Profile: f0fd6902...
Where is the center of the universe?
https://theconversation.com/where-is-the-center-of-the-universe-252695
Report: centralized entities control 31% of bitcoin’s total supply
https://atlas21.com/report-centralized-entities-control-31-of-bitcoins-total-supply/
A study conducted by Gemini in collaboration with Glassnode revealed that centralized actors currently hold 30.9% of bitcoin’s entire circulating supply.
These entities include national governments, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and publicly listed companies. Collectively, these players control 6.1 million BTC, equivalent to approximately $668 billion at current market prices. BlackRock alone holds around 665,635 BTC through its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) ETF, representing over 3% of bitcoin’s total supply, with a value close to $73 billion.
The research concludes that with nearly a third of bitcoin’s circulating supply now held by centralized entities, the market has undergone a structural transformation toward institutional maturity. According to the authors of the report, this evolution has made price action more predictable and less vulnerable to the speculative extremes that characterized Bitcoin’s early years.
Oklahoma City Thunder vs Indiana Pacers - FULL GAME 3 HIGHLIGHTS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O741mbS1Hhc&ab_channel=TheCCBNetwork
Millions of Americans Credit Scores Drop Due to Rising Student Loan Delinquencie
Millions of Americans saw their credit scores significantly drop from January to March 2025, largely due to failing to pay student loans after the government unpaused federal student loan repayments.
The Details: Nearly six million student loan borrowers, or about 14%, were 90 or more days delinquent or in default in this year’s first quarter, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report. About 2.2 million recently-delinquent borrowers have seen their credit scores drop over 100 points, and over 1 million additional borrowers have seen drops over 150 points.
For Context: The federal government paused student loan repayment requirements at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and fully reinstated repayment requirements in October 2024. This has significant potential effects on the economy, as low credit scores may prevent millions of Americans from making large purchases such as homes and cars.
How the Media Covered It: Newsweek (Center bias) quoted financial experts highlighting the economic consequences of student loan delinquencies, including the LendingTree Chief Consumer Finance Analyst saying that bad credit ”can literally cost you tens of thousands of dollars or more over the course of your life.” Washington Post (Lean Left bias) included the experience of an individual who was denied an automobile loan because of a $440 missed payment about which she claims the Education Department never notified her. Fox Business (Lean Right bias) noted that nearly 56.6% of newly-delinquent borrowers had subpar credit scores before loan repayments were reinstated.
Exclusive Interview: Coinfinity is Quietly Redefining Bitcoin Onboarding
https://bitcoinnews.com/interviews/coinfinity-redefining-bitcoin-onboarding/
Multifamily Delinquencies Are Now Higher than During the Great Recession
https://mises.org/power-market/multifamily-delinquencies-are-now-higher-during-great-recession
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (also known as “GSEs”) have released their April reports on their mortgage portfolios and mortgage delinquencies. Both Fannie and Freddie report that serious delinquencies in multifamily are rising to multiyear highs.
""Commercial mortgage delinquencies increased in the first quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest Commercial Mortgage Delinquency Rates Report.
“Commercial mortgage delinquencies rose across all major capital sources in the first quarter of 2025, reflecting growing pressure on certain property sectors and loan types,” said Reggie Booker, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research. “While delinquency rates remain relatively low for most investor groups, the uptick in CMBS delinquencies signals heightened stress in parts of the market that lack refinancing options or other challenges.”
MBA’s quarterly analysis looks at commercial delinquency rates for the top five capital sources: commercial banks and thrifts, commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), life insurance companies, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Together, these investors hold more than 80 percent of commercial mortgage debt outstanding.""
So, conditions are not exactly ideal for landlords raising rents to make up for rising interest rates on multifamily mortgages.
Nor is there likely any relief in sight in terms of interest rates. The Trump administration’s continued embrace of mega-deficits will flood the economy with rising levels of government debt, causing more competition for mortgage-backed securities which will push down bond prices, thus pushing up interest rates further. The current upward trend in multifamily delinquencies is likely to continue.
We've never seen this rare squid alive in the wild—until now
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/antarctic-squid-filmed-alive-first-video
In the frigid waters near Antarctica, the elusive squid Gonatus antarcticus was recently spotted by a remotely operated vehicle. It's the first time this squid has been seen alive.
There is a video in the link too
As the expedition’s remote vehicle, SuBastian, slowly dropped 7,000 feet through the ocean’s inky twilight zone toward the seabed on Christmas morning, Novillo watched a live video feed streaming into the ship’s mission control room.
Suddenly, he spotted a shadow a few feet away. Intrigued, he asked the pilot to get closer. And “voila, it appeared,” he says.
There, in front of the rover, was a three-foot-long squid, which released a small cloud of greenish ink—perhaps startled by the vehicle.
They used lasers to get an accurate measurement of its size, and the pilot turned down the lights so the team could get an idea of how this enigmatic animal lives in its natural environment.
The mystery of the 8,000-year-old rock paintings of Sego Canyon (2022)
https://anomalien.com/the-mystery-of-the-8000-year-old-rock-paintings-of-sego-canyon/
Sego Canyon is located in Utah, USA, and for several millennia, Native Americans have painted it with rather strange images.
The most ancient petroglyphs date back 8 thousand years, and the tribe that created them does not even have a personal name in history, they are simply called “archaic peoples”
Proponents of the paleocontact theory suggest that the strange figures in the cave paintings of Sego Canyon depict aliens who once visited the Earth.
As evidence, they cite the fact that although shamanism was very widespread among the Indian tribes, the strange figures of the Sego Canyon are almost a unique phenomenon, other tribes did not draw anything like this on the rocks.
Researcher Figured Out How to Reveal Any Phone Number Linked to a Google Account
The issue has since been fixed but at the time presented a privacy issue in which even hackers with relatively few resources could have brute forced their way to peoples’ personal information.
“I think this exploit is pretty bad since it's basically a gold mine for SIM swappers,” the independent security researcher who found the issue, who goes by the handle brutecat, wrote in an email. SIM swappers are hackers who take over a target's phone number in order to receive their calls and texts, which in turn can let them break into all manner of accounts.
In mid-April, we provided brutecat with one of our personal Gmail addresses in order to test the vulnerability. About six hours later, brutecat replied with the correct and full phone number linked to that account.
Brute forcing is when a hacker rapidly tries different combinations of digits or characters until finding the ones they’re after. Typically that’s in the context of finding someone’s password, but here brutecat is doing something similar to determine a Google user’s phone number.
Brutecat said in an email the brute forcing takes around one hour for a U.S. number, or 8 minutes for a UK one. For other countries, it can take less than a minute, they said.
Researcher Figured Out How to Reveal Any Phone Number Linked to a Google Account
Rust is Officially in the Linux Kernel
https://weeklyrust.substack.com/p/rust-is-officially-in-the-linux-kernel
Three Dumb Studies for your consideration
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/three-dumb-studies-for-your-consideration
It’s cool to run big, complicated science experiments, but it’s also a pain in the butt. So here’s a challenge I set for myself: what’s the lowest-effort study I could run that would still teach me something? Specifically, these studies should:
Take less than 3 hours
Cost less than $20
Show me something I didn’t already know
Be a “hoot”
I call these Dumb Studies, because they’re dumb. Here are three of them.
EXPERIMENT 1: I AM BABY
I’m bad at tasting things. I once found a store-bought tiramisu at the back of the fridge and was like “Ooh, tiramisu!” Then I ate some and was like, “Huh this tiramisu is kinda tangy,” and when my wife tasted it, she immediately spat it out and said, “That’s rancid.” We looked at the box and discovered the tiramisu expired several weeks ago. I would say this has permanently harmed my reputation within my family.
That experience left me wondering: just how bad are my taste buds? Like, in a blind test, would I even be able to tell different flavors apart? I know that sight influences taste, of course—there are all sorts of studies dunking on wine enthusiasts: they can’t match the description of a wine to the actual wine, they like cheaper wine better when they don’t know the price, and if you put some red food coloring in white wine, people think it’s red wine.1 But what if I’m even worse than that? What if, when I close my eyes, I literally can’t tell what’s in my mouth?
EXPERIMENT 2: MISS PAIN PIGGY LOVES TO PUT HER HAND IN A BUCKET OF ICE
My friends and I were hosting a party and we thought it would be funny to ask people to stick their hands in various buckets, just to see how long they would do it. We didn’t exactly have a theory behind this. We just thought something weird might happen.
EXPERIMENT 3: SUGAR DADDY SALT BAE
Here’s something that’s always bugged me: people love sugar and salt, right? I mean, duh, of course they do. So why doesn’t anyone pour themselves a big bowl of salt and sugar and chow down? Is it just social norms and willpower preventing us from indulging our true desires? Or is it because pure sugar and salt don’t actually taste that good? Could it be that our relationship with these delicious rocks is, in fact, far more nuanced than simply wanting as much of them as possible?
This study was partly inspired by cybernetic psychology, which posits that the mind is full of control systems that try to keep various life-necessities at the right level. Sugar and salt are both necessary for life, and people certainly do seem to desire both of them. And yet, if you eat too much of them, you die. That sounds like a job for a control system—maybe there’s some kind of body-brain feedback loop trying to keep salt and sugar at the appropriate level, not too high and not too low. One way to investigate a control system is just to put stuff in front of someone and see what they do. That sounded pretty dumb, so that’s what I did.
Did slavery sow distrust in Africa?
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/did-slavery-sow-distrust-in-africa
The “deep roots” literature in economics seeks to explain the enduring nature of global inequality by tracing the economic destinies of nations to events that happened decades or centuries ago. From the coercive labor systems of colonial Latin America to the trust-eroding effects of Africa’s slave trade, the literature posits that historical events cast long shadows that shape present-day outcomes. However, this thesis falls apart under emprical scrutiny.
Botswana is an example of an African country whose success is due in large part to effective post-colonial policies.
Claims about the devastating impact of colonial institutions are frequently made in regard to Latin America, where institutions like the Mit’a and encomienda are blamed for cycles of poverty in indigenous communities. However, a detailed study by Leticia Abad and Noel Maurer tells a more complex story, which points to institutional dissipation rather than persistence.
Nowhere is the deep roots narrative more influential than in discussions of Africa’s slave trade. In a widely cited study, Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon argue that historical exposure to transatlantic slavery eroded social trust in Africa. They claim that fear of enslavement at the hands of one’s associates bred suspicion and undermined social cohesion—a legacy that supposedly endures to this day, thwarting economic development.
But the argument falters on both historical and empirical grounds. First, it mischaracterizes the nature of slave acquisition. As David Eltis and John Thornton argue, slave raiding was not the predominant method of enslavement. A substantial portion of slaves entered the trade through warfare, debt bondage or judicial punishment. According to Thornton, that over a third of slaves were prisoners of war. This undermines the trust theory: if enslavement occurred primarily through formal practices rather than random betrayals, why would it sow distrust? Parts of southern Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia have long histories of slavery, yet do not suffer from the trust-eroding effects attributed uniquely to Africa.
As Jean-Philippe Platteau and colleagues have shown using the Afrobarometer surveys, countries like Benin that were at the center of the slave trade do not exhibit consistently lower levels of trust than non-slave-trading countries. On some measures, Benin exhibits higher levels of trust. And when trust is disaggregated into its generalized and particularized forms (e.g., trust in strangers vs. trust in neighbors), the results remain decidedly mixed. Historical exposure to slavery does not seem to be a robust predictor of trust.
if enslavement occurred primarily through formal practices rather than random betrayals, why would it sow distrust? Parts of southern Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia have long histories of slavery, yet do not suffer from the trust-eroding effects attributed uniquely to Africa.
if trust was so deeply eroded, how were transcontinental slave trading networks maintained in the first place?
The most controversial study in the deep roots is the one by Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, presenting evidence that genetic distance to the US is a major predictor of development. The argument is not that genes directly affect productivity, but rather that genetic distance proxies for cultural distance, which in turn hinders the diffusion of innovation. However, Douglas Campbell and Ju Pyun showed that once proper geographic controls are included (e.g., distance from the equator and a dummy for sub-Saharan Africa), Spolaore and Wacziarg’s result no longer reaches significance. The observed correlations, they argue, are better explained by climatic compatibility and ecological constraints.
The deep roots literature offers a compelling story: that the economic destinies of nations were determined by events dozens or even hundreds of years ago. But as the latest research makes clear, this narrative is at best incomplete and at worst simply wrong. From Peru to Singapore, we see that institutions can dissolve, recover and reform. The persistence framework compresses decades or centuries of institutional change into simple, path-dependent trajectories—ignoring political agency. While sometimes constrained by genes or geography, societies can and do remake themselves.
Did slavery sow distrust in Africa?
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/did-slavery-sow-distrust-in-africa
The “deep roots” literature in economics seeks to explain the enduring nature of global inequality by tracing the economic destinies of nations to events that happened decades or centuries ago. From the coercive labor systems of colonial Latin America to the trust-eroding effects of Africa’s slave trade, the literature posits that historical events cast long shadows that shape present-day outcomes. However, this thesis falls apart under emprical scrutiny.
Botswana is an example of an African country whose success is due in large part to effective post-colonial policies.
Claims about the devastating impact of colonial institutions are frequently made in regard to Latin America, where institutions like the Mit’a and encomienda are blamed for cycles of poverty in indigenous communities. However, a detailed study by Leticia Abad and Noel Maurer tells a more complex story, which points to institutional dissipation rather than persistence.
if enslavement occurred primarily through formal practices rather than random betrayals, why would it sow distrust? Parts of southern Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia have long histories of slavery, yet do not suffer from the trust-eroding effects attributed uniquely to Africa.
if trust was so deeply eroded, how were transcontinental slave trading networks maintained in the first place?
The most controversial study in the deep roots is the one by Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg, presenting evidence that genetic distance to the US is a major predictor of development. The argument is not that genes directly affect productivity, but rather that genetic distance proxies for cultural distance, which in turn hinders the diffusion of innovation. However, Douglas Campbell and Ju Pyun showed that once proper geographic controls are included (e.g., distance from the equator and a dummy for sub-Saharan Africa), Spolaore and Wacziarg’s result no longer reaches significance. The observed correlations, they argue, are better explained by climatic compatibility and ecological constraints.
The deep roots literature offers a compelling story: that the economic destinies of nations were determined by events dozens or even hundreds of years ago. But as the latest research makes clear, this narrative is at best incomplete and at worst simply wrong. From Peru to Singapore, we see that institutions can dissolve, recover and reform. The persistence framework compresses decades or centuries of institutional change into simple, path-dependent trajectories—ignoring political agency. While sometimes constrained by genes or geography, societies can and do remake themselves.
Did slavery sow distrust in Africa?
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/did-slavery-sow-distrust-in-africa
The “deep roots” literature in economics seeks to explain the enduring nature of global inequality by tracing the economic destinies of nations to events that happened decades or centuries ago. From the coercive labor systems of colonial Latin America to the trust-eroding effects of Africa’s slave trade, the literature posits that historical events cast long shadows that shape present-day outcomes. However, this thesis falls apart under emprical scrutiny.
The deep roots literature offers a compelling story: that the economic destinies of nations were determined by events dozens or even hundreds of years ago. But as the latest research makes clear, this narrative is at best incomplete and at worst simply wrong. From Peru to Singapore, we see that institutions can dissolve, recover and reform. The persistence framework compresses decades or centuries of institutional change into simple, path-dependent trajectories—ignoring political agency. While sometimes constrained by genes or geography, societies can and do remake themselves.
How Marxists Erase Human Will and Agency
https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-marxists-erase-human-will-and-agency
JG: Would you be happy to be described as a “Marxist historian” or is there a more accurate term for historians like you, Howard Zinn and others?
EF (Eric Foner is reputed to be a “noted Marxist historian,”): I tend to eschew labels. Marx is believed to have said: “I am not a Marxist.” In other words: “I don’t want to be assigned to a single school of interpretation.”
But no-one can understand history who does not have at least some familiarity with the writings of Marx.
I have been powerfully influenced by Marxist insights, especially those of the last generation of British Marxist scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson and others.
But I have also been influenced by black radical scholars like WEB Du Bois, who himself was influenced by Marxism and also by other radical traditions and by feminist scholars.
Mises further explains:
Human action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is human will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life.
Mises highlights the importance of the human will and human agency in making choices:
For the term will means nothing else than man’s faculty to choose between different states of affairs, to prefer one, to set aside the other, and to behave according to the decision made in aiming at the chosen state and forsaking the other.
In “Why America Has Never Been Great for Black People” Ariana Doss writes that:
Our president’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” has always confused me.
As a progressive person, who only views the past to find ways to improve the future, I cannot fathom why President Trump wants to go backwards. When I examine this country’s history, I do not find a time in which I, or any other Black person for this matter, would have wanted to go.
As Mises explains:
Marxism asserts that a man’s thinking is determined by his class affiliation. Every social class has a logic of its own. The product of thought cannot be anything else than an “ideological disguise” of the selfish class interests of the thinker.
Many champions of the instinct school are convinced that they have proved that action is not determined by reason, but stems from the profound depths of innate forces, impulses, instincts, and dispositions which are not open to any rational elucidation.
Mysterious Jellyfish UFOs and Their Alarming Encounters
https://anomalien.com/mysterious-jellyfish-ufos-and-their-alarming-encounters/
Your Phone, the Spy: Threats to Activists & the Rest of Us | Presentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qknOIafYODs&ab_channel=OsloFreedomForum
Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton reveals how smartphones and Internet-connected devices are turned into tools of surveillance by dictators. This talk exposes the hidden risks facing advocates and why no one is truly immune.
The astonishing superpowers of nature’s most unloved animals
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/unloved-animals-conservation-population-underdogs
The Anarchists
https://www.hbo.com/the-anarchists
In 2015, Jeff Berwick, a Canadian entrepreneur-turned-provocateur, launched a conference in Acapulco, Mexico in hopes of promoting anarchy in its purest form – an ideal espousing the absence of government with absolute individual self-rule. The event, called “Anarchapulco,” draws an international array of libertarians, fugitives, and families seeking to “unschool” their children to protect them from the bureaucracies of modern life, as well as crypto-currency evangelists and others attracted to the idea of creating a stateless community, free from governments and central banking systems.
Unfolding over six years, The Anarchists, a six-part documentary series, chronicles a strange and deadly series of events. What begins as an impulsive one-off gathering turns into an ever-growing annual event attracting sponsorship from crypto-currency companies and featuring speakers such as Ron Paul and BitCoin investor Roger Ver. And when rule-avoidant freedom activists come together in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, utopian ideology collides with the unpredictability of human nature. Relationships are fractured, rivalries are forged and, ultimately, lives are lost.
With intimate access to the main players, The Anarchists features candid, first-hand accounts from Berwick, the reluctant figurehead of the movement; anarchy activists Lisa and Nathan Freeman who left the United States with their children to find a freer life in Mexico; and John Galton and Lily Forester, American fugitives on the run from drug charges, among others.
HBO Documentary Films presents A Blumhouse Television Production: The Anarchists. Directed by Todd Schramke; executive producers, Jason Blum, Jeremiah Crowell, Kim Kylland and Todd Schramke for Bird Murmur, Chris McCumber, Jeremy Gold, Mary Lisio, James Buddy Day, Andre Gaines, Allen Bain; co-executive producer, Ben Parry. For HBO: senior producer, Tina Nguyen; executive producers, Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller.