be especially problematic for fruit and vegetable production, since these crops generally require insect pollination and are often heavily treated with fungicides.
A team of researchers in the United Kingdom has also used this type of test to investigate the impact of oxidizing air pollutants—like ozone and nitrate radicals (NO3)—on honeybees’ ability to recognize scents. These pollutants are naturally present in the air at low levels but are dramatically increased by emissions from cars, power plants, and oil and gas production. Instead of just adding new odor molecules on top of an existing scent, oxidizing pollutants react with different components of floral perfumes, degrading their scents.
After researchers taught honeybees to recognize a floral odor blend, they released that scent into a wind tunnel of ozone-polluted air. At six meters from the source, only about 30 percent of bees could still recognize the scent. This kind of pollution could seriously impair honeybees’ ability to find flowers, which is concerning because honeybees are estimated to be responsible for about half of crop pollination worldwide.
While daytime pollinators get the most attention, nocturnal pollinators are also important for crops and wild plant species. To find out if night-time pollination was similarly affected by pollutants, Riffell turned his attention to a fragrant, night-blooming wildflower called the pale evening primrose and its hawkmoth pollinators.
A farmer sprays fungicide on potato field in Germany, June 2019.Thomas Warnack/picture alliance via Getty
He and his team measured how compounds in the primrose scent changed when exposed to NO3, which increases at night. While some types of odor compounds were relatively resistant to these pollutants, others, like β-Pinene, a woodsy-green scent, and β-Ocimene, which is more floral and herbaceous, began to degrade within seconds.
Next, researchers set up scent traps at their field site in eastern Washington. Over the course of the night, they recorded how often pollinators visited a real flower, a paper cone releasing a simulated floral scent, and a cone releasing floral scent degraded by NO3 exposure. Pollinators stopped by the real flower and the floral-scented cone at similar rates, but the degraded scent received about 70 percent fewer visits. That’s bad news for both players: As natural scents degrade, pollinators may have less access to food while plants may have a lower chance of reproducing.
Using a model of atmospheric conditions that included pollution levels and weather conditions and combining it with data on how quickly oxidizing pollutants can degrade key floral odors, Riffell and his colleagues mapped distances at which a moth would be able to detect a primrose in different locations on Earth. In more heavily polluted regions of the world, the team found, the distance from which a moth can sense a flower has fallen to just a quarter of what it was during preindustrial times. Similar modeling strategies could be used to identify croplands and valuable ecosystems at greatest risk for communication breakdown and the loss of crucial pollination services.
Studies reveal that ozone pollution breaks down pheromones, with serious consequences for insects looking to mate.
Much of the work on the ecology of shifting smells has focused on pollination—and with good reason. “When you go to the grocery store in, say, Canada or the United States, almost 70 percent of the food is actually a result of pollination,” says Riffell. The vast majority of wild flowering plants also depend on pollination by insects and other animals.
But plant-pollinator interaction is just a tiny part of how scents structure our world. How human activities affect other types of chemical messages is largely unexplored, but the few existing studies suggest concerning disruptions. Markus Knaden, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, is exploring how ozone alters chemical communication between insects. “The problem is that [scent] molecules are very sensitive to oxidants,” he says. “Which was not a problem for the last millions of years but is becoming an increasing problem due to us.”
Knaden’s studies revealed that ozone pollution breaks down pheromones, with serious consequences for insects looking to mate. For example, ozone-altered pheromones made male flies less appealing to females of their species and increased male-male courtship behaviors. The mating process leaves insects vulnerable to predation, Knaden says, so if a male wastes time courting other males, he might get eaten before he can reproduce.
Pheromone breakdown can mess with mating in other ways, too: When Knaden’s team exposed flies to ozone-enriched air, females were much more likely to mate with males of a different species, producing hybrid offspring that were often infertile.
A moth pollinates a thistle in in Ladywell Park in London.Dan Kitwood via Getty
Insect populations are already in decline globally, a phenomenon known to be driven by habitat loss and the widespread use of pesticides, but Knaden says it’s possible that oxidizing pollutants could accelerate this decline. “If you take down the population by 30 percent or 50 percent, it is already harder for [insects] to locate each other,” he says. “But if you then take down their communications channel by oxidizing their pheromones, that might be an additional effect.”
What does a future of altered smellscapes look like for organisms that rely on scent to communicate?
“Depending on the relationship, some of the plants and animals can handle these changes,” says Shannon Olsson, who runs the Naturalist-Inspired Chemical Ecology lab at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, in India. “We have seen robustness in the system, but we’ve also seen failures in the system.”
Some insects are quick learners: Bumblebees and honeybees can learn attraction to new scents after just a handful of training runs. And while pollinating hoverflies seem to be innately attracted to certain floral scents and colors, Olsson’s research shows that they can also learn to avoid them, demonstrating that some insects are highly adaptable to changes in the environment.
Pollution can change the scent of a Mediterranean fig enough that it is no longer attractive to its only pollinator, the fig wasp.
But some insects may not live long enough for meaningful learning to occur. Researchers found that ozone pollution can change the scent of a Mediterranean fig enough that it is no longer attractive to its only pollinator, the fig wasp. In the wild, the wasp lives only about two days—likely not enough time to learn an odor that’s different from the tree that it evolved with over millions of years.
Learning may not help buffer insects against pollution-altered sexual signals, either. “People that work on insect mating and on insect pheromones,” Knudsen says, “usually think that this is a really hard-wired system.”
The good news, says Riffell, is that air quality regulations implemented in recent decades have had a substantial impact on reducing oxidizing air pollutants. In the US, levels of ozone and nitrogen oxides—which are also harmful to human health—have been falling slowly but steadily since 1980. Even so, many places in the US and Europe still regularly experience unhealthy levels of these pollutants, and ozone exposure is estimated to be increasing globally.
“I am hopeful that things are getting better,” says Riffell. “But I am very mindful that things can change really dramatically and very quickly. We’ve all experienced this—especially in the US, in the last year or two.” To prevent these anthropogenic pollutants from further affecting animal communication systems, he adds, “we need enhanced regulations.”
For agricultural chemicals, like fungicides, Sprayberry says more research is needed to determine when and how much to use them to minimize the loss of crops to disease while also producing the smallest amount of bee-disturbing olfactory pollution. Ultimately, says Olsson, “We have to learn how to coexist in a way that’s minimally destructive to our plants and animals.”
