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ECP NetHappenings News Headlines
U.S. Announces China Trade Deal in Geneva
LEFT: Trump says they’ve agreed to a trade deal with China.
RIGHT: China says they’ve “reached an agreement” to talk more.
Will we see Bitcoin go up to $110,000 tomorrow!
The OCC says it’s OK for your bank to embrace Bitcoin.
US BANKS CAN NOW CUSTODY #BITCOIN
OCC-regulated banks may buy and sell assets held in custody and are permitted to outsource bank-permissible crypto-asset activities, including custody and execution services.
FORMER PAYPAL PRESIDENT SAYS AI AGENTS WILL BUY, SELL, AND TRADE #BITCOIN “WITHOUT HUMAN INVOLVEMENT”
BTC WILL BE THE “NEUTRAL ASSET OF THE AI ERA.”
MISSOURI HOUSE JUST PASSED A BILL TO EXEMPT CAPITAL GAINS TAXES ON #BITCOIN AND CRYPTO
THIS IS MASSIVE!!!
Bitcoin officially surpasses Amazon to become the 5th largest asset in the world by market cap. Well over 1 MILLION BTC has been accumulated via the ETFs in just over a year!
“Trump on Jerome Powell: “I know much more than he does about interest rates. Believe me.”
“Laughter is a force for democracy.”
– John Cleese
SCIENCE
This is what it looks like when an explosion creates gold in space
“The 2016 event was very exciting at first. It was nearby and visible with every major telescope, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. But it didn’t match our predictions–we expected to see the infrared emission become brighter and brighter over several weeks,” said Eleonora Troja, study author and associate research scientist in the University of Maryland’s Department of Astronomy.
The first observation of a collision between neutron stars, detected in August 2017, created gravitational waves, light and heavy elements like gold and platinum. But astronomers have realized they also witnessed a kilanova, the kind of explosion that creates gold and platinum, the year before as well.
“We’ve never had a breach” often means “We’ve never looked hard enough.”
LAW
The Copyright Office report yesterday affirms what our members – and the broader creative community – have long contended: that the wholesale ingestion of copyrighted works to train gen AI models without consent or compensation is NOT fair use under current law. Here is a full statement from DCN along with the very important and thorough analysis from the Copyright Office
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-3-Generative-AI-Training-Report-Pre-Publication-Version.pdf
Via email, Trump fires head of Library of Congress
President Donald Trump fired the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, via email, a move that immediately drew sharp condemnation from her supporters.
“President Trump’s ignorant decision will impact America’s libraries, our copyrighted economic interests, and service to the American people by threatening support for Congress,” Rep. Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat, posted to social media shortly after Hayden’s firing became public late May 8. “His decision is a complete disgrace.”
Added Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat: “Donald Trump just fired my dear friend Dr. Carla Hayden — the Librarian of Congress — via email. This is disgraceful. The Library of Congress represents some of the best America has to offer. Equal access to learning for all.”
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind . . . Alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” ~Frank Wilhoit
Republicans Silent as Trump Refuses to Commit to Upholding Constitution
Rolling Stone reached out to all 53 GOP senators after the president said he didn’t know whether he needs to honor the nation’s founding document. None replied
Judges have a warning about Trump’s rapid deportations: Americans could be next
How Pablo Escobar Hid His Billions From the FBI
The pay off
Who holds Trump Coin? Here’s where the top backers are likely based.
The majority of top holders of Donald Trump’s memecoin have used foreign exchanges that say they ban US users, suggesting many purchasers are based abroad
President Trump is poised to accept a luxury jet costing $400 million as a gift from Qatar. It’s to be used as Air Force One and then transferred to the Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sure appears to be corruption in plain — and plane — sight.
Last week Donald Trump announced that a $5.5 billion golf course and Trump resort would be built in Qatar. This week Qatar gifts the President a luxury jet that he can keep when he leaves office. This is corruption in its rawest form. It’s not only breathtakingly corrupt, it’s manifestly illegal, no matter what permission is received from a cowardly and compromised Department of Justice.
It has to be retrofitted to match Air Force One’s safety and security standards, so that it can’t be shot down by a surface-to-air missile. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to retrofit this plane before Trump’s third term. Good luck to the intel agencies with dismantling every panel in the 747 that Qatar is giving Trump to check for bugs and trackers.
Qatar: Same country that bankrolled bailout loan to Kushner family. Unearthed records show that AG Pam Bondi, who authorized Trump’s luxury plane gift from Qatar, was previously a lobbyist for Qatar, receiving over $100,000 monthly.
The jet worth $400M will be overhauled by L3Harris, used as Air Force One and later transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation
WH & DOJ claim this is not a bribe
How can you call for 20 percent of Generals to be fired for lack of efficiency in the Pentagon and then ask for $150 billion MORE for a Pentagon budget that is now over $1 trillion?
Rep. Rob Menendez @RepMenendez May 10
No matter what this Administration tells the American people, the law is very clear: Members of Congress have a legal right to enter any DHS detention facility to conduct oversight without prior notice – something I’ve done twice this year without issue.
Gen Z’s ‘conscious unbossing’ should be a wake-up call for businesses
https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-consciously-unbossing-avoid-management-roles-preserve-mental-health-2025-4
NY lawmakers add disclaimer to AI chatbots: They aren’t human
https://gothamist.com/news/ny-lawmakers-add-disclaimer-to-ai-chatbots-they-arent-human
Massachusetts voters approved a 4% surtax on the ultra-wealthy in 2022.
Since then, the number of millionaires in Massachusetts has jumped by 38.6%.
Wealth taxes don’t kill innovation or drive the wealthy away.
NOT taxing the wealthy costs us all.
Judges have a warning about Trump’s rapid deportations: Americans could be next
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/10/donald-trump-immigration-deportations-due-process-00339319
The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee is investigating whether the GSA has given preferential treatment to a tech startup linked to some of President Donald Trump’s most influential Silicon Valley allies, including Peter Thiel.
Google to pay Texas $1.4 billion in data privacy settlement
Former Palantir workers condemn company’s work with Trump administration
Could Apple Exist Without Its Ties to China? Probably Not.
The world’s most valuable company has become so reliant on Chinese suppliers and sales that it would be worth half as much or less without them.
Published May 1, 2025 Updated May 2, 2025
Several years before Donald J. Trump entered politics, Apple and its partners built massive factories across China to assemble iPhones. Mr. Trump first campaigned for president by promising his supporters that he would force Apple to make those products in America.
Nearly a decade later, little has changed. Instead of bringing its manufacturing home, Apple shifted some production from China to India, Vietnam and Thailand. Almost nothing is made in America, and an estimated 80 percent of iPhones are still made in China.
Despite years of pressure, Apple’s business is still so dependent on China that the tech giant can’t operate without it. Moves by the Trump administration to change Apple’s behavior risk damaging the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. And any serious effort to move Apple’s production to the United States — if that is even possible — would take a titanic effort by both the company and the federal government.
In the four days after President Trump announced taxes on Chinese exports of 145 percent last month, Apple lost $770 billion in market capitalization. It regained some of those losses after Mr. Trump gave consumer electronics manufacturers in China a temporary reprieve.
On Thursday, Apple reported $24.78 billion in quarterly profit, a 4.8 percent increase from a year ago, a result of strong sales of apps and services and a new, lower-priced iPhone, which the company introduced in February. China was the only region where it didn’t increase sales during the quarter.
An Apple spokesman declined to make any company executives available for this article. During a call with Wall Street analysts on Thursday, Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, said Apple had more than 9,000 suppliers in the United States and planned to open a factory in Houston to make artificial intelligence servers.
The 6 strongest materials on Earth are harder than diamonds https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/strongest-material/
The Architect Trump’s Agenda Is Shaped by Project 2025 Author, Not Elon Musk
the Trump loyalist – Vought spent several years working for a Gramm protégé, Jeb Hensarling, then served as executive director of the Republican Study Committee, a right-wing caucus. It was the “center of conservative gravity in the House,” Hensarling says. He recalls Vought as a “true believer” with a “mastery of details of really arcane budget processes.” Vought left Congress in 2010 and went to work as vice president of Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation. There he took up another of Gramm’s favorite pastimes: calling Congress gutless. A current CFPB staffer, testifying in a court affidavit, described conversations with senior officials at the bureau who said Vought’s plan is to turn the agency into a single room with “five men and a phone.” (Administration lawyers have denied this was the goal and said the downsizing effort has been lawful.)
In a series of essays for Red State, the commentary site run by conservative radio host Erick Erickson, Vought railed against congressional Republicans for, as he saw it, failing to block President Barack Obama’s agenda. This position played well during the heyday of the Tea Party, when many conservatives suddenly became deficit hawks. Vought was ready to make the case for big changes. “We are past the point of incrementalism,” he wrote in 2011. “We don’t have the time to fiddle at the edges. We need elected officials free of calcified political assumptions of what is possible that reveal only their own level of accommodation with the liberal welfare state.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-russell-vought-doge-musk-trump/
Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer
Apple Hits Google’s Battleship
HEALTH
The Acid King Inside Story of LSD Chemist William Leonard Pickard
For more than two decades, authorities believe, Leonard Pickard was a major player in the LSD underground. In 2001, while sitting in a federal prison, he told his story for the first time
Psychedelics may boost mental health by dampening inflammation
Psychedelic drugs like MDMA and psilocybin may help treat depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions by reducing the number of inflammatory cells around the brain
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2479069-psychedelics-may-boost-mental-health-by-dampening-inflammation/#Echobox=1746748855
How Being Watched Changes How You Think
We live in an era of constant surveillance. Psychology research shows how this might change how we perceive the world—even unconsciously
Structural knee MRI findings are already frequent in a general population-based birth cohort at 33 years of age. To evaluate the incidence and severity of knee magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings and their associated lifestyle and health factors in a relatively healthy subset of a general population-based birth cohort.
Groom of the Stool – The worst job in history?
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Groom-of-the-Stool/
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