Alfred King

More on the productive and reproductive payoffs for aging societies associated with WFH and Hybrid work. Payoffs for productivity and fertility. This is from Steve Davis and his work with Nick Bloom and researcher. linkedin.com/posts/steven-j…

News: @RonWyden placed holds on three military promotions. — Lt. Col. Vincent Noble, — Lt. Commander Thomas MacNeil, — Col. Thomas Siverts. He explained why in the Congressional Record.

Something remarkable happened this week: a Substack post helped expose and remove the first-ever ICE 287(g) enforcement agreement with a K-12 school district in the United States. Here's what we know. 🧵

This is stolen valor. The Trump USDA isn’t issuing a new “Product of USA” rule. It’s just implementing a rule that the Biden USDA fought tooth and nail against the Big Four meatpackers to finalize back in March 2024 — and they’re implementing it badly to boot. For nearly 20 years before the 2024 Biden USDA rule, a meatpacker was allowed to put a “Product of USA” label on any meat product — even if it came from an animal born, raised and slaughtered abroad — as long as it was slightly further processed in the US. From 2022 to 2024, the Biden USDA waged a knock-down, drag-out fight against the Big Four meatpackers to bring honesty back to the “Product of USA” label. Ultimately, they were able to finalize a rule in March 2024 establishing that a “Product of USA” label may only be applied to meat products derived from animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States. All the Trump USDA is doing now is implementing that Biden rule, which the Biden USDA set to become effective on January 1, 2026. To make things worse, the Trump USDA is actually *botching* the rule’s implementation, because DOGE gutted the USDA division in charge of enforcing the meat labeling rules. In other words: These scam artists are taking credit for a rule they inherited and are ruining as we speak.

Rather than examining why the GOP is investing such enormous political capital in a bill that strips voting rights from millions of Americans, the media focuses on whether it might backfire politically. I want to warn you and I want there to be a record. democracydocket.com/opinion/there-…

Wrote about the female DJs of color making Atlanta's nightlife more inclusive. “The girls are outside." ajc.com/arts-entertain…

This is so, so well done It’s about the Red Sox, but it’s also about every team and everything, really

Academic databases are starting to show signs of being affected by AI-generated hallucinated research. If the publishing system is the immune system of science, it is not in the best of health, writes Andrew Gray. thebulletin.org/premium/2026-0…

BREAKING: 50 billionaire families have already spent over $433 MILLION influencing the 2026 midterms. 80% of the cash is going towards politicians and groups who will protect tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. Tax the rich.

An Auntie Anne’s original pretzel cost about $3.50 in 2009. Today it’s $7.29. The pretzel tracked inflation almost perfectly. The pretzel is accidentally the most honest inflation tracker in America. It’s priced in flour, sugar, labor, commercial rent, and energy. Every cost that went up in 17 years is baked into that $7.29. One mall receipt tells you more about the economy than most dashboards. Now do the rest. Gas in 2009 averaged $2.35 a gallon. Today it’s $3.81. Up 62%. The median U.S. home sold for $172,000 in 2009. The latest FRED data has it at $405,300. Up 136%. Average public university tuition went from about $7,000 to $12,000. Up 71%. Health insurance premiums for a family of four went from $13,000 to over $24,000. Up 85%. Every price in the economy moved. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 was set on July 24, 2009. It has not changed once in 6,088 days. $7.25 in 2009 had the purchasing power of $10.47 today. That’s a 30% silent pay cut delivered one year at a time, while the number on the check never moved. In 2009, $7.25 bought two Auntie Anne’s pretzels. In 2026, it doesn’t buy one. The dollar lost 30% of its value. The pretzel adjusted. The wage didn’t.

Wow this blew up, I’m so happy yall are liking this film we worked so hard on it. We are a group of independent Filmmakers and actors and are creating this new web series called “Doin’ Too Much”. You can expect our next film within 3-4 weeks. Thank you so much 💙⏸️

I wrote about plastic prices in yesterday's Odd Lots newsletter ahead of today's episode (which you should definitely listen to) Packaging really is an underappreciated driver of inflation, and plastics prices are already spiking You can't buy a bag of carrots without petroleum

A Black fascist is still a fascist A Black pig is still a pig A Black Judas is still a Judas A Black ICE agent is still an ICE agent A Black Pedophile is still a Pedophile We're not playing this game anymore

We invaded Venezuela, kidnapped their leader and installed a puppet, and are now pillaging the country's resources just like the fascists in the 1930s did, and somehow this has already been normalized and isn't being treated as the crime it is cnbc.com/2026/03/25/ven…

The Pentagon has a $1T budget and failed 8 audits in a row. Health insurance companies defraud taxpayers out of $80B a year. The 1% steals $163B a year through tax evasion. Companies steal $50B in wages per year from US workers. Start there.

BREAKING: I just motioned to subpoena Don Trump Jr. for funneling $670 million in taxpayer dollars to a critical minerals company he has financial stake in. Republicans left the hearing room.

Those wheels you’re looking at are 0.75 millimeters thick. That’s half the thickness of a US dime. Each one was carved from a single block of aluminum, and NASA sent six of them to Mars knowing they’d eventually shred. Curiosity was built for a 2-year mission. It landed in August 2012, and by December that year NASA had already extended the mission indefinitely. Thirteen years and 35.5 kilometers later, the rover is still going, but the wheels started cracking just 14 months in. The damage came faster than anyone at JPL predicted. Sharp embedded rocks were punching straight through the skin between the treads. So NASA assembled a Wheel Wear Tiger Team (a crisis problem-solving tradition that goes back to Apollo 13) and got to work. In 2017, they uploaded a traction control algorithm from Earth that adjusts each wheel’s speed in real time based on the terrain, reducing force on the front wheels by 20%. They rerouted the rover to softer ground and started driving backward when possible, because pulling wheels over rocks produces less force than pushing them into rocks. The wildest part: if enough treads snap off, Curiosity is designed to find a sharp rock on Mars and use it to deliberately rip out the damaged inner section of its own wheel. JPL tested this on a replica rover and found Curiosity can keep driving on just the outer third. They predict this won’t be needed until around 2034. Every 1,000 meters, the rover pulls over and uses the camera on its robotic arm to photograph its own wheels so engineers on Earth can count every crack. Each wheel also has tiny holes that spell “JPL” in Morse code, which Curiosity uses to measure distance by photographing its own tracks in the dirt. These photos directly changed the next rover. When NASA built Perseverance, engineers 3D-printed about 70 different tread designs before landing on 48 curved treads instead of Curiosity’s 24, with thicker skin. They tested the new wheels over 60 kilometers and got zero damage by Curiosity’s original failure definition. “A boring graph with no data on it,” as one JPL engineer put it. A $2.5 billion machine doing self-surgery with rocks on another planet because the mission outlasted its design by 6x.

The US Navy sent its two most powerful warships to fight Iran. Both are now gone from the front. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the most expensive warship ever built at $13.2 billion, left the Red Sea after a fire broke out in its laundry room. That’s the official story. The real story is what a Pentagon testing report quietly revealed at the same time. The Ford’s jet launch system is unreliable. Its radar is unreliable. Its weapons elevators, the lifts that move bombs and missiles to the flight deck, are unreliable. Pentagon testers said there is simply not enough data to assess whether the ship can keep operating if it takes enemy fire. Fixes for these combat systems have been identified. Most remain unfunded. The ship also doesn’t have enough bunks. It needs at least 159 more. This is the Navy’s flagship. Delivered years late. $13.2 billion. Deployed into a war zone with systems the Pentagon itself cannot certify as combat-ready. Then there’s the USS Abraham Lincoln. Iran claimed repeatedly that its missiles forced the Lincoln to retreat. The US called it propaganda. What’s not disputed: the Lincoln moved from 350 kilometers off the Iranian coast to over 1,100 kilometers away. Both carriers are now parked far beyond the range of Iranian anti-ship missiles. The Pentagon calls it “tactical repositioning.” The Ford has been at sea for nearly 11 months, one of the longest carrier deployments in modern US history. Maintenance on nuclear carriers takes months under normal conditions. After a fire, an 11-month deployment, and a backlog of deferred repairs, analysts are now talking about 12 to 14 months out of action. America went into this war with two carriers. It now has zero operating near the fight. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Donald Trump got the Director of the US Patent and Trade Office to apply for trademarks for the Board of Peace—something it does for no other entity and which is not allowed under federal law. Then he waived the fee for registration. Now he’ll decide whether to grant the application he submitted! No one knows what this Board of Peace is or where the billions of dollars gathered from corrupt foreign states will go. We're exposing this devious scheme.