<h2>Taking a Bath</h2>
For the third time in six months, an uber-expensive military fighter jet has fallen into the sea from the same Navy warship amid continued American strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels.
As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/politics/second-us-navy-jet-is-lost-at-sea">CNN reports</a>, a <a href="https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/FA-18EF-Super-Hornet">$67 million F/A-18F jet</a> was lost to the Red Sea earlier this week after its pilots failed to brake quickly enough during an attempted landing on the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier.
In a statement to the outlet, the Navy said that both aviators were safely ejected from the two-seater "Super Hornet" jet, as they're nicknamed, and neither sustained major injuries.
Incredibly, this is the second time one of these massively expensive fighter crafts has plunged into the Red Sea from the Truman in less than two weeks — a tremendous waste of money amid this administration's quest to both <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-government-deals-trump-budget-slashed">fatten up the Pentagon's budget</a> while cutting spending on, well, <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-doge-veterans-affairs">everything else</a>.
<h2>Watery Death</h2>
At the end of April, another Super Hornet met its watery demise after <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/politics/us-navy-jet-overboard">falling off the warship</a>, which had swerved rapidly to avoid a drone strike from the Houthis, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/politics/us-navy-jet-overboard">CNN</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/29/fighter-jet-lost-hornet-houthis-red-sea/">other outlets</a> reported at the time.
The Truman's most recent mission fighting Houthis in the Red Sea was <a href="https://news.usni.org/2024/09/23/carrier-uss-harry-s-truman-leaves-for-deployment">launched at the end of 2024</a> and has seemingly been cursed ever since.
In late December, shortly after the <a href="https://www.military.com/equipment/nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier">Nimitz-class warship</a> exited the Suez Canal in North Africa and reached the Middle East, yet another F/A-18F crashed into the Red Sea — though on that occasion, it was the result of <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-navy-fighter-pilots-eject-safely-shot-down-red-sea-friendly-fire-uss-gettysburg/">mistaken friendly fire</a> between the Truman and the USS Gettysburg.
Unsurprisingly, the Navy has maintained since that first Super Hornet incident that it's investigating the unusual incidents with the Truman, which was also involved in a <a href="https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/Article/4065260/uss-harry-s-truman-involved-in-collision-at-sea/">collision with a Panamanian merchant vessel</a> back in February.
Thus far, the only results we've seen from those probes were the <a href="https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/Article/4065260/uss-harry-s-truman-involved-in-collision-at-sea/">firing of the Truman's commanding officer</a> after the February crash.
While it's not exactly surprising that the Navy is keeping its cards close to its proverbial (war) chest, it does seem mighty egregious that upwards of $200 million have been lost at sea due to careless mistakes while Donald Trump's administration has brutally slashed government budgets.
More on the military: <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-administration-signal-clone-hacked">The Trump Administration Switched to a Sketchy Signal Clone and It Got Hacked, Leaking Messages</a>

Farcical

What the hell is going on?

Ludicrously Expensive Fighter Jets Keep Mysteriously Tumbling Off of an Aircraft Carrier

In an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/bill-gates-elon-musk-far-right">ongoing battle</a> for which capitalist overlord can claim the moral high ground, Microsoft founder and the world's sixth richest man, Bill Gates, has accused Elon Musk of "killing the world's poorest children" by <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-conflict-interest-shutting-down-usaid">gutting</a> the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
"The picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one," Gates <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bdd9bb89-ac3c-4043-9ca4-bc7efbd41fed">told the </a><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bdd9bb89-ac3c-4043-9ca4-bc7efbd41fed">Financial Times</a>.
Musk, through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), all but shuttered USAID in February by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-judge-bars-musk-doge-further-efforts-shut-down-usaid-2025-03-18/">freezing its grants</a> used for foreign assistance and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/doge-guts-usaid-workforce/">slashing its workforce</a>, once 10,000 strong, to less than 300 employees.
Gates said that the abruptness of the cuts meant that troves of food and medicines are now <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/02/12/millions-dollars-worth-american-food-rots-ports-usaid-shut/">rotting in warehouses</a>. In April, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/world/africa/sudan-usaid-famine.html">reported</a> that Musk's USAID cuts forced hundreds of <a href="https://futurism.com/children-starving-death-elon-musk-cut-food">soup kitchens in Sudan to shut down</a>.
Gates also slammed Musk for having no understanding of USAID or the work it did, citing how Musk cancelled grants because he <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/politics/some-of-the-things-that-i-say-will-be-incorrect-musk-backs-away-from-false-claim-of-usd50-million-for-gaza-condoms/index.html">wrongly believed</a> that the agency was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza, Palestine — when in reality, those grants were for a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, to prevent women transmitting HIV to their babies. 
"I'd love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money," Gates told the FT.
In a separate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/magazine/bill-gates-foundation-closing-2045.html">interview with the New York Times</a>, Gates called the USAID cuts "stunning" and chided Musk for his <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-charity-hoarding-money">lack of charitable giving</a>.
"Well, he's the one who cut the USAID budget. He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn't go to a party that weekend," Gates told the NYT. When the interviewer raised Musk's commitment to the Giving Pledge, Gates noted that the pledge to give away most of your fortune doesn't have to be fulfilled while you're still alive — it can be done after you're dead, too.
"So who knows? [Musk] could go on to be a great philanthropist," he said. "In the meantime, the world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children."
Grimly, Gates offered an estimate of just how many children's lives were being endangered due to the cuts to foreign aid.
"On childhood deaths, which over the next few years should have gone from five million to four million — now, unless there’s a big reversal, we’ll probably go from five million to six million," Gates told the NYT.
Gates' comments come as he announces his plan to close down the Gates Foundation by 2045, which is decades ahead of schedule. His intent, in the meantime, is to accelerate his philanthropic giving.
As the FT notes, critics have accused Gates of using his charitable initiatives <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-philanthropy-misanthropy/">as a tax shield</a>. USAID isn't above criticism, either. For all the very real aid it provides, it's also <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-history-controversies/">an extension of aggressive US foreign policy</a>, furthering imperial interests under a benevolent guise and going as far as in some cases to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest">foment regime change</a>.
Of course, that's not why Musk or the Trump administration is gutting the agency. There's no coherent and principled anti-imperialist thinking informing Musk, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros">once declared</a> that the US would "coup whoever we want." 
Most of his logic, from what he's shared with the public, <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-usaid-constructing-reality">amounts to brainless conspiracies</a>, such as <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887172343954563552">believing</a> that USAID has been constructing a "Truman Show"-style false reality around all of humanity, or <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886098373251301427">that it was</a> a "viper's nest of radical left Marxists who hate America." 
His right-wing counterparts, meanwhile, believe that USAID went "<a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/how-usaid-went-woke-and-destroyed-itself">woke</a>." Musk himself <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891408049857761414">once claimed</a> that USAID was "funding DEI abroad." 
In short, it's clear that Musk doesn't have the best interests in mind of the children and everyone else who once depended on foreign aid to survive.
More on DOGE cuts: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-children-toxic-chemicals">Trump Admin Cancels Programs to Protect Children From Toxic Chemicals</a>

Blood On His Hands

"I'd love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money."

Bill Gates Accuses Elon Musk of "Killing the World's Poorest Children"

<h2>Bye Bye, Savings</h2>
The Trump administration is so committed to environmental deregulation that it's ending a program that has saved Americans more than half a trillion dollars.
According to officials briefed on the matter who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/05/06/energy-star-program-epa-trump/">spoke to the Washington Post</a>, the Environmental Protection Agency — or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/trump-epa-cuts">what's left of it</a>, anyway — is slated to end the Energy Star program, which has certified electric efficiency on appliances across the country and resulted in <a href="https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/2024-05/Annual%20Overview%20Report_2023.pdf">more than $500 billion</a> in utility bill savings since 1992.
The Energy Star closure was announced during an all-hands meeting of the EPA's Office of Atmospheric Protection, which also learned at the same time that it would be dissolved.
In a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/climate/energy-star-trump">statement to CNN</a>, an agency spokesperson did not lay out a timeline for the closure or say when Americans could expect to stop seeing Energy Star certification stickers on appliances.
While the EPA itself has been tight-lipped about the changes, Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was "baffled" by the move to close the program.
"I know that my constituents like knowing what the energy usage is of a particular appliance," she told CNN, "so that they can factor that into their buying decisions."
<h2>Energy Crowbar</h2>
As WaPo notes, widespread adoption of Energy Star-certified appliances has prevented an estimated four billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from leaking into our atmosphere, the equivalent of taking nearly 950 million cars off the roads for a year.
That focus on energy efficiency could well be why Trump, a longtime Energy Star hater who <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/killing-energy-star-a-popular-program-lands-on-the-trump-hit-list">floated closing the program</a> during his first presidency, wants to kibosh it now.
Trump has also long opposed appliance efficiency standards because, according to him, they don't provide enough water to wash his "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/the-president-pushes-for-more-flow-from-the-nations-shower-heads.html">perfect</a>" and "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&amp;v=k3OMkS0dDyk">beautiful</a>" hair. Last month, he signed an executive order lifting restrictions on "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-makes-americas-showers-great-again/">weak and worthless</a>" showerheads to that end.
Now that Energy Star's future is unknown, the public is left wondering — if this administration will kill even <a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/remembering-president-george-h-w-bush-5-key-moments-energy-department-history">George HW. Bush-era</a> conservation programs, how much further will it go?
More on Trump's energy haterade: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-tariffs-solar-panels">Trump Just Set a Tariff on Solar Panels So High That Your Eyebrows May Raise Involuntarily</a>

Need To Cut It

Nothing is safe.

You’ll Start Spiralling When You Learn What the Trump Administration Just Did

Tesla's Cybertruck, it's fair to say, isn't exactly flying off the shelves. 
As Electrek <a href="https://electrek.co/2025/05/05/tesla-cybertruck-inventory-skyrockets-to-record-high/">reports</a>, the automaker's inventory of unsold Cybertrucks has reached a record high of over 10,000 units — even as it reportedly <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-disaster-production">slows down production of the disastrous vehicle</a>.
The figure is an estimate based on the number of Cybertruck listings in the US, tracked by <a href="https://tesla-info.com/blog/inventory-stats-regional/US?q=1">Tesla-Info.com</a>. If accurate, it's an embarrassingly high amount of expensive vehicles out there — about a staggering $800 million worth, per the reporting — that have never even left the dealership lot. 
In the entire first quarter of the year, for comparison, Tesla barely sold around 6,400 Cybertrucks, <a href="https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2025-ev-sales/">according to Cox Automotive</a>.
Clearly, Musk's company is having trouble suckering people into buying the stainless steel behemoths, and it's not hard to understand why buyers are staying away. With complaints of it <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-brick-car-wash">bricking after going through a car wash</a> to <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/cybertruck-breaks-down-one-mile-driving">breaking down after a single mile of driving</a>, its reputation for being shoddily made is well earned.
It's also <a href="https://futurism.com/rent-cybertruck-flipped-off">become a symbol</a> of public outrage against Musk, as the automaker faces <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-targeted-protests-vandalism">worldwide protests</a> for its CEO's <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-rally-nazis-holocaust">far-right politics</a> and his <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-failed-cuts-sleepovers">role in the Trump administration</a>.
The Cybertruck has also been recalled a whopping <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-cybertruck-recall-piece-flying-off">eight times </a>since it first started shipping to customers <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/30/23982569/tesla-cybertruck-delivery-price-specs-features-elon-musk">in late 2023</a>, One recall was because its accelerator <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/business/tesla-cybertruck-recall">got stuck in the down position</a>. The latest recall, meanwhile, was to address the small issue of its <a href="https://futurism.com/cybertruck-held-together-glue">glued-on body panels flying off</a>, affecting nearly every single Cybertruck the company had sold at that point — approximately 46,000.
If you just did the mental math, then you'll know that, at this rate, Tesla is nowhere near on track to match the amount of Cybertrucks it sold in 2024 this year. Consequently, it's also an entire galaxy away from reflecting the <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/where-did-the-one-million-people-who-wanted-a-cybertruck-go/">one million Cybertruck reservations</a> that were allegedly made ahead of its launch — or, for that matter, the 250,000 Cybertrucks sold per year that <a href="https://insideevs.com/news/667723/musk-estimates-tesla-could-sell-250000-500000-cybertrucks-yearly/">Musk promised</a> would happen.
Right now, Tesla will be lucky if it cracks 20,000 Cybertrucks sold by the end of 2025.
To boost sales, Tesla introduced a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-cheaper-slower-cybertruck-worse-deal">cheaper Long Range Rear Wheel Drive version</a> of the Cybertruck in April, with way less features and a still pretty steep price tag of $69,990. Behind the scenes, though, it's signaling that it has little faith in the vehicle's fortunes: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cybertruck-production-drops-sales-slump-2025-4">according to Business Insider</a>, Tesla has reduced production targets at several Cybertruck manufacturing lines over the past few months, shifting some employees who worked on the truck to work on the Model Y. 
That could be a revealing omen of what's to come for the Cybertruck, and perhaps for Tesla, which is <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-sales-continue-fall">facing its worst sales in years in Europe</a>.
More on Tesla: <a href="https://futurism.com/teslas-sales-continue-fall">Tesla's Sales Are Somehow Continuing to Fall</a>

Cyberstuck in the Lot

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks are rotting in dealership lots.

Tesla Is Sitting on an Enormous Pile of Unsold Cybertrucks as Crisis Deepens

Astronomers have made an intriguing discovery that could upend everything we know about the structure of the universe and its expansion.
Scientists recently found that dark energy, the mysterious form driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, could be weakening over time.
The findings could undermine the existing standard cosmological model of the universe called the lambda-cold dark matter (LCDM) model, which takes dark energy, ordinary matter, and cold dark matter — a hypothetical form of dark matter that moves slowly compared to the speed of light — into consideration.
The symbol lambda in the model refers to Albert Einstein's cosmological constant, which assumes that the universe is accelerating at a fixed rate.
Yet, last year, scientists <a href="https://www.desi.lbl.gov/2024/04/22/desi-2024-in-the-news-is-dark-energy-weakening-new-uncertainty-invites-optimism-about-the-fate-of-the-universe/">concluded</a> that dark energy isn't a constant after all, analyzing observations by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona, as <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2478344-dark-energy-bombshell-sparks-race-to-find-a-new-model-of-the-universe/">New Scientist reports</a>. They found that the mysterious force could be evolving and weakening over time.
In March, scientists <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/science/desi-dark-energy-results/index.html">released a follow-up,</a> strengthening the unusual findings.
"This is exciting – it might actually be putting the standard model of cosmology in danger," Autonomous University of Madrid assistant research professor Yashar Akrami told New Scientist.
Instead of making changes to the LCDM itself, Akrami and his colleagues suggested redefining dark energy as a "quintessence field," which has been used to explain observations of an accelerating rate of expansion of the universe.
That could allow scientists to harmonize more advanced string theory with the standard cosmological model.
"If you prove that quintessence is dark energy, it’s very good for [string theorists]," Akrami told New Scientist. "That’s why the string theory community is really excited now."
An altered take on the quintessence model of dark energy suggests the mysterious force could be interacting with gravity itself.
"We’ve always grown up thinking about the universe as having the gravitational force, and gravity fuels everything," University of Oxford astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira told the publication. "But now there’s going to be an additional fifth force, which is due to the dark energy, which also fuels everything."
But before we can add this fifth force, we'd have to reconcile the fact that we simply haven't seen any evidence for it, at least not when we're making precise measurements of our neighborhood of the universe.
"Physics ends up being even more complicated than we thought it could have been, and that kind of makes you wonder, why do you want to go down that route?" Ferreira added.
The researcher believes it's most likely that scientists will debate different models of dark energy and "never resolve it."
Yet, there's still a chance researchers could observe gravity being influenced by dark energy in upcoming observations by the European Space Agency's Euclid satellite and DESI.
More on dark energy: <a href="https://futurism.com/black-hole-bomb">Scientists Say They've Built a "Black Hole Bomb"</a>

Strung Along

This could change everything.

Scientists Say That Something Very Weird Is Going on With the Universe

It's an unwritten rule in some <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/15p5762/there_is_nothing_more_annoying_then_celebrating_a/">crankier circles</a> online that after 21, your birthdays should be quiet, humble affairs shared with friends and family. Sure, there can be some exceptions for the big ones. But in this day and age, it could be seen as a bit ostentatious to make a spectacle out of, say, your 27th birthday.
That's evidently not a rule Jimmy "MrBeast" Smith follows, if his birthday posts are any indication.
Earlier today, the YouTube mogul took out an ad campaign on X-formerly-Twitter to wish himself a happy 27th trip around the Sun.
"Happy Birthday MrBeast!" the <a href="https://x.com/MrBeast/status/1920092300715172218">simple post read</a>.
Thanks to his self-promotion, the post gathered nearly 2.5 million views in just under six hours. The replies were full of well-wishers from accounts like <a href="https://x.com/Alftokeneth/status/1920104846213914822">ALF Token</a> — an ALF themed cryptocurrency — to <a href="https://x.com/GodsPURP0SE/status/1920096838381654084">@GodsPURP0SE</a>, who wrote "Happy Birthday Dude!! Love your content and what you do for people in need around the world. God bless you and your journey through life."
There were plenty of critics, too, who likely only saw the post thanks to Smith's boost. "Did you really buy an ad so people can say happy birthday to you?" <a href="https://x.com/Yep_ItsMeAgain/status/1920098939270758647">one poster asked</a>. "Is that like not weird to you?"
Advertising on X-formerly-Twitter is a costly move — likely one of the reasons Musk is struggling to sell ads. Though we don't know if MrBeast made any back-door marketing deals to post content on Elon Musk's social media platform, we do know that most promoted ads cost between $0.26-$1.50 per action, <a href="https://www.webfx.com/social-media/pricing/how-much-does-it-cost-to-advertise-on-twitter/">according to WebFX</a>, a digital marketing blog.
With over 49,000 likes, 6,500 comments and 3,500 retweets at the time of writing, we can estimate this birthday post cost somewhere between $15,340 on the low end, to a whopping $88,500 on the high end. And that's just in the first six hours.
Again, this is assuming Musk didn't put his fingers on the scale. In 2023, it was revealed that MrBeast was one of a handful of <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23659842/twitter-boost-elon-musk-dril-mrbeast-algorithm-accounts">VIP accounts</a> secretly boosted by Musk, who had recently taken over the platform. Those VIP accounts had their posts pushed to the top, however, in a way that made them look organic — no "ad" tag like the one plastered on Smith's birthday post.
What followed Musk's takeover was nothing short of a mass exodus of advertisers from the platform.
By September 2024, only 4 percent of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/sep/05/advertiser-exodus-x-survey-2025-elon-musk">marketers polled</a> said that X provided brand safety as the platform became overrun with extremists, spam bots, and conspiracy cranks. That fall-off in ad revenue came with a rise in <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/twitter-users-are-warning-each-other-about-its-junk-ads-with-community-notes/">low-rent junk ads</a> by dropshipping companies and Neo-nazis (Musk is reportedly recruiting <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-twitter-pr-boost-image">PR specialists</a> to help reform the brand image of the ailing platform.)
More recently, <a href="https://x.com/MrBeast/status/1917228796287078505">Smith teased</a> that he "might actually own this platform soon," after <a href="https://x.com/Dexerto/status/1917205362366652642">Musk volunteered</a> to be part of a "100 men vs 1 gorilla" MrBeast video.
Unfortunately for those fed up with <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Musk+X+toxic&amp;sca_esv=b5b85f1110a5fb0d&amp;rlz=1C1GCEU_en&amp;ei=O7MbaNiCFfHk5NoPl5u50A4&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiYjPHcipKNAxVxMlkFHZdNDuoQ4dUDCBA&amp;uact=5&amp;oq=Musk+X+toxic&amp;gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiDE11c2sgWCB0b3hpYzIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigAUiiClCrBljTCXABeACQAQCYAZIBoAH6A6oBAzAuNLgBA8gBAPgBAZgCBaACkwTCAg4QABiABBiwAxiGAxiKBcICCBAAGLADGO8FwgIFEAAYgATCAgYQABgWGB6YAwCIBgGQBgWSBwMxLjSgB8kPsgcDMC40uAeMBA&amp;sclient=gws-wiz-serp">the billionaire's reign</a> over the social media app, those comments were definitely tongue-in-cheek — Musk probably won't be handing over the keys anytime soon.
Still, it'd make a great present for the birthday boy.
More on MrBeast: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/allegations-mrbeast-contest">Allegations Keep Piling Up Against MrBeast</a>

Vanity Fair

"Is that like not weird to you?"

MrBeast Takes Out Online Ads to Wish Himself Happy Birthday

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a type of CRISPR gene-edited pig for human consumption.
As <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/02/1116059/the-us-approves-crispr-pigs-for-food/">MIT Technology Review reports</a>, only an <a href="https://crispr-gene-editing-regs-tracker.geneticliteracyproject.org/united-states-animals/">extremely limited list of gene-modified animals</a> are cleared by regulators to be eaten in the United States, including a transgenic salmon that has an extra gene to grow faster, and heat-tolerant beef cattle.
And now a type of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/meat-gene-hacked-pigs">illness-resistant pig</a> could soon join their ranks. British company Genus used the popular gene-editing technique CRISPR to make pigs immune to a virus that causes an illness called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).
It's the same technology that's been used to <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/gene-hacking-scientist-ethics">gene-hack human babies</a> — experiments that have proven far more controversial — and <a href="https://innovativegenomics.org/news/crispr-clinical-trials-2024/">develop medicine</a> in the form of gene therapies.
The PRRS virus can easily spread in factory farms in the US and cause the inability to conceive, increase the number of stillborn pigs, and trigger respiratory complications, including pneumonia.
It's been <a href="https://vetmed.iastate.edu/vdpam/about/focus-areas/swine/swine-disease-manual/index-diseases/porcine-reproductive">called</a> the "most economically important disease" affecting pig producers, since it can have a devastating effect on their bottom lines. According to MIT Tech, it causes losses of more than $300 million a year in the US alone.
Genus' gene-editing efforts have proven highly successful so far, with the pigs appearing immune to 99 percent of known versions of the virus.
Using CRISPR, the company knocked out a receptor that allowed the PRRS virus to enter cells, effectively barring it from infecting its host.
Beyond the respiratory illness, scientists are using gene-editing to make pigs less vulnerable or even immune to other infections, including swine fever.
But before we can eat a pork chop from a gene-edited pig, Genus says that it will have to lock down regulatory approval in Mexico, Canada, Japan, and China as well, the United States' biggest export markets for pork, as MIT Tech reports.
The company is hoping gene-edited pork could land in the US market as soon as next year.
But whether you'll actually know if you're eating meat from a pig that had a virus receptor turned off using a cutting-edge DNA modification technique is unclear.
"We aren't aware of any labelling requirement," Genus subsidiary Pig Improvement Company CEO Matt Culbertson told MIT Tech.
More on CRISPR: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/gene-hacking-scientist-ethics">Scientist Who Gene-Hacked Human Babies Says Ethics Are "Holding Back" Scientific Progress</a>

Sower User

Genetics

Is this bacon... CRISPR?

FDA Approves Gene-Hacked CRISPR Pigs for Human Consumption

In Arizona, the family of a man killed during a road rage incident has used artificial intelligence to revive their dead loved one in court — and the video is just as unsettling as you think.
As <a href="https://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/chandler/family-uses-ai-to-create-video-for-deadly-chandler-road-rage-victims-own-impact-statement">Phoenix's ABC 15 reports</a>, an uncanny simulacrum of the late Christopher Pelkey, who died from a gunshot wound in 2021, played in a courtroom at the end of his now-convicted killer's trial.
"In another life, we probably could have been friends," the AI version of Pelkey, who was 37 when he died, told his shooter, Gabriel Paul Horcasitas. "I believe in forgiveness."
<iframe loading="lazy" title="A.I. of Murdered Chris Pelkey Makes His Own Impact Statement at Sentencing (a court first)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cMs-_8etNts?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Despite that moving missive, it doesn't seem that much forgiveness was in the cards for Horcasitas.
After viewing the video — which was created by the deceased man's sister, Stacey Wales, using an "aged-up" photo Pelkey made when he was still alive — the judge presiding over the case ended up giving the man a 10-and-a-half year manslaughter sentence, which is a year more than what state prosecutors were asking for.
In the caption on her video, Wales explained that she, her husband Tim, and their friend Scott Yenzer made the "digital AI likeness" of her brother using a script she'd written alongside images and audio files they had of him speaking in a "prerecorded interview" taken months before he died.
"These digital assets and script were fed into multiple AI tools to help create a digital version of Chris," Wales wrote, "polished by hours of painstaking editing and manual refinement."
In her interview with ABC15, Pelkey's sister insisted that everyone who knew her late brother "agreed this capture was a true representation of the spirit and soul of how Chris would have thought about his own sentencing as a murder victim."
She added that creating the digital clone helped her and her family heal from his loss and left her with a sense of peace, though others felt differently.
"Can’t put into words how disturbing I find this," <a href="https://x.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1919588854471745852">writer Eoin Higgins tweeted</a> of the Pelkey clone. "The idea of hearing from my brother through this tech is grotesque. Using it in a courtroom even worse."
Referencing both the Pelkey video and news that NBC is planning to use late sports narrator <a href="https://futurism.com/nbc-jim-fagan-ai-voice">Jim Fagan's voice to do new promos</a> this coming NBA season, a <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/ashlynnb.bsky.social/post/3loixmeafc22e">Bluesky user</a> insisted that "no one better do this to me once I'm dead."
"This AI necromancy bullshit is so creepy and wrong," that user put it — and we must say, it's hard to argue with that.
More on AI revivals: <a href="https://futurism.com/nbc-jim-fagan-ai-voice">NBC Using AI to Bring Beloved NBA Narrator Jim Fagan Back From the Grave</a>

Beyond The Veil 

"In another life, we probably could have been friends."

Family Uses AI To Revive Dead Brother For Impact Statement in Killer’s Trial

Ozempic and other drugs like it have been <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/diet-industry-ozempic-meltdown">threatening the established diet industry</a> since they premiered — and it appears that Weight Watchers is now getting the hatchet.
In a <a href="https://corporate.ww.com/news/news-details/2025/WeightWatchers-Takes-Strategic-Action-to-Eliminate-1-15-Billion-of-Debt-Strengthening-Financial-Position-for-Long-Term-Growth-and-Profitability/default.aspx">note to investors</a>, the <a href="https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/nutrition-and-dietetics/weight-watchers-begins">long-running</a> weight loss company is taking the "strategic action" of filing for bankruptcy in hopes of consolidating its immense $1.15 billion dollars' worth of debt.
The move comes nearly eighteen months after Oprah Winfrey, a Weight Watchers investor who served as the celebrity face and body of the diet company, admitted that she had started <a href="https://people.com/oprah-winfrey-reveals-weight-loss-medication-exclusive-8414552">taking weight loss drugs</a> like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy.
Just a few months after that, Winfrey announced that she was <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/oprah-leaves-weight-watchers-medication">exiting WW's board of directors</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/oprah-questions-weightwatchers-wegovy">questioned the company's purpose</a> alongside the advent of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs, the class of medications to which Ozempic and other popular weight loss injectables belong. The drugs are <a href="https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/research-and-discoveries-articles/research-on-glp-1-drugs">believed to work</a> by mimicking the stomach's feeling of fullness, lowering blood sugar in diabetics and preventing overeating in non-diabetic overweight people.
Though WW mentioned neither Ozempic nor the class of drugs it belongs to in its bankruptcy statement, its specter haunted the announcement — especially because the company is apparently looking to expand its telehealth services.
Back in October, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/weightwatchers-adds-compounded-version-novos-obesity-drug-weight-loss-program-2024-10-08/">WW announced</a> that it would be offering compounded versions of semaglutide, the GLP-1 behind Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy. That branded compounding market, however, is both clogged with companies looking to <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/fda-declares-semaglutide-shortage-over-spelling-end-compounded-glp-1-market">cash in on the GLP-1 craze</a> and, more importantly, <a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-information-patients-and-providers/fdas-concerns-unapproved-glp-1-drugs-used-weight-loss">rife with safety and quality control concerns</a>.
Considering that <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/09/24/weight-watchers-international-ww/1408238002/">workout meetings</a> were once considered the company's main value proposition — one that had already been existentially threatened by the <a href="https://fortune.com/2015/02/27/weight-watchers/">rise of fitness apps</a> years before the GLP-1 revolution — it's not exactly surprising that WW's compounded GLP-1 gambit hasn't taken off as the company may have liked.
Confirmation of WW's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which will not cease its operations but rather help it reorganize its structure and consolidate its debt, follows <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/weightwatchers-prepares-for-bankruptcy-4c81b69f?mod=article_inline">leaks to the Wall Street Journal last month</a> that it was preparing for the filing.
In a WSJ interview following the confirmation of the bankruptcy news, artist and veteran WW member Naomi Nemtzow expressed her frustration at the company's pivot to telehealth and weight loss meds. As the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/nyregion/brooklyn-weightwatchers-meetings.html">New York Times documented</a> back in 2023, the company abruptly ended its meeting in her Brooklyn neighborhood, leaving a void that she and her fellow former Weight Watchers had to fill themselves.
"Basically they gave up on the kind of work they had been doing and went on to selling Ozempic. They jumped on that bandwagon," the 75-year-old artist told the newspaper. "It’s become a quick fix, a fashion thing."
Critical impressions aside, Nemtzow's irked opinion does seem to indicate that WW is now suffering for its attempts to stay apace of the latest weight loss trend instead of doubling down on its bread and butter.
Then again, Weight Watchers was also a huge part of the <a href="https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/fad-diet-trends-weight-watchers-atkins-paleo-diet">fad diet craze</a> in the 1990s and 2000s — so maybe, this is nature taking its course.
More on weight loss drugs: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/glp-1-pill-promising">Human Experiments on GLP-1 Pill Looking Extremely Promising</a>

Watching the Watchers

Rx/Medicines

"They gave up on the kind of work they had been doing and went on to selling Ozempic."

Weight Watchers Goes Bankrupt After Rise of Ozempic-Like Drugs

Billionaire Elon Musk has demonstrated an extreme level of disregard for other people's privacy. He has a long track record of singling out specific private individuals to siccing his lackeys after them.
But when it comes to his own privacy, it's an entirely different matter.
It's a glaring double standard, with the mercurial CEO repeatedly trying to protect his own privacy at all costs. Case in point, as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/technology/elon-musk-texas-neighbors.html">New York Times reports</a>, his staff tried to keep the construction of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/elon-musk-texas-neighbors.html">ludicrously tall fence and gate</a> to his $6 million mansion in Austin, Texas, hidden from the public.
Emails obtained by the newspaper show that Musk's handlers tried to make public meetings allowing neighbors to speak out about his plans private instead. His staff also argued that the city of Austin should exempt him from state and federal public records laws, efforts that ultimately proved futile.
The Zoning and Planning Commission ultimately voted to deny Musk the exceptions he was asking for to turn his mansion into a Fort Knox of billionaire quietude.
Yet while he goes to extreme lengths to keep his own affairs private, Musk's track record of invading other people's privacy — often using his enormous 200 million follower base to make other people's lives miserable — is extensive, to say the least.
In February, the mercurial CEO was <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/elon-musk-accused-of-doxxing-after-reposting-judge-john-mcconnell-s-daughter-s-job-on-x/ar-AA1yZwAX">accused of publicizing the occupation of the daughter</a> of judge John McConnell to his hundreds of millions of followers, after her father unfroze the Department of Education's federal grants.
Musk has also <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-firing-wall-street-journal-reporter-doge-racist-tweets">accused</a> Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long of being a "disgusting and cruel person," after she <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-posts-d9f11a93">reported on</a> how Musk had armed a severely underqualified 25-year-old to infiltrate the US Treasury's payments system earlier this year.
In 2022, Musk <a href="https://9thstreetjournal.org/2022/04/15/how-elon-musk-and-his-trolls-attacked-a-duke-professor-on-twitter/">took to Twitter to send his lackeys after</a> Duke University professor and automation expert Missy Cummings for allegedly being "extremely biased against Tesla."
Late last year, Musk <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-bullying-federal-worker">extensively bullied</a> US International Development Finance Corporation employee Ashley Thomas on X-formerly-Twitter, resulting in major harassment by his followers on the platform.
But his capacity to receive criticism — much of it deserved, considering his actions — has been abysmal.
"It’s really come as quite a shock to me that there is this level of, really, hatred and violence from the Left," Musk whined during a Fox News interview in March after his gutting of the government and embrace of extremist views <a href="https://futurism.com/wave-vandalism-protest-tesla">inspired a major anti-Tesla movement</a>.
"I’ve never done anything harmful," he claimed. "I’ve only done productive things."
"My companies make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone," Musk complained in a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1901635479528726969">tweet</a> at the time. "So why the hate and violence against me?"
More on Musk: <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-drama-neighbors">Elon Musk Is Having Massive Drama With His Mansion's Neighbors</a>