So I got this mail in my spam folder yesterday from "Mike Zhang", who is the "Service Manager" for "Domain Registrar (Head Office)". The opening line is interesting:
Dear CEO,
(It's very urgent, please transfer this email to your CEO. If this email affects you, we are very sorry, please ignore this email. Thanks)
As the kids say these days: "Wait, what?"
Ignore the mail if it affects me? That seems… counterintuitive.
Anyway, what our CEO should know is:
We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in China.
We received an application from Kai Rui Ltd on July 7, 2025. They want to register " punsalad " as their Internet Keyword and " punsalad .cn "、" punsalad .com.cn " 、" punsalad .net.cn "、" punsalad .org.cn " domain names. But after checking it, we find " punsalad " conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, so we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China or not?
So I Googled. And this popped up: Dear CEO scam is causing trouble. And sure enough, "Mike Zhang" was sending out the exact same mail (with fill-in-the-blank domains) back in 2019.
And that site says:
This scam has been hanging around for over years [sic].
Still, if they haven't bothered to make the opening paragraph sensible, it must work occasionally.
Also of note:
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No, it's not. Impeach his orange ass. Damon Root wonders: Trump won’t enforce the TikTok ban. Is that constitutional?
The U.S. Constitution requires the president to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Yet President Donald Trump has not only refused to enforce the federal law banning TikTok, but his administration has also told multiple tech companies that they may openly violate the TikTok ban "without incurring any legal liability" because the Department of Justice is "irrevocably relinquishing any claims" against the companies "for the conduct proscribed in the Act."
But wait, may the president do that? May Trump encourage private parties to violate a duly enacted federal law while simultaneously vowing to free them from present and future liability for their lawbreaking? Is that constitutional?
As Damon details, there's a long history of presidential, um, discretion about "faithfully executing" laws. Back to Jefferson! But Trump's pressing against the boundaries even harder.
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At last, Pam Bondi explains the Epstein deal. Jeff Maurer turns over his substack for Pam to come clean: Whoops: That Was a Menu for EPSTEIN'S DELI on My Desk.
MAGA land is obsessed with the so-called “Epstein files”. This trove of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — especially his alleged “client list” — is thought to be the smoking gun that will expose a cabal of rich and powerful sex abusers. MAGA land was ecstatic when I told Fox News in February that the files were “sitting on my desk right now”. Finally, the predatory men who join in Epstein’s abuse and then plotted his murder would be exposed! Or, so some people thought.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department concluded that there was no client list and that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. This is consistent with previous law enforcement findings. The questions remains, though: Why did I say that the Epstein files were “on my desk”? Was it because I was afraid to puncture the delusions of the paranoid shut-ins who are an important part of the Trump base? Not, it’s not that. The truth is that what I thought was the Epstein files turned out to be a menu for a local restaurant called “Epstein’s Deli”. Whoopsie. My bad, everyone — talk about Mistake Town, population “me”. I thought I had evidence of an international conspiracy, but it turned out to be a promotion for an eatery offering sandwiches, paninis, and soups made fresh every morning. Egg on my face, table for one, am-I-right?
It's an honest mistake that anyone with an IQ of 80 could make, Pam.
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Another good question. Tyler Cowen asks it at the Free Press: Why Won’t Socialism Die? Some theories are offered, concocted by some very smart people:
It is a long-standing task of social scientists—perhaps the most tireless one—to try to explain the popularity of socialism. Economics Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek attributed it to mankind’s atavistic instincts, left over from earlier, poorer societies when extreme sharing was necessary. Milton Friedman treated the socialists as though they were well-intentioned individuals who simply had not learned enough good economics. Joseph Schumpeter believed it was the curse of capitalism that the intellectuals would turn against it—an idea later seconded by Robert Nozick.
Peter Thiel, more recently, has blamed student debt and the high cost of buying a home. “When one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time,” he said. “And if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.” As usual, Peter has a point.
There is truth in all of these hypotheses (and there are others yet), but focusing on 2025, I have a more concrete and perhaps more depressing explanation. Socialism is surging right now because American society has simply turned more negative. We complain more, we whine more, and we are more likely to dislike each other. And if we are more negative, that means we are more negative about everything around us—including capitalism. Big business has never been bigger, and we have never spent more time with it, whether it is scrolling on our smartphones, calling up an Uber, or flying to another city.
The only upside for people like me is we get to say:
"That won't work."
Followed in a few months or years by:
"See, I told you it wouldn't work."
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I think they'll figure it out someday, actually. Ars Technica attended a Democrat stunt dressed up as “Things we’ll never know” science fair highlights US’s canceled research.
None of the "researchers" are identified by name or institution in the article. And very few of the cancelled projects seem to be dedicated to actual scientific research. One exception:
The damage is far from limited to education and diversity issues. Despite having been in power during a pandemic that ultimately killed well over a million Americans, the administration has decided that any pandemic-related work is not a priority. So, an entire pandemic preparedness program was scrapped. A pair of researchers was there to talk about the Antiviral Drug Discovery program (AViDD), which had been funded to develop drugs that target various emerging viral threats, such as coronaviruses and the families that include Ebola, Zika, and measles. The idea behind AViDD is to have treatments ready that could limit the spread of any new, threatening version of these viruses in order to give us time to develop vaccines.
AViDD had been funded to the tune of $1.2 billion, included nine dedicated research centers, and involved researchers at 90 institutions. In total, it had spent about half that money in developing 35 treatment candidates that targeted seven different viral families. And then the funding for the entire program was eliminated before any of those candidates could be pursued any further—the researchers likened it to building half a bridge.
$1.2 billion spread over 90 institutions? Sounds a little boondoggly to me. Maybe it's not, but the Ars Technica report doesn't mention that possibility.