Elon Musk exposes real foreign racists with based new X feature

Source: The Hill
by Robby Soave

“Location, location, location. That’s what matters now on X, because Elon Musk has just rolled out a hugely important new feature, and it’s confirming what some of us have suspected was the case for some time now. It turns out that many of the openly racist and anti-Semitic accounts on X that claim to be America First but are actually giving MAGA a bad name — well, they’re not true America First at all. In fact, they’re largely coming from Muslim countries. And now we have the proof. A week ago, Fox News personality Katie Pavlich, a friend of mine, posted on X: ‘Hey @elonmusk, please make it mandatory that wherever an account is based – country – be featured in an account’s public profile. Foreign bots are tearing America apart. Thanks.’ In response, Nikita Bier, head of product development at X, said, ‘Give me 72 hours.’ And now, X has delivered.” (11/24/25)

https://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5620581-elon-musk-exposes-foreign-bots/

Steve Trinward

Consumer confidence slides as Americans grow wary of high costs and sluggish job gains

Source: Associated Press

“U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring and stubborn inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest reading since April, when President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge. The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found.” (11/25/25)

https://apnews.com/article/consumer-confidence-economy-55848421b5ff33ed244c8a4291f7facf

Thomas L. Knapp

The arithmetic of availability: Prospects for American grid dominance in 2030

Source: Niskanen Center
by Kenneth Sercy & Liza Reed

“Energy policy debates often sound like a choice among competing visions of which type of energy would best power America’s future: ‘dispatchable,’ on-demand power produced from fossil fuels and nuclear energy, or quick-build, cheap energy from renewables such as wind and solar? If only our choice was that simplistic. The reality, however, is that between now and 2030, surging demand for energy will collide with longstanding bottlenecks on new capacity. This mismatch between supply and demand stands to limit how much energy the grid can deliver to build homes, create jobs, support national security, drive the economy — everything we count on energy to do. Meanwhile, competitors such as China are able to rapidly bring new capacity online for data centers and other economic and security imperatives.” (11/25/25)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-arithmetic-of-availability-prospects-for-american-grid-dominance-in-2030/

Thomas L. Knapp

Outernet Integrity

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“The Internet is a global network. Update a website or type an email over here, in a jiffy it ends up over there, even if ‘there’ is thousands of miles away. Now, in cases where the connections of the interconnection get disrupted, the electrons (well, ‘packets’) are routinely diverted to a more stable path. … But not always. Certainly not if we’re talking about a major undersea data cable. Were such a cable accidentally severed — or deliberately severed, by a hostile power practicing for war, say, the People’s Republic of China — transmission of data between affected countries may stop dead until the cable can be fixed. Declan Ganley wants to cure this particular vulnerability by building an alternative he calls the Outernet, a space-based version of the Internet that bypasses the earthbound network entirely.” (11/25/25)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/11/25/outernet-integrity/

Thomas L. Knapp

Scientists may have finally “seen” dark matter for the 1st time

Source: Space.com

“Scientists may have ‘seen’ dark matter for the first time, thanks to NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope. If so, this would mark the first direct detection of the universe’s most mysterious substance. Dark matter was theorized in 1933 by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who found that the visible galaxies of the Coma Cluster lacked the necessary gravitational influence to prevent this cluster from flying apart. … If dark matter particles ‘annihilate’ when they meet each other and interact, much as matter and its counterpart antimatter do, then it should produce a shower of particles, including photons of gamma-rays that, while invisible to our eyes, could be ‘seen’ by sensitive gamma-ray space telescopes. … A team of researchers, led by Tomonori Totani from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo, trained the Fermi spacecraft on the regions of the Milky Way where dark matter should congregate, namely at the center of our galaxy, and hunted for this telltale gamma-ray signature.” (11/25/25)

https://www.space.com/astronomy/dark-universe/scientists-may-have-finally-seen-dark-matter-for-the-1st-time

Thomas L. Knapp

Jakarta surpasses Tokyo as world’s biggest city

Source: United Press International

“In just seven years, Jakarta, Indonesia, took a giant leap from 33rd biggest city in the world to surpass Tokyo at the top of the list. The city has grown to 42 million residents. Nearly half the world’s population now lives in cities, and the number of megacities such as Jakarta, which are home to more than 10 million people each, has ballooned from less than 10 to more than 30 in the last 50 years, according to a United Nations report. … According to the report, the world’s three largest cities are Jakarta and its 42 million residents; Dhaka, Bangladesh, with nearly 40 million residents; and Tokyo, with roughly 33 million residents, the report said. The only non-Asian city in the top 10, the U.N. found, is Cairo, Egypt.” (11/25/25)

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/11/25/jakarta-worlds-biggest-city/6671764099677/

Thomas L. Knapp