A four-foot humanoid robot named Gabi has become a monk at a Buddhist temple in Seoul, participating in a modified initiation ceremony where it pledged to respect life, obey humans, act peacefully toward other robots and objects. "Robots are destined to collaborate with humans in every field in the future," Hong Min-suk, a manager at the Jogye Order, the largest sect of Buddhism in South Korea, tells the New York Times. "It will only be natural for them to be part of our festival." Smithsonian Magazine reports: For the temple, this marks the first time a robot has participated in the sugye initiation ceremony, when followers pledge their devotion to the Buddha and his teachings. Gabi -- a Buddhist name that refers to mercy, Yonhap News Agency reports -- was made by Unitree Robotics, a Chinese civilian robotics company. The model, G1, retails starting at $13,500. During the ceremony, Gabi agreed to five vows usually recited by human monks and slightly altered for the humanoid. The robot pledged to respect life, act with peace toward other robots and objects, listen to humans, refrain from acting or speaking in a deceptive manner and save energy.

Gabi participated in a modified yeonbi purification ritual. While a human monk normally receives a small incense burn on the arm, instead Gabi received a lotus lantern festival sticker and a prayer bead necklace. The landmark event aligns with the promise made during a New Year's address by the Venerable Jinwoo, president of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, to incorporate artificial intelligence into the Buddhist tradition. "We aim to fearlessly lead the A.I. era and redirect its achievements toward the path of attaining peace of mind and enlightenment," he said, per a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

@html5test
Lol, maybe add servermode as well? And teamplay.
Kidding, this seems to me already insane.

L'ANGLIRU (ANP) - Anna van der Breggen heeft naast de eindzege gegrepen in de Vuelta Femenina. De 36-jarige wielrenster van SD Worx - Protime moest haar leidende positie in de slotrit met aankomst op de beruchte Alto de l'Angliru afstaan aan de Spaanse Paula Blasi van UAE Team ADQ. De Zwitserse Petra Stiasny van Human Powered Health won de etappe.

Van der Breggen had met de ritzege in de zesde etappe de leiding gegrepen, maar kon op de Angliru het tempo van Blasi niet volgen. De Spaanse, eerder dit voorjaar al winnares van de Amstel Gold Race, maakte de achterstand van achttien seconden op Van der Breggen goed.

Drie wielrensters vormden de kopgroep in de zevende en laatste etappe van deze Ronde van Spanje. Zussen Femke en Riejanne Markus en de Duitse Liane Lippert kregen maximaal ongeveer drie minuten voorsprong en lagen aan de voet van de Angliru nog bijna twee minuten voor. Lippert liet de twee Nederlandse wielrensters vervolgens achter.

Blasi

Met 5,5 kilometer klimmen te gaan haalde de groep van klassementsrensters, waarbij Van der Breggen met Valentina Cavallar nog een teamgenote had, Lippert bij. De Franse Marion Bunel versnelde op ruim 4 kilometer en Blasi reed ook weg bij Van der Breggen. De 23-jarige Spaanse ging daarna alleen door op weg naar nog een grotere overwinning in haar prille carrière dan de zege van de Amstel Gold Race. Ze werd ingehaald door Stiasny, maar had aan haar tweede plaats genoeg.

Van der Breggen kwam als vijfde binnen op 36 seconden van Blasi. Ze zakte naar de tweede plaats in het algemeen klassement, op 24 seconden van de Spaanse. Bij haar rentree in het profpeloton vorig jaar eindigde Van der Breggen als derde in de Vuelta en won ze eveneens een rit. Marion Bunel uit Frankrijk eindigde nu als derde in het klassement.

BOEDAPEST (ANP/RTR) - De pro-Europese conservatieveling Péter Magyar is geïnstalleerd als de nieuwe premier van Hongarije. Zijn partij Tisza bemachtigde bij de verkiezingen in april een ruime tweederdemeerderheid in het parlement.

De nationalistische Viktor Orbán was zestien jaar onafgebroken aan de macht. Onder zijn premierschap werden in Hongarije onder meer de onafhankelijkheid van de rechtspraak, de rechten van lhbti'ers en de persvrijheid ingeperkt.

Ook zette Orbán zich af tegen de Europese Unie, door bijvoorbeeld een lening aan Oekraïne te blokkeren. Brussel houdt nog miljarden euro's aan steunfondsen voor Hongarije bevroren. Het is aan Magyar om die vrij te spelen. Kiezers hopen ook dat Magyar de rechtsstaat kan herstellen en de corruptie in het land kan tegengaan. Hij heeft ze veranderingen beloofd.

Brussel en Kyiv zijn blij met de komst van een nieuwe premier. Zij denken dat Magyar zich constructiever zal opstellen dan Orbán, die banden onderhield met de Russische president Vladimir Poetin.

GENÈVE (ANP) - De directeur-generaal van de Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WHO) heeft zich direct gericht tot de bevolking van Tenerife, waar zondag het door hantavirus getroffen schip m/v Hondius wordt verwacht. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus drukt de inwoners van het Spaanse eiland op het hart dat zij een gering risico lopen en dat de samenwerkende landen en gezondheidsautoriteiten er alles aan doen om dat zo te houden.

"Ik wil rechtstreeks tot u spreken, niet via persberichten of technische briefings, maar als mens tot mens, want dat verdient u", schrijft Ghebreyesus in een brief. "Ik weet dat u zich zorgen maakt. Maar dit is geen nieuwe covid", verzekert hij. "Het huidige risico voor de volksgezondheid van het hantavirus blijft laag. Mijn collega's en ik hebben dit ondubbelzinnig gezegd en ik herhaal het nu nogmaals."

In zijn bericht bedankt hij ook de Spaanse premier Pedro Sánchez, die toestond dat het schip naar Tenerife vaart, wat hij een "daad van solidariteit en morele plicht" noemt.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Werknemersvertegenwoordigers binnen bedrijven houden zich nog te weinig bezig met de ontwikkelingen rond kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) op de werkvloer. "AI speelt een steeds grotere rol voor werknemers. Daarom is het essentieel dat or-leden zich verdiepen in AI en weten wat er binnen hun organisatie of sector gebeurt", waarschuwen de vakbonden De Unie en de VCP.

De bonden publiceerden zaterdag een handreiking voor vakbonden en ondernemingsraden om te zorgen dat AI "verantwoord en menswaardig" wordt ingezet. "Zo kan werknemersvertegenwoordiging mede-architect worden van de wijze waarop AI in de organisatie wordt ingezet. Door onder meer te sturen op aandacht voor (om)scholing, bijscholing en een leven lang ontwikkelen, zodat mensen mee kunnen in de digitale transitie", stellen de bonden.

Hoewel er nu al wettelijke kaders zijn om AI-beleid in organisaties vorm te geven, zijn er volgens de bonden cao's en medezeggenschap nodig om de vertaling te maken naar de dagelijkse werkpraktijk.

FRANKFURT (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De Europese Centrale Bank (ECB) twijfelt nog over de volgende rentestap in juni. Volgens ECB-president Christine Lagarde worden beleidsmakers geconfronteerd met "enorme onzekerheid" en hebben zij "veel meer data" nodig om de gevolgen van het conflict in het Midden-Oosten goed te kunnen inschatten.

"We worden voortdurend heen en weer getrokken tussen het risico te snel te reageren of juist te laat te reageren. We moeten de juiste weg vinden om onze economieën richting de middellangetermijndoelstelling van 2 procent inflatie te leiden", zei ze tegen de Spaanse publieke omroep RTVE.

De ECB vond het bij het vorige rentebesluit eind april nog niet nodig om in te grijpen vanwege de oplopende inflatie. De beleidsbepalers bij de centrale bank in Frankfurt hielden de rente in de eurozone toen opnieuw ongewijzigd. Volgens economen zit de ECB in een lastig parket omdat het de zorgen over hogere inflatie door de oorlog moet afwegen tegen de bezorgdheid over afzwakkende economische groei.

Gevolgen conflict

Het conflict in het Midden-Oosten en de stijgende olieprijzen hebben de inflatie in de eurozone al opgedreven tot 3 procent. Verdere stijgingen liggen in het verschiet. Tegelijk begint dat ook steeds meer te wegen op de economische activiteiten. Cijfers van vrijdag lieten een onverwachte daling zien van de industriële productie in Duitsland, de grootste economie van Europa.

Door de vrijwel volledige afsluiting van de Straat van Hormuz zijn de olie- en gasleveringen uit het Midden-Oosten ernstig verstoord. Hierdoor zijn de brandstofprijzen wereldwijd flink opgelopen, waardoor het leven in het algemeen duurder dreigt te worden.

Women’s Six Nations updates from 2pm BST kick-off
Is England’s dominance an issue? | And mail Lee

6 mins. The home side decide to ram a stick in their own spokes by booting the restart out on the full. England will have a scrum on the centre spot.

4 mins. A return to the 22 pulls the Italy defence in narrow and that is all the opportunity Harrison needs to find space on the right with a cross kick that Packer dives on to score.

Continue reading...

⚽ Brighton v Wolves rounds out Premier League 3pm BSTs
⚽ Live scores | Latest tables | Follow on Bluesky | Mail Barry

Liverpool 1-1 Chelsea: Now Liverpool have a goal ruled out for offside, with the flag correctly going up at Cody Gakpo’s expense as he teed up Curtis Jones to nod home from close range. Replays show he had strayed offside but it was careless on his part. We’re approaching the hour at Anfield, where the tackles are flying in and an entertaining encounter could go either way …

Liverpool 1-1 Chelsea: Cole Palmer thought he had capitalised on a defensive mix-up between Virgil van Dijk and Giorgi Marmadashvili to fire Chelsea into a deserved lead at Anfield shortly after half-time, only for his effort to be ruled out because Marc Cucurella was a smidgen offside in the build-up. Liverpool are second best at Anfield but have got off the hook thanks to VAR. Scott Murray has the latest …

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Passengers were evacuated safely after the plane struck a person and an engine then caught on fire

A Frontier Airlines plane hit a person on the runway of Denver’s international airport during takeoff, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate, authorities said.

The plane, headed to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff” at about 11.19pm on Friday, the Denver airport’s official X account wrote.

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Woman recovered after volcanic eruption on remote island, while operation to find two missing Singaporeans goes on

Rescuers have recovered the body of an Indonesian woman who was caught in a volcanic eruption on Mount Dukono on Indonesia’s remote island of Halmahera, officials have said.

Search operations continued on Saturday for the bodies of two Singaporeans. The dead hikers were among 20 who set out to scale the 1,355-metre (4,445ft) volcano in defiance of safety restrictions and became stranded when Dukono erupted early on Friday, spewing a thick ash column about 6 miles (10km) into the air.

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At the city’s Great Exhibition of 1904, 57 Somali men, women and children cooked, weaved and danced for visitors

It was, the posters said, a rare chance to see a “little known but interesting people”: a live display of 57 Somali men, women and children who cooked, weaved and danced for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of Edwardians who flocked to Yorkshire to see them.

More than 120 years later, this controversial – and, in its time, incredibly popular – show will be revisited in a new exhibition in Bradford that will put Britain’s colonial legacy under the spotlight.

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Spirit Airlines helped turn flying into a fee-based nightmare. Now it’s gone, and fuel prices are soaring

Forgive me for not mourning last week’s demise of Spirit Airlines, the company responsible for making flying absolutely terrible. Due to rising expenses and billions of dollars in debt, Spirit shut down abruptly last Saturday, stranding thousands of customers who were unaware that an entire business meant to transport them through the sky was about to shutter for good.

Spirit was struggling for years, but it all got so much worse thanks to the soaring cost of jet fuel caused by the war in Iran and the crisis in the strait of Hormuz that halted the shipment of oil. It was bad enough being the country’s most ridiculed mode of conveyance outside of the Segway. But now it costs even more to suck that badly.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

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Africa is leading a change in news consumption habits – and transforming the lives of current affairs enthusiasts

Last year Amahle-Imvelo Jaxa posted a TikTok video about South African peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She explained an argument that had erupted between the South African and Rwandan presidents, then listed roles different South African groups would play in a war with Rwanda: the Sotho strategists, the Xhosa negotiators, the Afrikaner muscle. The video went viral and she racked up 100,000 followers in three days.

This breakout video enabled Jaxa to pivot from being a marketing and restaurant entrepreneur to a “professional yapper and current affairs enthusiast”, part of a group of content creators explaining the news to young South Africans who, like many of their global peers, are eschewing traditional news in favour of social media.

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Home reportedly occupied by mother of Paul Flores, who was convicted of killing college student who went missing in 1996

Soil testing at a property linked to the man convicted in the murder of California college student Kristin Smart, who disappeared in 1996, turned up evidence of human remains, a state sheriff announced on Friday.

“We can’t call it Kristin, but there’s evidence to support human remains – there at one time,” the San Luis Obispo county sheriff, Ian Parkinson, said at a news conference.

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Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that got ID’d, caught on camera, internally probed, and married off.

First, scientists have confirmed the identities of four sailors who died in a grisly Victorian voyage. Then: the sights and sounds of an Arctic seafloor, a glimpse into the guts of ice giants, and a wedding kiss of death.

As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.

Putting a face, and names, to lost Arctic sailors

Stenton, Douglas R. et al. “DNA identifications of three 1845 Franklin expedition sailors from HMS Erebus.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Stenton, Douglas R. et al “‘Some very hard ground to heave’: DNA identification of Harry Peglar, Captain of the Foretop, HMS Terror.” Polar Record.

Scientists have identified four men who died in Sir John Franklin’s disastrous expedition of 1845, a British mission to chart a passage through the Arctic that ended in misery, starvation, and cannibalism, leaving no survivors.

“Since the late nineteenth century the coast of Erebus Bay on King William Island, Nunavut, has been a focal point for historical and archaeological investigations of the 1845 Franklin Northwest Passage expedition,” said researchers led by Douglas Stenton of the University of Waterloo. “Its significance comes from the nature and volume of materials derived from an extraordinary and ultimately tragic event: the fatal attempt by 105 surviving sailors to escape their icebound ships in the spring of 1848 by walking hundreds of kilometres south to the mainland of North America.”

Using DNA extracted from skeletal remains, a study has confirmed that the 180-year-old bones belong to the able seaman William Orren, the ship's boy David Young, the officers' steward John Bridgens, and captain of the foretop Harry Peglar. Orren, Young, and Bridgens served on HMS Erebus, the expedition’s flagship, and their remains ended up in Erebus Bay on Canada’s King William Island. 

The remains of Peglar, who served on the secondary vessel HMS Terror, were found nearly 80 miles away from the others and are reported in a separate study led by Stenton. Stenton’s team has previously identified the Erebus engineer John Gregory as well as the Captain of Erebus, James Fitzjames, whose remains were subject to cannibalism.

The researchers matched the DNA of these sailors to samples provided by living descendants or relatives to conclusively confirm their identities. In addition to solving a scientific mystery, this process literally puts a face to one man as the team included a reconstructed portrait of David Young, who was around 20 when he died.

The results also help to piece together key details of the nightmarish fates that befell these sailors as they endured starvation, exposure, disease, and despair. 

“For their descendants, the identifications of John Bridgens, David Young, and William Orren reveal that, like John Gregory, they had survived the first three years of the expedition,” the researchers said. “They also unveil the locations where their deaths occurred, and the fact that none of the men were alone when they died.”

Peglar did die alone, however, and he remains the only member of the Terror crew who has been identified. In the study about his farflung remains, the team concludes with a passage Peglar wrote a few days before the survivors abandoned their stuck vessels and embarked on the retreat that would ultimately kill them all. 

Peglar noted the need to procure new boots as “we have got some very hard ground to heave.”

In other news…

Scenes from an Arctic seafloor

Podolskiy, Evgeny A. et al. “Seafloor video-acoustic monitoring in a Greenlandic glacial fjord records hyperbenthos, backward-swimming fish, and narwhals.” PLOS One.

Though the Arctic has many deadly perils, this region is also home to some of the most amazing lifeforms found anywhere on the planet. Scientists have now captured rare footage and recordings of “a highly turbulent environment” on the seafloor of a glacial fjord in northwest Greenland, according to a study. 

Here, at depths of about 850 feet, the songs of narwhals reverberate along the seafloor, crustaceans called copepods move in sudden hops, and “marine snow” made of particulate matter falls in blizzardlike bursts. A snailfish was also caught on tape making a particularly memorable exit.

“One snailfish showed peculiar backward swimming, passively drifting backward with the current,” said researchers led by Evgeny A. Podolskiy of Hokkaido University. “It curled its tail and remained motionless for at least 16 seconds before disappearing from view.” 

You’ve heard of the Irish Goodbye and the Minnesota Goodbye, but I’m not sure anything can top the Greenlandic Glacial Fjord Snailfish Goodbye.

The flavorful fillings of ice giants

Ramirez, Vanesa et al. “Reassessing planetary composition: Evidence of rock-dominated envelopes in Uranus and Neptune.” Astronomy & Astrophysics. 

What’s inside Uranus? Or Neptune, for that matter? Nobody really knows, and we have to rely on models until someone can figure out how to get a direct look inside the guts of these ice giants. 

To that end, researchers ran simulations of the possible evolution and composition of the two planets’ interiors based in part on observations of their atmospheres. The results suggest that “the deep interiors of the two planets exhibit distinct compositions” with Neptune having “relatively rock-rich mantles…whereas Uranus is inferred to have more ice-rich mantles,” according to researchers led by Vanesa Ramirez of Leiden University.  

“Our results indicate fundamental differences in the internal architectures of Uranus and Neptune, challenging the traditional view of these planets as compositional twins,” the team added.

To put in confectionary terms, Neptune appears to be more of a rocky road, while Uranus may be a refreshing ice slushy. Either way, the study underscores how much there is left to learn about these solar system worlds.

Mob Wives, but it’s science

Catino, Maurizio et al. “Marrying for power: Gendered alliances in mafias.” PLOS One.

In a genuinely gangster new study, scientists took a whack at unraveling the marital power dynamics at work within the 'Ndrangheta mafia syndicate, an infamous crime ring built around familial ties. 

“Interfamily marriages have long been recognized as a strategic resource in mafia organizations,” said researchers led by Maurizio Catino of the University of Milano-Bicocca. “Drawing on judicial records documenting…906 marriages among 623 ’Ndrangheta clans, we analyze how matrimonial ties relate to power and cohesion within the organization.”

While nuptials between the most powerful clans are important for group cohesion, the team found that the marriages among less influential families were the real “load-bearing” relationships in the network. In part, this is because boss families tended to be “associated with redundant, overlapping unions” whereas there is more elasticity in the outer circles.

The study is packed with wild and often disturbing anecdotes—and some that seem directly lifted from a Scorsese flick. 

For instance, take the case of Emanuele Mancuso, whose aunt tried to dissuade him from cooperating with law enforcement with this pitch-perfect guilt trip: “How is your mother doing? She’s not well! She knows she no longer has a son, how do you think she feels?” 

It’s stressful enough to plan a wedding without the additional pressure of figuring out how you will fit into an international criminal syndicate. You can only hope the union will end in holy (not holey) matrimony. 

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

His every move to preserve power accelerates decay, writes a former senior official in the Russian government.

Drie mannen uit Rotterdam zijn vrijdag aangehouden nadat zij met 76 kilo cocaïne werden betrapt in de Waalhaven. Het gaat om Rotterdammers van 29, 28 en 25 jaar oud. Ze blijven voorlopig nog zeker twee weken vastzitten, besloot de rechter-commissaris.

Today's links

• Trump's fruitless search for a goreable ox: You can keep billionaires happy, or you can fight the cost of living crisis, but not both.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Typewriter bust; Phrack's new issue; Panama Papers whistleblower speaks; The PRO Act; Zuck's new mind-control ray.
• Upcoming appearances: Barcelona, Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC, Edinburgh.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Trump's fruitless search for a goreable ox (permalink)

I've got good news and bad news for Trump. The good news: you can get elected by promising to do something about the cost of living crisis, and the president actually has a lot of ways to improve people's daily costs. The bad news: everything you could do to fix working people's cost of living will make an oligarch worse off.

This is the essential conundrum of Trumpismo: to keep his base happy, he needs to make their lives better; but to make their lives better, he'll have to make oligarchs angry. The oligarchs' wealth bonanza caused the cost of living crisis. Oligarchs' pleasure causes our suffering, so alleviating our suffering will reduce their pleasure.

This means that while Trump can promise help with prices, all he can deliver is union-busting, ICE lynchings, and pointless wars, none of which have any hope of materially improving the lives of working people. Indeed, all of this stuff makes working people materially worse off, as wages fall, crops rot in the fields, and gas prices shoot through the roof.

Trump would dearly love to find an ox he can safely gore, but all the good oxen are owned by his oligarch chums. Trump can't punish Ticketmaster, because the billions Ticketmaster steals from the WWE, F1 and football fans in his base all land in the pocket of oligarchs who own stock in Ticketmaster, and Trump can't afford to upset those oligarchs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/03/aoi-aoi-oh/#concentrated-gains-vast-diffused-losses

Indeed, I can't think of a single corrupt racket that Trump can afford to do something about. Not even the only cost of living metric that can approach gas prices in the hierarchy of American electoral salience: grocery prices.

Your grocery bill went up because oligarchs price-gouge you. Eggflation was caused by Cal-Maine, the monopolist that owns every brand of eggs in your grocer's fridge, who jacked up prices because they knew they could:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/10/demand-and-supply/#keep-cal-maine-and-carry-on

Pepsi and Walmart conspired to force every retailer to jack up the prices of all Pepsi products (including Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Aquafina, etc) at every retailer's store, so that Walmart could also jack up their prices and still undersell their competition (naturally, Trump let them get away with it):

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart

This stuff isn't exactly a secret. Grocery store owners hold earnings calls with their investors where they boast about the fact that they can raise their prices far in excess of their increased costs, and blame it on inflation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

They boast about their "personalized pricing" swindles, whereby they use surveillance data to figure out how desperate you are and jack up the prices you see in their apps:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/11/nothing-personal/#instacartography

Trump has the power to put a stop to all of this, but still, he can't, because his oligarch pals would squeal, and when they squeal, Trump jumps. In theory, Trump has lots of power, but in practice, Trump can't do anything.

Which brings me to the cost of meat. Meat inflation has raced ahead of other forms of food inflation, even as the payments to ranchers and other producers fell sharply, leading to waves of bankruptcies:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/beef-is-expensive-so-why-are-cattle

Partly, that's because meat processing is controlled by cartels, with 85% of all the beef being processed by four packers, and nearly every chicken going through one of four poultry processors. These middlemen jack up prices to grocers while colluding to push down the payments to their suppliers.

How do they rig those prices? After all, it's very illegal for these four companies to get together around a table to rig prices. Instead, they use a "price consultancy" called Agri Stats that does the price-rigging for them. Every week, the packers send a detailed list of all their costs and prices into Agri Stats, and Agri Stats "advises" them all to raise all their prices at once, and anyone who doesn't play along is pushed out of the Agri Stats cartel. Everyone wins – except families paying for groceries:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

Agri Stats has been doing this since the Reagan years, but they grew steadily more brazen, until, back in 2023, Biden's DOJ brought history's most obvious, easily won antitrust case against them:

https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/29124-doj-sues-agri-stats-for-complicity-in-meat-market-manipulation

And wouldn't you know it, Trump just settled that case, in a way that will make Agri Stats much, much richer and give them far more opportunities to rig prices:

https://prospect.org/2026/05/08/meat-industry-agri-stats-department-of-justice-price-fix-trump/

Under the terms of the settlement, Agri Stats must "allow" restaurants, farmers, and other parts of the supply chain to pay it for the data it consolidates. This will allow more parties to collude to rig prices, and provide more income to Agri Stats. As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, they've been "sentenced to make money."

Agri Stats isn't the only "price consultancy" that is used to launder a price-fixing cartel that's driving up the cost of living for all Americans, including Trump's base, in order to make oligarchs better off. Companies like Realpage do the same thing for residential rents:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/#home-team-advantage

Trump can't do anything about any of these scams, not without goring some oligarch's precious ox. But, as Dayen points out, there are dozens of Democratic state Attorneys General who can kill Trump's sweetheart deal for Agri Stats using the Tunney Act, which gives them standing to sue to force a federal judge to review the settlement and determine whether it is fair.

Whether any AG will seize the moment remains to be seen, of course, but it would be very good politics to do so – after all, the path to political power in America runs through credible promises to do something about the cost of living crisis.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• The simple statistical error Republican Supreme Court justices used to gut the VRA https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-05-08-simple-math-error-scotus-callais-vra

• Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies

• The Scam Artistry of the Right’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels https://jacobin.com/2026/05/peterson-musk-tate-right-victimization

• Ploopy Bean Pointing Stick https://ploopy.co/shop/bean-pointing-stick/

'The Biggest Student Data Privacy Disaster in History': Canvas Hack Shows the Danger of Centralized EdTech https://www.404media.co/the-biggest-student-data-privacy-disaster-in-history-canvas-hack-shows-the-danger-of-centralized-edtech/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago A dotcom founder's tale (funny) https://features.slashdot.org/story/01/05/04/1541239/the-worst-of-times

#20yrsago Shell UK abandons chip-and-pin after £1M fraud https://web.archive.org/web/20060508044110/https://www.snakeoillabs.com/2006/05/07/shell-stops-accepting-chip-and-pin-in-fraud-fiasco-bp-to-follow/

#15yrsago Typewriter bust: Grandfather https://web.archive.org/web/20110511033756/http://jemayer.tumblr.com/post/5260317696

#10yrsago Kobo “upgrade” deprives readers of hundreds of DRM-locked ebooks https://www.teleread.com/drm-nightmare-after-recent-upgrade-kobo-customers-report-losing-sony-books-from-their-libraries/

#10yrsago Venerable hacker zine Phrack publishes its first issue in four years https://phrack.org/issues/69/1

#10yrsago Panama Papers whistleblower issues statement, naming and shaming failed states and institutions https://web.archive.org/web/20160506180902/https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160506-john-doe-statement.html

#5yrsago The FTC's (kick-ass) Right to Repair report https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/07/pro-act-class-war/#we-fixit

#5yrsago The PRO Act and worker misclassification https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/07/pro-act-class-war/#sectoral-balances

#1yrago Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again) https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
  https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/

• Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
  https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

• When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

• Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

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Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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