technocrit

Rising vehicle prices, auto loan interest rates, and insurance and maintenance costs are making it harder for people to buy or keep cars.

Imperial rag: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/business/car-ownership-prices-interest-rates.html

The SEC’s approval lets Nasdaq test blockchain-based versions of stocks that trade and settle like traditional shares.

Everyone knows that a good joke can liven up a talk. Sadly, however, good jokes are in short supply — at least according to a survey of more than 500 presentations at biology meetings1.

Two-thirds of the attempts at humour during these talks fell flat, drawing either polite chuckles or no laughter at all. Almost one-quarter of attempted jokes were judged as a “moderate success”, eliciting audible laughter from around half the audience. Only 9% prompted most or all of the attendees to laugh enthusiastically. In fairness, 42% of jests were spontaneous remarks relating to glitches in presentations, such as slide malfunctions, that were not intended to bring down the house. And audiences might not have expected jokes, making it harder to get them to laugh.

Roughly 40% of the talks monitored were humourless, eliminating the risk of failed jokes, but probably raising the risk of bored listeners. The work is published todayin Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

...

It’s also worth taking seriously Trump’s threats of treason charges against news outlets. The Justice Department is now staffed by loyalists like former Fox host Jeanine Pirro who are willing to follow through on his demands for political prosecutions. Those efforts keep failing — but they raise the cost of dissent and thus chill free speech.

And that’s what the president wants, as Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt made clear when she channeled him on Monday morning.

“The president has said enough with this coverage from other networks that are not telling you the truth, that are so negative about what’s going on,” she said. “This is a pro-America fight, and every network needs to get on board with that."

And if they aren’t, there will be consequences.

...

When NIH stops issuing targeted funding announcements, specific kinds of research become much harder to sustain.

Rare disease research suffers because individual investigators are unlikely to propose studies on conditions affecting small populations unless NIH signals it is a priority and has dedicated funding. Research on health disparities struggles for the same reason. Studies requiring particular methodologies, specific patient populations, or coordination across multiple sites all depend on NOFOs that describe exactly what NIH is looking for and commit resources to support it.

Emerging threats become harder to address quickly. When COVID-19 emerged, NIH issued emergency funding announcements within weeks. Those NOFOs allowed the agency to mobilize researchers rapidly toward specific problems: vaccine development, therapeutic testing, long-term effects, vulnerable populations. Without the ability to issue targeted calls, response to future health emergencies will be slower and less coordinated.

...

A party that built its message around a strong, firm, and unequivocal case to end this war now would very suddenly draw attention to the undoubtedly dozens of congressional Democrats who would not echo this line. So what we get instead is limp process critiques, demanding pointless hearings, and bizarre attacks that Trump is not doing regime change fast enough. Polls repeatedly show the most common criticism of Democrats is not that they are too far left or too anti-war, but that they are too weak, that they don’t stand for anything.

Centering criticism of a deeply unpopular war on those carrying it out for not filling out the right paperwork or producing a satisfactory slideshow — rather than making clear, normative objections to a war of aggression — feeds directly into this perception. But perhaps it’s a perception Democratic leaders, and the pro-war, pro-Israel donors who fund their political careers, would prefer over the alternative.

The essay in question: a film review I wrote in 2019 about the horror movies “Hereditary” and “Midsommar.”

I blinked twice, rubbed my eyes, and then began digging around on the internet to understand.

To my astonishment, prosecutors had introduced my seven-year-old analysis of feminism’s relationship to horror cinema as “evidence of ideologically driven intent” the previous day.

...

The appearance of my review in the trial is a brazen attempt at conjuring “guilt by literature” — just one of the tactics prosecutors have used to criminalize speech and use First Amendment-protected speech as a legal weapon against the Trump administration’s political enemies.

Nobody, by the way, is suggesting that Estrada shot or conspired to shoot the officer. He stands accused of two crimes: attempting to conceal documents “by transporting a box containing numerous Antifa materials” and conspiracy to conceal those zines. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

article: https://www.metalsucks.net/2026/03/13/drain-raised-almost-40000-to-help-immigrant-families-by-selling-their-anti-ice-shirt/

video: Drain - California Cursed

... in a moment when Americans are still debating why the country is involved in global conflicts at all, the people closest to power appear positioned to profit from the weapons and technology used in them.