CMR is the leading provider of funding and management support for small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs 

Authored by Ann Bauer via Brownstone Institute,

I have loved many addicts in my life.

I have been exasperated, impoverished, and terrified by them. But also amused, warmed, enraptured, elevated…That’s the thing about addicts. They contain multitudes, all drama and extremes. They’re charismatic until they’re repugnant, joyful until they’re suicidal. Everything is in vivid, dangerous color. It’s part of the ride and the reason they exert such a pull on cautious, ascetic people like me.

Some of my addicts are gone. My closest friend and “Damn Good Food” co-author, Mitch Omer, died at 61. Others have found God and turned their lives around (they’re now exciting and dramatic people of faith). I love people who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and food. Many surf between the four.

Recently, another category of people formed: the ones injecting themselves with GLP-1s, mostly to lose weight but also to control other impulses. It’s clearly great for the handful whose life and health were being destroyed by obesity. But for the others? I’m dubious.

Ozempic and its cousins (Mounjaro, Wegovy, Zepbound, et al.) modify the pleasure centers of the brain, making everything people crave—food, sex, smoking, alcohol, shopping, gambling, cocaine—less appealing. It doesn’t address the underlying problems of addiction, such as depression or dishonesty. It just eliminates the part of the person that enjoys and revels, the colorful, joyous side.

It’s a version of the drug in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that the doctor ginned up to divide himself, creating a respectable man bound by reserve and a separate murderous, pleasure-seeking monster.

From Dr. Jekyll’s own account:

Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.

Of course, the doctor’s desire to split off his hedonistic self will have devastating consequences. The lesson of Jekyll and Hyde is that decoupling morality from desire is unnatural. It disrupts the natural order. My question for RLS, were he still with us to answer: Do GLP-1s pose similarly catastrophic risks?

I think they may. One reason is my Uncle Joe.

Joe was a quiet, careful religious man. He and his wife, Darla, had desperately wanted children but it just never happened. They raised boxer dogs that they treated like babies. Joe worked as a photographer in North Minneapolis in this little tufted studio from the 1930s that smelled like rose cologne and dust.

Some time in the late 1970s, Joe started shaking uncontrollably. Terrible thing for a photographer. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and put on a whopping dose of Levodopa, which flooded his brain with dopamine. This got the tremors under control. He and Darla were hugely grateful. They needed Joe’s income and now he could go back to work.

But over the next half-decade, my uncle changed. He became furtive and untrustworthy. Around the time Darla discovered she had cancer, she also discovered that her husband had nearly bankrupted them. This tidy man had developed a rabid gambling habit—cards, horses, sports—and he was a terrible bettor. I was just a kid, but I remember my father talking about what a dumb bastard Joe was, how he lied to his wife and spent the money she needed for her treatments.

Darla died a few years later, and Joe kept right on gambling. He sold his business and used the money for trips to Las Vegas. By this time, the Levodopa was having diminishing returns and his Parkinsonian shaking was back. Joe’s doctors kept ratcheting up the dose, believing they were doing so with impunity. But the drug only made him step up his gambling. And spending. And drinking. And God knows what else.

Shortly after Joe died, penniless, news started to eke out that Levodopa was causing previously straight-laced people to do all sorts of out-of-character things. They were visiting prostitutes and buying fancy clothes, snorting blow and placing bets. Joe was part of the first wave of Parkinson’s patients that were treated with this new ‘miracle’ drug and went off the rails. He died alone, having borrowed money from everyone he knew and burned all the bridges he’d spent a lifetime building.

What does this have to do with Robert Louis Stevenson’s story about chemical medicine? Not a lot—directly. In Jekyll and Hyde, the main character sets out to create a potion that will free him from his rutting, profane, dissolute self (and vice versa). In the case of my uncle, chemists were simply trying to control the symptoms of his disease, and it had the awful, unintended consequence of turning a once-refined man into – basically – Mr. Hyde.

But Joe’s story is information about what happens when you mess with brain chemicals and try to spark or dampen certain behaviors. He wasn’t an addict they were trying to control. In fact, he was the kind of orderly person who shined his shoes and set them out every night. Levodopa MADE people like my Uncle Joe into addicts. Collaterally. And scientists missed it for years.

GLP-1 drugs center around the very same brain chemical: Dopamine. Instead of raising patients’ levels as neurologists did with Parkinson’s patients, Ozempic and the rest ‘modulate’ (which simply means adjust) Dopamine levels, suppressing them [typically] to a point where the pleasure-seeking cravings for food, alcohol, nicotine, and on and on are weak enough for people to overcome.

The Free Press ran an article recently on a little-talked-about downstream effect of GLP-1s: apathy. “They Went on Ozempic—and Gave Up on Life” by Evan Gardner reports on people who lost weight on the injectable, along with their libido, ambition, and desire to participate in the world. One woman finally had the boyfriend of her dreams, thanks (in her mind) to her slender new body, but no desire to have sex.

This is the opposite of what happened to Parkinson’s patients in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. The danger is that doctors are oblivious to (or ignoring) what’s happening because GLP-1s are easy, people want them, and they’re having the desired effect.

But what if the sum of becoming apathetic isn’t just laziness or low sex drive? What if it leads to something more sinister, such as a lack of empathy, the need for ever-more disruptive or violent entertainment, errors in high-risk high-stakes jobs, a dearth of parental love for a child….The list of potential ills goes on and on.

I ran this theory by a friend who works in the sober community, for a 12-step program, and he told me there are some professionals working in recovery who won’t accept people on GLP-1s into their programs. “A lot of us believe it’s an addiction if you’re relying on a drug that removes the need for spiritual work,” he said.

Robert Louis Stevenson warned about this very thing back in 1886. His story is about a drug made of phosphorus and salt and “some volatile ether” that allowed the addict, the rogue and criminal, to split off and wander free.

Today, we have a drug made of “salt forms of a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist,” being pushed by physicians and television campaigns and sports heroes and celebrities nationwide that allows people to silence the addict within—the self that once “laid aside restraint and plunged in shame”—stuff them in a crawl space, slam the door shut, and trap them there.

Don’t tell me that a Hyde-like creature isn’t going to get out eventually. There will be consequences.

“Prepare for a dreadful shipwreck,” I imagine Stevenson would say.

The tech bros are only now waking up to what we pointed out 1 year and 8 months ago: the early stages of public backlash against AI data center expansion. Since then, this resistance has spread nationwide as working-class people grow increasingly angry about hyperscalers erecting massive AI data centers in their backyards, with one of the most immediate consequences being surging power bills.

"If tech leaders don't organize and get America on their side, the situation on the ground - as seen in the three charts below - will get worse before it gets better," Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital and co-host of the All-In Podcast, wrote on X.

Palihapitiya warned, "That, in turn, will tank the US economy since AI is responsible for much of our incremental GDP. Someone needs to step up." 

Palihapitiya posted what appears to be several slides from a Social Capital deck showing alarming trends in public sentiment toward AI data centers, clearly moving deeply negative. 

Charts

AI has a perception problem - and it's getting a lot more political:

• The first chart shows net favorability of AI is negative (-20), worse than ICE (-18) and close to politically toxic categories.

• That's a big signal: AI is no longer viewed as neutral "innovation" - it's drifting into polarized, politically charged territory.

• Translation: regulatory risk is rising, not falling.

Surging power bills are the core at public backlash against AI 

• Power prices were relatively stable from 2014-19, then erupted post-2020.

• The narrative forming (rightly or wrongly): AI plus data centers = massive energy demand = higher bills

• Whether AI is the main driver doesn't matter - perception is locking in causality.

Local backlash is now measurable - and accelerating

• Data center projects facing opposition are soaring fast

• Roughly 40% of contested data centers get canceled

• That's a real constraint on future supply growth

The warnings about public backlash against data centers were well known by our readership for nearly two years. We noted this again last year.

Something we warned about a year ago... https://t.co/xECu4mNEGj pic.twitter.com/dcpcO7Uc78

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 6, 2026

Even with AI at their fingertips, the tech crowd's messaging on data centers remains awful.

The same tech bros who spent years backing Democrats and supporting de-growth climate policies, before suddenly pivoting to Trump, are now running into a disaster of their own making. The public is already angry, and the political damage will be far from easy to unwind. Next time, they might want to fund politicians who prioritize grid security over a fake climate crisis. 

Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times,

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on April 6 that it had closed its investigation into Tesla’s Actually Smart Summon feature, a remote driving function that allows low-speed vehicle movement over short distances in parking areas using a smartphone app.

The NHTSA opened its probe into the feature in January 2025 following multiple reports of crashes and incidents while the system was active.

The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) probe involved 2.85 million Tesla Model X, Model Y, and Model 3 vehicles equipped with the company’s Full Self Driving software package made between 2016 and 2025.

The ODI received 159 reports involving incidents with Actually Smart Summon sessions. The incidents typically were minor impacts stemming from the system failing to fully detect the vehicles’ surroundings and resulted in minor property damage.

Incidents took place when users did not have a full 360-degree view of their surroundings, in which the app could completely assess situational awareness, the NHTSA reported.

“This limited the app user’s ability to determine whether an impact was imminent during initial vehicle maneuvers such as reversing in close proximity to an obstacle or a curb,” the ODI report noted.

Most damage occurred from Tesla vehicles striking parking gates, nearby vehicles, or parking barrier posts, the NHTSA said. There were no reports of accidents where the vehicles’ airbags deployed, injuries, or fatalities, the federal agency added.

Only a minute fraction of Summon sessions resulted in incidents, the NHTSA noted. Two accidents involved wet conditions in snow-covered parking lots. Tesla owners tried to use the Actually Smart Summon feature to move their cars, but snow was blocking the forward-facing cameras and vehicles’ clipped unoccupied cars in adjacent parking spaces. In both instances, the NHTSA said, the Tesla owners did not command their vehicles to stop moving despite not having a clear field of view in the app.

In another incident, a Tesla powered with the Summons app failed to detect a gate arm that was blocking the exit lane of a parking garage.

The NHTSA said it dropped its investigation into the app after Tesla released six over-the-air software updates to improve blockage detection with the vehicles’ cameras. Tesla also released additional firmware updates that reduced false negative camera blockage detections under wet and snowy conditions.

“Due to low incident occurrence and low incident severity, this preliminary evaluation is closed,” the NHTSA report said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

Tesla is still under an active investigation by the ODI related to its Full Self Driving (FSD) feature. The inquiry began in early October following a spate of crashes and safety violations involving drivers using the vehicle’s automated driving system. That investigation originally involved 2.88 million vehicles, but the probe was expanded in mid-March to include roughly 3.2 million vehicles.

The ODI is currently evaluating Tesla’s FSD ability to properly detect degraded and adverse roadway conditions and give drivers enough time to react.

Bill Maher asks Ana Kasparian which Middle Eastern country she would feel comfortable wearing "that dress" and then this happened...

Bill Maher asks Ana Kasparian which Middle Eastern country she would feel comfortable wearing “that dress” and then this happened.

MAHER: “If you had to live in the Middle East. Any city. Where would you live where you’d be comfortable in that dress?”

ANA: “I’m sure I would not… pic.twitter.com/IzaYDuDjW5

— The Vigilant Fox ?? (@VigilantFox) April 6, 2026

Transcript (via Vigilant Fox)

MAHER: “If you had to live in the Middle East. Any city. Where would you live where you’d be comfortable in that dress?”

ANA: “I’m sure I would not be comfortable in this dress in any of the various Middle Eastern countries that have been destabilized by—”

MAHER INTERRUPTS: “Really? You’re not really blaming it on whitey, are you? You’re blaming Islam on whitey?”

ANA: “I’m not blaming Islam on whitey.”

MAHER: “But what you’re saying is we destabilize? That’s why you can’t wear that dress?”

ANA: “Did we destabilize?”

MAHER: “Wait a second.”

ANA: “We were funding terrorist organizations in Syria during the Syrian civil war starting under the Obama administration.”

MAHER: “We’re talking about your dress.”

ANA: “It looks good, I know.”

MAHER: “You’re saying you can’t wear that dress in Syria because of whitey destabilizing?”

ANA: “I didn’t say that.”

MAHER: “Okay, that’s what it sounded like… When I asked about the dress, you went right to destabilize. So is that why you couldn’t wear that dress?”

ANA: “You want me to talk about jihadism and Islam.”

MAHER: “Why won’t you? Why won’t you?”

ANA: “I don’t believe in jihadism, which is why I’m furious the United States just had significant Al Qaeda terrorists in the White House.”

MAHER: “But it’s not just jihadism that is preventing you from wearing that dress there. Are you saying every Muslim is a jihadist? I don’t think they are.”

ANA: “Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill. Let’s focus for a second.”

MAHER: “No, you won’t answer this question.”

Authored by Georgina Jedikovska via Interesting Engineering,

The U.S. has carried out a successful launch of a hypersonic missile made to travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5, meaning over five times the speed of sound, which allows it to cover vas distances in a matter of minutes.

The launch of the common hypersonic missile, which is capable of covering more than 3,836 miles per hour (mph), was conducted as part of a joint test by the US Army and Navy.

According to the U.S. Department of War, the event took place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the state of Florida. The push is part of the U.S.’ ongoing efforts to develop advanced strike capabilities.

“The U.S. Army’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Fires, in partnership with the US Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive Strategic Systems Programs, conducted a successful launch of a common hypersonic missile from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on March 26, 2026,” the U.S. Department of War stated.

A joint military test

Designed to travel faster than Mach 5, hypersonic weapons are considered a key part of future warfare and a military technology breakthrough. Their high speed makes them difficult to detect and intercept with existing defense systems.

The latest test by the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy marks another step toward deploying a shared hypersonic missile system. It is developed for both land- and sea-based platforms, and aims to help accelerate deployment and reduce costs.

Officials noted that the missile is being designed to strike time-sensitive, heavily defended, and high-value targets with minimal warning. What’s more, its extreme speed significantly reduces enemy reaction time.

“The Army and Navy partnership to field a common hypersonic missile across land- and sea-based platforms supports the National Defense Strategy by accelerating timelines, reducing costs, and delivering a highly survivable capability to defeat time-sensitive, heavily defended, and high-value targets at speeds exceeding Mach 5,” the U.S. Department of War continued in a statement shared on April 2.

Hypersonic push continues

According to reports, the test is part of a larger Pentagon plan to quickly roll out advanced technologies for combat use. On November 17, the US Department of War said that hypersonic weapons are one of six Critical Technology Areas (CTAs) seen as essential for battlefield advantage.

“Our adversaries are moving fast, but we will move faster,” Emil Michael, under secretary of war for research and engineering, revealed in a press release. “The warfighter is not asking for results tomorrow; they need them today.”

The six areas include Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI), biomanufacturing (BIO), Contested Logistics Technologies (LOG), Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID), Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE), and Scaled Hypersonics (SHY). All are aimed at strengthening battlefield performance.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at the time that the nation’s military has long been at the forefront of military power. “Under Secretary Emil Michael’s six Critical Technology Areas will ensure that our warriors never enter a fair fight and have the best systems in their hands for maximum lethality.”

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, turning innovation into battlefield advantage will secure future dominance. “The War Department is committed to remaining the most deadly fighting force on planet Earth,” Hegseth concluded.

President Trump has set a Tuesday evening deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Tehran facing severe consequences if it refuses. Trump’s messaging suggests the next phase of the conflict could shift toward strikes on power plants, bridges, and other critical infrastructure nationwide.

New reporting from Bloomberg suggests that the Department of War shifted a large share of its JASSM-ERs, formerly the AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, a long-range, conventional, air-launched stealth cruise missile fired from bomber aircraft and fighter jets, from Pacific theater stockpiles and U.S. warehouses to bases supporting the Gulf theater.

Sources told the outlet that the JASSM-ERs shifted out of U.S. warehouses in late March were being delivered to Central Command bases or to Fairford in the UK.

Neither the report nor its sources disclosed all the CENTCOM bases to which the stealth cruise missiles were being sent.

In recent days, large waves of U.S. transport planes have been observed flying from the U.S. into Europe, suggesting the DoW may already be laying the groundwork for resupplying munitions to the Gulf theater.

Bloomberg noted, "After the moves, only about 425 JASSM-ERs out of a prewar inventory of 2,300 will remain available for the rest of the globe. That would be roughly enough for 17 B-1B bombers on a single mission. Another 75 or so are 'unserviceable' because of damage or technical faults."

The Air Force has described the JASSM-ER as having a range of more than 500 nautical miles, compared to about 200 nautical miles for the earlier JASSM.

The JASSM-ER allows U.S. forces to strike Iranian targets from farther away and with lower risk to aircrews - and comes after multiple U.S. military aircraft have been shot down, resulting in daring rescues of the crewmen.

The Air Force noted the JASSM-ER is already integrated into the B-1, B-2, B-52H, F-15E, and F-16, allowing many air-delivered launch options.

The movement of these stealth cruise missile stockpiles may suggest that if Iran does not agree to reopen the Strait by Tuesday evening, and also agree to some form of ceasefire, the next phase of the conflict will begin with a barrage of these missiles.

 

 

US-Israeli strikes have been on a noticeable uptick against Iranian institutions of higher learning over the last days. This has included a large-scale aerial assault on Tehran’s Sharif University, which is often dubbed the "MIT of Iran".

After this attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi threatened Iranian retaliation, warning "aggressors will see our might." He said several other universities have also been struck over the last days:

Israeli-U.S. aggressors have bombed the MIT of Iran. This follows attacks on other universities.

1,400 years ago, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that even if knowledge was situated in the distant Pleiades, Iranians would be capable of attaining it.

Aggressors will see our might. pic.twitter.com/Dn3hSCaBNv

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 6, 2026

These recent attacks have had a high rate of casualties, at a moment the Trump administration is vowing to go harder, imposing a Tuesday midnight deadline for Tehran to agree to ceasefire - or else it will face an unprecedented bombing campaign against bridges and power plants.

Al Jazeera writes, "At least 34 people have been killed, including six children, as the United States and Israel carried out massive attacks across Iran, targeting a top university as well as residential areas, after US President Donald Trump set a Tuesday deadline for Tehran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its power plants and bridges."

The report continues, "The Fars news agency reported on Monday that an air attack killed 23 people, including four girls and two boys aged below 10 years, in Tehran province’s Baharestan County."

Neither the US nor Israel divulged the reasons behind attacking university campuses. Many of the students at these very campuses were involved in the January protests. The US claims to be "helping" the protesters through the Trump-ordered massive bombing campaign.

One regional report says that at least 30 Iranian colleges and universities have suffered damage amid the ongoing attacks.

Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran was attacked last Friday. It issued a statement saying: "This hostile act not only targets the security of academics and the country’s scientific environment, but is also a clear attack on reason, research, and freedom of thought."

Trump has threatened to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Age" - and that is precisely what appears to be in progress. An advanced Iranian civilization, with scientific know-how, is seen as a threat in Israel, which believes Tehran has long sought to achieve nuclear weapons status.

Airports have also been frequently targeted, with Israeli officials saying at the start of this week that dozens of aircraft and helicopters have been taken out - including "Bahram Airport, Mehrabad Airport and Azmayesh Airport" - according to regional media.

* * * Sale ends Friday

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,

A federal appellate court has agreed to reinstate a $656 million judgment against Palestinian authorities for Americans killed or wounded in attacks by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority while in Israel.

The ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was issued in the wake of a Supreme Court decision authorizing such suits for victims of international terrorism in a legal saga that’s been ongoing since the mid-2010s.

“We conclude that the original judgment for the plaintiffs should be reinstated. That conclusion is consistent with the plain import of the Supreme Court’s decision,” the judges said in a decision dated March 30.

The Supreme Court’s decision directly overturned a prior ruling made by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on the matter.

The case has its earliest origins in a law passed by Congress in 1992, the Anti-Terrorism Act, which permitted victims of international terror to sue the offender.

In 2014, in the case Sokolow v. PLO, the PLO was successfully sued under that law in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the case, victims were awarded $218.5 million in damages by a jury—tripled to $655.5 million under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The victims and their families have stated that Palestinian agents were either directly involved in the attacks or helped incite them.

The Palestinians have consistently argued that the cases shouldn’t be allowed in American courts.

In 2016, the case was brought before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. In their decision, circuit judges tossed out the verdict from the lower court, and ruled that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over international actors in non-U.S. countries.

Frustrated by the ruling, Congress in 2019 passed the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (PSJVTA), which sought to create a legislative carve-out to ensure that lawsuits against the PLO and Palestinian Authority could move forward.

The legislation stated that the PLO and Palestinian Authority had “consented” to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts if they either paid martyr benefits to terrorists or their families or if they maintained any non-United Nations offices in the United States.

In 2023, the matter came again before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, and the court held that the PSJVTA was unconstitutional. Its ruling stated that Congress could not simply “deem” an action to constitute consent to U.S. jurisdiction without running afoul of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

In a unanimous decision in June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of victims, overturning the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling that the Fifth Amendment was violated by the PSJVTA.

With the vacation overturned, the courts will now move toward enforcement of the lower court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, although collecting the funds from the PLO may meet with practical obstacles.