Another day, another sad thing to report about our compromised Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Brendan Carr has followed through on his 2025 threat to kill long-term broadband speed goals established during the Biden administration, which aimed for eventually getting us to gigabit download and half-gigabit upload speeds. How dare we dream of spreading great download and upload speeds across the country!

It’s wild that 13 years after Comcast said Americans don’t need gigabit internet we’re somehow back in this conversation. Especially since the private sector has delivered, albeit unevenly, on super high speeds in certain areas; …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Source: YouTube

Summary

Astronomer's tips for a good solar eclipse viewing

Why It Matters

This video provides visual context for the story and helps readers quickly understand the key development from the original source.

Watch Original Video

Imagine what would happen if a British prime minister in London told the Scots they could not have their own parliament, national football team or fly the saltire. Or if the Welsh were told their language and poetry were banned and must no longer be taught in schools. The ensuing uproar would probably destroy the United Kingdom. Yet that’s exactly what Xi Jinping, China’s communist emperor, is telling the roughly 125 million members of the 55 ethnic and religious minorities who together comprise about 9% of the country’s (majority Han Chinese) population.

Xi claims his sinicisation policy, embodied in a new “ethnic unity” law, will boost national identity and integration and, by expanding compulsory use of the Mandarin language, improve life and work prospects. Minorities should “hug tightly like pomegranate seeds” to build a strong, united China, he says. But Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs and others who value their separate language and customs fiercely object to what they see as forced assimilation into a conformist, intolerant monoculture dominated by the Communist party’s tunnel vision. For them, it’s ethnic cleansing by another name.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Continue reading…

America’s strategy toward Iran is undergoing its most significant shift in decades. The objective is apparently no longer simply to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program, but to systematically degrade the regime’s capacity to govern and sustain itself. At Camp David, President Donald Trump said the United States is prepared to intensify military pressure, warning that Washington would “hit them very hard” until the regime reaches a point where it “can’t go on anymore.”

Trump’s repeated cancellations of planned large-scale strikes have raised questions about U.S. credibility and strategic coherence. Meanwhile, Tehran — backed by Moscow and Beijing — is exploiting that uncertainty, while Trump appears to be placing his hopes on a faction within Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

IRANIANS SPEAK OUT OVER POSSIBLE TRUMP-REGIME DEAL

Many Iranians would welcome the ruling establishment’s humiliation, defeat, and eventual surrender. Although disrupting the regime’s critical infrastructure would impose temporary hardships, many opponents of the Islamic Republic see such suffering as the pain of childbirth — a difficult but necessary transition that could ultimately bring about the regime’s collapse.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s propaganda machine has threatened broad retaliation, warning that attacks on critical infrastructure will provoke a severe response. These statements indirectly acknowledge the regime’s preparation for a wider confrontation with the United States and Israel. They also raise the possibility that Tehran could activate dormant terrorist cells and other asymmetric assets in the United States and across the West — an arena in which the Islamic Republic has decades of experience.

The Iranian people are entering an even deeper period of hardship as the regime steadily loses control over large parts of the country. It could spiral into chaos at any moment. If, after the regime’s collapse, a figure such as Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi does not lead a transitional government, Iran could face a bloodbath. The remnants of the Islamic Republic are likely to regroup through mosques and underground terrorist networks, preserving their ideology and continuing their campaign by other means. This risk cannot be ignored.

The current White House has shown no serious commitment to regime change in Iran. Defeating Islamist terrorism requires political resolve, strategic clarity, and a clear understanding of the threat. More than two decades into the 21st century, Washington has failed to defeat a regime that continues to serve the strategic interests of Moscow and Beijing, while much of Europe remains detached from reality. Israel alone has recognized that its security — and the emergence of a new Middle East — depends on regime change in Iran.

TRUMP KEEPS NEGOTIATING WHILE IRAN PLAYS THE LONG GAME AMERICA KEEPS MISSING

President Trump’s objective appears to be forcing Tehran back to the negotiating table. In my view, the ideological rigidity and fanaticism of the Shiite clerical establishment make that outcome unlikely. The regime has repeatedly shown that it would rather see Iran devastated than abandon its revolutionary ideology. This is no longer a conventional military campaign but a form of system warfare in which the regime’s critical vulnerability is no longer the IRGC or its nuclear facilities, but the infrastructure that enables it to survive.

The regime’s critical vulnerability now lies in its electricity grid, oil refineries, fuel distribution networks, command-and-control systems, communications infrastructure, and the institutions that sustain government. Disrupting these systems would have consequences far beyond physical destruction. The IRGC would struggle to coordinate nationwide operations, provincial control would weaken, and pressure on an already bankrupt government would intensify. This is the strategic logic behind targeting the regime’s infrastructure.

For forty-eight years, the Shiite clerical establishment has turned Iran into a military garrison and an ammunition depot. In pursuit of its revolutionary ideology, it has devastated the economy, plundered the nation’s wealth, and sacrificed Iran’s development for ideological expansion. For decades, much of the world ignored Israel’s warnings about the Islamic Republic. Only now is the international community beginning to recognize the scale of the security threat posed by Tehran’s state-sponsored Islamist terrorism.

IRAN IS NOT A NORMAL NATION YOU CAN MAKE DEALS WITH; IT’S A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

America’s years of negotiating with Iran’s ruling clerical regime have produced little beyond delay, allowing Tehran to buy time while advancing its strategic objectives. Diplomacy with a regime built on terrorism and ideological expansion has repeatedly failed to deliver lasting security. Rather than seeking compromise, Tehran has used negotiations to outlast successive U.S. administrations. The result is a Middle East that continues to pay the price for Washington’s hesitation, while Israel confronts a threat it has long understood.

The Tehran regime and its military and intelligence institutions — including the Supreme National Security Council — have repeatedly threatened operations against the United States and Israel. Within the regime’s ideological worldview, mass-casualty attacks such as September 11 and October 7 are treated as instruments of political intimidation and ideological warfare. Khomeini and Khamenei may be gone, but the ideology they institutionalized endures. To preserve the regime, its leaders have repeatedly shown a willingness to commit acts of violence and repression.

The current White House has shown little commitment to pursuing regime change in Iran. Yet as long as Tehran continues to serve as a strategic partner of Moscow and Beijing, the challenge extends far beyond Iran itself. Israel has long recognized that lasting regional security depends on ending the Islamic Republic’s rule.

The path forward is clear: dismantling the infrastructure that sustains the Islamic Republic is the only way the United States and its allies can force a strategic recalibration in Tehran — or hasten the regime’s collapse. Anything less will allow the mullahs to continue their campaign of terrorism, instability, and ideological expansion. The next phase of this conflict will determine whether the Middle East remains hostage to a dying dictatorship — or finally breaks free.

CENTCOM’s strategic objectives may also require reassessment. Rather than focusing primarily on military facilities, its strategy should target the pillars that sustain the regime: cutting off the IRGC’s financial networks and proxies, disrupting its command-and-control capabilities, exposing the leadership’s corruption and hidden assets, denying access to surveillance technologies, and expanding secure communications for the Iranian people.

At the same time, lower-ranking military and security personnel should be told that those who refuse to repress civilians will have a future in a post-Islamic Republic Iran. External pressure without a credible transition plan risks producing chaos rather than change. The objective should be to dismantle the machinery of repression while preserving the Iranian people’s ability to determine their own future.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

Limited U.S. support could help spark a new popular uprising, accelerating the regime’s collapse. As Iran’s leaders remain hidden in tunnels and the regime’s security apparatus grows increasingly fragmented, Washington should prioritize coordinated covert clandestine operations, stronger protection for opposition figures, and a long-term transition strategy over election-driven diplomacy. Closer strategic coordination between the CIA and Mossad may also be essential to better understand and confront the ideological and operational roots of the radical Islamist threat that has spread since 1979 — a challenge successive U.S. administrations have too often underestimated. The people of Iran and Israel are already paying the price for a prolonged war of attrition. Unless Washington recognizes that the regime’s ideology leaves little room for compromise, the consequences will extend far beyond Iran.

The next phase of this conflict will determine not only the future of Iran, but the future balance of power across the Middle East.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM ERFAN FARD

I regard these strangers as my intimates in a way, even though some of them are not people I think I would like if I actually met them. One morning, I was watching one on my living-room television while sipping my coffee. My husband walked into the room and winced as one of the women changed into a perfect re-creation of an American Girl–doll outfit (very theater kid, not his thing). I felt a flash of defensiveness—she makes everything by hand! She has a real sense of self! Not to mention a seemingly sweet relationship with her father and pet birds. I kept scrolling and was relieved that another one of my girls hadn’t appeared. She often records herself eating a frozen dinner on her couch while watching police body-cam footage on YouTube to unwind. And I mean no disrespect to her, but if she had shown up, I would have lunged for the remote.

You might be wondering: Why was I watching Instagram on my TV? Instagram’s vice president of product, Tessa Lyons-Laing, has referred to TV as the company’s “next frontier.” As it tries to compete with YouTube and Netflix, Instagram is apparently looking for ways to be … both of them. And so it has launched a stand-alone service for various streaming devices, which it recently expanded with new features to help “friends and family watch together.” This caught my attention: I wanted to try taking the “bad” screen (my phone) and putting it onto the “good” screen (my TV) to see how it would make me (and the people around me) feel.

[Read: The flip-phone cleanse]

Years ago, the “good screen versus bad screen” meme originated as a joke about having an office job. The “bad” screen was a desktop computer at work, whereas the “good” screen was a personal laptop, full of one’s own, delightful, self-chosen digital activities. But in 2022, following the coronavirus-pandemic lockdowns, the writer Kate Lindsay noted a shift. When people referred to the “bad” screen, they now seemed to be talking about their smartphone, which they felt hopelessly dependent on, and when they mentioned the “good” screen, they were referring to the humble television, which now felt wholesome and safe. “We’re so convinced that it’s in our best interest to reverse the effects of social media that even watching a 30-minute TV show uninterrupted seems constructive,” Lindsay observed. But maybe, four years later, the 30-minute-show part is negotiable. Perhaps “good” could come just from giving our thumbs a break, looking up instead of down, and permitting other people to see what we’re doing.

My husband was initially wary of adding his Instagram account to our living-room TV, but he acquiesced, and we had kind of a blast watching his feed together. Most of the videos were of male comedians I didn’t recognize; I sounded like the trope of a Boomer mom as I repeatedly asked, “Do you know him?” whenever a new guy showed up. I didn’t mean “Are you friends?”; I meant “Are they Your Guys?” Sometimes they were, and I was honored to meet them. Sometimes they weren’t; they were just guys. We both laughed to the point of tears at a video that some guy had shared of his dad trying to teach him to bunt a baseball when he was 10 years old. I manually liked it with the remote control and then sent it to myself, from my husband, via direct message. On my TV.

“This intrigues me,” Jonathan Gray, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me when I asked him about the app. Scrolling has always had a social element, he said, and people will often show a funny or interesting video to the person next to them. But he was skeptical of whether they would want to share every bit of their feed with their loved ones. “It’s one thing when I turn my phone to my wife and say, ‘Hey, you’ll like this,’ but 90 percent of what I see, she won’t want to watch,” he said. “It seems kind of painful.” Plus, his wife is learning how to whittle at the moment, and he doesn’t want to watch a bunch of whittling videos.

[Read: The extras are tired]

Gray also noted that the recommendation algorithms sometimes take big swings and throw new things at users to learn whether they’ll be interested. One might worry a little about the big swings that could appear on your TV, which to others in the room might appear to be something you’ve already expressed enthusiasm about. When I asked the Instagram spokesperson Christine Pai whether the TV app would filter out any weird stuff, she told me that both apps are using the same recommendation system. (The only specific difference she cited is that the TV app will give an edge to horizontal videos, because they are better suited for the display.)

The app does allow users to play themed “channels” based on their preestablished interests, so you don’t necessarily have to show off your entire, highly variable and sometimes unpredictable feed. The idea with the channels seems to be that making the secret, private shame of scrolling into a collaborative activity will give it a new place in the home. It can be more like watching America’s Funniest Home Videos together after dinner and less like sitting side by side, staring silently at something in your lap. People feel ambivalent about scrolling feeds, Marika Lüders, a professor of media and communication at the University of Oslo, wrote to me on this point. We find it entertaining at times, but we also feel embarrassed and guilty about it. To her, moving Instagram from a phone to a TV seems like “a strategy to increase the status of short-form videos,” by putting them on a screen that people (currently) feel less anxiety about.

That makes sense to me, though I find it just as easy to imagine how this may backfire for the company. Many people who are attempting to cut back on their Instagram use remove the app from their phone and use only the desktop-computer version, which is clunkier and less comfortable to scroll through for hours. Using it is so nonintuitive and unnatural that it calls attention to the absurdity of one’s habit. Moving Instagram to a bigger screen, then, is usually a route not to normalizing it in that new space but instead to severing ties with it altogether. The differences between a phone and a TV are even more dramatic and may be even more off-putting.

Surely the novelty will wear off. Last week, while visiting my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, my husband and I asked them to show us their feeds on their TV. My sister-in-law’s was funny because it was full of wedding-planning content—she’s currently waiting on the requisite engagement ring—and because she kept getting videos of this one baby who’s obsessed with Bad Bunny. Her boyfriend got a hairless cat, a guy pretending to be Wolverine, and a recipe for butter-chicken macaroni and cheese. Those were a little funny, too, but because you don’t know him, you don’t get why and you don’t care. After 20 minutes or so, we got bored of the experiment and left for a baseball game. Later, in the quiet of my hotel room, I went back to my own, private phone.

Source: YouTube

Summary

Can tech help us get a good night's sleep? | BBC News

Why It Matters

This video provides visual context for the story and helps readers quickly understand the key development from the original source.

Watch Original Video

Source: YouTube

Summary

Good News: Teen returns to field cancer-free after first pitch

Why It Matters

This video provides visual context for the story and helps readers quickly understand the key development from the original source.

Watch Original Video