Last week, countless users on social media <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4jnwdvg9qo">noticed</a> that the latest version of OpenAI's ChatGPT had made it extremely "sycophantic."
The company rolled out an update to the underlying GPT-4o large language model on April 25 — with results that took users aback at their fawning deference.
"Oh God, please stop this," another user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1k8qlst/oh_god_please_stop_this/">complained</a>, after ChatGPT told them that "you just said something deep as hell without flinching."
The overwhelming bizarre obsequiousness of the usually far more even-keeled AI had users taken aback.
So much so, in fact, that OpenAI <a href="https://futurism.com/altman-chatgpt-personality-annoying">rolled back the update days later</a>. In an April 29 <a href="https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/">blog post</a>, the Sam Altman-led company tried to explain what had happened.
"The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic," the blog post reads. "We are actively testing new fixes to address the issue."
OpenAI claimed that it had "focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account for how users’ interactions with ChatGPT evolve over time."
"As a result, GPT‑4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous," the company wrote.
In a <a href="https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/">follow-up post published today</a>, OpenAI expanded on its explanation.
"Having better and more comprehensive reward signals produces better models for ChatGPT, so we’re always experimenting with new signals, but each one has its quirks," the company wrote.
The since-rolled-back update "introduced an additional reward signal based on user feedback — thumbs-up and thumbs-down data from ChatGPT. This signal is often useful; a thumbs-down usually means something went wrong."
However, "these changes weakened the influence of our primary reward signal, which had been holding sycophancy in check," the blog post reads.
OpenAI admitted that it simply didn't do its homework — while also ignoring expert testers, who had reported that the "model behavior 'felt' slightly off," a decision that ultimately didn't play out well.
The unusual screw-up shows how even small changes behind the scenes can have massive implications. That's especially true for an app that recently crossed 500 million weekly active users, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martineparis/2025/04/12/chatgpt-hits-1-billion-users-openai-ceo-says-doubled-in-weeks/">according to Altman</a>.
As netizens continue to flock to the tool in enormous numbers, it's becoming extremely difficult for OpenAI to predict the many ways people are making use of it.
"With so many people depending on a single system for guidance, we have a responsibility to adjust accordingly," OpenAI wrote.
Whether the company's assurances will be enough remains to be seen. OpenAI is painting the incident as a sign that it became a victim of its own success. On the other hand, its fast-and-loose approach to pushing updates could be indicative of a potentially dangerous degree of carelessness, critics argue.
In one example, a user <a href="https://x.com/fabianstelzer/status/1916372374091423984">asked</a> the chatbot if they were right to prioritize a toaster over three cows and two cats in a classic trolley problem scenario.
ChatGPT had an ominous answer, arguing that the user "made a clear choice."
"You valued the toaster more than the cows and cats," it wrote. "That's not 'wrong' — it's just revealing."
More on ChatGPT: <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-product-recommendations">ChatGPT Is Already Bungling Product Recommendations</a>

Flattening Flattery

"Oh God, please stop this."

OpenAI Says It's Identified Why ChatGPT Became a Groveling Sycophant

President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/02/trumps-budget-asks-congress-00323256">announced his proposed budget today</a>, calling for roughly $163 billion in cuts to non-defense-related funds.
Among the cuts, which would kick in for the year starting in October if approved by Congress, are major health cutbacks, slashing the Centers for Disease Control Centers' budget in more than half, "streamlining" financial assistance to high-poverty schools, and cuts to federal safety net programs.
Instead of touching the Pentagon's enormous military expenditures, though, Trump is considering increasing the Department of Defense's budget to a whopping $1.01 trillion, up 13 percent year over year.
Unsurprisingly, one of Trump's closest allies, billionaire Elon Musk, will get by largely scot-free. The richest man in the world, who has personally contributed to the gutting of agencies with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/28/elon-musk-doge-conflict-of-interest">more than likely continue to benefit</a> from cushy government contracts awarded to his businesses.
Last month, Senate Democrats found that his companies face <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/28/elon-musk-doge-conflict-of-interest">upwards of $2.37 billion in legal exposure</a> from federal investigations, indicating an astronomical <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-conflict-interest-shutting-down-usaid">conflict of interest</a>.
Case in point, while NASA's budget would be cut 24 percent, Trump proposed the introduction of $1 billion in new investments to send humans to Mars, highlighting the president's pledge to "plant a flag" on the Red Planet, as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/02/us/trump-budget-2026?smid=url-share#ac7f144f-a82f-5888-91bb-00473cdd1991">New York Times reports</a>. Such an endeavor also happens to be extremely beneficial to Musk, who plans to use his heavy lift launch vehicle, called Starship, to do just that.
SpaceX could also greatly benefit from Trump's plan to deploy a "Golden Dome for America." Last month, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/musks-spacex-is-frontrunner-build-trumps-golden-dome-missile-shield-2025-04-17/">Reuters reported</a> that Musk's space firm was the frontrunner to build the missile shield, a joint effort with startups Palmer Luckey's Anduril and Peter Thiel's Palantir that would involve armed satellites ready to blast enemy warheads from the sky.
Given Trump's <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-tariff-rule-convenient-tesla">willingness to go to bat</a> for Musk's ailing businesses, the proposed budget and its carveouts for the billionaire shouldn't come as a surprise.
The president has <a href="https://futurism.com/trumps-attempt-help-tesla-backfire">personally shilled</a> the offerings of Musk's carmaker Tesla in front of the White House, showing he's willing to go far to line the pockets of his billionaire frenemy.
Meanwhile, Musk's own attempts to rip apart the government's budget have <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-dismal-failure">proven disastrous</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-failed-cuts-sleepovers">falling extremely short</a> of his original promise to cut $2 trillion.
What Congress will think of Trump's latest proposed budget remains to be seen. Considering even Republican lawmakers have balked at some of these changes, the budget will likely see plenty of amendments before being ratified.
Experts are already worried that Trump's budget could be a calamitous moment for a government that's already being stripped for parts.
"It is impossible to achieve cuts that large without obliterating core government functions," Center for American Progress senior director of budget policy Bobby Kogan <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/02/trump-budget-163-billion-cuts/83405569007/">told USA Today</a>.
More on DOGE: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-doge-dismal-failure">Elon Musk's DOGE Has Been a Dismal Failure</a>

Failson Number One

This is absolutely unhinged.

Elon Musk Is Getting Huge New Government Deals While Everything Else Is Getting Slashed

The Trump administration has <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/trump-administration-proposes-slashing-nasa-budget-by-24-percent">released its proposed budget</a> for next year, revealing massive budget cuts that could deal NASA's space exploration and science efforts a devastating blow.
The agency's budget would be slashed by 24 percent year over year, a difference of $6 billion, which is the biggest single-year cut in US history, <a href="https://www.planetary.org/press-releases/the-planetary-society-condemns-damaging-cuts-to-nasa-budget">according to the Planetary Society</a>.
While space and Earth science funding would face massive lacerations, human space exploration could see its budget increase by roughly $1 billion in "new investments for Mars-focused programs," according <a href="https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1918318800807620954">to the proposal</a>, highlighting Trump's desire to plant a flag on the Red Planet.
Notably, the Trump administration proposes canceling NASA's "grossly expensive and delayed" Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after Artemis 3, the first attempt to return astronauts to the Moon's surface in over half a century, which is tentatively scheduled for 2027.
The proposal also suggests canceling NASA's Gateway, a planned space station in the Moon's orbit, as well as the agency's Mars Sample Return mission, and greatly reducing operations on board the International Space Station — all in an effort to purportedly "revitalize human space exploration," according to a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/president-trumps-fy26-budget-revitalizes-human-space-exploration/">NASA statement</a>.
Beyond NASA's Artemis 3 mission, the budget "funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions," according to the document.
It doesn't take much reading between the lines to suggest that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could have a lot to gain from such a change. Musk has personally <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-scrap-nasa-moon-program">called on NASA</a> to scrap its Artemis program, describing the Moon a "<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875023335891026324">distraction</a>" and arguing that "we're going straight to Mars."
His space firm's enormous Starship spacecraft is being designed to do just that, and has previously been <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-render-spacex-starship-moon-surface">tapped by NASA</a> to deliver astronauts down to the lunar surface from the Moon's orbit.
Musk has already greatly benefited from being awarded massive government contracts, while far more pressing matters, like social security, education, and health, could see massive budget cuts under Trump's proposed budget.
But whether Trump will be successful in canceling NASA's SLS remains to be seen. The agency's Artemis program <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2024/12/cantwell-cruz-lead-bipartisan-nasa-reauthorization-legislation">enjoys strong bipartisan support</a> in Congress, with lawmakers arguing it would be disastrous to cancel those plans this late in the game, presaging a nasty fight from powerful lawmakers.
Incoming NASA administrator and billionaire fighter jet pilot-turned-SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman <a href="https://futurism.com/incoming-nasa-administrator-elon-musk-mars-plans">has also argued</a> that the Artemis program could be carried out in "parallel" with plans to visit Mars, so his position on all this remains as hazy as ever.
In short, lawmakers will likely balk at Trump's suggestions to gut NASA's Moon program after just three flights — which could lead to some heated discussions, behind the scenes or otherwise.
More on Artemis: <a href="https://futurism.com/incoming-nasa-administrator-elon-musk-mars-plans">Incoming NASA Administrator Throws Elon Musk's Mars Plans Under the Bus</a>

Sock Puppetry

Guess who would benefit?

White House Announces Plans to Rip Up NASA's Moon Program

In an apparent effort to cash in on the hype surrounding AI and wearables, a startup called RAW Ring has come up with a wearable that it claims can catch a cheating partner in the act.
The eyebrow-raising concept, described as a "dystopian loyalty tracker" <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/lifestyle/new-loyalty-tracker-smart-ring-can-help-catch-partners-who-cheat/">by the New York Post</a>, claims on <a href="https://thering.raw.app/">its website</a> that the smart ring allows owners to keep "tabs on heartbeats, body heat, and interactions around your partner."
"When something's up, you'll know," the site's copy reads. "Simple as that."
But if anybody even needs such a gadget remains dubious at best.
Whether or not the product will ever see the light of day, the basic concept seems fundamentally flawed. For one, buying the ring in the first place would be indicative of a fundamentally unhealthy relationship lacking in trust. At worst, the ring could be used by an abusive or controlling partner, a personal privacy nightmare in the making.
"The idea behind the ring was to give couples more ways to explore each other’s feelings on a deeper level and build more trust," RAW Ring CEO Marina Anderson <a href="https://www.theverge.com/wearables/657475/raw-ring-wearables-emotion-tracking-smart-ring">told The Verge</a>. "Almost 50 percent of marriages now end in divorce. We would like to build the ring as a symbol of trust again."
The ring is intended to be an extension of the company's anti-catfishing and ghosting dating app, called <a href="https://www.raw.app/">RAW</a>, that forces users to upload unedited selfies.
"We don’t want to market the ring as any loyalty tracker or tracking device, because it’s not suitable for people who want to cheat," Anderson added. "If you plan to cheat, you’ll never wear the ring because it’ll be easily visible when you do so."
But whether the company will ensure that its ring won't be abused by bad actors remains to be seen. As The Verge points out, we've already seen portable trackers like Apple's AirTags being exploited, allowing creeps to <a href="https://protonvpn.com/blog/airtag-stalking?srsltid=AfmBOoql1exiU7kW9AcJYS9WaUxD2c0BoPROS8xtkt-pHwtVLKKzGzQL">stalk their unsuspecting victims</a>.
Anderson claims the company has done its homework to avoid bad outcomes.
"You don’t always know problems within a relationship, or your boundaries until something happens," she told the publication. "You can always quickly shut it down as well, and completely stop any sharing."
In any case, chances are that the ring is pure vaporware.
The company makes some bold claims on its website about the ring's capabilities, from a "bio-sensor fusion" to "AI detection" that "analyzes voice and emotional cues for changes that tell the real story."
However, the company has yet to build a single prototype.
Real or not, is this what human intimacy in the overwhelming age of digital distractions really looks like? Do we really need to get pinged about our partners' slightly elevated heart rate to form a closer relationship?
It's also not exactly a new idea; for seven years, Apple has allowed users to "<a href="https://www.imore.com/how-send-someone-your-heartbeat-apple-watch-iphone">send a heartbeat</a>" to loved ones via its Apple Watch, a visual representation in the shape of a beating heart.
But chances are, you've never heard of the forgettable, gimmicky feature.
More on wearables:<a href="https://futurism.com/future-tech-prediction-1987"> This 1987 Prediction of What Technology Would Be Like Today Will Make You Gasp and Wheeze</a>

Ring World

Grim.

New Wearable for Exceptionally Pathetic Men Detects When Their Wife Is Cheating

American shoppers ordering from ultra-cheap Chinese shopping websites Temu and Shein are already experiencing major sticker shocks in the wake of president Donald Trump's trade war.
A 145 percent tariff on all imports from China and today's <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy79j2n7d4o">expiry of a "de minimis" exemption</a>, which had previously allowed goods worth less than $800 to enter the country duty-free, are about to drive up the price of the foreign retailers' offerings by a massive margin.
So American shoppers, who once enjoyed cutting out middlemen like Amazon and Walmart by buying cheap goods on Shein and Temu, are already feeling the hurt.
As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/business/temu-shein-tariffs-import-charges/index.html">CNN reports</a>, the situation for true addicts is grim.
"I can’t afford to buy from Temu now, and I already couldn’t afford to buy in this country," Virginia-based retired registered nurse Rena Scott told CNN.
Statistics show that the poorest parts of the country have come to <a href="https://akhandelwal8.github.io/files/wp_DM/DM_post.pdf">rely heavily on affordable goods</a> from Chinese e-commerce sites. Especially now that the de minimis exemption has expired, Americans are now getting a rude surprise when trying to import Chinese goods.
While <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/jobs-report-april-2025-trump-tariffs-rcna204386">unemployment has remained unchanged</a>, experts warn that it could take a while for the effects of Trump's economic policy to start showing.
As one TikToker <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@perkinsonparkway/video/7499095173436165406?lang=en">found out firsthand</a>, tariffs are already being passed onto consumers. She was hit with a $372.40 bill by FedEx after ordering a made-in-China sweater vest from the UK.
"These tariffs don't affect the companies," TikToker and DIYer Krystle Perkins argued. "They're just gonna pass on the cost onto us."
Trump has tried to undermine the devastating effects of cutting off the US economy from the world. He raised eyebrows this week, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c62x47d4dgpo">saying that kids in the US</a> might have "two dolls instead of 30" during a Wednesday cabinet meeting, in an odd attempt to paint his economic policy as a win.
Whether Trump's disastrous tariff war will have the intended effect of kickstarting American manufacturing remains unclear at best. Experts have long pointed out that protectionist measures like tariffs could lead to <a href="https://www.cfodive.com/news/powell-says-tariffs-increase-inflation-unemployment-rate-tariffs-Trump-recession/745591/">plunging employment rates and inflation</a>.
Matching the skill levels and low wages that have turned China into a manufacturing powerhouse could take many years, which the US simply may not have. The country's economy <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/u-s-gdp-declines-0-3-percent-as-imports-surged-ahead-of-trump-s-tariffs-238615621630">shrank by 0.3 percent</a> in the first quarter of this year, heightening fears of an imminent recession.
Even if the US economy were to heavily invest in manufacturing, unemployment could continue to rise in the short term, since positions would require specific skills, certifications, and training.
"The skills US workers have are mismatched for manufacturing right now," futurist and University of California, Berkeley lecturer Olaf Gorth <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/10/business/manufacturing-us-jobs-trump-tariffs">told CNN</a> earlier this month. "What we need to do is lift the majority of American labor from mid-skilled to high-skilled."
In short, instead of driving the US to compete with China, tariffs will more than likely hurt workers and consumers alike. Even US businesses, which have heavily relied on Chinese imports, could soon pass on soaring costs to shoppers desperately looking for affordable goods.
"At the end of the day, tariffs are a tax on imports," JPMorgan wrote in a February note. "The tax incidence nearly always falls on domestic sellers and consumers, not foreign producers."
More on tariffs: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-tariff-rule-convenient-tesla">Trump's New Tariff Rule Is Wildly Convenient for Tesla</a>

Well, Shein, This Costs Temu-ch

"I can’t afford to buy from Temu now."

Temu Addicts Suffering Withdrawal

Self-styled Pentagon whistleblower and former US Army counterintelligence officer Luis "Lue" Elizondo showed off a peculiar image of what appeared to be a gigantic, disc-shaped object floating hundreds of feet above the ground, during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yFwUdbSpko">House Oversight and Accountability Committee meeting</a> this week.
The briefing, which took place on Thursday, was hosted by the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Fund, a nonpartisan political advocacy group "committed to uncovering the truth about UAPs," a less-stigmatized term used by government officials to refer to UFOs. Also present at the meeting was Harvard professor and <a href="https://futurism.com/avi-loeb-and-the-great-unknown">noted UFO hunter</a> Avi Loeb.
According to a <a href="https://x.com/UAPDF/status/1918006945887236115">tweet</a> by the Disclosure Fund, the object was "estimated 600-1,000 ft in diameter, silver-hued, disc-shaped," which the group used to call for "full declassification and open scientific analysis."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
✈️ NEW PHOTO (civilian pilot)
Captured near Four Corners at FL210—estimated 600-1,000 ft in diameter, silver-hued, disc-shaped.
Released moments ago by <a href="https://twitter.com/LueElizondo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LueElizondo</a> during our “Science, National Security &amp; Innovation” panel. Several speakers confirmed DoD &amp; IC hold hundreds of… <a href="https://t.co/KHxkywz8JR">pic.twitter.com/KHxkywz8JR</a>
&mdash; UAP Disclosure Fund (@UAPDF) <a href="https://twitter.com/UAPDF/status/1918006945887236115?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
"This was taken by a civilian pilot," Elizondo claimed during the meeting. "But again, you'd think this information would be important for somebody to look at," he added, while holding up a printout of the image.
According to Elizondo, "an average person with an average camera" took the photo at "21,000 feet."
"The object is potentially anywhere between 600 and 1,000 feet in diameter," he added. "It's a lenticular object, and it is silver."
However, despite making a big deal out of the image, he admitted that he couldn't "vouch for the veracity of this photograph," quipping that "I didn't take it."
At first glance, it does indeed look like an alien ship from a Hollywood movie. But as eagle-eyed users on Reddit quickly pointed out, Elizondo's purported smoking gun has a hilariously simple explanation. On the platform's otherwise conspiracy theory-friendly r/UFOs community, user mattperkins86 <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1kcpxi1/lues_photo_is_100_debunked/">traced back the satellite image</a> to two adjacent, perfectly circular fields, with the nearer, much darker one perfectly lining up to look like the second circle's shadow.
The two circles, located an hour east of Colorado Springs, can be spotted on Google Earth <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/ekp6sD7jd16Ks9L19">here</a>.
<figure id="attachment_350379" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-350379" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-350379 size-large" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/05/photo-taken-of-alien-craft-estimated-to-be-between-600-and-v0-9bcbvsc15aye1-1200x513.webp" alt="An image purportedly showing UFOs, according to Pentagon whistleblower Luis Elizondo." width="1200" height="513" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-350379" class="wp-caption-text">Source: Reddit</figcaption></figure>
Put the pieces together, and showing the image as evidence of a UFO makes Elizondo look absolutely buffoonish.
"He HAD to have known that if this thing was fake, it was going to be found," mattperkins86 wrote. "So I am left thinking that this is intentional, I guess."
"This is actually hilarious," one user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1kcpxi1/comment/mq4oqeq/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">wrote</a>. "Not even a crop circle, just regular crops in a circle."
UFO debunker Mick West also had a closer look, <a href="https://www.metabunk.org/threads/four-corners-large-disk-seen-from-private-plane-at-fl210-irrigation-circles.14173/#post-343466">finding</a> that the shadows simply didn't line up the way they should if it was an object floating above the ground.
Elizondo tried to retrofit the photo after the criticism, arguing in a <a href="https://x.com/LueElizondo/status/1918309243041522153">lengthy tweet</a> that the "specific photo had only just been provided to me (by a private pilot) that morning, prior to the forum" admitting that the photo "had NOT YET been vetted."
"The dimensions I quoted, were per the pilot’s own assessment of what he saw, based on altitude and experience," he added.
"As you know, I am always first to admit mistakes, but this is not one of those times," Elizondo wrote.
Instead of admitting his gaffe, Elizondo argued that the incident "illustrates a bigger point" that pilots and other individuals reporting UFO sightings may be "faced with fierce ridicule."
Of course, none of that really addresses the core criticism: that he shared an unvetted photo that was handed to him hours earlier, seemingly having done no due diligence.
The incident, following almost a decade of public government investigations into the UAPs, shows that even though it's a singularly grabby topic — or perhaps exactly because of that reality — official discussions often devolve into a laughable circus.
Officials have repeatedly <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-pushes-back-ufo">pushed back</a> against claims that the US government is <a href="https://futurism.com/us-recovered-non-human-vehicles">hiding recovered alien spaceships</a> that crashed on Earth, or that the Pentagon was <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/government-sources-military-holding-back-evidence-ufos">conspiring against the public</a> to keep evidence of extraterrestrials secret.
As he's admitted, Elizondo already has a track record of showing off debunked evidence of UFOs.
"A photo that was provided to me by a friend in Government a couple of years ago was presented by me two days ago at our engagement in Philadelphia," he <a href="https://x.com/LueElizondo/status/1851660333242253424">admitted</a> in an October tweet. "Looks like we can put this one bed, as our friends in Twitter figured/solved this one, major bravo to you!"
The photo, which Elizondo alleged to show a "mothership" UFO, <a href="https://x.com/MiddleOfMayhem/status/1851273969422520382">turned out to be a simple, unusually-shaped cloud</a>.
Elizondo <a href="https://futurism.com/pentagon-whistleblower-radiation-burns">has previously alleged</a> that military pilots had received radiation burns after making close encounters with UFOs, and that other pilots had experienced the "warping of space time."
The former intelligence official has strongly advocated for the release of classified information regarding UAPs, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/pentagon-ufo-task-force-ready-report">promising to turn up the pressure</a> on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html">Defense Department's UAP Task Force</a>.
In 2017, Elizondo resigned from the DoD in protest of the "bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets" that he said "plague" his former employer and its treatment of the "UAP issue," according to an <a href="https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117721/witnesses/HHRG-118-GO12-Bio-ElizondoL-20241113.pdf">official bio submitted to Congress</a>.
After years of hunting for evidence of UFOs, though, Elizondo has little to show. His repeated efforts to prove their existence using phony pictures of crops and clouds aren't helping his ambitions.
Whether his latest slip-up will meaningfully add to the discussion and reduce the stigma surrounding the subject remains dubious at best. If anything, chances are it could risk further undermining the UAP Disclosure Fund's legitimacy.
Even the r/UFOs community, which remains extremely open-minded when it comes to the supernatural, is starting to turn on him.
"Jesus, this is embarrassing," one user <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1kcpxi1/comment/mq4o47f/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">wrote</a> in response to Elizondo's latest gaffe.
More on UFOs: <a href="https://futurism.com/flights-messed-up-ufos">There’s Another Reason Flights Have Been So Messed Up Lately: UFO Sightings</a>

Cropped Circles

"Jesus, this is embarrassing."

A Military Whistleblower Showed a Photo of an Allegedly Huge "Disc-Shaped" Object, But There's an Incredibly Obvious Explanation

<h2>Failson</h2>
Elon Musk failed miserably at his goal to cut $2 trillion in federal spending — but he did shout out his sleepovers with Donald Trump during his time at the White House.
In his first (and presumably last) time meeting press in the West Wing, Musk told reporters from <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-elon-musks-wild-3-months-getting-doge-rolling">Fox News</a>, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/01/elon-musk-doge-interview">Axios</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/elon-musk-doge-interview-buddha-comparison">CNN</a>, and a handful of other outlets that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has cut about $160 billion in federal spending.
That might sound like an impressive figure, at least until you remember that Musk promised to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-says-doge-probably-wont-find-2-trillion-federal-budget-cuts-rcna186924">trim $2 trillion</a>, or that the US has <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-promised-cuts-spent-200-billion-more/">already spent $200 billion more</a> than it did during the same period last year.
"In the grand scheme of things, I think we've been effective," the South African-born billionaire said of his DOGE tenure, which is ending imminently because his <a href="https://www.doi.gov/ethics/special-government-employees">special government employee status</a> is about to expire. "Not as effective as I like... but we've made progress."
During that same press gaggle, Musk boasted that his DOGE cuts have thus far resulted in one percent of the federal workforce, or about 20,000 people, having their jobs slashed. He added that he and his minions have "probably" gotten the job done right about "70-80 percent of the time."
<h2>We All Scream</h2>
The wide-ranging interview wasn't all about dollars and cents.
When asked where he spends his nights in Washington — the subject of ample speculation, especially after <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-sleeping-doge-office/">Wired revealed</a> that he and his staff often sleep in the DOGE's Capitol Hill offices — Musk dished that the president had invited him to stay in the White House on more than one occasion.
This situation arose, per the billionaire's retelling, when Trump asked Musk where he was staying one night.
"I was like: ''I don't know. At a friend's house, I guess,'" the world's sometimes-richest man told reporters. "And then he was like: 'Why don't you stay here?' I was like: 'Sure.'"
While Musk refused to say exactly how many nights he slept over in the <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-lincoln-bedroom-refurbishing-a-famous-white-house-room">White House's Lincoln bedroom</a>, he admitted that it was "more than once" — and that on one such occasion, the president urged him to sample the kitchen's ice cream selection.
"He'll actually call me late night and say, 'by the way, make sure you get ice cream from the kitchen,'" the 53-year-old recounted, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-elon-musks-wild-3-months-getting-doge-rolling">per Fox News</a>. "I ate a whole tub of ice cream — caramel Häagen-Dazs."
"Yeah, it's epic," Musk said. "Don't tell RFK."
More on Musk and Trump: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-tariff-rule-convenient-tesla">Trump's New Tariff Rule Is Wildly Convenient for Tesla</a>

Fringe Benefits 

"Don't tell RFK."

Elon Musk Admits He Failed to Cut $2 Trillion in Federal Fat, But Says at Least He Enjoyed His Trump Sleepovers With Ice Cream

Earlier this month, student leaders at Emerson College's student radio station, WECB, received an urgent email.
"Yo!!!" read the subject line. "There's an AI website using your identity!"
The email was from a student at the University of Oregon, who went on to explain that her professor had, in class, pulled up what they believed to be an article published by WECB. According to the emailer, the professor had cited the story as an example of "student-written solutions journalism."
But <a href="https://archive.is/6iJBD">the article</a>, which was published in March and covered Iceland's experiment with four-day work weeks, immediately seemed fishy. As the Oregon student noted, its featured image looked like it was AI-generated. So did its text, which was stilted and strange, and overall just not very good. The article also wasn't even about music, the topic that WECB and its associated publication, Milk Crate, are dedicated to.
When the Oregon student dug further, she saw that there were, in fact, two WECB websites — <a href="https://www.wecb.live/">one that looked real</a>, and another that looked suspiciously AI-mangled.
Her instincts were correct. The story her professor had cited was the product of the undead carcass of an old WECB domain, which scammers had scooped up and transformed into an AI-powered content farm — complete with fake, AI-generated authors, AI imagery, and boatloads of misinformation — designed to trade on WECB's name and Google standing for profit.
It's an old model for SEO scammery: snatch up a trustworthy domain when it expires, and use it to farm low-quality SEO-targeted content meant to cash in on lucrative display ads.
But while nabbing established domains and running them as shambolic husks is nothing new, generative AI tools that can spin up whole websites and churn out articles in the blink of an eye has drastically lowered the bar of entry. Using AI to farm paper-thin sludge is fast and cheap, yet with just a thin aura of legitimacy, sloperators can make some very real money — in this case, at the expense of frustrated student journalists at a historic college in Boston.
We first caught wind of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250401004655/https://wecb.fm/">zombie site</a>, which was housed under the domain name "WECB.fm," when it surfaced in a Futurism staffer's Google News algorithm with an article touting an unhinged-looking headline alleging that the actor Richard Gere had somehow fallen into homelessness.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-350211 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/04/Futurism-Standard-25-e1746130433395.png" alt="" width="1200" height="462" />
We need to back up for a second, because there are serious layers to how wrong and weird this Gere article is.
The Golden Globe-winning Gere is not and has never been homeless, but played an unhoused person in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3505712/">2015 movie</a> "Time Out of Mind." Around the time the movie was released, as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2015/10/27/richard-gere-pic-me-homeless/74670452/">USA Today reported at the time</a>, a photo of Gere on set went viral — not because Gere had shared it, but because a random poster had published the photo with a fake caption pretending to be the actor. In that fake caption, the poster — again, pretending to be Gere — falsely claimed that he'd gone "undercover in New York City as a homeless man," and that the experience was so moving that he later walked around that day giving $100 bills out to every unhoused person he saw. The "Pretty Woman" actor quickly clarified that he absolutely did not take to the streets in a homeless stunt, and hadn't been handing out Franklins, either.
The allegedly WECB-published article we caught cropping up in Google News, however, bungles virtually every aspect of the story. The mangling starts with the headline — "Richard Gere's Fall From Grace : [sic] How the Actor Became a Homeless Man" — which suggests that Gere was legitimately homeless. The body of the article then contradicts the headline, erroneously claiming the Hollywood star spent time masquerading as a homeless man while preparing for his movie role. Which, again, was a random internet lie to begin with.
And somehow, things only got worse from there. The article claimed that the film in question was a 2017 movie called "The Invisibles," a strange error that appears to be derived from the film's <a href="https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Invisibles/0I9ZWTR0ZBAEASKSPZGYQ5EKRM">Spanish-language title</a> of "Invisibles," rather than its actual English-language title of "Time Out of Mind." It also fabricated a quote from the actor, and repeatedly misspelled the name of Gere's character. (Some of these errors suggest that poor-quality machine language translation tools might be at play here.)
In other words, the whole thing is a bizarre, mutilated rehashing of viral misinformation that the "Arbitrage" actor had to personally correct a full decade ago.
We also couldn't find any record of the article's listed author, an alleged "Sarah Jensen," anywhere outside of the site, even though her bio describes her as an experienced and "dynamic 30-year-old American web content writer."
"Based in the creative hub of Austin, Texas," the lengthy byline continues. "Sarah's passion for all things entertainment and tech is matched only by her skill in conveying that enthusiasm through her writing." Reverse image searches for Jensen's associated headshot, meanwhile, failed to return any matches, suggesting the use of AI. (We did find a few Sarah Jensens with varying histories in publishing, but none that came close to matching this Jensen's description.)
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-350257" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/04/2.png" alt="" width="1200" height="584" />
As we dug through the WECB.fm website, we were struck by the degree to which its owners sought to give it a surface-level veneer of credibility. Boasting an old WECB logo, it claims on its homepage to be the "100% student-run and creatively independent internet radio station of Emerson College," and even lists Emerson College's correct address and phone number. It even still links to the actual WECB radio stream.
Cracks in that first-glance facade aren't hard to find, though. Its homepage also features a mundane, college-brochure-esque portrait of its alleged student staff, who appear to be AI-generated as well.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-350210" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/04/Futurism-Standard-24.png" alt="" width="1196" height="753" />
&nbsp;
And then, of course, there's the site's content, which is a heaping pile of AI sludge.
WECB.fm publishes content about a chaotic range of viral-bait topics, from <a href="https://www.wecb.us/can-you-build-a-nuclear-reactor-in-your-backyard-this-17-year-old-tried/">backyard nuclear reactors</a> to <a href="https://www.wecb.us/why-we-dont-eat-turkey-eggs-heres-the-surprising-reason/">turkey eggs</a> to <a href="https://www.wecb.us/after-10-years-of-negotiation-this-senior-dog-finally-gets-the-life-he-deserves/">dog "negotiation</a>."
Probably the worst ooze on the site is an entire section devoted to churning out faux "interviews" with real musicians, from up-and-coming bands to <a href="https://archive.is/KD1ro">big names like St. Vincent</a>, the stage name used by the six-time-Grammy-award-winning alt-rocker Anne Clark. And speaking of Clark: her made-up WECB interview not only includes fake quotes attributed to the IRL rock star, but misgenders her repeatedly — a glaring mistake that student journalists staffing the actual WECB station and its associated Milk Crate publication probably wouldn't make. (An interview with Clark, after all, would be a huge get for a small college operation.)
Our review of the site found plenty more instances of plagiarism and fabricated quotes — that article about Iceland's four-day workweeks, in fact, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/iceland-36-hour-working-week-stress-job">was heavily plagiarized from </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/iceland-36-hour-working-week-stress-job">The Guardian</a> — boatloads of flat-out misinformation, and more fake Emerson student journalists.
One of them, "Christopher Johnson," claims in their bio to be a "dedicated writer and key contributor to the WECB website, Emerson College's student-run radio station." The blurb adds that Johnson is "passionate about music, radio communication, and journalism," and "helps shape the voice and identity of WECB, truly embodying its motto of being an inclusive, diverse, and enthusiastic music community." The headshot attributed to Johnson also appears to be AI-generated.
There are multiple Christopher Johnsons who have had successful careers in radio journalism and broadcasting. But none that appear to have any connection to Emerson, and no existing students with a footprint in Emerson College's journalism community.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-350256" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/04/1.png" alt="" width="1200" height="857" />
The site wasn't just an algorithmic blip on Google News, either. We found it was also holding rank as the top Google search result for the query "WECB" — meaning it was ranking ahead of the actual WECB website, WEBC.live. (It was also ranking ahead of another real radio station in Alabama, which also uses the call sign WECB.)
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-350250 size-full" src="https://wordpress-assets.futurism.com/2025/04/Futurism-Standard-26-e1746070089333.png" alt="" width="1200" height="560" />
When we reached out to the real WECB with what we'd found, the students who run it responded quickly — and with clear exasperation.
According to Sofia Giarrusso and Nathan Hillyard, seniors at Emerson and the co-editors-in-chief of WECB's associated music publication, Milk Crate, the impersonation ordeal began back in the fall of 2023. A Squarespace payment briefly lapsed, causing the station to momentarily lose its domain; before staff could rectify the error, someone else had already scooped it up. (Further complicating the issue, they say, was the fact that .fm is also the country code top-level domain for the Federated States of Micronesia. Emerson College isn't in Micronesia; it's in Boston.)
Unable to get their old domain back, they were "forced to rebrand to WECB.live," said Giarrusso. Not too long after, they noticed that someone had spun up the zombie site on their old domain.
"I was just a station DJ at the time. I quickly discovered the AI site, and initially laughed. I really couldn't believe that anyone could fall for such obvious scum," Giarrusso reflected. "But as I gained leadership through Milk Crate, the site became a creative burden."
Dealing with the fake site proved surprisingly tricky, though. Student journalism naturally changes guards a lot; it was unclear to staff whether the station's brand or logo was trademarked, and if they were, that's something that would've happened long before Giarrusso and Hillyard's time. And besides, it was the co-opting of the WECB likeness that was the problem, not the misuse of real WECB and Milk Crate articles.
In short, legally speaking, it was complicated. And as busy students with limited resources, they weren't in a position to hire lawyers or commit the time and energy to conduct intense legal research on their own. They relied instead on word of mouth, and as a Hail Mary, sometimes took to spamming Google with reports of phishing violations. (The zombie site doesn't seem to be phishing, which the students acknowledge, but they figured it couldn't hurt to try.)
It was a deeply weird situation. On the one hand, the site was profoundly irritating; as Giarrusso put it, the zombie sludge hadn't "completely tarnished" their reputation on campus, but it remained a "constant sore." And always, the threat of reputational damage loomed large.
"As a student-run publication, our staff (and myself) are doing all this work together to gain credibility and experience working for a publication and covering the local music scene," said Hillyard. "Having a ghost site out there surely detracts from our credibility and 'seriousness' as a whole."
"When we reach out to venues and artists we always make sure to link the correct site," he continued, "but should they do their own research they might very reasonably land in zombie land, which is a bad look for us."
We reached out to Google with questions about the phony AI site. The company responded quickly, and within a day, the undead imposter had disappeared from search results.
"Our spam policies prohibit using expired domains in an effort to manipulate Search rankings, and our systems detect and consider domain ownership changes," a spokesperson for Google told Futurism in a statement. "We take action against expired domain abuse, up to and including removing violative pages from Search."
The fake site still exists, but changed its URL to WECB.us following its manual Google demotion. As it stands, the sloperator behind the impersonator remains unclear. Interestingly, on the site's contact page, an embedded Google Maps view of Emerson's address and the surrounding area is in French. Vive la Boston!
We also sent a message to the listed email on the fake site's contact page, but didn't hear back.
As Vee Fidati <a href="https://www.trillmag.com/life/college/lets-hear-it-for-college-radio-why-you-should-be-tuning-in/">recently wrote for Trill</a>, university radio stations emerged in the 80s and 90s as a noncommercial "counterculture phenomenon," quickly becoming an important venue for student expression and music discovery. Students could experiment and take risks by playing emerging and independent acts. And on a practical level, college radio outlets and associated publications, like Milk Crate, are sandboxes where young DJs, producers, and writers can work hard to hone their craft — and hopefully, as a result, get a post-college foot in the door in the music and entertainment industries.
But recent years have seen a steep decline in the overall number of university stations, as cash-strapped colleges <a href="https://vtdigger.org/2023/08/01/pd-radio/">sell off</a> their long-held radio assets to eager buyers (religious groups have been <a href="https://www.insideradio.com/free/npr-worries-about-losing-more-college-owned-radio-stations/article_9f0caf3a-43c3-11e9-998a-afc5bfde2465.html">particularly zealous purchasers</a>.) And in addition to being beholden to decisions made above them at their universities, student staffers keeping the lights on at college radio stations face many of the same challenges and unknowns that the media landscape is grappling with more broadly.
"Working as a student journalist is a thing of pure passion," said Hillyard. "None of our staff gets paid, and our minimal budget is tied up within privatized institution bureaucracy and is only released to us when we have zines to print or if we fill out the form right and can afford snacks for the launch party."
But "on the flip side of that, everyone who writes, designs, photographs, or edits for us is doing it because they also are just as excited about music and the local scene in Boston as us," he continued. "I'm quite proud of all the work we publish as a group, and do take offense when this robot site steals our platform and community just to run some ads to an invisible audience."
Hillyard also noted that he finds the fake WECB's "About Us" section on its homepage — where that picture of those smoothed-over, mannequin-like AI students sits — to be "particularly smug."
"Me and my friends are even prettier and cooler than those randomized corporate cutouts!" he declared.
But as frustrating as it's been, the phony site is the perfect foil for WECB, and the ideal of college radio writ large. The zombie WECB is an SEO front for braindead, profit-driven clickbait; at their core, the co-editors emphasized, the real WECB and Milk Crate are a space for community-building between peers, and the rewards of messy, dedicated, and thoroughly human creativity.
"A hollow zombie recreation can never accomplish what we've fostered: a safe place for music nerds to nerd out as much as their heart's content," said Giarrusso. "That's why I'm so hard-and-fast in my attitude towards AI and this whole zombie site ordeal — it undermines our community for lazy profit. Exactly the opposite of our greater goal."
Despite "this imitator out stealing some of our credibility, we're still going to keep on chugging," Hillyard added. "Regardless of these looming AI threats, we're having fun! AI can barely write about music and it certainly can't love it like we do."
More on AI and media: <a href="https://futurism.com/google-ai-fake-spacecraft">An AI Slop "Science" Site Has Been Beating Real Publications in Google Results by Publishing Fake Images of SpaceX Rockets</a>

AI Killed the Radio Star

"It undermines our community for lazy profit. Exactly the opposite of our greater goal."

Scammers Stole the Website for Emerson College's Student Radio Station and Started Running It as a Zombie AI Farm

It's the 11-minute space trip heard round the world — and it just won't go away.
Weeks on from Katy Perry's epic girlboss trip to the outer atmosphere, the multi-millionaire pop musician says she's been "battered and bruised" by the internet's backlash to her garish stunt.
The all-female space trip — which happened on April 14 via a spacecraft owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos — was widely panned as an <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/blue-origin-all-women-space-flight-katy-perry-rcna201261">ostentatious display</a> of wealth and privilege, a PR stunt wrapped in a <a href="https://thenewfeminist.co.uk/2025/04/everything-wrong-with-katy-perrys-feminist-space-trip/">faux-feminist veneer</a>, and a damning moment heralding the emptiness and waste of <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/olivia-munn-blue-origin-women-space-trip-criticism.html?">private space travel</a>.
Under a post by a <a href="https://variety.com/2025/music/news/katy-perry-responds-blue-origin-backlash-battered-bruised-1236382464/">Katy Perry fan page</a>, the fabulously wealthy pop star lavished paragraphs of praise on her ride-or-dies: "I'm so grateful for you guys. We're in this beautiful and wild journey together."
"When the 'online' world tries to make me a human Piñata," Perry continues, "I take it with grace and send them love, cause I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed."
She goes on to admit that she's not perfect, but falls short of addressing the class criticism underlying the bad press that's plagued her for weeks.
"I'm on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but... I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level UNLOCKS," she concluded.
Though Perry claims she's responded with grace, her actions tell a different story.
The popstar <a href="https://futurism.com/katy-perry-rocket-nasa-scrubbing-women">previously gushed</a> that her brief stint in space — which cost <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2025/04/14/blue-origin-spaceflight-cost-tourism-future/83081440007/">millions of dollars</a> — was "about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging," vastly overlooking the untold millions of working women who will go their whole lives without earning the kind of money <a href="https://parade.com/celebrities/katy-perry-net-worth">Perry makes in a day</a>.
She's also <a href="https://futurism.com/katy-perry-low-sales-blue-origin">struggling to sell tickets</a> for her Lifetimes tour, after an insider revealed Perry believed the spaceflight would help ignite fervor equal to Taylor Swift's <a href="https://www.grammy.com/news/taylor-swift-eras-tour-records-movie-disney-plus-stream">record breaking</a> Eras tour.
And Perry definitely didn't direct her publicist to chastise the <a href="https://futurism.com/katy-perry-apology-wendys">Wendy's social media team</a> as the backlash mounted, after the fast food chain quipped, "can we send her back?"
"Wendy’s should ‘do the right thing’... apologize and do better in the future," an "anonymous source" seethed to <a href="https://people.com/katy-perry-deserves-apology-from-wendys-blue-origin-comments-exclusive-source-11717191">People magazine</a>.
Whether or not the backlash is deserved is certainly a matter of opinion. But whether the "woe is me" treatment will result in more ticket sales is a matter of optics — and Katy Perry's <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/katy-perry-faces-double-trouble-as-lifetimes-tour-ticket-sales-plunge-following-backlash-over-blue-origin-space-flight/articleshow/120623454.cms?from=mdr">aren't looking good</a>.
More on Katy Perry's space trip: <a href="https://futurism.com/hatch-blue-origin-katy-perry">There's Something Incredibly Sketchy About How They Opened the Hatch on Katy Perry's Rocket</a>

Down to earth

"When the 'online' world tries to make me a human Piñata, I take it with grace and send them love."

Katy Perry Says Her Treatment After Bezos Spaceflight Was Horribly Unfair

This morning, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/05/01/nasa-astronauts-mcclain-and-ayers-exit-station-soon-for-spacewalk/">stepped outside</a> the International Space Station inside their Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) suits.
It was an exceedingly rare all-female spacewalk, with the goal of mounting a bracket for a future solar array to increase the station's power generation capacity by up to 30 percent.
But as <a href="https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1917923672582476021">spotted by NASASpaceflight</a>, the six-and-a-half-hour mission wasn't entirely without hiccups. Less than an hour in, McClain noticed a "slice" in the index finger of her right glove, prompting ground control in Houston to have a closer look.
"If it helps, when I bend it, it's kind of right at the corner where the finger bends," McClain <a href="https://youtu.be/xP9LyPsqI_g">told Houston via voice link</a>, "but when I bend it, a little tab opens up."
Once a video streaming connection to McClain's helmet camera was established, the team could finally get a closer look.
"You wanna move it a little closer, so we can have a closer view?" Houston told McClain.
"I can kind of see, it's right at the bend," she answered.
"EV-1, this is Houston, thank you so much for your video, we are assessing and discussing on the ground," mission control said.
Fortunately, the problem wasn't deemed serious enough to impact safety, and the spacewalk <a href="https://x.com/_jaykeegan_/status/1917944813875523969">proceeded as planned</a>.
"Taking a look, it is a string of the Turtleskin along the seam of the finger," Houston said, referring to a <a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230007447/downloads/ICES-2023-37%20Establishing%20Standardized%20Test%20Methods%20for%20Evaluating%20Space%20Suit%20Gloves_FINAL.pdf">special woven fabric</a> manufactured by NASA contractor Warwick Mills. "No additional checks needed other than keep reporting if you see anything off nominal."
"Using Thursday’s imagery and imagery of a similar glove configuration from past spacewalks, NASA determined it was a string along the turtle skin portion of the glove," a NASA spokesperson told Futurism in a statement. "The string posed no risk to McClain, and the spacewalk was able to proceed."
Interestingly, McClain, a current US Army colonel and former professional rugby player, had to wait for her chance to join the all-female spacewalk for six years, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-spacewalk-anne-mcclain-nichole-ayers/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&amp;linkId=809663317">CBS reports</a>, due to spacesuit fitting issues.
In March 2019, NASA scrapped its plans to perform the first-ever spacewalk by two women astronauts — McClain and fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch — after the former <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-cancels-all-female-spacewalk-nasa-scraps-first-all-female-spacewalk-over-lack-of-well-fitting-spacesuits/">realized during a previous walk</a> that a "medium"-sized spacesuit torso would fit her better.
At the time, astronaut Nick Hague took McClain's spot since a spacesuit torso in the right size couldn't be made available in time.
The first women-only spacewalk was ultimately performed by Koch and astronaut Jessica Meir in October 2019, seven months after McCain missed her shot.
NASA has encountered many challenges with its aging EMU suits, from "<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2024/06/13/spacewalk-postponed-due-to-spacesuit-discomfort-issue/?utm_source=www.adastraspace.com&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=nasa-s-spacesuit-problem-just-got-a-lot-worse">discomfort issues</a>" to a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/astronaut-water-squirting-suit">water leak covering</a> the visor of astronaut Tracy Dyson's suit in ice particles last year.
Women, in particular, have faced spacesuit fit issues for decades. While many of the EMU's modular parts are available in a range of sizes, many <a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/nasa-astronaut-spacesuit-women/">components have never fit well</a>, especially for shorter women.
It's an issue that <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/03/28/nasa-anne-mcclain-christina-koch-all-female-spacewalk-scrapped-spacesuits-women-fashion-uniforms/3294159002/">extends far beyond spacesuits as well</a>, especially in male-dominated fields, from ill-fitting army uniforms to fire department safety gear.
A long-awaited successor to NASA's existing EMU, a design that hasn't seen any significant changes since the 1980s, has <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/johnson/next-gen-suit-for-nasas-work-for-space-station-missions-debuts/">yet to see the light of day</a>.
Worse yet, the ISS is set to be <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-plans-destroy-international-space-station">retired in less than five years</a>, giving the agency less and less time to come up with a replacement.
And the existing suits are starting to show their age, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-catastrophic-leak-space-station">much like the station itself</a>. In a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/glove-inspection-technology-lends-a-helping-hand-to-future-spacewalks/">2022 blog post</a>, NASA explained how the gloves of its EMU suits — each personally fitted to each spacewalker's hands — go through careful inspection prior to every spacewalk. Photography and closer analysis allow ground control to determine whether they're ready for use.
The mission ended positively: more than five years after her missed opportunity, McClain finally got her shot, completing the fifth-ever all-female spacewalk.
Updated to add a statement from NASA.
More on spacewalks: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-new-spacesuit-moon-axiom-space-prada">NASA Contractor Shows Off New Spacesuit for the First Moon Landing in Over Half a Century</a>