SatStats

On this day:
1525
Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.
1966
The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1983
Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the furthest planet from the Sun at the time).

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“Sick of his arrogance and Trump-like condescension to the media he begs for money to every time he gets fired!” --Jimmy Murphy on Tortorella, bringing what everyone wants in sports: more politics.

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Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is revealing new evidence of longstanding United States government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries.

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Smith then inquired into the causes of wealth. He didn’t inquire into the causes of poverty. Smith understood that poverty is humanity’s default mode. Nearly all people before Smith’s time — and still most people during his time — were mired in poverty. Poverty is simply the condition we suffer when wealth isn’t created. Wealth, not poverty, demands explanation because wealth, not poverty, has causes.--Post


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SatStats

Among 70-year-old men, roughly 40 percent show loss of Y in their blood cells, and among 93-year-olds, that number rises to 57 percent.

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The middle class is shrinking, but so is the proportion of Americans below the middle class — because the upper-middle class is growing. As of 2022, they report, the share of wealth held by the middle class had fallen to 8% from 24% in 1989, while the share held by the top 3% rose from 26% in 1989 to 53% in 2022.

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“No child deaths have been definitively linked to Covid vaccines, according to a report from the FDA that was quietly made public.”

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Albert Einstein’s estate was worth just $65,000 when he died.

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A study by GCheck found that, faced with anxiety about how automation could impact job security, 63% of 1,500 workers surveyed reported that they exaggerate their AI skills to appear more up-to-date. That number shot up to 80% among Gen Z workers as the tech threatens early-career and entry-level roles more drastically.

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Wind and solar generated more electricity than gas globally for the first month ever in April 2026, according to data analysed by global energy think tank Ember. Together, wind and solar generated 22% of global electricity in April 2026, compared with 20% from gas.

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New York City’s $125 billion budget is that it is bigger than the $115 billion expected to be spent this year by the entire state of Florida. New York City has 8.5 million people; the state of Florida has 23.6 million.

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Swedish intel on Russia

 While Russia has claimed GDP expanded by about 13% between 2020 and 2024, Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span.

Moscow has also lowballed inflation substantially, according to Stenergard, who pointed out that Russia’s official inflation figure in 2024 was 10% while the central bank hiked interest rates to 21% that year.

Similarly, Sweden’s military intelligence chief has estimated that today’s inflation is likely closer to the current benchmark borrowing cost of 15% than the government’s official reading of 5.2%.

“This would mean Russia is overstating its purchasing power, and that its military spending capacity is weaker than it appears,” Stenergard wrote.

But Swedish intelligence believes Russia would need the average price for Urals oil to stay above $100 a barrel for the rest of the year to provide a meaningful benefit to the government’s finances,

At the same time, more advanced Ukrainian drones with longer ranges have evaded air defenses and attacked Russian oil export terminals, limiting the gains from higher oil prices.

Ukraine has been making battlefield gains in recent months and has inflicted 1.2 million casualties on Russia since the war started, with new recruits increasingly difficult to find.

“Russia’s economy, in nominal terms, is barely bigger than the State of New York’s, smaller than that of Texas and fragile,” she said. 

Putin’s approval rate has fallen to 65.6% from 77.8% at the start of the year and prewar levels well above 80%.

Inflationary pressures will persist for years amid a demographic downturn, military mobilizations, and the high demand for labor in the defense industry.

Russia’s government has estimated the workforce will need 3.1 million more workers by 2030, according to Interfax. And in the next five years, the total shortfall will hit 11 million jobs when including a ramp-up in retirement.