Strange things are afoot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, giving rise to an obvious question: how did we get here?

Rising from the South Lawn of the White House is a 92ft-tall skeletal structure known as “the Claw”. Beneath it sits an octagonal cage surrounded by sponsor logos, temporary grandstands and thousands of seats for a mixed martial arts card on Sunday night to celebrate Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand.

The event has prompted comparisons to Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s satire of a future US where politics, entertainment and corporate branding become indistinguishable. Others have gone further, dismissing it as a “kleptocratic spectacle”.

Continue reading...

Against Paraguay, the Monaco striker provided the ruthless finishing the USMNT have often missed in recent years

• World Cup newsletter | Daily podcast | Download the app

Even after they conceded an early goal on Friday, Paraguay kept affording the United States ample room up the channel. As the ball reached Malik Tillman and Weston McKennie in midfield, their disoriented opponents never quite seemed to know how to station themselves to stem the tide. The US’s off-ball movement further complicated those efforts, dizzying Paraguay’s defense before it could establish an ideal structure.

“I just tried to run in behind,” McKennie said after the US had completed their 4-1 victory. “I think I realized early on that they were struggling to follow my deep runs. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. I keep trying to do it until they figure something out. I was able to find more space than usual, and it was fun. I really enjoyed to get on the ball as much as I did.”

Continue reading...

It could top 90F in several cities hosting World Cup games – and workers could pay the price with their health

As the World Cup kicks off, labor advocates and scholars warn that the workers making the tournament possible could face serious heat-related risks.

“It’s going to be extremely hot, and you just cannot leave people unprotected or you’re going to deal with a lot of injuries,” said Jonathan Alingu, co-executive director of Central Florida Jobs With Justice, which has been calling for worker protections at the Miami games. “Or, God forbid, something even worse.”

Continue reading...

The system of ocean current that moves heat in the Atlantic Ocean plays a key role in regulating climate. Today’s monitoring of it may be discontinued

Imagine we detect a large asteroid heading straight for Earth. We are able to intervene and prevent disaster, but instead we cut the funding needed to track it. A few million dollars, it was argued, was too expensive to have a chance to save society.

While this scenario isn’t real, the metaphor is alarmingly accurate. In Europe, we spend €1bn to monitor space for asteroids, even if the actual risk of a civilisation-ending asteroid strike is close to zero.

Continue reading...

Edward thinks of sex as playtime and has a vivid imagination, which Jane is happy to go along with despite being quite ‘vanilla’ herself

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

When I dreamed about Jane in a latex catsuit, we had one made

Continue reading...

Nederland kleurt steeds meer oranje. Vanavond speelt het Nederlands elftal tegen Japan. In de Markstraat in Den Haag zijn ze er helemaal klaar voor.

Anthropic heeft, na een exportbeperking van het Witte Huis, voorlopig het nieuwste AI-model uitgezet. Wat betekent dat voor bedrijven die daar al mee werkten?

AXEL (ANP) - De stille tocht voor de slachtoffers van het fatale ongeluk in Zeeland gaat door. Dat laat een woordvoerder van de gemeente Terneuzen zondagochtend weten. De slachtoffers waren leerlingen of begeleiders van een school uit de plaats Axel, dat binnen de gemeente ligt. Daar is de stille tocht. Over de precieze route wordt nog overlegd, aldus de woordvoerder.

Zaterdag namen burgers het initiatief voor de tocht, maar dit moest nog worden afgestemd.

Donderdag iets na het middaguur botste een auto op fietsers die op schoolkamp van groep 8 waren. De groep bestond uit veertien kinderen en twee volwassenen. Een van hen was de directeur. Zij is overleden. Ook drie kinderen kwamen om. Zij waren 12 jaar, bevestigde een woordvoerder van Namens de Familie die alle nabestaanden bijstaat. Hij weet niet of familieleden of andere slachtoffers bij de tocht zijn.

Vooralsnog hebben de nabestaanden geen behoefte meer informatie te delen, aldus Namens de Familie. Mocht dat veranderen, dan staat de organisatie hen daarin bij.

Simon Ritter joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. He's now written an opinion piece for InfoWorld warning that "Between 2029 and 2032, every currently supported long-term support (LTS) version of Java will reach end-of-support within a single three-year window."

That's Java 17 in 2029, Java 8 in 2030, Java 21 in 2031, and Java 11 in 2032...

On paper, this looks like a manageable upgrade cycle. In practice, it creates a collision of timelines that most enterprises have failed to forecast. Organizations attempting to modernize incrementally — moving application by application, version by version — are operating on a model that the calendar has already rendered obsolete... [W]hen every major Java version expires in the same compressed window, sequential planning collapses. By the time this becomes obvious, organizations will be forced into reactive mode, making rushed decisions under extreme pressure.

For organizations planning traditional stepwise upgrades — Java 8 to Java 11 to Java 17 to Java 21 — this convergence elevates a routine maintenance task into a structural crisis. Enterprises with large Java estates will be forced to upgrade multiple applications across multiple versions simultaneously to maintain security compliance and business continuity.

"Parallel modernization requires parallel capacity — something most organizations haven't budgeted for," he points out. "This explains why traditional approaches struggle to scale."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This apparent rise in accusations around 'AI slop' does not appear to be part of a broader or more general increase in online hostility: older invective forms such as 'shill', 'sockpuppet', and 'troll' remained relatively stable during the same period, suggesting that suspicion of AI emerged as a novel form of social boundary-policing, rather than a continuation or extension of earlier internet feuds. [original paper on arxiv]