Paul Patrick – Page 6

The $4.3 billion space telescope Trump tried to cancel is now complete

astronomy, dark energy, exoplanets, goddard space flight center, NASA, roman space telescope, Science, Space / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

“We’re going to be making 3D movies of what is going on in the Milky Way galaxy.”

Artist’s concept of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

A few weeks ago, technicians inside a cavernous clean room in Maryland made the final connection to complete assembly of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Parts of this new observatory, named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, recently completed a spate of tests to ensure it can survive the shaking and intense sound of a rocket launch. Engineers placed the core of the telescope inside a thermal vacuum chamber, where it withstood the airless conditions and extreme temperature swings it will see in space.

Then, on November 25, teams at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, joined the inner and outer portions of the Roman Space Telescope. With this milestone, NASA declared the observatory complete and on track for launch as soon as fall 2026.

“The team is ecstatic,” said Jackie Townsend, the observatory’s deputy project manager at Goddard, in a recent interview with Ars. “It has been a long road, but filled with lots of successes and an ordinary amount of challenges, I would say. It’s just so rewarding to get to this spot.”

An ordinary amount of challenges is not something you usually hear a NASA official say about a one-of-a-kind space mission. NASA does hard things, and they usually take more time than originally predicted. Astronomers endured more than 10 years of delays, fixes, and setbacks before the James Webb Space Telescope finally launched in 2021.

Webb is the largest telescope ever put into space. After launch, Webb had to perform a sequence of more than 50 major deployment steps, with 178 release mechanisms that had to work perfectly. Any one of the more than 300 single points of failure could have doomed the mission. In the end, Webb unfolded its giant segmented mirror and delicate sunshield without issue. After a quarter-century of development and more than $11 billion spent, the observatory is finally delivering images and science results. And they’re undeniably spectacular.

The completed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, seen here with its solar panels deployed inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya

Seeing far and wide

Roman is far less complex, with a 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirror that is nearly three times smaller than Webb’s. While it lacks Webb’s deep vision, Roman will see wider swaths of the sky, enabling a cosmic census of billions of stars and galaxies near and far (on the scale of the Universe). This broad vision will support research into dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up about 95 percent of the Universe. The rest of the Universe is made of regular atoms and molecules that we can see and touch.

It is also illustrative to compare Roman with the Hubble Space Telescope, which has primary mirrors of the same size. This means Roman will produce images with similar resolution to Hubble. The distinction lies deep inside Roman, where technicians have delicately laid an array of detectors to register the faint infrared light coming through the telescope’s aperture.

“Things like night vision goggles will use the same basic detector device, just tuned to a different wavelength,” Townsend said.

These detectors are located in Roman’s Wide Field Instrument, the mission’s primary imaging camera. There are 18 of them, each 4,096×4,096 pixels wide, combining to form a roughly 300-megapixel camera sensitive to visible and near-infrared light. Teledyne, the company that produced the detectors, says this is the largest infrared focal plane ever made.

The near-infrared channel on Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which covers much the same part of the spectrum as Roman, has a single 1,024-pixel detector.

“That’s how you get to a much higher field-of-view for the Roman Space Telescope, and it was one of the key enabling technologies,” Townsend told Ars. “That was one place where Roman invested significant dollars, even before we started as a mission, to mature that technology so that it was ready to infuse into this mission.”

With these detectors in its bag, Roman will cover much more cosmic real estate than Hubble. For example, Roman will be able to re-create Hubble’s famous Ultra Deep Field image with the same sharpness, but expand it to show countless stars and galaxies over an area of the sky at least 100 times larger.

This infographic illustrates the differences between the sizes of the primary mirrors and detectors on the Hubble, Roman, and Webb telescopes. Credit: NASA

Roman has a second instrument, the Roman Coronagraph, with masks, filters, and adaptive optics to block out the glare from stars and reveal the faint glow from objects around them. It is designed to photograph planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, or 100 to 1,000 times better than similar instruments on Webb and Hubble. Roman can also detect exoplanets using the tried-and-true transit method, but scientists expect the new telescope will find a lot more than past space missions, thanks to its wider vision.

“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard, in a press release. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”

Big numbers are crucial for learning how the Universe works, and Roman will feed vast volumes of data down to astronomers on Earth. “So much of what physics is trying to understand about the nature of the Universe today needs large number statistics in order to understand,” Townsend said.

In one of Roman’s planned sky surveys, the telescope will cover in nine months what would take Hubble between 1,000 and 2,000 years. In another survey, Roman will cover an area equivalent to 3,455 full moons in about three weeks, then go back and observe a smaller portion of that area repeatedly over five-and-a-half days—jobs that Hubble and Webb can’t do.

“We will do fundamentally different science,” Townsend said. “In some subset of our observations, we’re going to be making 3D movies of what is going on in the Milky Way galaxy and in distant galaxies. That is just something that’s never happened before.”

Getting here and getting there

Roman’s promised scientific bounty will come at a cost of $4.3 billion, including expenses for development, manufacturing, launch, and five years of operations.

This is about $300 million more than NASA expected when it formally approved Roman for development in 2020, an overrun the agency blamed on complications related to the coronavirus pandemic. Otherwise, Roman’s budget has been stable since NASA officials finalized the mission’s architecture in 2017, when it was still known by a bulky acronym: WFIRST, the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope.

At that time, the agency reclassified the Roman Coronagraph as a technology demonstration, allowing managers to relax their requirements for the instrument and stave off concerns about cost growth.

Roman survived multiple attempts by the first Trump administration to cancel the mission. Each time, Congress restored funding to keep the observatory on track for launch in the mid-2020s. With Donald Trump back in the White House, the administration’s budget office earlier this year again wanted to cancel Roman. Eventually, the Trump administration released its fiscal year 2026 budget request in May, calling for a drastic cut to Roman, but not total cancellation.

Once again, both houses of Congress signaled their opposition to the cuts, and the mission remains on track for launch next year, perhaps as soon as September. This is eight months ahead of the schedule NASA has publicized for Roman for the last few years.

Townsend told Ars the mission escaped the kind of crippling cost overruns and delays that afflicted Webb through careful planning and execution. “Roman was under a cost cap, and we operated to that,” she said. “We went through reasonable efforts to preclude those kinds of highly complex deployments that lead you to having trouble in integration and test.”

The outer barrel section of the Roman Space Telescope inside a thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde

There are only a handful of mechanisms that must work after Roman’s launch. They include a deployable cover designed to shield the telescope’s mirror during launch and solar array wings that will unfold once Roman is in space. The observatory will head to an observing post about a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

“We don’t have moments of terror for the deployment,” Townsend said. “Obviously, launch is always a risk, the tip-off rates that you have when you separate from the launch vehicle… Then, obviously, getting the aperture door open so that it’s deployed is another one. But these feel like normal aerospace risks, not unusual, harrowing moments for Roman.”

It also helps that Roman will use a primary mirror gifted to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency. The NRO originally ordered the mirror for a telescope that would peer down on the Earth, but the spy agency no longer needed it. Before NASA got its hands on the surplus mirror in 2012, scientists working on the preliminary design for what became Roman were thinking of a smaller telescope.

The larger telescope will make Roman a more powerful tool for science, and the NRO’s donation eliminated the risk of a problem or delay manufacturing a new mirror. But the upside meant NASA had to build a more massive spacecraft and use a bigger rocket to accommodate it, adding to the observatory’s cost.

Tests of Roman’s components have gone well this year. Work on Roman continued at Goddard through the government shutdown in the fall. On Webb, engineers uncovered one problem after another as they tried to verify the observatory would perform as intended in space. There were leaky valves, tears in the Webb’s sunshield, a damaged transducer, and loose screws. With Roman, engineers so far have found no “significant surprises” during ground testing, Townsend said.

“What we always hope when you’re doing this final round of environmental tests is that you’ve wrung out the hardware at lower levels of assembly, and it looks like, in Roman’s case, we did a spectacular job at the lower level,” she said.

With Roman now fully assembled, attention at Goddard will turn to an end-to-end functional test of the observatory early next year, followed by electromagnetic interference testing, and another round of acoustic and vibration tests. Then, perhaps around June of next year, NASA will ship the observatory to Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to prepare for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

“We’re really down to the last stretch of environmental testing for the system,” Townsend said. “It’s definitely already seen the worst environment until we get to launch.”

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Senators count the shady ways data centers pass energy costs on to Americans

AI, ai data centers, Amazon, data center coalition, data centers, Google, Meta, microsoft, Policy / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

Senators demand Big Tech pay upfront for data center spikes in electricity bills.

Senators launched a probe Tuesday demanding that tech companies explain exactly how they plan to prevent data center projects from increasing electricity bills in communities where prices are already skyrocketing.

In letters to seven AI firms, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cited a study estimating that “electricity prices have increased by as much as 267 percent in the past five years” in “areas located near significant data center activity.”

Prices increase, senators noted, when utility companies build out extra infrastructure to meet data centers’ energy demands—which can amount to one customer suddenly consuming as much power as an entire city. They also increase when demand for local power outweighs supply. In some cases, residents are blindsided by higher bills, not even realizing a data center project was approved, because tech companies seem intent on dodging backlash and frequently do not allow terms of deals to be publicly disclosed.

AI firms “ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing them from sharing information with their constituents, operate through what appear to be shell companies to mask the real owner of the data center, and require that landowners sign NDAs as part of the land sale while telling them only that a ‘Fortune 100 company’ is planning an ‘industrial development’ seemingly in an attempt to hide the very existence of the data center,” senators wrote.

States like Virginia with the highest concentration of data centers could see average electricity prices increase by another 25 percent by 2030, senators noted. But price increases aren’t limited to the states allegedly striking shady deals with tech companies and greenlighting data center projects, they said. “Interconnected and interstate power grids can lead to a data center built in one state raising costs for residents of a neighboring state,” senators reported.

Under fire for supposedly only pretending to care about keeping neighbors’ costs low were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Equinix, Digital Realty, and CoreWeave. Senators accused firms of paying “lip service,” claiming that they would do everything in their power to avoid increasing residential electricity costs, while actively lobbying to pass billions in costs on to their neighbors.

For example, Amazon publicly claimed it would “make sure” it would cover costs so they wouldn’t be passed on. But it’s also a member of an industry lobbying group, the Data Center Coalition, that “has opposed state regulatory decisions requiring data center companies to pay a higher percentage of costs upfront,” senators wrote. And Google made similar statements, despite having an executive who opposed a regulatory solution that would set data centers into their own “rate class”—and therefore responsible for grid improvement costs that could not be passed on to other customers—on the grounds that it was supposedly “discriminatory.”

“The current, socialized model of electricity ratepaying,” senators explained—where costs are shared across all users—”was not designed for an era where just one customer requires the same amount of electricity as some of the largest cities in America.”

Particularly problematic, senators emphasized, were reports that tech firms were getting discounts on energy costs as utility companies competed for their business, while prices went up for their neighbors.

Ars contacted all firms targeted by lawmakers. Four did not respond. Microsoft and Meta declined to comment. Digital Realty told Ars that it “looks forward to working with all elected officials to continue to invest in the digital infrastructure required to support America’s leadership in technology, which underpins modern life and creates high-paying jobs.”

Regulatory pressure likely to increase as bills go up

Senators are likely exploring whether to pass legislation that would help combat price increases that they say cause average Americans to struggle to keep the lights on. They’ve asked tech companies to respond to their biggest questions about data center projects by January 12, 2026.

Among their top questions, senators wanted to know about firms’ internal projections looking forward with data center projects. That includes sharing their projected energy use through 2030, as well as the “impact of your AI data centers on regional utility costs.” Companies are also expected to explain how “internal projections of data center energy consumption” justify any “opposition to the creation of a distinct data center rate class.”

Additionally, senators asked firms to outline steps they’ve taken to prevent passing on costs to neighbors and details of any impact studies companies have conducted.

Likely to raise the most eyebrows, however, would be answers to questions about “tax deductions or other financial incentives” tech firms have received from city and state governments. Those numbers would be interesting to compare with other information senators demanded that companies share, detailing how much they’ve spent on lobbying and advocacy for data centers. Senators appear keen to know how much tech companies are paying to avoid covering a proportionate amount of infrastructure costs.

“To protect consumers, data centers must pay a greater share of the costs upfront for future energy usage and updates to the electrical grid provided specifically to accommodate data centers’ energy needs,” senators wrote.

Requiring upfront payment is especially critical, senators noted, since some tech firms have abandoned data center projects, leaving local customers to bear the costs of infrastructure changes without utility companies ever generating any revenue. Communities must also consider that AI firms’ projected energy demand could severely dip if enterprise demand for AI falls short of expectations, AI capabilities “plateau” and trigger widespread indifference, AI companies shift strategies “away from scaling computer power,” or chip companies “find innovative ways to make AI more energy-efficient.”

“If data centers end up providing less business to the utility companies than anticipated, consumers could be left with massive electricity bills as utility companies recoup billions in new infrastructure costs, with nothing to show for it,” senators wrote.

Already, Utah, Oregon, and Ohio have passed laws “creating a separate class of utility customer for data centers which includes basic financial safeguards such as upfront payments and longer contract length,” senators noted, and Virginia is notably weighing a similar law.

At least one study, The New York Times noted, suggested that data centers may have recently helped reduce electricity costs by spreading the costs of upgrades over more customers, but those outcomes varied by state and could not account for future AI demand.

“It remains unclear whether broader, sustained load growth will increase long-run average costs and prices,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers concluded. “In some cases, spikes in load growth can result in significant, near-term retail price increase.”

Until companies prove they’re paying their fair share, senators expect electricity bills to keep climbing, particularly in vulnerable areas. That will likely only increase pressure for regulators to intervene, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, Ari Peskoe, suggested in September.

“The utility business model is all about spreading costs of system expansion to everyone, because we all benefit from a reliable, robust electricity system,” Peskoe said. “But when it’s a single consumer that is using so much energy—basically that of an entire city—and when that new city happens to be owned by the wealthiest corporations in the world, I think it’s time to look at the fundamental assumptions of utility regulation and make sure that these facilities are really paying for all of the infrastructure costs to connect them to the system and to power them.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Software leaks point to the first Apple Silicon “iMac Pro,” among other devices

Apple, Apple silicon, iMac, Mac, macos 26 tahoe, Tech / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

Apple doesn’t like to talk about its upcoming products before it’s ready, but sometimes the company’s software does the talking for it. So far this week we’ve had a couple of software-related leaks that have outed products Apple is currently testing—one a pre-release build of iOS 26, and the other some leaked files from a kernel debug kit (both via MacRumors).

Most of the new devices referenced in these leaks are straightforward updates to products that already exist: a new Apple TV, a HomePod mini 2, new AirTags and AirPods, an M4 iPad Air, a 12th-generation iPad to replace the current A16 version, next-generation iPhones (including the 17e, 18, and the rumored foldable model), a new Studio Display model, some new smart home products we’ve already heard about elsewhere, and M5 updates for the MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and the other MacBook Pros. There’s also yet another reference to the lower-cost MacBook that Apple is apparently planning to replace the M1 MacBook Air it still sells via Walmart for $599.

For power users, though, the most interesting revelation might be that Apple is working on a higher-end Apple Silicon iMac powered by an M5 Max chip. The kernel debug kit references an iMac with the internal identifier J833c, based on a platform identified as H17C—and H17C is apparently based on the M5 Max, rather than a lower-end M5 chip. (For those who don’t have Apple’s branding memorized, “Max” is associated with Apple’s second-fastest chips; the M5 Max would be faster than the M5 or M5 Pro, but slower than the rumored M5 Ultra.)

This device could be the long-awaited, occasionally-rumored-but-never-launched replacement to Apple’s 27-inch iMac, which was discontinued in 2022 with no direct replacement. An M5 Max chip would also make this machine the closest thing we’ve seen to a direct replacement for the iMac Pro, a 27-inch iMac variant that was launched in late 2017 but likewise discontinued without an update or replacement.

The current M4 Max chip includes 14 or 16 CPU cores, 32 or 40 GPU cores, and between 36GB and 128GB of unified memory, specs we’d expect an M5 Max to match or beat. And because the Max chips already fit into the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros, it should be no problem to fit one into an all-in-one desktop PC.

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Utah leaders hinder efforts to develop solar energy supply

Policy, Science, solar cells, Solar energy, syndication, Utah / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

Solar power accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox believes his state needs more power—a lot more. By some estimates, Utah will require as much electricity in the next five years as it generated all last century to meet the demands of a growing population as well as chase data centers and AI developers to fuel its economy.

To that end, Cox announced Operation Gigawatt last year, declaring the state would double energy production in the next decade. Although the announcement was short on details, Cox, a Republican, promised his administration would take an “any of the above” approach, which aims to expand all sources of energy production.

Despite that goal, the Utah Legislature’s Republican supermajority, with Cox’s acquiescence, has taken a hard turn against solar power—which has been coming online faster than any other source in Utah and accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Cox signed a pair of bills passed this year that will make it more difficult and expensive to develop and produce solar energy in Utah by ending solar development tax credits and imposing a hefty new tax on solar generation. A third bill aimed at limiting solar development on farmland narrowly missed the deadline for passage but is expected to return next year.

While Operation Gigawatt emphasizes nuclear and geothermal as Cox’s preferred sources, the legislative broadside, and Cox’s willingness to go along with it, caught many in the solar industry off guard. The three bills, in their original form, could have brought solar development to a halt if not for solar industry lobbyists negotiating a lower tax rate and protecting existing projects as well as those under construction from the brunt of the impact.

“It took every dollar of political capital from all the major solar developers just to get to something tolerable, so that anything they have under development will get built and they can move on to greener pastures,” said one industry insider, indicating that solar developers will likely pursue projects in more politically friendly states. ProPublica spoke with three industry insiders—energy developers and lobbyists—all of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing lawmakers who, next month, will again consider legislation affecting the industry.

The Utah Legislature’s pivot away from solar mirrors President Donald Trump taking a more hostile approach to the industry than his predecessor. Trump has ordered the phaseout of lucrative federal tax incentives for solar and other renewable energy, which expanded under the Biden administration. The loss of federal incentives is a bigger hit to solar companies than the reductions to Utah’s tax incentives, industry insiders acknowledged. The administration has also canceled large wind and solar projects, which Trump has lamented as “the scam of the century.” He described solar as “farmer killing.”

Yet Cox criticized the Trump administration’s decision to kill a massive solar project in neighboring Nevada. Known as a governor who advocates for a return to more civil political discourse, Cox doesn’t often pick fights. But he didn’t pull punches with the decision to halt the Esmeralda 7 project planned on 62,300 acres of federal land. The central Nevada project was expected to produce 6.2 gigawatts of power—enough to supply nearly eight times the number of households in Las Vegas. (Although the Trump administration canceled the environmental review of the joint project proposed by multiple developers, it has the potential to move forward as individual projects.)

“This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race with China,” Cox wrote on X when news surfaced of the project’s cancellation. “Our country needs an all-of-the-above approach to energy (like Utah).”

But he didn’t take on his own Legislature, at least publicly.

Many of Utah’s Republican legislators have been skeptical of solar for years, criticizing its footprint on the landscape and viewing it as an unreliable energy source, while lamenting the retirement of coal-generated power plants. The economies of several rural counties rely on mining coal. But lawmakers’ skepticism hadn’t coalesced into successful anti-solar legislation—until this year. When Utah lawmakers convened at the start of 2025, they took advantage of the political moment to go after solar.

“This is a sentiment sweeping through red states, and it’s very disconcerting and very disturbing,” said Steve Handy, Utah director of The Western Way, which describes itself as a conservative organization advocating for an all-of-the-above approach to energy development.

The shift in sentiment against solar energy has created a difficult climate for an all-of-the-above approach. Solar projects can be built quickly on Utah’s vast, sun-drenched land, while nuclear is a long game with projects expected to take a decade or more to come online under optimistic scenarios.

Cox generally supports solar, “in the right places,” especially when the captured energy can be stored in large batteries for distribution on cloudy days and after the sun goes down.

Cox said that instead of vetoing the anti-solar bills, he spent his political capital to moderate the legislation’s impact. “I think you’ll see where our fingerprints were,” he told ProPublica. He didn’t detail specific changes for which he advocated but said the bills’ earlier iterations would have “been a lot worse.”

“We will continue to see solar in Utah.”

Cox’s any-of-the-above approach to energy generation draws from a decades-old Republican push similarly titled “all of the above.” The GOP policy’s aim was as much about preserving and expanding reliance on fossil fuels (indeed, the phrase may have been coined by petroleum lobbyists) as it was turning to cleaner energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal.

As governor of a coal-producing state, Cox hasn’t shown interest in reducing reliance on such legacy fuels. But as he slowly rolls out Operation Gigawatt, his focus has been on geothermal and nuclear power. Last month, he announced plans for a manufacturing hub for small modular reactors in the northern Utah community of Brigham City, which he hopes will become a nuclear supply chain for Utah and beyond. And on a recent trade mission to New Zealand, he signed an agreement to collaborate with the country on geothermal energy development.

Meanwhile, the bills Cox signed into law already appear to be slowing solar development in Utah. Since May, when the laws took effect, 51 planned solar projects withdrew their applications to connect to the state’s grid—representing more than a quarter of all projects in Utah’s transmission connection queue. Although projects drop out for many reasons, some industry insiders theorize the anti-solar legislation could be at play.

Caught in the political squeeze over power are Utah customers, who are footing higher electricity bills. Earlier this year, the state’s utility, Rocky Mountain Power, asked regulators to approve a 30 percent hike to fund increased fuel and wholesale energy costs, as well as upgrades to the grid. In response to outrage from lawmakers, the utility knocked the request down to 18 percent. Regulators eventually awarded the utility a 4.7 percent increase—a decision the utility promptly appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Juliet Carlisle, a University of Utah political science professor focusing on environmental policy, said the new solar tax could signal to large solar developers that Utah energy policy is “becoming more unpredictable,” prompting them to build elsewhere. This, in turn, could undermine Cox’s efforts to quickly double Utah’s electricity supply.

Operation Gigawatt “relies on rapid deployment across multiple energy sources, including renewables,” she said. “If renewable growth slows—especially utility-scale solar, which is currently the fastest-deploying resource—the state may face challenges meeting demand growth timelines.”

Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, had sponsored legislation to end the solar industry’s state tax credits for several legislative sessions, but this was the first time the proposal succeeded.

Christofferson agrees Utah is facing unprecedented demand for power, and he supports Cox’s any-of-the-above approach. But he doesn’t think solar deserves the advantages of tax credits. Despite improving battery technology, he still considers it an intermittent source and thinks overreliance on it would work against Utah’s energy goals.

In testimony on his bill, Christofferson said he believed the tax incentives had served their purpose of getting a new industry off the ground—16 percent of Utah’s power generation now comes from solar, ranking it 16th in the nation for solar capacity.

Christofferson’s bill was the least concerning to the industry, largely because it negotiated a lengthy wind-down of the subsidies. Initially it would have ended the tax credit after Jan. 1, 2032. But after negotiations with the solar industry, he extended the deadline to 2035.

The bill passed the House, but when it reached the Senate floor, Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, moved the end of the incentives to 2028. He told ProPublica he believes solar is already established and no longer needs the subsidy. Christofferson tried to defend his compromise but ultimately voted with the legislative majority.

Unlike Christofferson’s bill, which wasn’t born of an antipathy for renewable energy, Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, made it clear in public statements and behind closed doors to industry lobbyists that the goal of his bill was to make solar pay.

The bill imposes a tax on all solar production. The proceeds will substantially increase the state’s endangered species fund, which Utah paradoxically uses to fight federal efforts to list threatened animals for protection. Snider cast his bill as pro-environment, arguing the money could also go to habitat protection.

As initially written, the bill would have taxed not only future projects, but also those already producing power and, more worrisome for the industry, projects under construction or in development with financing in place. The margins on such projects are thin, and the unanticipated tax could kill projects already in the works, one solar industry executive testified.

“Companies like ours are being effectively punished for investing in the state,” testified another.

The pushback drew attacks from Snider, who accused solar companies of hypocrisy on the environment.

Industry lobbyists who spoke to ProPublica said Snider wasn’t as willing to negotiate as Christofferson. However, they succeeded in reducing the tax rate on future developments and negotiated a smaller, flat fee for existing projects.

“Everyone sort of decided collectively to save the existing projects and let it go for future projects,” said one lobbyist.

Snider told ProPublica, “My goal was never to run anybody out of business. If we wanted to make it more heavy-handed, we could have. Utah is a conservative state, and I would have had all the support.”

Snider said, like the governor, he favors an any-of-the-above approach to energy generation and doesn’t “want to take down any particular industry or source.” But he believes utility-scale solar farms need to pay to mitigate their impact on the environment. He likened his bill to federal law that requires royalties from oil and gas companies to be used for conservation. He hopes federal lawmakers will use his bill as a model for federal legislation that would apply to solar projects nationwide.

“This industry needs to give back to the environment that they claim very heavily they are going to protect,” he said. “I do believe there’s a tinge of hypocrisy to this whole movement. You can’t say you’re good for the environment and not offset your impacts.”

One of the more emotional debates over solar is set to return next year, after a bill that would end tax incentives for solar development on agricultural land failed to get a vote in the final minutes of this year’s session. Sponsored by Rep. Colin Jack, R-St. George, the bill has been fast-tracked in the next session, which begins in January.

Jack said he was driven to act by ranchers who were concerned that solar companies were outbidding them for land they had been leasing to graze cows. Solar companies pay substantially higher rates than ranchers can. His bill initially had a slew of land use restrictions—such as mandating the distance between projects and residential property and creeks, minimum lot sizes and 4-mile “green zones” between projects—that solar lobbyists said would have strangled their industry. After negotiating with solar developers, Jack eliminated the land use restrictions while preserving provisions to prohibit tax incentives for solar farms on private agricultural land and to create standards for decommissioning projects.

Many in rural Utah recoil at rows of black panels disrupting the landscape and fear solar farms will displace the ranching and farming way of life. Indeed, some wondered whether Cox, who grew up on a farm in central Utah, would have been as critical of Trump scuttling a 62,300-acre solar farm in his own state as he was of the Nevada project’s cancellation.

Peter Greathouse, a rancher in western Utah’s Millard County, said he is worried about solar farms taking up grazing land in his county. “Twelve and a half percent is privately owned, and a lot of that is not farmable. So if you bring in these solar places that start to eat up the farmland, it can’t be replaced,” he said.

Utah is losing about 500,000 acres of agricultural land every 10 years, most of it to housing. A report by The Western Way estimated solar farms use 0.1 percent of the United States’ total land mass. That number is expected to grow to 0.46 percent by 2050—a tiny fraction of what is used by agriculture. Of the land managed by the Utah Trust Lands Administration, less than 3,000 of the 2.9 million acres devoted to grazing have been converted to solar farms.

Other ranchers told ProPublica they’ve been able to stay on their land and preserve their way of life by leasing to solar. Landon Kesler’s family, which raises cattle for team roping competitions, has leased land to solar for more than a decade. The revenue has allowed the family to almost double its land holdings, providing more room to ranch, Kesler said.

“I’m going to be quite honest, it’s absurd,” Kesler said of efforts to limit solar on agricultural land. “Solar very directly helped us tie up other property to be used for cattle and ranching. It didn’t run us out; it actually helped our agricultural business thrive.”

Solar lobbyists and executives have been working to bolster the industry’s image with lawmakers ahead of the next legislative session. They’re arguing solar is a good neighbor.

“We don’t use water, we don’t need sidewalks, we don’t create noise, and we don’t create light,” said Amanda Smith, vice president of external affairs for AES, which has one solar project operating in Utah and a second in development. “So we just sort of sit out there and produce energy.”

Solar pays private landowners in Utah $17 million a year to lease their land. And, more important, solar developers argue, it’s critical to powering data centers the state is working to attract.

“We are eager to be part of a diversified electricity portfolio, and we think we bring a lot of values that will benefit communities, keep rates low and stable, and help keep the lights on,” Rikki Seguin, executive director of Interwest Energy Alliance, a western trade organization that advocates for utility-scale renewable energy projects, told an interim committee of lawmakers this summer.

The message didn’t get a positive reception from some lawmakers on the committee. Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, who represents three rural Utah counties and was among solar’s critics last session, said the biggest complaint he hears from constituents is about “that ugly solar facility” in his district.

“Why, Rep. Albrecht, did you allow that solar field to be built? It’s black. It looks like the Dead Sea when you drive by it,” Albrecht said.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Utah leaders hinder efforts to develop solar energy supply Read More »

Roomba maker iRobot swept into bankruptcy

bankrupt, Biz & IT, iRobot, picea, Roomba, syndication / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

In recent years, it has faced competition from cheaper Chinese rivals, including Picea, putting pressure on sales and forcing iRobot to reduce headcount. A management shake-up in early 2024 saw the departure of its co-founder as chief executive.

Amazon proposed buying the company in 2023, seeing synergy with its Alexa-powered smart speakers and Ring doorbells.

EU regulators, however, pushed back on the deal, raising concerns it would lead to reduced visibility for rival vacuum cleaner brands on Amazon’s website.

Amazon and iRobot terminated the deal little more than a month after Adobe’s $10 billion purchase of design software maker Figma was abandoned amid heightened US antitrust scrutiny under Joe Biden’s administration.

Although iRobot received $94 million in compensation for the termination of its deal with Amazon, a significant portion was used to pay advisory fees and repay part of a $200 million loan from private equity group Carlyle.

Picea’s Hong Kong subsidiary acquired the remaining $191 million of debt from Carlyle last month. At the time, iRobot already owed Picea $161.5 million for manufacturing services, nearly $91 million of which was overdue.

Alvarez & Marsal is serving as iRobot’s investment banker and financial adviser. The company is receiving legal advice from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Roomba maker iRobot swept into bankruptcy Read More »

The $140,000 Question

Question / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

There was a no good, quite bad article by Michael Green that went viral. The condensed version was entitled ‘The Valley of Death: Why $100,000 Is the New Poverty,’ and a follow-up here.

His actual claim in that post, which was what caught fire, was that the poverty line should be $140,000, and even that this number is him ‘being conservative.’

Obviously that is not remotely true, given that:

America is the richest large country in history by a wide margin.
$140,000 is at or above median household income.
You can observe trivially that a majority of Americans are not in poverty.

Today’s post covers this narrow question as background, including Green’s response.

If you’ve already had your fill of that, including ‘well, yes, obviously, how are we bothering with all this, I know it went viral but someone was being Wrong On The Internet’ then you are not wrong. You can safely skip this post. It’s fine.

I’m writing this as a lead-in to broader future discussions of the underlying questions:

How hard life actually is right now in various ways, in various senses.
What costs in particular are rising versus falling.
What we can do to turn the problems around.
The roles of the Revolutions of Rising Expectations and Rising Requirements in all of it.

Michael Green’s calculation of an alternative poverty line does not make any sense, but he is correct that the official poverty line calculation also does not make any sense.

Michael Green: The statement was this: “The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”

When I read it I felt sick. And when you understand that number, you will understand the rage of Americans who have been told that their lives have been getting better when they are barely able to stay afloat.

The official poverty line of $32,000 for a family of four seems both totally arbitrary and obviously too low if you look at taxes and transfers, in the same way that the median income of $140,000, where Green wants to set that poverty line, is absurdly high.

Neither number is saying a useful thing about whether people are barely able to stay afloat, or whether lives are getting better. My guess is the right number is ~$50,000.

The point of a poverty line is not ‘what does it take to live as materially well as the median American.’

Green literally equates the poverty line with median income, in two distinct ways. No, really. He equates this with ‘basic participation.’ That’s not how any of that works.

Poverty actually means (from Wikipedia) “a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living.”

Neither of those things is well predicted by the same number of constant dollars over time. The first is especially not well predicted, and the second mostly is not either. The minimum basket of goods does not track inflation.

Before I get to the chorus of debunkers, I’ll briefly join that chorus for those who came in late and point out that the underlying math that Michael Green does is deeply, deeply stupid, it makes even less sense than you think, as in it is actually tautological equating of median income with poverty except with calculation errors.

I mostly wrote my debunk before reading the others, but we found the same things, so if you’ve read the others you can skip this section and the next one.

Michael Green: In 2024, food-at-home is no longer 33 percent of household spending. For most families, it’s 5 to 7 percent. Housing now consumes 35 to 45 percent. Healthcare takes 15 to 25 percent. Childcare, for families with young children, can eat 20 to 40 percent.

If you keep [the original] logic [of the poverty threshold]—if you maintain [the] principle that poverty could be defined by the inverse of food’s budget share—but update the food share to reflect today’s reality, the multiplier is no longer three.

It becomes 16. Which means…the threshold for a family of four—the official poverty line in 2024—wouldn’t be $31,200. If the crisis threshold—the floor below which families cannot function—is honestly updated to current spending patterns, it lands at close to $140,000.

As in, he’s taking a food, multiplying by (14 or 16), and calling that the poverty line, because food-at-home is (1/14th or 1/16th) of typical household spending. Even if his calculations were correct: Seriously, what? You presumably see (some of the) problems?

(The calculations also aren’t correct in other ways, at minimum he should be using total food share which only leads to a 7.8 multiplier, and the way he’s backing out minimum food costs is assuming costs rose exactly with CPI, but that’s not important right now.)

That’s the same as saying ‘the poverty line is equal to typical household spending.’

Well, it’s that plus the error from the conflation of food with food-at-home, the ‘what do people actually spend’ calculation should end up in more like $80k, almost exactly American median income Mike claims American households make (he’s wrong, it’s actually $125k for families of four, whoops).

That’s not a coincidence. This methodology would say that half the people will always be under the poverty line, no matter how rich or poor those people were.

Poverty here is being defined as ‘below the median.’ Except with a bug in the math.

Thus, contra Green, there’s no typical expense that this ‘doesn’t include.’

If your response is ‘parts of this are what the original calculation did, kind of’ my answer is: I do not care, not even a little, that a different calculation was also ad-hoc nonsense followed by CPI adjustments. We agree that the $32k number also isn’t right.

He then uses the ‘living wage calculator’ to assemble a typical household budget in Essex County, New Jersey, a relatively expensive metro area. His source says ‘typical expenses’ there require $96k in income if one parent is working, $136k if two parents are working, mostly due to a $32k child care gap which is nonsensical if the children are in school. All of which Scott Winship analyzes and finds patently absurd on multiple levels.

But once again ignore all those numbers because he’s literally using the ‘typical expenses’ calculation, which has basically nothing to do with the minimum spend or any reasonable definition of a poverty rate, hence the $32k in child care, the paying full healthcare premiums and so on. Once again this calculation makes no sense.

(Oh, and fun note via Noah Smith, poor people in America still spend about a third of their money on food.)

A chorus rose up to explain this person being Wrong On The Internet. Here’s some pull quotes and overviews. Several of these links go into great detail, some would say unnecessary detail but those some would be wrong, we thank all of you for your service.

Scott Lincicome called this a ‘nerd fight’ but I mean stop, stop, he’s already dead.

Noah Smith has some excellent common sense graphs for sanity checks showing Americans mostly do have adequate health care, food, transportation and space.

Scott Winship has the most detailed debunking methodology, if you want that. This includes noticing that in many calculations Winship goes beyond relying on medians. He instead moves to average (mean) spending in various categories, which is even more absurd a comparison point, and when he breaks down the ‘typical budget’ based on Essex County we see absurdity after absurdity.

His analysis also contains the central conflation I’ll be largely focusing on next time, which is that yes Americans now have higher real incomes and buy vastly more and better stuff, but that this does not automatically mean survival is easier because Americans now are required to buy and expect to get vastly more and better stuff.

Alex Tabarrok: Of course ⁦Jeremy Horpedahl⁩ is correct. I would just add that this is another example of grievance culture. Right or left almost everyone wants to blame someone else—billionaires, minorities, immigrants, foreigners, white people, systematic racism etc.

Ptuomov: There are two issues here.

The first is that Mike’s numbers are off, as explained in the link below. This is a minor issue.

The second and more serious issue is that I think he is confusing two very different questions:

1. What does it take to not be so poor in the US that poverty itself closes doors for you and your children?

2. What does it take for a family man to feel like a success in the US?

In my opinion, Mike uses the word “poverty” but is actually writing about the second question.

I’m no bleeding heart-liberal by any means, but I think there is legitimate reason to reduce the type of true poverty that causes a newborn child to be excluded from self-improvement opportunities of which he could realistically take advantage.

Scott Lincicome: Fortunately for us, subsequent scrutiny—including from some of Capitolism’s favorite scholars—revealed Green to have been spectacularly, demonstrably wrong in all sorts of obvious and less obvious ways. Most American families, it turns out, aren’t living hand-to-mouth, and, while real affordability challenges exist, the general long-term trend for both middle-class living and real poverty has been positive.

The Numbers—and Entire Premise—Were Nonsense.

Tyler Cowen: Fortunately for us, this [poverty line of $140k] is all wrong. The underlying concepts are wrong, and the user of evidence is misguided. There are genuine concerns about affordability in the United States, but the analysi in this article is not a good way to understand them.

Noah Smith: But despite its popularity, Green’s claim is wrong. Not just slightly wrong or technically wrong, but just totally off-base and out of touch with reality. In fact, it’s so wrong that I’m willing to call it “very silly”. I know Mike Green, and I count him as a friend, but we all write silly things once in a while,¹ and when we do, we deserve to be called out on it.

Jeremy Horpedahl: I think there are at least three major errors Mr. Green makes in the essay:

He drastically underestimates how much income American families have.
He drastically overstates how much spending is necessary to support a family, because he uses average spending figures and treats them as minimum amounts.
He obsesses over the Official Poverty Measure, since it was originally based on the cost of food in the 1960s, and ignores that Census already has a new poverty measure which takes into account food, shelter, clothing, and utility costs: the Supplement Poverty Measure.

We also have Eric Boehm in Reason, and no doubt many more.

Clifford Asness: The populist fabulists will only move the goal posts again.

It started as 140k was “poverty” moved on to something softer about “participation” (not that this isn’t a real concept it’s just not poverty) and now is down to “you can’t deny the ennui” and “all we meant was government programs are poorly designed to punish those seeking to leave poverty” something poverty scholars have only yelled about 1mm times.

Data + analysis >> vibes which sadly doesn’t mean they win in the court of public opinion.

Adam Ozimek: The defense of the $140k poverty line post have retreated to yes the data is wrong, yes the core claim is wrong, but it is a complaint about standard of living improvement in the US so I must nevertheless say it’s good.

Guess who led this chorus? Michael Green, saying that ‘accuracy’ was not the point.

If people keep insisting life sucks and the vibes are bad then you should believe them that there is a problem, that in some important way their life sucks and the vibes are bad. That doesn’t mean you need to respect the actual claims if they are false, but if you are trying to figure out what is true the defense of those claims is important evidence. Listen.

This also leads into themes I mostly am saving for next time, but needs to be mentioned here: A family with one typical income will increasingly fall behind.

That doesn’t mean you can’t make the numbers work that way. You can. Falling behind doesn’t mean starving. Falling behind still sucks. A lot.

Matt Bruenig: New piece at @PplPolicyProj. It’s my entry into the “$140k is poverty” discourse and the “you used to be able to live comfortably on a single income” discourse more generally. I think I know how to make sense of it that does not require nonsense claims.

One way to put it that I ultimately cut out of the piece is imagine your society went from a 20-hour workweek to a 40-hour workweek but not everyone went along with the change. You could accurately say that you used to be able to afford a normal life on 20 hours but now you cant.

But rather than seeing that clearly for what it is — the standard for a normal life has ratcheted upward with more income/output — there is a temptation to say that there is hidden costs or inflation or whatever that have fully swallowed increased income etc.

… If everyone around me started working 20 hours of overtime each week and I didn’t, then that would suck. Even if I followed suit, but didn’t want to, that’d also suck. Because inequality sucks. Being alienated from the society sucks.

Real wages for married men are up, but the median income for married couples is up a lot more because a lot more women are working, which means if only the man works you’re falling behind. You get punched in the face with the Revolutions of Rising Requirements and Expectations.

Matthew Yglesias: Some excellent charts and info here, but I think the impulse to sanewash and “clean up” false claims is kind of misguided.

If we want to address people’s concerns, they need to state the concerns accurately.

The claim that the *absolute affordabilityof being a married, one-earner family with kids has fallen would — if it were true — have straightforward win-win policy remedies like “higher wages and incomes.”

But it’s not true.

When you reformulate to a more accurate claim what you end up with is the observation that it is is hard for one person to earn as much income as two people and that the wedge has grown as women’s earning power has increased.

This is very true but what’s the fix?

One that would “work” would be to push women generally out of opportunities for careers and white collar work — something more conservatives are tip-toeing around but don’t quite want to say.

Family incomes have been moving up, much of which is increased female labor participation but a lot less than all of it.

Violeta: I’m following an insta acct who interviews elders from remote Romanian villages. Every single one of them speaks of how we now live in a God given infinite abundance so good that compared to their childhood &youth, they feel now they have more desire to live longer

a different POV

I know women in their 70s who for decades now, have been in grateful awe at how much easier they have it now. One of my aunts, mountain people, was raving when I last saw her about washing machines but also about *plastic bottles*, how practical they are during haymaking season

Green’s follow-up post might be the most smug and obnoxious ‘okay yes my original post was full of lies but I don’t care because it worked to get the discussion I wanted, so take that assholes who are in a grand conspiracy to keep us good folks down’ that I have ever seen. It somehow continues to fully equate the poverty line with median income, and to be arrogant about it, saying numbers shmumbers, they don’t matter.

And then he turns around and says, how dare you respond to my ‘legitimate grievances’ by pointing out that my facts are wrong and my arguments are nonsense?

Michael Green: In Are You an American?, I described “The Mockery Machine”—the ritualized pattern in which elites respond to legitimate grievances by distorting them into absurdity, ridiculing the distortion, and then shaming the “complainer” for even noticing the decline. I thought of it as a cultural reflex, a defensive maneuver performed mostly by Twitter avatars and partisans. I was wrong.

… Just like in Atlas Shrugged, all the sycophants wanted to display their loyalty to Balph. Check out the brutal assault on my childcare figure — “It’s not $32K — it’s $25.7K!!!!”

I mean, sir, that’s because your facts were wrong and your arguments were nonsense. No, it wasn’t ‘narrative discipline,’ it was caring about the accuracy of claims. And no, this wasn’t one isolated error, it was part of a string of errors mostly in the same direction, that people are very carefully and politely pointing out. All the careful pushback warmed my heart to see it. Have you tried making true claims instead?

The post went viral because of the false claims, and that was the message most people got. You can’t then turn around and say, why do you care about the false claims, I don’t care if my claims were false, that wasn’t the central point.

But yes. The fact that such obviously false claims resonated must be reckoned with, which is what the second post will be about, and these same people are also trying to say ‘and therefore everything is fine’ when everything is rather not fine.

Indeed, Green also correctly identifies the ‘making the goods better does not help you afford the goods’ problem with equating ‘real income adjusted for CPI’ with someone’s felt spending power and ability to survive.

This is written backwards by accident by Green, but correct once you fix it:

As others have noted, it’s great that the 1963 basket is so much higher quality than the 2025 basket that it’s “worth” much more, but it’s illegal to buy the 1963 basket.

Yes, that’s backwards – it’s the 2025 basket that’s worth much more, and rightfully so, but you still spent the same amount of money on the basket, and it’s still illegal to buy the 1963 basket, and that’s central to the argument I’ll make next time.

I’m definitely not here to say everything is fine. I’m not mocking the idea a lot of people feel like their lives suck, quite the opposite, stay tuned for the second post. But I absolutely, if forced to engage, will mock anyone who knowingly posts so much obvious nonsense and then pretends that this was fine because it worked and it wasn’t the central point, and only people with an agenda would call you out on it.

One other potentially good point Green makes there is that many individuals and couples don’t start families because they don’t feel they can afford one, which biases two-parent household income upwards. But in terms of impact on the averages it’s complicated, because there are kind of two fertility tracks, one for those who are trying to follow the ‘have enough money first’ playbook, and the other where some people go ahead and have kids anyway, and that second group is more present and has higher fertility at lower incomes. If you look at fertility by income, you see a U-curve, that fertility declines as income rises, until you get rather far up in income.

I do think that ‘a lot of people don’t have kids because they don’t believe they can afford them’ is central to the problem we face.

He then pivots (while continuing to assert various forms of nonsense along the way) into saying ‘the real point’ is two completely distinct other claims that are far better.

The first is that phase outs generate a Poverty Trap where effective marginal tax rates can be very high, even in excess of 100%. If marginal tax rates are very high, there’s no push to earn more money, so you don’t advance your career and you never earn enough to escape poverty. That’s a very real, no good, very bad problem.

Michael Green: This is the policy failure that was actually at the heart of Part 1: We have created benefit cliffs and income phase-outs that systematically capture the working poor, ensuring that climbing the ladder only leads to loss of essential benefits and permanent financial fragility.

Green’s version actually understates the issue. Assuming those numbers are right, yes, the post-transfers marginal tax rate there is obnoxious at around 45%, but that’s also the marginal tax rate at the top, and transfers are worth less than one dollar per dollar. Still, Green’s graph doesn’t look so bad, because the worst potential Valley is at $30k, and Green can’t count that low.

This, via Jeremy Horpedahl, is the chart that shows a real Valley of Death that can come up under some circumstances:

This graph is remarkably terrible. You could plausibly prefer $29k to $69k.

Here’s another graph that goes to the relatively expensive Boston and finds a trap that goes out farther, where you don’t escape until north of $100k:

Or this one looks less bad that has a small reversal around $63k:

Again, benefits are worth less than $1 per $1, so marginal tax rates are not quite as bad as they look on these graphs, but they are not great.

Once you get above these thresholds, I don’t want to say you are ‘home free’ but you are strictly better off each time you earn an extra dollar.

Contra Green, ~80% of families of 4 are north of the trap in practice.

Can these dynamics trap people in poverty? Oh yes, absolutely, it’s all quite terrible, and we should work on solutions to make this whole thing sane.

However, note that the basic problem will remain, which is:

To live reasonably, people implicitly need ~$50k in total pay and benefits, given the Revolution of Rising Requirements and what you by law have to purchase.
Thus, if you make less, we give you the difference, or your family starves.
If you make more, we are going to tax you to pay for all of that.
If you make the climb in effective pay steeper you make it suck that much more to make less money. You have to pick, how progressive will you make your taxation?

As an intuition pump to how tricky this is, redone from scratch for 2025, for families of exactly 4 only for now: We could change to instead provide a universal basic income (you can also call it a negative income tax) of $40k per family, plus a flat tax of about 25%-35% (depending on implementation details elsewhere) to $250k, then resume the current tax rates (so we don’t change how much we raise from the top of the distribution). No other default benefits, including Medicare and Medicaid, and no other federal taxes (no payroll, no Medicare tax and so on). My quick calculation says that’s roughly revenue neutral. Is that style of approach better? Maybe, but there’s at least one huge obvious problem, which is that this creates unsubsidized health insurance markets with no fallback, and so many others we’re not noticing. Of course, there’s huge upsides, especially if you fix the worst of the secondary effects.

Either way, good luck passing anything like this. The numbers are brutal if you’re not willing to blow up a bunch of sacred values somewhere.

The details Green discusses here are wrong again, including the fragility issue, but he’d be the first one to tell you the details and exact numbers don’t matter. His claim about a ‘different nature of the struggle’ doesn’t make sense.

But here, yes, this part’s very true and important, nail meet head:

The question we are increasingly asking is, “Why aren’t we having more families and procreating?” The answer, largely, is that we are asking families to make an investment in children that becomes a future common good and penalizing them for doing so.

Yes. Many people are saying. Children are an expensive public good. They are getting relatively expensive compared to other goods thanks to the Revolution of Rising Requirements. We are expecting parents to foot a huge portion of the bill, and that is the big problem.

It’s not a new big problem. The story of the world outside of farms has been, roughly, ‘spend your life trying to earn enough money to support as big a family as you can.’

He closes by making a bunch of other vibe-level and directionally correct but importantly false statements about the nature of wealth and transfers and the signaling theory of education, written to give a false impression, to equate the directional vibes with reality.

That works on a certain type of reader. To me and hopefully my readers, it’s toxic.

As a closing fun note, it can always be worse.

As in: You have to love the community note on this graph.

No, seriously, he took the MIT Living Wage Calculator and doubled it, and considers ‘comfortable’ to include 20% savings while meeting all ‘wants and needs.’ Must be nice.

Brennan Schlagbaum: For context…

SmartAsset studied how much families need to live a “normal” life in every US state. (covering needs, wants, AND saving 20%) The results are terrifying.

Okay, good. We got through that. We are now ready for next time.

Discussion about this post

The $140,000 Question Read More »

Microsoft takes down mod that re-created Halo 3 in Counter-Strike 2

counter-strike 2, CS2, DMCA, engine, gaming, Halo, microsoft, source 2, takedown, valve / Paul Patrick / December 15, 2025

Last month saw the release of Project Misriah, an ambitious modding project that tried to re-create the feel of Halo 3 inside Valve’s Counter-Strike 2. That project has now been taken down from the Steam Workshop, though, after drawing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint from Microsoft.

Modder Froddoyo introduced Project Misriah on November 16 as “a workshop collection of Halo ported maps and assets that aims to bring a Halo 3 multiplayer-like experience to Counter-Strike 2.” Far from just being inspired by Halo 3, the mod directly copied multiple sound effects, character models, maps, and even movement mechanics from Bungie and Microsoft’s popular series.

In the weeks since, Project Misriah has drawn a lot of praise from both Halo fans and those impressed by what modders could pull off with the Source 2 engine. But last Wednesday, modder Froddoyo shared a DMCA request from Microsoft citing the “unauthorized use of Halo game content in a [Steam] workshop not associated with Halo games.”

A trailer announcing Project Misriah, posted last month.

In a social media post sharing that DMCA text, Froddoyo ruefully said that players should “make sure to give your thanks to Microsoft” for the project’s fate. But in a comment on Project Misriah’s YouTube trailer, Froddoyo noted that, following the takedown, the project “will not be worked on or uploaded in the future. But hey, it was fun while it lasted. Thank you to all of the players and supporters of [the] project. We will use the knowledge and skills obtained from this to cook up something else!”

Microsoft takes down mod that re-created Halo 3 in Counter-Strike 2 Read More »

Investors commit quarter-billion dollars to startup designing “Giga” satellites

Commercial space, k2, satellites, Science, Space / Paul Patrick / December 13, 2025

A startup established three years ago to churn out a new class of high-power satellites has raised $250 million to ramp up production at its Southern California factory.

The company, named K2, announced the cash infusion on Thursday. K2’s Series C fundraising round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with additional funding from investment firms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. K2 has now raised more than $400 million since its founding in 2022 and is on track to launch its first major demonstration mission next year, officials said.

K2 aims to take advantage of a coming abundance of heavy- and super-heavy-lift launch capacity, with SpaceX’s Starship expected to begin deploying satellites as soon as next year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launched twice this year and will fly more in 2026 while engineers develop an even larger New Glenn with additional engines and more lift capability.

Underscoring this trend toward big rockets are other launchers like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, and new vehicles from companies like Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace. K2’s founders believe satellites will follow a similar progression, reversing a trend toward smaller spacecraft in recent years, to address emerging markets like in-space computing and data processing.

Mega, then Giga

K2 is designing two classes of satellites—Mega and Giga—that it will build at an 180,000-square-foot factory in Torrance, California. The company’s first “Mega Class” satellite is named Gravitas. It is scheduled to launch in March 2026 on a Falcon 9 rocket. Once in orbit, Gravitas will test several systems that are fundamental to K2’s growth strategy. One is a 2o-kilowatt Hall-effect thruster that K2 says will be four times more powerful than any such thruster flown to date. Gravitas will also deploy twin solar arrays capable of generating 20 kilowatts of power.

“Gravitas brings our full stack together for the first time,” said Karan Kunjur, K2’s co-founder and CEO, in a company press release. “We are validating the architecture in space, from high-voltage power and large solar arrays to our guidance and control algorithms, and a 20 kW Hall thruster, and we will scale based on measured performance.”

Investors commit quarter-billion dollars to startup designing “Giga” satellites Read More »

Rocket Report: Neutron’s Hungry Hippo is deemed ready, whither Orbex?

rocket report, Space / Paul Patrick / December 13, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“That is the moment an IPO suddenly came into play.”

Rocket Lab has completed qualification testing of its “Hungry Hippo” payload fairing. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 8.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week concerns the decision by SpaceX founder Elon Musk to take the company public, via IPO, sometime within the next 12 to 18 months. Musk confirmed this after Ars published a story on Wednesday evening. This understandably raises questions about whether a future SpaceX will be committed more to AI data centers in space or Mars settlement. However, one of the company’s founding employees, Tom Mueller, said this could benefit the company’s Mars plans. Clearly this is something we’ll be following closely.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Avio will build solid rocket motors in Virginia. The governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, announced Wednesday that Avio USA has selected his state to produce solid rocket motors for defense and commercial space propulsion purposes. Avio USA’s investment, which will be up to $500 million, is supported by its Italian parent Avio. The company’s factory will encompass 860,000 sq. feet.

From Italy with love … “Avio looks forward to establishing on U.S. soil a solid rocket motor production facility to contribute in strengthening the US industrial base by providing decades of experience in engineering and manufacturing,” said Avio Chief Executive Officer Giulio Ranzo. Final approvals and the site-selection announcement are expected to be completed early next year.

Orbex funding lags in European Launcher Challenge. One of the five launch companies in ESA’s European Launcher Challenge, Orbex, received far less funding than the other four at the agency’s ministerial conference after the United Kingdom deferred a decision on how to allocate most of its contribution. Unlike typical ESA programs, in which members contribute funds with the expectation of receiving contracts proportional to their investments, the launcher challenge allowed member states to choose among five “preselected challengers,” Space News reports.

Orbex not in prime position … Those companies were chosen in July based on technical and business maturity, and each could receive up to 169 million euros. They were: Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Orbex, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA). Isar, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, and RFA each received at least 169 million euros, while Orbex received just 34.9 million euros. The UK left 112.3 million euros unallocated, a move that puzzled many industry observers. “We are working with multiple partners to ensure this funding delivers our requirements for assured access to space and benefits U.K. taxpayers,” a UK Space Agency spokesperson said. This was not exactly a ringing endorsement of the UK-based launch company. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Europe takes a tentative step toward crewed launch. The European Space Agency has published a call for tenders to develop a launch abort system for a future crewed launch capability, European Spaceflight reports. The system would be used in the event of an emergency, either on the launch pad or during the initial stages of flight.

Looking beyond ISS … The new call is part of the European agency’s post-ISS low-Earth orbit strategy. This strategy, the material explains, includes the development of an end-to-end European crewed flight solution. In addition to developing a crewed launch capability, the agency’s post-ISS strategy includes options for low-Earth orbit infrastructure. These options include partnering with a commercial space station or building a European station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

After Russian launch incident, NASA brings Dragon launches forward. With a key Russian launch pad out of service, NASA is accelerating the launch of two Cargo Dragon spaceships in order to ensure that astronauts on board the International Space Station have all the supplies they need next year, Ars reports. According to the space agency’s internal schedule, the next Dragon supply mission, CRS-34, is moving forward one month, from June 2026 to May. And the next Dragon supply mission after this, CRS-35, has been advanced three months, from November to August.

NET April for pad repairs … A source indicated that the changing schedules are a “direct result” of a launch pad incident on Thanksgiving Day at the Russian spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The issue occurred when a Soyuz rocket launched Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The rocket had no difficulties, but a large mobile platform below the rocket was not properly secured prior to the launch and crashed into the flame trench below, taking the Soyuz pad offline. Russia has told NASA it will require at least four months to repair the pad.

Rocket Lab completes Neutron fairing test. Rocket Lab announced Monday that the Neutron rocket’s innovative “Hungry Hippo” captive fairing has successfully completed qualification testing and is en route to Virginia for Neutron’s first launch. Whereas typical rockets’ fairing halves fall away during launch and are disposable or require collection at sea for reuse, Neutron’s fairing halves open to release the rocket’s second stage and mission payload before closing again to return Neutron to Earth as a single reusable vehicle.

Gobbling marbles … To qualify the Hungry Hippo fairing for Neutron’s first launch, Rocket Lab completed an intensive qualification and acceptance testing campaign that validated the structure’s expected performance during the intense aerodynamic pressure of launch and re-entry featuring full-scale tests as well as a series of sub-component tests. “Building, qualifying, and shipping Hungry Hippo is a fantastic marker of progress toward Neutron’s first launch, and I’m proud of the team for their attention to detail and pulling off this significant milestone,” said Shaun D’Mello, the company’s vice president overseeing Neutron.

Terran R flight tanks assembled. Relativity Space has gone largely silent since being taken over by former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, but the company still provides monthly updates online. On Tuesday the company published its November 2025 update and revealed that progress is being made on flight hardware for the debut launch of the large Terran R rocket. Relativity has not announced a new launch target yet.

More work to be done … “In November, the team completed all circumferential friction stir welds for the first stage tank for first flight,” the company said. “Measuring 163 feet (49.7 meters) in length, the tank is composed of eight barrel sections and three domes, joined by ten circumferential welds. The tank will now move into integration. With both the first and second stage tanks finished, focus has shifted to the interstage.”

Veteran Falcon 9 booster extends record. SpaceX achieved a couple notable milestones with its Falcon 9 rocket launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday, December 8, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, dubbed Starlink 6-92, featured the use of the company’s most-flown Falcon booster, tail number B1067. On its 32nd flight, it delivered SpaceX’s 3,000th Starlink satellite of the year to low-Earth orbit.

How is your payload fairing? … The use of B1067 on this mission brings SpaceX one step closer to its current goal of certifying its Falcon boosters for up to 40 missions a piece. The ultimate number of missions a booster flies will partially depend on the types of missions for which it was used and if it is needed on an expendable flight. SpaceX is looking to achieve the same level of reuse for the payload fairings on a Falcon rocket’s upper stage, but typically only provides updates on those during the launches of customer missions for the government or from other companies.

SpaceX likely to IPO next year to fund ambitions. SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, and this represents a major change in thinking from the world’s leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk. The question is, why? He has not enjoyed the public scrutiny of Tesla, and feared that shareholder desires for financial return were not consistent with his ultimate goal of settling Mars. Ars attempts to answer this question by speaking to a number of people familiar with Musk’s thinking.

The short-term answer is data centers … Abhi Tripathi, a long-time SpaceX employee, believes that once Musk realized Starlink satellites could be architected into a distributed network of data centers, the writing was on the wall. “That is the moment an IPO suddenly came into play after being unlikely for so long. Much of the AI race comes down to amassing and deploying assets that work quicker than your competition. A large war chest resulting from an IPO will greatly help his cause and disadvantage all others.” Foremost among Musk’s goals right now is to “win” the battle for artificial intelligence. Taking SpaceX public and using it to marshal an incredible amount of resources shows he is playing to win.

New Glenn targets a four-launch certification. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will have to complete four successful orbital flights as its pathway to certification under the US Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program, Space News reports. Gen. Philip Garrant, who leads the Space Systems Command, said Blue Origin selected the four-flight benchmark and the government agreed.

And then there were three? … “The government is supporting a four-flight certification for New Glenn,” Garrant said. The rocket has logged two successful missions so far, and Garrant said a third launch is expected “earlier in the new year than later.” If upcoming flights stay on track, he added, “I think they’re going to be in a fantastic place to become our third certified provider and compete for missions.” If certified, Blue Origin would join SpaceX and United Launch Alliance as the Space Force’s third heavy-lift launch provider. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

December 13: Long March 6 | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 01: 05 UTC

December 14: Electron | RAISE and Shine | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 03: 00 UTC

December 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-12 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 05: 20 UTC

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Rocket Report: Neutron’s Hungry Hippo is deemed ready, whither Orbex? Read More »

Scientists built an AI co-pilot for prosthetic bionic hands

AI, prosthetics, robotic hands, robotics, Science, sensors / Paul Patrick / December 12, 2025

To test their AI-powered hand, the team asked intact and amputee participants to manipulate fragile objects: pick up a paper cup and drink from it, or take an egg from a plate and put it down somewhere else. Without the AI, they could succeed roughly one or two times in 10 attempts. With the AI assistant turned on, their success rate jumped to 80 or 90 percent. The AI also decreased the participants’ cognitive burden, meaning they had to focus less on making the hand work.

But we’re still a long way away from seamlessly integrating machines with the human body.

Into the wild

“The next step is to really take this system into the real world and have someone use it in their home setting,” Trout says. So far, the performance of the AI bionic hand was assessed under controlled laboratory conditions, working with settings and objects the team specifically chose or designed.

“I want to make a caveat here that this hand is not as dexterous or easy to control as a natural, intact limb,” George cautions. He thinks that every little increment that we make in prosthetics is allowing amputees to do more tasks in their daily life. Still, to get to the Star Wars or Cyberpunk technology level where bionic prostheses are just as good or better than natural limbs, we’re going to need more than just incremental changes.

Trout says we’re almost there as far as robotics go. “These prostheses are really dexterous, with high degrees of freedom,” Trout says, “but there’s no good way to control them.” This in part comes down to the challenge of getting the information in and out of users themselves. “Skin surface electromyography is very noisy, so improving this interface with things like internal electromyography or using neural implants can really improve the algorithms we already have,” Trout argued. This is why the team is currently working on neural interface technologies and looking for industry partners.

“The goal is to combine all these approaches in one device,” George says. “We want to build an AI-powered robotic hand with a neural interface working with a company that would take it to the market in larger clinical trials.”

Nature Communications, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65965-9

Scientists built an AI co-pilot for prosthetic bionic hands Read More »

Senator endorses discredited doctor’s book that claims chemical treats autism, cancer

chlorine dioxide, Dr. Pierre Kory, health, jenna mccarthy, Sen. Ron Johnson / Paul Patrick / December 12, 2025

Safety experts advise those who handle chlorine dioxide to work in well-ventilated spaces, wear gloves.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) gives a thumbs up to chlorine dioxide. Credit: Scott Olson

For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines.

He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a book by a discredited doctor promoting an unproven and dangerous treatment for autism and a host of ailments: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching.

The book is “The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals before losing his medical certification for statements advocating using an antiparasite medication to treat COVID-19. The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license.

Kory has said there’s a globally coordinated campaign by public health agencies, the drug industry, and the media to suppress evidence of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His book, according to its website, contends that the “remarkable molecule” works “to treat everything from cancer and malaria to autism and COVID.”

The book jacket features a prominent blurb from Johnson calling the doctor’s treatise: “A gripping tale of corruption and courage that will open eyes and prompt serious questions.”

Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that has a range of applications, including as a disinfectant and deodorizer. Food processing plants apply it to sanitize surfaces and equipment. Hospitals use it to sterilize medical devices, and some municipalities use low levels to treat public water supplies. Paper mills rely on it to whiten wood pulp. Safety experts advise those who handle it to work in well-ventilated spaces and to wear protective gloves.

Concentrations in drinking water systems higher than 0.8 milligrams per liter can be harmful, especially to infants, young children, and fetuses, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Still, for many years people in online discussion groups have been promoting the use of chlorine dioxide in a mixture that they call a “miracle mineral solution,” ingested to rid people of a host of maladies. The Food and Drug Administration has warned that drinking these chlorine dioxide mixtures can cause injury and even death.

It is not medicinal, despite Kory’s contention. “It is all lunacy. Absolutely, it’s 100% nonsense,” said Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society in Montreal and an expert on the threat of pseudoscience. Schwarcz has written articles about the so-called miracle mineral solution, calling it “a poison” when it’s in high concentrations.

Kory’s book, set to be released to the public in January, argues that word of chlorine dioxide’s effectiveness has been suppressed by government and medical forces that need people to remain perpetually ill to generate large profits. The use of the word “war” in the title is fitting, Kory said in a recent online video on his co-author’s Substack. “In the book I detail many, many assassination attempts of doctors who try to bring out knowledge around chlorine dioxide,” he said.

Johnson confirmed to ProPublica in an email that he authorized the statement on the cover. “After reading the entire book, yes I provided and approved that blurb,” he said. “Have you read the book?”

ProPublica asked Kory and his co-author, Jenna McCarthy, to provide an advance copy, an interview, and responses to written questions. Kory did not respond. McCarthy wrote in an email to ProPublica that she was addressing some of the questions on her Substack. (She did not send a book or agree to an interview.)

The book “is a comprehensive examination of the existing evidence and a plea for open-minded inquiry and rigorous research,” she wrote on Substack. She dismissed warnings about chlorine dioxide’s toxicity in high concentrations, writing: “Everything has a toxic dose — including nutmeg, spinach, and tap water.”

She said that chlorine dioxide is being studied in controlled settings by researchers in the United States and Latin America and that “the real debate is how it should be used, at what dose, and in which clinical contexts.”

Her Substack post was signed “Jenna (& Pierre).”

Johnson did not agree to an interview and did not answer questions emailed to his office by ProPublica, including whether he views chlorine dioxide as a world-changing medical treatment and whether he believes the FDA warnings are false.

“It’s called snake oil”

Johnson has been an advocate of Kory’s for years, calling the doctor as an expert witness in two 2020 Senate hearings. In one, Kory championed taking the drug ivermectin, an antiparasite medicine, to treat COVID-19.

In 2021, an analysis of data from clinical trials concluded that ivermectin could reduce deaths from COVID-19 and may produce other positive effects. McCarthy cited that analysis in her Substack response.

In 2022, however, the American Journal of Therapeutics, which had published the study, warned that suspicious data “appears to invalidate the findings” regarding ivermectin’s potential to decrease deaths.

Later clinical trials have found no beneficial effect of ivermectin for COVID-19, and the FDA has warned that taking large doses can be dangerous. The drug’s manufacturer has said it hadn’t found any scientific basis for the idea that ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19. Kory, though, continued advocating for ivermectin.

In 2024 the American Board of Internal Medicine, which credentials physicians in certain specialties, revoked Kory’s certifications in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, and critical care for making false and misleading public statements about the ability of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Hospitals and many insurance networks typically require doctors to be board certified.

Kory vigorously fought the disciplinary action, arguing to the ABIM that he provided substantial medical and scientific evidence to support his recommendations for addressing COVID-19, though not the “consensus-driven” approach. He also sued the board in federal court, citing his free speech rights in a case that is still progressing in the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. On Substack, McCarthy excoriated the ABIM, saying it “bullies physicians” and “enforces ideological conformity.”

In 2022, Johnson and Kory penned a Fox News op-ed opposing a California bill that would strip doctors’ licenses for espousing misinformation about COVID-19. The bill became law but was repealed after a court fight. A federal judge found the statute’s definition of misinformation to be too vague, which could infringe on doctors’ right to free speech.

Johnson, who has been in Congress since 2011, has a history of advocating for experimental treatments and viewing the government as an impediment. Dr. Peter Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public health advocacy group, said that among members of Congress, Johnson was “an early adopter of anti-science ideas.”

Lurie said that Johnson is no longer an outlier in Washington, which now has many more elected lawmakers whom he considers anti-science. “What may have started off as the cutting edge of an anti-science movement has now turned into a much more broader-based movement that is supported by millions of people,” he said.

Earlier this year, Johnson held a hearing highlighting a flawed study claiming that vaccinated children had an increased rate of serious chronic diseases when compared to children who were not vaccinated. The conclusion questions the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe. The study’s researchers chose not to publish it because of problems they found in their data and methodology.

In November, Johnson and Kory were listed among the speakers at a conference of the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that stirs anti-vaccine sentiment. It was launched in 2018 by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose FDA is considering new ways to more closely scrutinize vaccine safety.

HHS did not respond to requests from ProPublica about Kennedy’s views on chlorine dioxide. At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy praised President Donald Trump for his wide search for a COVID-19 remedy in his first term, which Kennedy said included vaccines, various drugs, “even chlorine dioxide.”

Kory’s publisher is listed as Bella Luna Press, which has issued at least two other titles by McCarthy. “Thanks to the Censorship Industrial Complex, you won’t find The War on Chlorine Dioxide on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble. We had to design and build this website, figure out formatting and printing and shipping, and manage every aspect of order processing ourselves,” the book’s website states. (A representative for Bella Luna could not be reached for comment.)

As this new book is released, the autism community is also grappling with another controversy: the unsubstantiated assertion by Kennedy that Tylenol use by pregnant women poses an increased risk of autism. In addition, under Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its website in November to cast doubt on the long-held scientific conclusion that childhood vaccines do not cause autism.

Some parents of children with autism, desperate for a remedy, have long reached for dubious and at times dangerous panaceas, including hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation therapy, used for the treatment of heavy metal poisoning. Neither method has been proven effective.

Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University, said Johnson has “acted extremely irresponsibly” in lending his name to a book making claims about chlorine dioxide treating autism.

“Wisconsin is filled with experts—clinical experts, medical experts, scientists—who understand and have studied autism and treatments for autism for many many years,” she said. “He’s chosen to completely ignore the clinical and the scientific community.”

People with autism may take medication to reduce anxiety, address attention problems, or reduce severe irritability. Many benefit from behavioral interventions and special education services to help with learning and functional abilities. But there is no cure, said Tager-Flusberg.

Referring to chlorine dioxide, she said: “We have had examples of this probably throughout the history of medicine. There’s a word for this, it’s called snake oil.”

In her response on Substack to ProPublica, McCarthy wrote that “chlorine dioxide is being used to treat (nobody said ‘cure’) autism with life-changing results.”

The search for miracle cures

The mother of an autistic son, Melissa Eaton of North Carolina, heard Kory reference his book in early November on The HighWire, an Internet talk show hosted by Del Bigtree, a prominent vaccine skeptic and former communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign. She then looked up the book online and noticed Johnson’s endorsement.

Eaton for many years has worked to expose people who peddle chlorine dioxide and to report apparent injuries to authorities. She monitors social media forums where parents discuss giving it to their children orally or via enemas. Sometimes the families reveal that their children are sick. “They’re throwing up and vomiting and having diarrhea and rashes,” Eaton said.

Some adherents advise parents that the disturbing effects indicate that the treatment is working, ridding the body of impurities, or that the parents should alter the dosage.

“Most of these kids are nonverbal,” Eaton said. “They’re not able to say what’s hurting them or what’s happening to them. The parents feel they’re doing the right thing. That’s how they view this: They’re helping to cure autism.”

The idea that chlorine dioxide can be a miracle cure began to spread about 20 years ago when a gold prospector, Jim Humble, wrote a book claiming his team in Guyana fell ill with malaria and recovered after drinking safe amounts of chlorine dioxide.

Humble later co-founded a “health and healing” church in Florida with a man named Mark Grenon, who called himself an archbishop and sold a chlorine dioxide solution as a cure for COVID-19. They described it as a “miracle mineral solution,” or MMS.

Grenon went to prison in 2023 for conspiring to defraud the United States by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug. The scheme took in more than $1 million, according to prosecutors.

An affidavit in the case filed by a special agent with the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations noted: “FDA has received numerous reports of adverse reactions to MMS. These adverse reactions include hospitalizations, life-threatening conditions, and death.”

Grenon, who is now out of prison, told ProPublica that he too is writing a book about chlorine dioxide. “My book will tell the truth.” He declined further comment.

Chlorine dioxide is currently used in many ways that are not harmful. It is found in some consumer products like mouthwashes, but it is not meant to be swallowed in those instances. (One popular mouthwash warns to “keep out of reach of children.”) It’s also available to consumers in do-it-yourself packages where they combine drops from two bottles of different compounds—commonly sodium chlorite and hydrochloric acid—and add it to water. Hikers often carry the drops, or tablets, using small amounts to make quarts of fresh water potable.

But numerous online shoppers post product reviews that go further, referring to it as a tonic. Various online guides, some aimed at parents of autistic children, recommend a shot-glass-size dose, sometimes given multiple times a day and even hourly. That can far exceed the threshold the EPA considers safe.

McCarthy, addressing ProPublica on Substack, wrote: “You point to various online guides that offer what could be considered dangerous dosing instructions. We agree, the internet is a terrifying wasteland of misinformation and disinformation.”

In the Substack video, Kory said he felt compelled to spread the word about chlorine dioxide much as he did about ivermectin, even though it cost him professionally.

He no longer has a valid medical license in Wisconsin or California, where he did not renew them, according to the Substack post. His medical licenses in New York and Michigan are active.

“I like to say I was excommunicated from the church of the medical establishment,” he said in the Substack video. As a result, he said, he turned to telehealth and started a practice.

In the November 6 HighWire episode hosted by Bigtree, the discussion included talk not just of chlorine dioxide’s medicinal potential but also of how cheap and easy it is to obtain.

“On Amazon, it’s literally, you get two bottles, well, it comes in two,” Kory started to explain, before stopping that train of thought.

“I wouldn’t know how to make it,” he said.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Senator endorses discredited doctor’s book that claims chemical treats autism, cancer Read More »

Runway claims its GWM-1 “world models” can stay coherent for minutes at a time

AI, Gen-4.5, GWM-1, ml, robotics, Runway, Runway Gen-4.5, runway ml, world models / Paul Patrick / December 11, 2025

Even using the word “general” has an air of aspiration to it. You would expect a general world model to be, well, one model—but in this case, we’re looking at three distinct, post-trained models. That caveats the general-ness a bit, but Runway says that it’s “working toward unifying many different domains and action spaces under a single base world model.”

A competitive field

And that brings us to another important consideration: With GWM-1, Runway is entering a competitive gold-rush space where its differentiators and competitive advantages are less clear than they were for video. With video, Runway has been able to make major inroads in film/television, advertising, and other industries because its founders are perceived as being more rooted in those creative industries than most competitors, and they’ve designed tools with those industries in mind.

There are indeed hypothetical applications of world models in film, television, advertising, and game development—but it was apparent from Runway’s livestream that the company is also looking at applications in robotics as well as physics and life sciences research, where competitors are already well-established and where we’ve seen increasing investment in recent months.

Many of those competitors are big tech companies with massive resource advantages over Runway. Runway was one of the first to market with a sellable product, and its aggressive efforts to court industry professionals directly has so far allowed it to overcome those advantages in video generation, but it remains to be seen how things will play out with world models, where it doesn’t enjoy either advantage any more than the other entrants.

Regardless, the GWM-1 advancements are impressive—especially if Runway’s claims about consistency and coherence over longer stretches of time are true.

Runway also used its livestream to announce new Gen 4.5 video generation capabilities, including native audio, audio editing, and multi-shot video editing. Further, it announced a deal with CoreWeave, a cloud computing company with an AI focus. The deal will see Runway utilizing Nvidia’s GB300 NVL72 racks on CoreWeave’s cloud infrastructure for future training and inference.

Runway claims its GWM-1 “world models” can stay coherent for minutes at a time Read More »

Author name: Paul Patrick