By OLIVER WEBB Images courtesy of Peter Hjorth and Zentropa, except where noted. Peter Hjorth. (Photo courtesy of Danish Film Institute) When Peter Hjorth first started out, visual effects were virtually non-existent in the Danish film industry. “We had one guy at the lab who did work on the Oxberry [rostrum animation camera], and I worked at a video production company,” Hjorth states. “I trained as a videotape editor, then it went into online. When the first digital tools arrived, I joined one of the hot post places where they got the first digital VTRs. All my first years of experience were with commercial clients and music videos and making the transition from analogue to digital in video post-production. I did a little bit of work for friends of mine where we actually did it at the lab. I’m old enough to have done stuff with the optical printer and waiting for weeks to get it right. There were some very early start-ups in Copenhagen doing files to film, and I started working with them.” Hjorth’s first feature film came in 1998 with Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, where he served as camera operator and digital consultant. Festen also marked Hjorth’s first foray into the Dogme 95 movement. “We shot on MiniDV, and I was attached to the whole project. I shot the second camera and then was asked if I could do some advanced work in visual effects for commercials. I was then asked by Lars von Trier to help out on Dancer in the Dark when he was starting.” Working on Dancer in the Dark marked the beginning of Hjorth’s frequent collaborations with Lars von Trier. “That was sort of a two-fold thing because we had 100 DV cameras that needed some kind of infrastructure to work, and my television background was good for that. We also needed some visual effects work to get rid of some cameras. If you put 100 cameras in the same set, you’re going to get into a visual effects situation. So, I did that and worked on the editing. At that time, people were a little bit afraid of Lars, but I’m up for anything. We had a great time, especially during the editing and post-production.” Hjorth was pleased with his collaboration with director Tarik Saleh on the U.S. film The Contractor (2022), on which he served as Production Visual Effects Supervisor. (Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures) “There’s a special thing about Denmark, which is that we tend to all stick together… It’s not competitive in this way because people will get the jobs they get. Everybody realizes we have to work together, and what really matters is that we put something on screen that gives the audience a good experience.” —Peter Hjorth, Visual Effects Supervisor Initially, production experimented with a wall of cameras, where Hjorth did a test compositing that into an image. Von Trier found it interesting, but felt it wasn’t right for Dancer in the Dark. He later came back to Hjorth with Dogville and explained that he wanted to implement the multi-camera technique for this project. “Lars didn’t want linear perspective, instead he wanted something more like visual arts, fine arts, a notion of perspective, even cubism maybe,” Hjorth adds. “At that point in between those two projects, I did the first big Vinterberg film, It’s All About Love.” Hjorth worked as Visual Effects Supervisor for the film. “We did lots of precise visual effects, matched lenses, matched camera heights, everything by the book. Then I went into this totally crazy project for Lars and really developed a close understanding of what Lars wanted. We’ve done eight feature films and a TV series together. The last one was the third season of The Kingdom. I also did his last feature film, The House That Jack Built. I was Production Visual Effects Supervisor on all the stuff in-between, such as Antichrist and Melancholia.” Hjorth explains that he was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. “Working on those projects has given me a network all over Europe with good people. We had some decent budgets, and people were thrilled to work on Lars’ films. I’ve made some excellent friends and good connections. If you wanted VFX for a movie in the early 2000s you hired someone from a post house for a specific scene. The notion of a production visual effects supervisor was not very common in Denmark, and the role has since developed. I find that my contribution is now mostly in pre-production. With post-production, I usually take a step back and leave it to the vendors to get right, but I’m happy I’ve been able to assist when the need arose.”  Throughout his career, Hjorth has worked across the board as camera operator, colorist and editor. “I did some camera work on the side for music videos, and so on,” he explains. “When I speak to the DP and the gaffers, I know the language. I wouldn’t say I did great work as a cinematographer, but I know the language, the equipment and the limitations. Actually, my first job before even going into post-production was as an electrician. I used to work on really old, heavy movie lights back in the day, so I also know a little bit about departments on set and how it works. That has made it a little bit easier for me to be on set because as a visual effects supervisor, it can be a super scary experience. If you feel like a tourist, it’s just horrible. I, of course, worked on the Dogme 95 films, where we worked closely with the actors, and I’m not afraid to have a conversation with an actor. No matter how good the VFX is, if the actors don’t believe a scene they are in, it doesn’t work. So, I’ve been lucky to do a bit of everything, and I feel blessed that things turned out the way that they did.” Starting out in Dogme 95 also proved to be a huge learning curve when it came to film language and understanding how to work within a set of specific rules and guidelines. The movement was founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the Dogme 95 Manifesto. The Manifesto consisted of 10 rules, which included: camera must be handheld, shooting must be done on location and special lighting isn’t allowed. “It’s a good background to have,” Hjorth states. “We’ve had rules for all of the films I’ve made with Lars, even on projects such as Melancholia.” Setting rules hasn’t been limited to Danish cinema and extends beyond that. “We made kind of a set of rules for the films I’ve made with Ali Abbasi, and that’s always made things easier,” Hjorth says. “He first called me when he was in film school. He was doing some early tests and was audacious enough to ask me for a VFX shot. It was hard to understand what he was saying, but then he talked about a scene with a guy coming out of a cake and he kills his brother, slicing his throat with a knife, and he wanted to see that in close-up. I appreciate younger directors calling and asking me to work with them, and it has really paid off.” Hjorth was the Visual Effects Supervisor for several episodes of the 1994-2022 TV series The Kingdom and The Kingdom: Exodus. Hjorth has worked on eight feature films and a TV series with director Lars von Trier. (Photo: Peter Hjorth) Hjorth with director Lars von Trier, left, on the set of The Kingdom: Exodus. (Photo: Peter Hjorth) Hjorth was Visual Effects Supervisor on The House That Jack Built, directed by Lars von Trier. (Photo: Christian Geisnæs) Peter Hjorth was recognized for his work as European Visual Effects Supervisor for the Swedish-Danish feature and Cannes winner Border, directed by Ali Abbasi. (Image courtesy of Meta Film Stockholm) Hjorth was Production Visual Effects Supervisor on Lamb (2021), directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson. (Image courtesy of Go To Sheep and A24) Hjorth with Simone Grau Roney, Production Designer on The House That Jack Built (2018), directed by Lars von Trier. Choosing a favorite visual effect shot from his career, however, is a difficult task for Hjorth, though he’s particularly proud of the work achieved on Dogville. “Nobody noticed how messed up it was,” he explains. “Toward the end of the movie, you can see the masks, and you can see that we didn’t bother to match the grain between layers and all that. We did the first test on Flame, and when we went to layer 99, it just stopped working. We ended up doing it with combustion software, which was crummy, but it worked, and we got the shots done. I think we went to 170 layers on the opening shot. It was a learning experience for everybody involved, and I still work with some of those same people, most recently on the Netflix series I did this spring.” Hjorth worked as Visual Effects Supervisor on Holy Spider, directed by Ali Abbasi. (Photo: Nadim Carlsen. Image courtesy of Profile Pictures)   Hjorth served as Visual Effects Supervisor on Antichrist (2009), directed by Lars von Trier. Hjorth believes that there’s been an immense upgrade in professionalism in Denmark in the years since he’s worked in the business. “The beginning was much less industrial. The directors that I have worked with tend to work with me multiple times. A lot of the stuff I say in the first meeting is really defining for how that [job] is going to go. I’ve been so lucky to work on films that I actually think made a difference. It has mostly been art house films with limited budgets and resources. When we work together with the same producer or director a few times, sometimes they come back and say, ‘We’d like to have a creature or some special thing.’ It’s an evolving process.” Hjorth worked as Visual Effects Supervisor on the Lars von Trier-directed Melancholia (2011), and was also credited for his astrophotography of auroras for the film. (Image courtesy Magnolia Pictures) Hjorth was Visual Effects Supervisor on Dogville (2003), directed by Lars von Trier. Hjorth worked with director Lars von Trier to develop the Automavision technique, which was credited with the cinematography for The Boss of It All (2006). A computer algorithm randomly changes the camera’s tilt, pan, focal length and/or positioning as well as the sound recording without being actively operated by the cinematographer. Hjorth works closely with stunts, special effects makeup, animal wranglers and other specialists. “I know the craft and what they need from me. They know more about what’s going to be effective on screen, so I just leave them to it and make sure they have what they need. Same thing with animals and visual effects, makeup and stuff like that, physical things. You know I have a bit of a reputation for trying to get as many pieces of the puzzle as possible with a camera. Some production VFX people get quotes from, say, three different vendors, and then they pick all the cheapest bids for each sequence or shot, and that’s how they get down in budget. I tried to avoid that. I’d rather actually sit down with the director and say for example, ‘We should have some breathing space here.’” When it comes to the future of visual effects in Denmark, Hjorth takes an optimistic view. “I think this trend that we have more production supervisors is basically going to continue in the way that even if you have very little work, you hire someone from the get-go and you make sure that’s a balance in ambition and resources. There’s a special thing about Denmark, which is that we tend to all stick together, even people who are not in the same line of work. We have lots of experience sharing. There are no limits to who you can call and ask questions. It’s not competitive in this way because people will get the jobs they get. Everybody realizes we have to work together, and what really matters is that we put something on screen that gives the audience a good experience.”

For the past two years, it’s been a ghost in the machine of American tech. Between 2022 and today, a little-noticed tweak to the U.S. tax code has quietly rewired the financial logic of how American companies invest in research and development. Outside of CFO and accounting circles, almost no one knew it existed. “I work on these tax write-offs and still hadn’t heard about this,” a chief operating officer at a private-equity-backed tech company told Quartz. “It’s just been so weirdly silent.”AdvertisementStill, the delayed change to a decades-old tax provision — buried deep in the 2017 tax law — has contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of high-paying, white-collar jobs. That’s the picture that emerges from a review of corporate filings, public financial data, analysis of timelines, and interviews with industry insiders. One accountant, working in-house at a tech company, described it as a “niche issue with broad impact,” echoing sentiments from venture capital investors also interviewed for this article. Some spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political matters.Since the start of 2023, more than half-a-million tech workers have been laid off, according to industry tallies. Headlines have blamed over-hiring during the pandemic and, more recently, AI. But beneath the surface was a hidden accelerant: a change to what’s known as Section 174 that helped gut in-house software and product development teams everywhere from tech giants such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta (META) to much smaller, private, direct-to-consumer and other internet-first companies.Now, as a bipartisan effort to repeal the Section 174 change moves through Congress, bigger questions are surfacing: How did a single line in the tax code help trigger a tsunami of mass layoffs? And why did no one see it coming? For almost 70 years, American companies could deduct 100% of qualified research and development spending in the year they incurred the costs. Salaries, software, contractor payments — if it contributed to creating or improving a product, it came off the top of a firm’s taxable income.AdvertisementThe deduction was guaranteed by Section 174 of the IRS Code of 1954, and under the provision, R&D flourished in the U.S.Microsoft was founded in 1975. Apple (AAPL) launched its first computer in 1976. Google (GOOGL) incorporated in 1998. Facebook opened to the general public in 2006. All these companies, now among the most valuable in the world, developed their earliest products — programming tools, hardware, search engines — under a tax system that rewarded building now, not later.The subsequent rise of smartphones, cloud computing, and mobile apps also happened in an America where companies could immediately write off their investments in engineering, infrastructure, and experimentation. It was a baseline assumption — innovation and risk-taking subsidized by the tax code — that shaped how founders operated and how investors made decisions.In turn, tech companies largely built their products in the U.S. AdvertisementMicrosoft’s operating systems were coded in Washington state. Apple’s early hardware and software teams were in California. Google’s search engine was born at Stanford and scaled from Mountain View. Facebook’s entire social architecture was developed in Menlo Park. The deduction directly incentivized keeping R&D close to home, rewarding companies for investing in American workers, engineers, and infrastructure.That’s what makes the politics of Section 174 so revealing. For all the rhetoric about bringing jobs back and making things in America, the first Trump administration’s major tax bill arguably helped accomplish the opposite.When Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the signature legislative achievement of President Donald Trump’s first term, it slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% — a massive revenue loss on paper for the federal government.To make the 2017 bill comply with Senate budget rules, lawmakers needed to offset the cost. So they added future tax hikes that wouldn’t kick in right away, wouldn’t provoke immediate backlash from businesses, and could, in theory, be quietly repealed later.AdvertisementThe delayed change to Section 174 — from immediate expensing of R&D to mandatory amortization, meaning that companies must spread the deduction out in smaller chunks over five or even 15-year periods — was that kind of provision. It didn’t start affecting the budget until 2022, but it helped the TCJA appear “deficit neutral” over the 10-year window used for legislative scoring.The delay wasn’t a technical necessity. It was a political tactic. Such moves are common in tax legislation. Phase-ins and delayed provisions let lawmakers game how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — Congress’ nonpartisan analyst of how bills impact budgets and deficits — scores legislation, pushing costs or revenue losses outside official forecasting windows.And so, on schedule in 2022, the change to Section 174 went into effect. Companies filed their 2022 tax returns under the new rules in early 2023. And suddenly, R&D wasn’t a full, immediate write-off anymore. The tax benefits of salaries for engineers, product and project managers, data scientists, and even some user experience and marketing staff — all of which had previously reduced taxable income in year one — now had to be spread out over five- or 15-year periods. To understand the impact, imagine a personal tax code change that allowed you to deduct 100% of your biggest source of expenses, and that becoming a 20% deduction. For cash-strapped companies, especially those not yet profitable, the result was a painful tax bill just as venture funding dried up and interest rates soared.AdvertisementSalesforce office buildings in San Francisco.Photo: Jason Henry/Bloomberg (Getty Images)It’s no coincidence that Meta announced its “Year of Efficiency” immediately after the Section 174 change took effect. Ditto Microsoft laying off 10,000 employees in January 2023 despite strong earnings, or Google parent Alphabet cutting 12,000 jobs around the same time.Amazon (AMZN) also laid off almost 30,000 people, with cuts focused not just on logistics but on Alexa and internal cloud tools — precisely the kinds of projects that would have once qualified as immediately deductible R&D. Salesforce (CRM) eliminated 10% of its staff, or 8,000 people, including entire product teams.In public, companies blamed bloat and AI. But inside boardrooms, spreadsheets were telling a quieter story. And MD&A notes — management’s notes on the numbers — buried deep in 10-K filings recorded the change, too. R&D had become more expensive to carry. Headcount, the leading R&D expense across the tech industry, was the easiest thing to cut.AdvertisementIn its 2023 annual report, Meta described salaries as its single biggest R&D expense. Between the first and second years that the Section 174 change began affecting tax returns, Meta cut its total workforce by almost 25%. Over the same period, Microsoft reduced its global headcount by about 7%, with cuts concentrated in product-facing, engineering-heavy roles.Smaller companies without the fortress-like balance sheets of Big Tech have arguably been hit even harder. Twilio (TWLO) slashed 22% of its workforce in 2023 alone. Shopify (SHOP) (headquartered in Canada but with much of its R&D teams in the U.S.) cut almost 30% of staff in 2022 and 2023. Coinbase (COIN) reduced headcount by 36% across a pair of brutal restructuring waves.Since going into effect, the provision has hit at the very heart of America’s economic growth engine: the tech sector.By market cap, tech giants dominate the S&P 500, with the “Magnificent 7” alone accounting for more than a third of the index’s total value. Workforce numbers tell a similar story, with tech employing millions of Americans directly and supporting the employment of tens of millions more. As measured by GDP, capital-T tech contributes about 10% of national output.AdvertisementIt’s not just that tech layoffs were large, it’s that they were massively disproportionate. Across the broader U.S. economy, job cuts hovered around in low single digits across most sectors. But in tech, entire divisions vanished, with a whopping 60% jump in layoffs between 2022 and 2023. Some cuts reflected real inefficiencies — a response to over-hiring during the zero-interest rate boom. At the same time, many of the roles eliminated were in R&D, product, and engineering, precisely the kind of functions that had once benefitted from generous tax treatment under Section 174.Throughout the 2010s, a broad swath of startups, direct-to-consumer brands, and internet-first firms — basically every company you recognize from Instagram or Facebook ads — built their growth models around a kind of engineered break-even.The tax code allowed them to spend aggressively on product and engineering, then write it all off as R&D, keeping their taxable income close to zero by design. It worked because taxable income and actual cash flow were often notGAAP accounting practices. Basically, as long as spending counted as R&D, companies could report losses to investors while owing almost nothing to the IRS.But the Section 174 change broke that model. Once those same expenses had to be spread out, or amortized, over multiple years, the tax shield vanished. Companies that were still burning cash suddenly looked profitable on paper, triggering real tax bills on imaginary gains.AdvertisementThe logic that once fueled a generation of digital-first growth collapsed overnight.So it wasn’t just tech experiencing effects. From 1954 until 2022, the U.S. tax code had encouraged businesses of all stripes to behave like tech companies. From retail to logistics, healthcare to media, if firms built internal tools, customized a software stack, or invested in business intelligence and data-driven product development, they could expense those costs. The write-off incentivized in-house builds and fast growth well outside the capital-T tech sector. This lines up with OECD research showing that immediate deductions foster innovation more than spread-out ones.And American companies ran with that logic. According to government data, U.S. businesses reported about $500 billion in R&D expenditures in 2019 alone, and almost half of that came from industries outside traditional tech. The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that this sector, the broader digital economy, accounts for another 10% of GDP.Add that to core tech’s contribution, and the Section 174 shift has likely touched at least 20% of the U.S. economy.AdvertisementThe result? A tax policy aimed at raising short-term revenue effectively hid a time bomb inside the growth engines of thousands of companies. And when it detonated, it kneecapped the incentive for hiring American engineers or investing in American-made tech and digital products.It made building tech companies in America look irrational on a spreadsheet.A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to repeal the Section 174 change, with business groups, CFOs, crypto executives, and venture capitalists lobbying hard for retroactive relief. But the politics are messy. Fixing 174 would mean handing a tax break to the same companies many voters in both parties see as symbols of corporate excess. Any repeal would also come too late for the hundreds of thousands of workers already laid off.And of course, the losses don’t stop at Meta’s or Google’s campus gates. They ripple out. When high-paid tech workers disappear, so do the lunch orders. The house tours. The contract gigs. The spending habits that sustain entire urban economies and thousands of other jobs. Sandwich artists. Rideshare drivers. Realtors. Personal trainers. House cleaners. In tech-heavy cities, the fallout runs deep — and it’s still unfolding.AdvertisementWashington is now poised to pass a second Trump tax bill — one packed with more obscure provisions, more delayed impacts, more quiet redistribution. And it comes as analysts are only just beginning to understand the real-world effects of the last round.The Section 174 change “significantly increased the tax burden on companies investing in innovation, potentially stifling economic growth and reducing the United States’ competitiveness on the global stage,” according to the tax consulting firm KBKG. Whether the U.S. will reverse course — or simply adapt to a new normal — remains to be seen.

Few companies in the history of capitalism have amassed as much wealth and influence as Meta.A global superpower in the information space, Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads — has a market cap of $1.68 trillion at the time of writing, which for a rough sense of scale is more than the gross domestic product of Spain.In spite of its immense influence, none of its internal algorithms can be scrutinized by public watchdogs. Its host country, the United States, has largely turned a blind eye to its dealings in exchange for free use of Meta's vast surveillance capabilities.That lack of oversight coupled with Meta's near-omnipresence as a social utility has had devastating consequences throughout the world, manifesting in crises like the genocide of Muslims in Myanmar, or the systemic suppression of Palestinian rights organizations.How do you uncover the harms caused by one of the most powerful companies on earth? In the case of public violence, the evidence isn't hard to trace. However, Meta's unprecedented corporate dynasty also creates less obvious harms, which scores of scholars, researchers, and journalists are devoting entire careers to uncovering.One prominent group of said investigators is GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which recently released its annual report on social media safety, privacy, and expression for LGBTQ people.The report notes that Meta has undergone a "particularly extreme" ideological shift over the past year, adding harmful exceptions to its content moderation policies while disproportionately suppressing LGBTQ users and their content. The tech giant has also failed to give LGBTQ users sovereignty over their own personal data, which it collects, analyzes, and wields to generate huge profits.While Meta collects all of our data — from which it draws over 95 percent of its revenue — the practice is particularly harmful to LGBTQ users, who then have to contend with algorithmic biases, non-consensual outing, harassment, and in some countries state oppression."It's a dangerous time, certainly for trans people, who as a minority have been so ridiculously maligned, but also a dangerous time for gay people, openly bi[sexual] people, people who are different in any way," says Sarah Roberts, a UCLA professor and Director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.To address these shortcomings and the dangers they introduce, GLAAD made a number of recommendations. One key suggestion was to improve moderation "by providing training for all content moderators focused on LGBTQ safety, privacy and expression." The media advocacy group doesn't mince words, adding that "AI systems should be used to flag for human review, not for automated removals."However, it doesn't look like Meta got the message.Weeks after GLAAD issued its findings, internal Meta documents leaked to NPR revealed the company's plan to hand 90 percent of its privacy and integrity reviews over to "artificial intelligence."This will impact nearly every new feature introduced to its platforms, where human moderators would typically evaluate new features for risks to privacy and safety, and the wellbeing of user groups like minors, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.Meta's internal risk assessment is an already opaque process, and Roberts notes that government attempts at risk oversight, like the EU's Digital Services Act, are likewise a labyrinth of filings which are largely dictated by the social media companies themselves. AI, chock full of biases and prone to errors — as admitted by Meta's own AI chief — is certain to make the situation even worse.Earlier this week, meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal revealed Meta's plans to fully automate advertising via the company's generative AI software, which will allow advertisers to "fully create and target ads" directly, with no human in the loop.This includes hyper-personalized ads, writes the WSJ, "so that users see different versions of the same ad in real time, based on factors such as geolocation."Data hoarders like Meta — which track you even when you're not using its platforms — have long been able to profile LGBTQ users based on gender identify and sexual orientation, including those who aren't publicly out.Removing any human from these already sinister practices serves to streamline operations and distance Meta from its own actions — "we didn't out gay users living under an oppressive government," the company can say, "even if our AI did." It's no coincidence that Meta had already disbanded its "Responsible AI" team as early as 2023.At the root of these decisions — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's right wing turn notwithstanding — is the calculated drive to maximize revenue."If there's no reason to rigorously moderate harmful content, then why pay so many content moderators? Why engage researchers to look into the circulation of this kind of content?" observes Roberts. "There ends up being a real cost savings there.""One of the things I've always said is that content moderation of social media is not primarily about protecting people, it's about brand management," she told Futurism. "It's about the platform managing its brand in order to make the most hospitable environment for advertisers."Sometimes these corporate priorities line up with progressive causes, like LGBTQ user safety or voter registration. But when they don't, Roberts notes, "dollars are dollars.""We are looking at multibillion-dollar companies, the most capitalized companies in the world, who have operated with impunity for many, many years," she said. "How do you convince them that they should care, when other powerful sectors are telling them the opposite?"Share This Article

The council granted consent to JTP's reserved matters application for the new amenity within the Blackbird Leys estate. The practice has been working on its wider vision for the estate’s regeneration since 2019. The district centre is being regenerated by housing association Peabody, which plans to create 294 affordable homes as well as shops, public realm improvements and active travel infrastructure. The community centre will be owned and operated by the council, and is designed to offer flexible space for support services, events and community activities.Advertisement It will feature three large halls, a range of office spaces and other areas for people to meet and relax. The building will be complemented by a new public square featuring play areas for children and young people, a rain garden, accessible equipment and public art. Peabody regional managing director Simon Barry described the planning approval as ‘really good news for Blackbird Leys’. He added: ‘Local people have told us how much they want a community space that’s welcoming, flexible and built around their needs, and now we can get started on making that happen. ‘We’re grateful to everyone who’s taken the time to share their views along the way, and we’ll continue working closely with the community as we move into the next phase.’Advertisement Blackbird Leys community centre co-design with Transition by Design Oxford cabinet member for housing Linda Smith described the approval as ‘a huge step forward for Blackbird Leys’. She added: ‘The new community centre will be a true home for community life – a vibrant, welcoming, inclusive space where residents can come to connect. ‘It’s been shaped by local voices every step of the way and will sit right at the heart of a regenerated district centre that offers real opportunities for the community, including much-needed homes, shops and outdoor space. ‘We are so proud to be delivering this vibrant new development, and I’m excited to see the next steps take shape.’ Construction of the community centre is expected to start later this year and is expected to be ready for internal fit-out in 2027. JTP's approved community centre for Blackbird Leys Oxford - axonometric

Microsoft has tapped LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky for a dual role leading Microsoft Office and M365 Copilot as the tech company looks to dominate in the enterprise productivity space. Roslansky will continue to serve as LinkedIn CEO, reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, as he takes on his new role as EVP of Office under EVP Rajesh Jha. He announced the promotion on LinkedIn. The popular social and recruiting platform for enterprise professionals has steadily increased its revenues and launched new AI-powered products under Roslansky’s leadership, and Microsoft’s move reflects its intent to go all-in on AI. “LinkedIn has been especially successful at building and extending products over time,” said Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights. “There is no doubt that Microsoft wants to bring that expertise to  Microsoft 365, especially in the adoption of Copilot.” Successful product leader turned CEO Roslansky will now oversee Office M365 productivity software, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Microsoft’s AI assistant, M365 Copilot, which launched in 2020, will also be under his purview. Roslansky has spent 16 years at LinkedIn, five of those as its CEO. Previously, he was SVP of products and content at Glam Media, and general manager and product manager at Yahoo. Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $27 billion in 2016, and in his LinkedIn post, Roslansky called it “one of Microsoft’s most successful acquisitions.” The platform for connecting business professionals achieved $16.37 billion in revenues in 2024, up from $14.9 billion in 2022. LinkedIn has launched numerous AI products in recent years, including AI-assisted messaging, search, and projects, automated follow-ups, gauging candidate likelihood of interest, and resumé search. “Roslansky is a successful product leader turned CEO of a subsidiary company,” said Jeremy Roberts, senior director of research and content at Info-Tech Research Group. “He has a good track record of growing LinkedIn’s revenue year-over-year and largely keeping the platform out of trouble.” Roberts noted that his product bona fides will be “especially useful” as Microsoft figures out how to fit Copilot into its broader product offerings and consolidate its AI strategy between divisions. Amalgam Insights’ Park pointed out that every enterprise application vendor “desperately” wants to own the business AI usage market, and Microsoft is looking to increase the amount of screen time users have with Office 365. “Roslansky‘s success in building LinkedIn as a platform demonstrates the potential to have similar success with 365,” he said. Redefining Microsoft and LinkedIn In his LinkedIn post, Roslansky called Microsoft Office “one of the most iconic product suites in history” that has “shaped how the world works, literally.” He noted that he is coming into the role in “a new, exciting era where productivity, connection, and AI are converging at scale.” “Both Office and LinkedIn are used daily by professionals globally, and I’m looking forward to redefining ourselves in this new world,” he wrote. Roberts noted that pushing deeper integration between its product lines and de-duplicating development efforts is probably also part of Microsoft’s motive for the hire. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be all sorts of Microsoft Office features natively built into LinkedIn, such as the ability to ask Copilot to build a slideshow in PowerPoint from within LinkedIn, but he believes we could see some rationalization of back-end platforms and services. “LinkedIn has operated quite independently, so this could be part of a broader effort to fold it in, realize some efficiencies, and further Microsoft’s AI ambitions,” said Roberts. On the other hand, it could also be a circumstance where Microsoft had a product in need of a leader, and a successful product leader looking to expand his portfolio. Roberts also emphasized that being in charge of Microsoft Office and M365 Copilot is not the same as being in charge of Microsoft 365, which includes enterprise mobility and security, Windows 11, and a number of other applications. “So it’s both big news and a relatively minor shakeup, depending on what Nadella intends with this move,” said Roberts.

Facing huge fines, Apple on Monday began a legal challenge to the European Commission’s “unreasonable” demand that it open up its platforms to rivals, arguing any such move threatens the foundations of its platforms with a costly process that also undercuts its ability to serve customers. The company is, in a word, furious. It argued that it has cooperated with the Commission’s demands under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and points to the investments it has already made in complying with that act. What Apple said “At Apple, we design our technology to work seamlessly together, so it can deliver the unique experience our users love and expect from our products,” the company said in a statement. “The EU’s interoperability requirements threaten that foundation, while creating a process that is unreasonable, costly, and stifles innovation. These requirements will also hand data-hungry companies’ sensitive information, which poses massive privacy and security risks to our EU users.” The company also noted that there is a real risk that people’s most sensitive information could be accessed, partially because it becomes so much harder to defend. These attempts are already taking place, Apple said. “Companies have already requested our users’ most sensitive data — from the content of their notifications to a full history of every stored Wi-Fi network on their device — giving them the ability to access personal information that even Apple doesn’t see. In the end, these deeply flawed rules that only target Apple — and no other company will severely limit our ability to deliver innovative products and features to Europe, leading to an inferior user experience for our European customers. We are appealing these decisions on their behalf, and in order to preserve the high-quality experience our European customers expect.” A one-sided approach What seems to really upset Apple is that some aspects of the demands mean the company will effectively be forced to hand its innovations out to businesses with which it is in direct competition — at no charge. That means Apple does not get to draw the full benefits of its work and makes it far more difficult to introduce products in Europe. What makes matters worse is that while Apple is being forced to open up in ways that advantage competitors, quite literally at its expense, it is not being given the opportunity to do the same back. Apple is the only company that these demands have been made of, meaning it is being forced to give its intellectual property away to others who do not need to play by the same rules. Some data hungry companies are already attempting to exploit the DMA to gain unfettered access to sensitive customer data. All the while, Apple is left alone and isolated in its quest to ensure user privacy consistent with GDPR regulation. It’s attempts to protect privacy are about protecting customers. Compliance? We are compliant While critics will continue to sneer and jeer at the company in their quest to rid the world of the “Apple Tax” only the world’s largest developers actually pay, Apple would argue that it has been making serious efforts to comply with the DMA. The company has opened up a portal developers can use to request additional interoperability with hardware and software features inside iPhones and iPads. Apple consistently opens up API access to iPhone, including opening up SMS messaging to RCS, HomeKit features and messaging services support. It has also put in place numerous other enhancements in response to the DMA, and while the warning messages it places when using third-party stores may be stark, this makes them no less true. Europe seems to want customers to use third-party stores with no warning at all that this is what is going on, which seems weird. Malicious regulatory compliance There is a degree to which much of the situation seems to reflect political, rather than economic or moral pressures. The fact that Europe is using Apple as a high profile example, while also refusing to be totally transparent about what it wants before levying any fines, suggests that the Commission is not so much deciding on facts as implementing a political decision using a set of laws that seem designed almost solely to punish one company. That’s the kind of malicious regulatory compliance Apple is furious about — a compliance regime that will now be tested in the courts. Will it make a difference?  Who knows? But the existential battle will decide the future of technology in Europe, and if the market is worth doing business in when compared to the cost of doing so. It will also determine the future of Apple, which will use its considerable resources to find some way to change the nature of the game. One group it seems unlikely to help will be those of Apple’s European customers who are happy and accustomed to the Apple ecosystem, and don’t particularly want to use third-party services, as Apple’s right to offer that “pure Apple” experience seems a likely sacrifice to Europe’s politically-driven zeal. That is, unless cooler heads do curtail the Commission’s attacks. You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

/May 30, 2025/4:28 p.m. ETTrump Attacks Harvard With Social Media Screening for All VisasThis pilot program will soon be expanded across the country.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe Trump administration has begun carrying out its expanded vetting for student visa applicants, surveilling their social media accounts to make sure they aren’t posting anything in support of Palestine, which the administration considers antisemitic. This vetting will start with Harvard visa applicants but is expected to be adopted nationwide.Secretary of Stato Marco Rubio sent a cable to all U.S. embassies and consulates on Thursday ordering them to “conduct a complete screening of the online presence of any nonimmigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose.” That would apply not just to students but also to faculty, staff, and researchers visiting the university.The Trump administration is taking particular interest in people who have their social media accounts on “private,” an obvious, ominous crossing of boundaries.The State Department has ordered officers to examine “whether the lack of any online presence, or having social media accounts restricted to ‘private’ or with limited visibility, may be reflective of evasiveness and call into question the applicant’s credibility.”This is yet another instance of Harvard serving as a test subject for the administration’s larger crackdown on free speech and international students at American universities. Trump has already revoked billions of dollars in research funding from the Massachusetts school, and even banned it from admitting any international students at all, although the latter policy was temporarily revoked by a judge. Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/3:53 p.m. ETStephen Miller Grilled on Musk’s Drug Use as Wife Lands New GigTrump’s chief adviser seems desperate to avoid questions on Elon Musk. Does that have anything to do with his wife’s new job? Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesStephen Miller had a dismissive response Friday to new reports of Elon Musk’s drug use during Trump’s campaign last year. CNN’s Pamela Brown asked the far-right Trump adviser if there was “any drug testing or requests for him to drug test when he was in the White House given the fact that he was also a contractor with the government.”  A chuckling Miller ignored the question and said, “Fortunately for you and all of the friends at CNN, you’ll have the opportunity to ask Elon all the questions you want today yourself,” before he then segued into the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. “The drugs I’m concerned about are the drugs that are coming across the border from the criminal cartels that are killing hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Miller said. Perhaps Miller laughed instead of answering because his wife, Katie Miller, has left her job as adviser and spokesperson for the Department of Government Efficiency to work full-time for Musk and his companies. Miller has probably had enough of Musk, as he has also been subtweeting the tech oligarch, trying to refute Musk’s criticisms that the Republican budget bill would raise the deficit. “The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill and does not fund the departments of government. It does not finance our agencies or federal programs,” Miller said, in a long X post earlier this week. Is there bad blood between Miller and Musk that has now spiraled because Miller’s wife is working for the tech oligarch and fellow fascism enthusiast? Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/3:19 p.m. ETOld Man Trump Repeatedly Fumbles in Weird Speech Praising Elon MuskDonald Trump couldn’t keep some of his words straight as he marked the supposed end of Elon Musk’s tenure at the White House.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesHours after reports emerged Friday that Elon Musk had been under the influence of heavy drugs during his time advising the president, Musk and Donald Trump stumbled and fumbled their way through a White House press conference recognizing the end of the tech billionaire’s special government employee status.The wildly unusual joint conference featured Musk’s black eye, a giant gold key that Trump said he only gives to “very special people,” cringe-worthy regurgitations by Musk of Trump’s take on his Pulitzer Board defamation suit, and claims that Musk’s unpopular and controversial time in the White House was not quite over.But as Trump continued to praise Musk and his time atop the Department of Government Efficiency, the president’s verbal gaffes became more apparent. He claimed that DOGE had uncovered $42 million in wasteful spending, referring to expenditures related to Uganda, which Trump pronounced as “oo-ganda.” The 78-year-old also mentioned he would have Musk’s DOGE cuts “cauterized by Congress,” though he quickly corrected himself by saying they would be “affirmed by Congress,” instead. Trump’s on-camera slippage has gotten worse in recent weeks: Earlier this month, Trump dozed off while in a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That is despite the fact that the president received a clean bill of health in a medical report released in April that described Trump as being in “excellent health,” including neurological functioning.Musk, meanwhile, refused to acknowledge emerging reports of his alleged drug use. But the news of White House drug use under Trump’s helm is nothing new: In fact, if the reports prove true, it would be little more than a return to form. Last year, a report by the Department of Defense inspector general indicated that the West Wing operated more like a pill mill than the nation’s highest office. Common pills included modafinil, Adderall, fentanyl, morphine, and ketamine, according to the Pentagon report. But other, unlisted drugs—like Xanax—were equally easy to come by from the White House Medical Unit, according to anonymous sources that spoke to Rolling Stone.While other presidents were known to take a mix of drug cocktails to fight off back pain (like JFK) or bad moods (like Nixon), no previous administrations matched the level of debauchery of Trump’s, whose in-office pharmacists unquestioningly handed out highly addictive substances to staffers who needed pick-me-ups or energy boosts—no doctor’s exam, referral, or prescription required.“It was kind of like the Wild West. Things were pretty loose. Whatever someone needs, we were going to fill this,” another source told Rolling Stone in March 2024.Meanwhile, pharmacists described an atmosphere of fear within the West Wing, claiming they would be “fired” if they spoke out or would receive negative work assignments if they didn’t hand pills over to staffers.Read more about the press conference:Trump and Elon Musk Have Ominous Warning About Future of DOGEMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/3:00 p.m. ETElon Musk Gives Strange Excuse for Massive Black EyeMusk showed up a press conference with Donald Trump sporting a noticeable shiner.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesElon Musk sported what looked like a black eye during his DOGE goodbye press conference with President Trump on Friday. When asked about it, he blamed the bruise on his 5-year-old son punching him in the face. “Mr. Musk … is your eye OK? What happened to your eye; I noticed there’s a bruise there?” one reporter finally asked near the end of the press conference.“Well, I wasn’t anywhere near France,” Musk said, in a weak attempt at a joke regarding footage of French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife slapping him in the face.“I was just horsing around with [my son] little X and said, ‘Go ’head and punch me in the face,’ and he did. Turns out even a 5-year-old punching you in the face actually does—”“That was X that did it? X could do it!” Trump chimed in. “If you knew X …”“I didn’t really feel much at the time; I guess it bruises up. But I was just messing around with the kids.”Musk chose an impeccable time to show up to a press conference with a black eye. Earlier in the day, The New York Times reported on Musk’s rampant drug use on and off the campaign trail, as the world’s richest man frequently mixed ketamine and psychedelics and kept a small box of pills, mostly containing Adderall. The shiner only adds to speculation around his personal habits.More on that Times report:Elon Musk Was on Crazy Combo of Drugs During Trump CampaignMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/2:51 p.m. ETTrump and Elon Musk Have Ominous Warning About Future of DOGEElon Musk’s time as a government employee has come to an end, but his time with Donald Trump has not.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesDespite the fanfare over Elon Musk’s supposed departure from the Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump says that the billionaire bureaucrat isn’t really going anywhere.“Many of the DOGE people are staying behind, so they’re not leaving. And Elon’s not really leaving. He’s gonna be back and forth, I think. I have a feeling. It’s his baby, and he’s gonna be doing a lot of things,” Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office Friday.The press conference was held to mark the end of Musk’s time as a so-called “special government employee,” a title that allowed him to bypass certain ethics requirements during his 134-day stint in Trump’s administration. The president made sure to give Musk a gaudy golden key—what it actually unlocks went totally unaddressed—to make sure he could get back into the White House. “This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said, promising that DOGE’s “influence” would “only grow stronger” over time.Earlier Friday, the billionaire bureaucrat shared a post on X asserting that the legacy of DOGE was more psychological than anything else. Surely, it will take longer than four months to forget the image of Musk running around with a chainsaw. Read more about Musk:Elon Musk Was on Crazy Combo of Drugs During Trump CampaignMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/1:21 p.m. ETDem Governor Vetoes Ban on Surprise Ambulance Bills in Shocking MoveThe bill had unanimous support in both chambers of the state legislature.Michael Ciaglo/Getty ImagesColorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis has vetoed a bill that would ban surprise billing by ambulance companies, over the unanimous objections of both chambers of the state legislature. Why would Polis veto a bill that’s popular with everyone, even Colorado Republicans? The governor wrote in his veto statement that drafting errors in the bill made it “unimplementable” and estimated that it would make insurance premiums go up by as much as $0.73 to $2.15 per person. “I am committed to working with proponents and sponsors to protect Coloradans from surprise bills, but I encourage all parties to work towards a more reasonable reimbursement rate that mitigates premium impacts and nets a better deal for Colorado families,” Polis wrote. In Colorado, if legislators in both chambers repass the bill with a two-thirds majority, they can override the governor’s veto, especially considering that the bill passed with the support of every single legislator. But the legislature adjourned on May 7, meaning that the bill has to be passed again when the legislature reconvenes in January.  For some reason, ending surprise ambulance billing nationally is not the slam-dunk issue it should be. Congress ended most surprise medical bills in 2020 but exempted ground ambulances from the bill. Was Polis’s veto due to badly drafted language and a (seemingly modest) price hike in insurance premiums, as he said, or was it for a different, more nefarious reason? We might not know unless and until the bill is reintroduced next year. More on surprise ambulance bills:Congress Doesn’t Care About Your Surprise Ambulance Bill Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/12:21 p.m. ETTrump’s Pardons Since Jan 6 Spree Show an Infuriatingly Corrupt TrendSince his January 6 pardon spree, Donald Trump has tended to grant clemency a little closer to home.Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesA good chunk of the white-collar criminals pardoned by Donald Trump after his massive “Day One” pardoning spree either have a political or financial tie to him.The president has issued 60 pardons since he offered political forgiveness to some 1,600 individuals charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But out of those subsequent 60 unrelated to the attack, 12 people—or roughly one in five—were already in Trump’s orbit, according to ABC News.They included several politicos, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on several counts of corruption, including for an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after he left the position for the White House; former Republican Representative Michael Grimm, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud; former Nevada gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore, who allegedly stole public funds intended to commemorate a slain police officer; and former Tennessee state Senator Brian Kelsey, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2022.Trump also pardoned major financiers of his presidential campaigns. Trevor Milton, the founder of the Nikola electric vehicle company, donated nearly $2 million toward Trump’s 2024 campaign. Imaad Zuberi, who has donated to both parties, issued “at least $800,000 to committees associated with Trump and the Republican Party,” ABC reported.Others helped Trump advance his retribution campaign against his political enemies, or helped advance his own image in the broader Republican Party. Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, both former business partners of Hunter Biden, accused the younger Biden of leveraging his father’s name and influence in order to conduct business overseas. Archer had defrauded a Native American tribal entity, while Galanis was serving time for multiple offenses. Trump also forgave Todd and Julie Chrisley—reality TV stars known for their show Chrisley Knows Best who were sentenced to a combined 19 years on fraud and tax evasion charges—after their daughter Savannah Chrisley spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention.Speaking to press Friday after her parents’ release, Savannah Chrisley said that the “biggest misconception right now is I either paid for a pardon or slept for a pardon—,” but she couldn’t finish her sentence before Todd interjected: “That’s something I would have done,” he said.Read who else Trump is thinking of pardoning:Trump Considering Pardons for Men Who Tried to Kill Gretchen WhitmerMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/12:04 p.m. ETTrump Knew He Was Deporting Innocent People to El Salvador All AlongMany of the people deported to El Salvador have no criminal record, and Donald Trump knew it.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s administration was well aware that many of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it shipped off to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador had no criminal records at all, according to a Friday report from ProPublica.  While Trump officials claimed that the deportees were brutal gang members and “the worst of the worst,” only 32 of the deportees had actually been convicted of crimes, and most of them were minor offenses such as traffic violations, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security reviewed by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and a team of journalists from Venezuelan media outlets. One of the men, 23-year-old Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, faced a misdemeanor charge after he was arrested in 2023 for riding his bike and drinking a can of beer.Little more than half of the deportees, 130 of the 238, were charged only with violating U.S. immigration laws. Twenty of them had criminal records from other countries. The U.S. government data showed that 67 individuals had pending charges, with only six being for violent crimes. In several cases, the government data about the pending charges differed from what ProPublica was able to find. In some cases, the men had actually been convicted, and in one, the charges had been dropped. But in many cases, these individuals were remanded to a foreign prison before their criminal cases were ever resolved. The Trump administration has touted allegations of gang affiliation as a justification for denying the deportees their due process rights. But none of the men’s names appeared on a list of roughly 1,400 alleged Tren de Aragua members kept by the Venezuelan government, ProPublica reported. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan tried desperately in March to downplay reporting that many of these individuals did not have criminal records. “A lot of gang members don’t have criminal histories, just like a lot of terrorists in this world, they’re not in any terrorist databases, right?” Homan said on ABC News. But the methods the government relies on to classify individuals as gang members—such as identification of gang-affiliated tattoos—have been disproven by experts. Not only were many of the men who were deported not proven gang members, they weren’t even criminals, and by denying them the right to due process, they were remanded to a foreign prison notorious for human rights abuses without ever getting to prove it. Trump has continued to pressure the Supreme Court to allow him to sidestep due process as part of his massive deportation campaign, claiming that the judiciary has no right to intrude on matters of “foreign policy.” But immigrants residing on U.S. soil—who are clearly not the bloodthirsty criminals the administration insists they are—are still subject to protections under U.S. law. Read more about the deportations:Trump Asks Supreme Court to Help Him Deport People Wherever He WantsMost Recent Post/May 30, 2025/11:41 a.m. ETJoni Ernst Stoops to Shocking Low When Told Medicaid Cuts Will KillSenator Joni Ernst had a disgusting answer when confronted by a constituent at her town hall about Trump’s budget bill.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesRepublican Senator Joni Ernst had a particularly unhinged response to questions from her constituents at a town hall in Parkersburg, Iowa, on Friday.Ernst was asked about the GOP’s budget bill kicking people off of Medicaid, and her condescending answer quickly became callous and flippant as the Iowa politician smirked at the audience.“When you are arguing about illegals that are receiving Medicaid, 1.4 million, they’re not eligible, so they will be coming off, so—” Ernst began, before an audience member shouted, “People are going to die!”“People are not—well, we all are going to die,” Ernst responded, as the audience drowned her in loud protests.What was Ernst thinking with that answer? Almost every Republican town hall this year has gone badly for the politician holding it, thanks to President Trump upending the federal government, and Ernst surely knew that choosing death over Medicaid wouldn’t go over well with the crowd. Earlier this week in Nebraska, Representative Mike Flood was heckled after he admitted that he didn’t read the budget bill.Ersnt’s town hall wasn’t even the first one in Iowa to go badly for a Republican. On Wednesday, Representative Ashley Hinson was met with jeers and boos, with audience members in Decorah, Iowa calling her a fraud and a liar. But at least Hinson had the good sense not to seemingly embrace death over a vital, lifesaving government program. More on Trump’s bill:Here Are the Worst Things in Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Most Recent Post/May 30, 2025/11:35 a.m. ETKetanji Brown Jackson Blasts “Botched” Supreme Court Ruling on TPSSupreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a scathing disssent, called out the rest of the court for allowing Trump’s harmful executive order to stand.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesSupreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson thinks the Supreme Court “botched” a decision to allow the Trump administration to revoke the Temporary Protected Status protections of about 500,000 Haitian, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan immigrants.Jackson and fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor were the only two dissenters.“The Court has plainly botched this assessment today. It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm,” Jackson wrote in the dissent. “And it undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives of and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”TPS is a long-standing program that allowed those 500,000 immigrants to stay in the U.S. after they fled violence and risk in their home countries. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, all of them are at high risk of sudden deportation. “It is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage,” Jackson wrote.Read the full dissent here.View More Posts

Several Unitree G1 robots remotely operated by human beings punched, kicked and kneed one another in a fight to the top.

NASA's next mission will be to find a new agency leader, following a dramatic reversal from President Donald Trump. In a post made on Truth Social, the president withdrew his nomination of Jared Isaacman as the head of NASA. As first reported by Semafor, the pullback comes just a few days before Isaacman was due in front of the US Senate for a confirmation vote. Trump detailed in the post that he will soon announce another nominee who is more aligned with the president's mission and will "put America First in Space." Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that it was "essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda." According to The New York Times, unnamed sources attribute the withdrawal to Isaacman's previous donations to "prominent Democrats." Besides his role as CEO of payment processing company Shift4, Isaacman has been venturing into the world of commercial space travel. The billionaire businessman has been to space twice now, even serving as the mission commander of the Polaris Dawn mission that was operated by SpaceX and saw the first commercial spacewalk. Isaacman was known as a close ally of Elon Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX and recently left his White House role as an adviser to the president.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/trump-makes-a-last-minute-backtrack-on-his-pick-to-lead-nasa-153253836.html?src=rss

Remember the banana peels, apple cores, and leftover pizza you recently threw in the garbage? Today, your food waste—and your neighbors’—is emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases as it decomposes in a nearby municipal landfill. Buried food scraps and yard waste at 51 dumps across Colorado generate an amount of methane equivalent to driving 1 million gasoline-powered cars for a year. About 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a period of 20 years, methane accounts for 11% of global emissions that scientists say are warming the atmosphere and contributing to more intense and severe weather, wildfires, and drought. Landfills are the third-largest source of methane pollution in Colorado, after agriculture and fossil fuel extraction. Draft methane rules released last month by the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment would, for the first time, require some dump operators to measure and quantify methane releases and to fix leaks. The proposal mandates that waste managers install a gas collection system if their dump generates a certain amount of the climate-warming gas.  It also addresses loopholes in federal law that allow waste to sit for five years before such systems are required—even though science has shown that half of all food waste decays within about three and a half years. The draft rule surpasses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards in the amount of landfill area operators must monitor for emissions. It’s set to be heard by the state’s Air Quality Control Commission in August. Proposed regulations require the elimination of open gas flares—burning emissions directly into the atmosphere—and urge the use of biocovers and biofilters, which rely on bacteria to break down gases. The 70-page draft also calls for more routine and thorough monitoring of a dump surface with advanced technologies like satellites, which recently recorded large plumes of methane escaping from a Denver-area landfill. “We’ve had our eyes opened thanks to technology that has made the invisible, visible—now we know the extent of the problem, which is much greater than what estimates have portrayed,” said Katherine Blauvelt, circular economy director at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit working to decarbonize industry.  “When landfill operators fail to control leaks, we know harmful pollutants are coming along for the ride.” Cancer-causing volatile organic compounds, such as benzene and toluene, escape with methane leaching from landfills. These chemicals also contribute to the formation of lung-damaging ozone pollution, an increasing problem for the 3.6 million people who live in the greater Denver metropolitan area. Indeed, the region along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains ranked sixth in the nation for the most polluted air—with unhealthy ozone levels reported on one out of every 10 days, on average, according to the American Lung Association’s 2025 “State of the Air” report. The state is also woefully behind in its compliance with federal air quality standards. State officials and environmental advocates agree that reducing methane emissions from landfills, which are easier to mitigate than cow burps, for example, is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to slow warming in the short term. “Waste deposited in landfills continues producing methane for decades as it breaks down—and it’s one sector where Colorado has yet to directly take action to reduce these greenhouse gases,” said Tim Taylor, a supervisor in the state’s air pollution control division, in an online hearing last February on the proposed landfill methane rules. Colorado’s draft regulations are similar to those in California, Oregon, Maryland, and Washington, he added. More than 10 landfills in the state are already required under federal rules to have gas collection and control systems. Yet even with such technology in place, disposal facilities routinely exceed federal methane emissions caps. The state’s health department has also identified a dozen municipal solid waste landfills, based on a preliminary analysis, that would be required to put such systems in place under the proposed rules, Zachary Aedo, an agency spokesman, said in an email to Capital & Main. Many of these facilities are operated by counties, some of which expressed concerns about their ability to pay for such systems. “We are a small rural county, and a multimillion-dollar containment system is going to be more than we can build,” testified Delta County Commissioner Craig Fuller at the February hearing. “The financial equation of this whole thing is absolutely mind-boggling—we are struggling as it is to provide health and human services.” Other county officials embraced the proposed tightening of rules. “Landfills across Colorado, including in Eagle County, are leading sources of methane pollution,” said Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr in a March 6 statement. “As a local elected official I support a robust rule that embraces advanced technologies to cut pollution, protect public health and help the methane mitigation industry thrive.” For larger landfill companies, like Waste Management, which operates 283 active disposal sites nationwide, figuring out which technology works to best monitor emissions from a dump’s surface is proving a complex challenge. The company is testing technologies at facilities with different topographies and climate fluctuations to understand what causes emissions releases, said Amy Banister, Waste Management senior director of air programs. “Landfills are complicated, emissions vary over time, and we have emissions 24/7,” said Banister at an online meeting last September of a technical group created by Colorado health department officials. “Drones produced a lot of false positives—and we need more work understanding how fixed sensors can be applied in a landfill environment.” State health officials suggested municipalities could offset the costs of installing gas collection systems at disposal sites by converting methane into energy. Several landfill operations in Colorado currently have such waste-to-energy systems—which send power they generate to the state’s power grid. “We are mindful of the costs of complying with this rule and how tipping fees may be impacted,” said Taylor, an air quality supervisor, at the February hearing. “Analyses conducted in other states of their landfill methane rules found there wasn’t an increase in tipping fees as a result of regulations over time.” Tipping fees are paid by those who dispose of waste in a landfill. If operators passed on compliance costs to households, a state analysis found, the yearly average annual fee would increase $22.90 per household. Colorado’s push comes as the EPA issued an enforcement alert in September that found “recurring Clean Air Act compliance issues” at municipal solid waste landfills that led to the “significant release of methane,” based on 100 inspections conducted over three years.  Such violations included improper design and installation of gas collection and control systems, failure to maintain adequate “cover integrity,” and improper monitoring of facilities for emissions. To address gaps in federal regulations, which require operators to measure emissions four times a year by walking in a grid pattern across the face of the landfill with a handheld sensor, Colorado’s draft rules require third-party monitoring. Such measurements must be conducted offsite by an entity approved by the state’s air pollution control division that uses a satellite, aircraft or mobile monitoring platform. The infrequency of such grid walks—which skip spots that operators deem dangerous—contributes to the undercounting of methane emissions from landfills, according to a satellite-based analysis. An international team of scientists estimated potent greenhouse gas emissions from landfills are 50% higher than EPA estimates. Satellites like one operated by nonprofit Carbon Mapper found large methane plumes outside the quarterly monitoring periods over the Tower Landfill in Commerce City, northeast of Denver. The satellite allowed scientists to see parts of the landfill not accessible with traditional monitoring—measurements that found that such landfills are underreporting their methane emissions to state regulators, said Tia Scarpelli, a research scientist and waste sector lead at Carbon Mapper. “Landfill emissions tend to be quite persistent—if a landfill is emitting when it’s first observed, it’s likely to be emitting later on,” she added. Scarpelli cautioned that it’s important for regulators to investigate with operators what was happening on the landfill surface at the time the leak was measured. Tower Landfill’s operator, Allied Waste Systems of Colorado, provided reasons for such large methane releases in a January 2024 report to the state’s health department, including equipment malfunctions. The fix for about 22 emissions events over the federal methane limits detected in August 2023 by surface monitoring: “Soil added as cover maintenance.” Like many dumps across Colorado and the nation, the Tower Landfill is located near a community that’s already disproportionately impacted by emissions from industrial activities. “These landfills are not only driving climate change, they are also driving a public health crisis in our community,” said Guadalupe Solis, director of environmental justice programs at Cultivando, a nonprofit led by Latina and Indigenous women in northern Denver. “The Tower Landfill is near nursing homes, clinics, near schools with majority Hispanic students.” Physicians in the state warned that those who live the closest to dumps suffer the worst health effects from pollutants like benzene and hydrogen sulfide, which are linked to cancer, heart, and other health conditions. “People living near landfills, like myself, my family and my patients, experience higher exposure to air pollution,” testified Dr. Nikita Habermehl, a specialist in pediatric emergency medicine who lives near a landfill in Larimer County, at the February 26 public hearing, “leading to increased rates of respiratory issues and headaches and asthma worsened by poor air quality.” —By Jennifer Oldham, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.