Dangerous Readers
Summer Skate by Sean Avery and Leslie Cohen
Captain Outrageous
Ted Turner, Entrepreneur of His Age
The creative destruction triggered by Ted Turner’s wild gambits left the tyranny of licensed, bureaucratic TV in rubble.
Ted Turner, who just graduated from this earthly academy at age 87, was a bon vivant, Playgirl‘s man of the year, and a public embarrassment. He made billion-dollar deals when, you know, a billion was a really big number. He sailed the seas as a champion of the yachting crowd, winning the 1977 America’s Cup aboard the Courageous. He married a beautiful actress, made her do the politically incorrect Tomahawk chops to cheer his Atlanta Braves, and cycled through the ideological spectrum from Randian to Mouth of the South to globalist U.N. benefactor to environmentalist rescuing bison. Jane Fonda, his third wife, deemed him a “romantic swashbuckling pirate” and “my favorite ex-husband.”
The cartoon character he cultivated was for fun and to amortize the lithium load. His real role was Entrepreneur of His Age. Turner held the lead spear when the Late 20th Century Barbarians stormed the gates of the Old Order in American media. Meeting the moment at the perfect instant—when a “deregulation wave” was opening doors long shut—Turner flipped the script on “public interest” regulation concocted during the Progressive Era. Intellectuals largely bemoaned the passing of the administrative state, and the Cronkite audience it favored, devoid of controversy and offered as the “news from nowhere” (as a CBS executive bragged). But the closed-loop spoon feeding was inimical to freedom, open inquiry, and honest debate.
Goodyear
What Humans Did For 200,000 Years That We Stopped Doing In 1842
For 200,000 years, every human alive slept in direct contact with the Earth. Then in 1842, one invention severed that connection — and chronic disease rates have climbed ever since. Here’s what we lost. And how to get it back tonight.
By Dr. R. Caldwell, MD
For 200,000 years — every single generation of humans that ever lived before your grandparents — slept directly on the ground.
On grass. On animal hides laid over dirt. On straw mattresses pressed against earthen floors. On wooden cots inches above bare soil.
It didn’t matter which continent. It didn’t matter which century. From the African savanna to the Roman countryside to the American frontier, every human body spent 8 hours a night in direct electrical contact with the Earth.
And then, in 1842, one man invented something that severed that connection forever.
[ click to continue reading at The Grounding Report ]
Suicide By Jet
Disturbing moment person sucked into Frontier Airlines engine at take off
The collision caused a brief fire, which the airport said was quickly extinguished
Disturbing video captured the moment a Frontier Airlines aircraft struck a pedestrian on the runway at Denver International Airport on Friday night.
The plane, which was traveling to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff” at about 11:19 p.m., according to the airport’s official X account. The video shows the plane going down the runway until a loud bang is heard – with Fox News host left in disbelief over the horror incident after transport secretary Sean Duffy’s family road trip.
Several passengers could be heard gasping while one person screamed in shocked. According to the airport, the pedestrian was killed after the collision. It comes after the horrifying control tower audio was released with a chilling 6-word comment about ‘limbs’.
Adidas Magic
How Adidas created its 1:59 marathon super shoe: From ‘unreasonable ambition’ to ‘actual magic’
By Liam Tharme
No sooner had Sabastian Sawe broken the tape at the London Marathon than the Kenyan was posing for photos, proudly holding up his Adidas shoe, with “1:59:30” and “WR” written along the sole in black ink.
History had been made, a significant barrier surpassed, the first legal sub-two-hour marathon. He did not just break the world record, he obliterated it, beating Kelvin Kiptum’s mark (2:00:35 at the 2023 Chicago Marathon) by more than a minute. Yomif Kejelcha, coming home second, also ran under two hours, finishing just 11 seconds behind. Tigst Assefa lowered her own world record by nine seconds (to 2:15:41) in the women’s race.
All three are Adidas athletes and all raced in the Pro Evo 3. It was an incredible debut for a shoe that Adidas says is the lightest and best it has made — testing data shows 1.6 percent running economy improvements compared to the Pro Evo 2.
Stick Figure GPT
This Reggae Band Is in a Nightmare Battle Against AI Slop Remixes
When Stick Figure’s seven-year-old song shot up the charts, the band was thrilled. But its viral moment was spurred by unauthorized AI remixes.
by KATE KNIBBS
THE CALIFORNIA-BASED REGGAE band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like “Angels Above Me” did this past week.
The seven-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in six different countries, including the United Kingdom, Austria, and Canada, skyrocketing “out of nowhere,” according to Woodruff.
Stick Figure has had plenty of thrilling milestones before, with albums repeatedly hitting number one in the reggae category, and hit singles amassing hundreds of millions of streams. But the speed at which this track went from a years-old sleeper to a smash was new. People were posting TikToks about it, gushing with enthusiasm. “It was exciting,” Woodruff says. “But then once I found it was because of some version that was basically stolen and generated in one click, I mean, it’s saddening.”
[ click to continue reading at WIRED ]
Ted Turner Gone
Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87
As one of the most important figures in media history, he oversaw a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.
By Jonathan Kandell
Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.
Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.
As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.
James Frey with Zibby Owens
Apophis 2029
A ‘Potentially Hazardous’ Asteroid Will Pass Close to Earth in 2029 — and It Has an Alarming Nickname
This occurrence will be the closest approach to Earth by an asteroid of this size that scientists have known about in advance
By Lexi Lane
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A “potentially hazardous” asteroid is scheduled to pass by Earth in 2029, marking the “closest approach” to the planet by one of its size.
The asteroid is called Apophis, a name that comes from the ancient Egyptian god of chaos, according to Britannica.
However, despite the alarming-sounding name, NASA’s website noted it will “safely pass” about 20,000 miles from Earth on April 13, 2029.
NASA added that this distance is “closer than the distance of many satellites in geosynchronous orbit.”
FraudGPT
Deepfakes Are Coming for Your Bank Account
OpenAI made the perfect tool for scammers.
By Lila Shroff
Donald Trump is on TikTok doing his morning routine. “Get ready with me for a big day 💄🇺🇸,” reads the caption, as the president holds a makeup brush to his cheek. The scene is a still, ostensibly a screenshot of a TikTok clip. Like so much other AI-generated slop coursing through the internet, the image is fake and ridiculous. It also looks unnervingly real: There are no hands with six fingers, physics-defying angles, or other flagrant signs of AI-generated imagery. At quick glance, it really looks like the president is putting on bronzer.
I made this deepfake with OpenAI’s new image-generation model. ChatGPT Images 2.0, released last week, can create photorealistic visuals that are noticeably more convincing than what its predecessors might have produced. The tool has flooded the internet with hyperreal fakes: for example, Jeffrey Epstein as a Twitch streamer. I created the “screenshot” of Trump’s fake TikTok after encountering a similar image on the ChatGPT Subreddit, and I’ve since been able to use Images 2.0 to create all kinds of alarming deepfake images—including of Elon Musk getting whisked away by the FBI, world leaders suffering medical emergencies, and top American politicians donning Nazi paraphernalia (none of which I’ve shared anywhere).
Derby Luxe
Kentucky Derby’s $400,000 suites sell out in bigger luxury bet
By Aysha Diallo, Bloomberg News
This year’s Kentucky Derby will be the most luxurious ever – part of a nearly $1 billion investment plan to fortify horseracing’s marquee event as the sport faces declining interest.
Churchill Downs Inc., the publicly traded owner of the Derby and other racetracks, is offering ever more lavish experiences for deep-pocketed fans, including $400,000 suites at the finish line.
The demand is extremely strong for our luxury and high-end segment,” said Sarah Contardo, senior vice president for sales and strategy at Churchill Downs.
The company aims to keep boosting that supply after announcing a strategy in early 2025 to add more premium experiences over the next few years. That includes a revamped five-story terraced structure on the first turn and adding suites on the home stretch. Even the infield, the general admission section known for drunken and mud-soaked partying, is getting upgraded with pricier amenities such as rooftop views.
Gates of Fire
Art and War with a Master Storyteller
A novelist writes to move someone.
He begins by probing his own feelings—the things he loves and the things he hates. The things that pique his interest and pierce his heart; the things he fears but will never admit. He distills these insights into a story about life, and through his words seeks to induce a feeling in the reader, to make the reader love or hate or identify with people who do not exist. The novelist entertains, delights, grieves, and consoles us. Ultimately, the great novelists cause us to reflect on our own lives and, on occasion, to change them.
By this measure, Steven Pressfield is a great novelist. Pressfield is the author of more than 10 nonfiction books, several Hollywood films, and, with the publication of The Arcadian this month, 12 novels. From his pen has flowed millions of dollars in sales of books and movie tickets. But it was one book – Gates of Fire (1998) – that cemented his legacy.
“The Music is Black: A British Story”
From reggae to grime: how black music became synonymous with a British sound
As a major exhibition retracing how music from Africa, the Caribbean and North America merged to make a distinctly British sound opens in London, Spotlight on Africa looks at a century of black music in the diaspora.
V&A East, the latest offshoot of the world-renowned Victoria & Albert Museum, opened in Stratford – the area regenerated by London’s 2012 Olympic Games – on 18 April.
Its inaugural exhibition, entitled “The Music is Black: A British Story”, charts the rise of black music in the UK, from early drumbeats brought over from Africa to the present day, in which African and Afro-Caribbean music reflect British multiculturalism.
From Africa via the Caribbean and North America, the contribution of musicians of African descent still resonates in the United Kingdom – from reggae to rap and grime, a contemporary black British musical genre born in East London, which has allowed young people to create a sense of belonging, while connecting to a global audience.
Ms. Einstein
‘New Einstein’ vows to find ‘source code of universe’ and change everything
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski said, ‘I don’t want to make billionaires richer. I want to understand how the universe works’. She rejected Jeff Bezos and wants to understand how the universe works.
by Emilia Randall GAU Writer
32-year-old Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, built a plane when she was 12, was rejected from MIT, persuaded MIT to take her anyway, graduated top of her class in physics, and went on to study at Harvard.
But she rejects the Einstein moniker. She said: “When Harvard University called me ‘the next Einstein’, I expressed my rejection of that title, stating, ‘I am just a grad student. I have so much to learn. I do not deserve the attention'”. It comes during an alarming time for scientists, with a sinister kidnap conspiracy theory emerging over one who burned to death in a Tesla.
Missing MySpace
Myspace Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe Misses The “Serendipity” Of Social Media As Van Toffler-Produced Documentary Premieres
By Peter White
Myspace, which launched 2003, ushered in a joyous time for social media, where users discovered their favorite new band and debuted their angular new haircut for their friends.
The story of the site, which was subsequently bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2005, is told in Myspace, a documentary directed by Tommy Avallone and produced by Gunpowder & Sky, the company founded by former MTV boss Van Toffler.
The film, which premieres today at the HotDocs festival, explores the rise of the site, which introduced top 8 friendships, and how it helped launch the careers of the likes of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Dane Cook, and influencers such as Jeffree Star and Tila Tequila.
A Popularcalypse
The Apocalypse Goes Mainstream
About 40 percent of American adults believe that we are living in the “end times,” according to a 2022 poll. Where did that idea come from?
I grew up on a cul-de-sac in Arkansas, in a suburban house with a basketball hoop, a trampoline and a few years’ worth of food stored in the garage. My parents built industrial shelves and lined them with gleaming canisters of freeze-dried potatoes and green beans, boxes of stabilized milk and Ziplocs of beef jerky. They also stored hundreds of pouches of mac n’ cheese for me, the family’s pickiest eater.
My parents believed that the apocalypse loomed. They weren’t alone.
About 40 percent of American adults said in a 2022 poll that we are living in the “end times.” For much of the country, it’s an idea that’s almost mundane. The rapture is spliced into their Sunday sermons and enchants their world with a fearsome possibility. I’d hear bad news on television as a kid and think, is this it? Has the time come?
Andy Flying Low?
Warhol Is Out, Gulfstreams Are In: The Superrich Are Souring on Art
Art sales are stagnant even though demand for private jets and luxury yachts is on a tear
By Carol Ryan
Something unusual is happening in the art market. Sales are stagnant while other businesses that cater to the superrich, like private jet companies, are booming.
The wealthy might simply be putting their cash into other assets because paintings turned out to be a disappointing investment. Weak sales could also be a sign that the art world has become too reliant on baby boomer collectors who are past their peak buying years.
Mr. Seinfeld
The Passion of Jerry Seinfeld
The legendary comedian on his car addiction, why he’ll never go electric, and how most everything else in life is a grave disappointment
BY JAMIE KITMAN
Like serious collectors of many things, car people’s taste often changes as they age. A good case in point would be comedian, entertainer, and legendary gearhead Jerry Seinfeld. Known as a consummate collector of rare, blue-chip Porsches, he’s seen his automotive interests and fixations broaden with time. AIR MAIL’s automotive columnist Jamie Kitman caught up with him recently to discuss how he became a collector and the recent sea changes in his enthusiasm.
HAYVN LIVE with James Frey
HAYVN LIVE: An Evening with James Frey, Bestselling Author
Join us for an intimate, thought-provoking evening with bestselling author James Frey, one of the most provocative and widely discussed literary voices of our time.
In conversation with moderator Nancy Sheed, James will share the real story behind the headlines—his creative journey, the highs and lows of his career, and what it means to continually reinvent yourself.
Often described as a “literary outlaw,” James has written multiple global bestsellers—including A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shiny Morning, and The Final Testament of the Holy Bible—with more than 35 million copies sold worldwide and translations in 48 languages. His work has sparked conversation, controversy, and undeniable cultural impact.
Expect an honest, engaging dialogue that goes beyond the surface—touching on ambition, resilience, creativity, and the complexities of building a life (and career) on your own terms.
Guests will have the opportunity to purchase and have signed a copy of his latest paperback, Next to Heaven.
VIP Ticket Holders are invited to an exclusive pre-event meet & greet with James from 5:30–6:00pm.
There Will Be Campfire
WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BILLIONAIRES AT JEFF BEZOS’S PRIVATE RETREAT
For the richest men on Earth, everything is free and nothing matters.
By Noah Hawley
At the end of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 movie, There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis’s oil-baron character, old now and richer than Croesus, beats Paul Dano’s preacher to death with a bowling pin. Dano’s Eli Sunday, a nemesis of Day-Lewis’s Daniel Plainview during his seminal, wealth-building years, has come to sell Plainview the oil-rich land that he once coveted. But Plainview doesn’t need the land anymore, because—as he explains in one of the most famous monologues in modern cinema—he has sucked out all the oil hidden beneath it from an adjoining property, like a milkshake.
Desperate for money, Eli begs for a loan. Instead, Plainview chases him around a bowling alley and murders him with great enthusiasm. Once it’s over, a butler comes to see what all the noise was about. “I’m finished,” Plainview yells.
No matter how many times I watch that movie, and I watch it a lot, I have never once taken those words to mean I’m done for. There will now be consequences for my actions. Quite the opposite: They mean that Plainview has completed his journey, through the acquisition of wealth and power, to a realm outside the moral universe. He’s finished, in other words, pretending that the rules of human society apply to him.
‘Let art improve your life.’
12 Collectors on How to Buy Art That Actually Has Staying Power
From buying books before art to finding dealers who share your sensibility, these are the rules that celebrated collectors live by.
“Plenty of collectors play the financial game, and so have I. But it took away from the joy of art for me, the emotion. The market will do what it does. Buy what you love. Let it make your life better.” – James Frey
The Greatest Decade
Death of the Monoculture
The Last Time Everyone Watched the Same Thing
No one knew it at the time, but 2014 — more precisely, Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded selfie moment — marked the peak of a monoculture that no longer exists. The numbers show a long decay ever since.
BY RICK PORTER
At the 2014 Oscars, best supporting actor nominee Bradley Cooper took a selfie with host Ellen DeGeneres and a bunch of A-listers, among them Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Lupita Nyong’o and Jennifer Lawrence. DeGeneres’ Twitter account posted it immediately afterward, and it became the most retweeted post in the platform’s history at the time.
The selfie was an instantly viral moment in a telecast that drew the Academy Awards’ largest audience in 14 years — 43.74 million people. The photo (for which Cooper used a phone made by Samsung, a major Oscars sponsor) became a dayslong news cycle unto itself.
No one knew it at the time, but in retrospect the selfie moment feels like the last stand of a shared popular culture that no longer exists. Monoculture didn’t die with Cooper’s selfie, but that night may have been its last peak.
“It’s entirely shrouded in mystery…”
Steven Spielberg Praises Universal For Commitment To 45-Day Window — “Do I Hear 60?” — In Appearance At His First CinemaCon With ‘Disclosure Day’
Steven Spielberg praised NBCUniversal Entertainment chair Donna Langley for moving to a 45-day exclusive theatrical window, accepted an award from the Motion Pictures Association, and sat down with Colman Domingo at CinemaCon on Wednesday to talk about his upcoming film Disclosure Day, a thriller about extraterrestrial life.
The subject has always fascinated him, as evident from some of his early work, especially because “It’s entirely shrouded in mystery,” he told Domingo, one of the films stars, in a Q&A on stage. “There are those who know exactly what is happening in our skies [and] this movie will cause you to ask a lot of questions.” The idea of interplanetary life was mostly a great story to tell 50 years ago in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, he said. But, in the years, since, the idea has become more widely accepted.
Duchamp In America!
Marcel Duchamp at MoMA: Five Revelations From the Artist’s First North American Survey in Over 50 Years
The museum’s major survey presents Duchamp not only as the father of conceptual art but also as a techno-imaginative innovator and semiotic pioneer who anticipated how we read images, language and reality today.
One of the most interesting aspects of major retrospective surveys—particularly when staged after decades—is the way they attempt to present, and often reframe, the artist by situating their work both within the present moment and across the broader evolution of art history. Because artists so often anticipate and amplify the undercurrents of their time, such exhibitions can eventually reveal alternative readings through which to approach a practice, bringing into focus aspects that may once have gone unnoticed.
This is certainly the case for Marcel Duchamp, innovator and provocateur par excellence, who pushed the disruptive spirit of Dada toward conceptual and philosophical thresholds that not only anticipated but, in many ways, laid the groundwork for much of what we now describe as contemporary art. A new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York—the first survey in North America in over 50 years—offers a wealth of new interpretive lenses through which to read the unique and innovative contribution Duchamp made to the course of art history.
Fort Space Force
from the Sierra Vista Herald/Review
Fort Huachuca lands major new mission, believed to be ‘Space Force’
TUCSON — The U.S. Department of War has selected Fort Huachuca as the site for a new military mission, Rep. Juan Ciscomani announced today.
The Arizona Republican says the decision represents a major win for Sierra Vista, Cochise County and national security. Fort Huachuca, a 149-year-old Army post located 15 miles north of the Mexican border, currently houses the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, the Network Enterprise Technology Command and the Electronic Proving Ground.
What the hell is a Vulnpocalypse?
The ‘Vulnpocalypse’: Why experts fear AI could tip the scales toward hackers
Anthropic is withholding its most advanced model over hacking concerns. Experts say it may only be a matter of time before similar tools are widely available.
As AI grows more capable of identifying software vulnerabilities, experts are increasingly warning of a potential disaster scenario: the so-called “Vulnpocalypse.” Hackers could quickly turbocharge their attacks with AI technology designed to identify holes in cyber defenses, security researchers warn. This week, that scenario started to feel less theoretical.
Anthropic, a leading AI company, announced that it would withhold its latest model, Mythos Preview, from the public, citing unprecedented vulnerability-discovery capabilities that could cause significant damage in the wrong hands. The company is instead sharing the model with a limited group of tech giants and partners to help shore up their defenses.
ArmageddonIT
Your entire browsing history, private messages and financial details could be released for ANYONE to read: TOM LEONARD reveals crisis talks over Armageddon new program – and the devastating consequences
By TOM LEONARD, US CORRESPONDENT
Recently, a researcher working for the large AI company Anthropic was sitting in a park near its San Francisco headquarters, enjoying a lunchtime sandwich. Scrolling on his phone, he suddenly received an email that must have instantly ruined his appetite.
It was from a new AI model the company was testing: a program that was meant to have no access to the internet, let alone be able to send emails.
Chillingly, the AI informed the researcher that it had successfully broken its way out of its digital ‘sandbox’ – a supposedly secure enclosure used to test potentially dangerous software without it running amok – and was now happily exploring cyberspace.
The program – a cutting edge, so-called ‘frontier AI’ named Claude Mythos Preview – then informed the stunned Anthropic worker with what seemed like a boast that it had posted ‘details of its exploit’ on publicly accessible websites.
All that in itself was concerning enough – but what Anthropic subsequently revealed was truly terrifying.
‘No more comfy consensus’
Peter Bart: Finding Movies That Will Galvanize America Has Become A Tough Bet
By Peter Bart
Even as Ryan Gosling launched his “Hail Mary” and Super Mario re-discovered his “Galaxy,” the bets were piling up on Kalshi: Which movie would win the summer?
Or would there be a winner at all? The mega-hits of seasons past reflected a comfy consensus in our pop culture, but today’s audience is splintered by genre and mood. The various Gens, whether in their teens or dotage, seem huddled in their Minecraft or chilling alone at Freddy’s.