We're deporting birds now?

 Rare cliff swallow colony to be removed from Rowe Town Hall

Cliff swallows are migratory, reports Duck.ai. And who wouldn't believe a duck? Especially given the options.

What's more they migrate from Central America. 

They do eat mosquitoes. 

But is it great TV?

Steve Bannon calls on Trump to deport Elon Musk and ‘seize’ SpaceX: ‘Strong belief that he is an illegal alien’

First we have Stevie Miller, White House assistant assistant, playing Donnie's hatchet man, and then former White House assistant assistant Stevie Bannon enters to attack boy wonder and occasional assistant roommate Elon, who ran off with the other Stevie's wife, urging Donnie to deport Elon and take away his toys. While NATO hangs in the balance. And where is China?

And the first season is just getting started .

"Never seen anything like this"

US faces vape shortage as China tariffs, seizures hit Geek Bar

One retailer, who asked not to be named because their business sells unauthorised vapes, told Reuters that one of the store's vape suppliers normally receives 100 boxes of Geek Bar vapes per week, but is now getting just ten.

Never. And how will we survive without our unauthorized vapes? 

Taco chips

 Trump Extends Tariff Exemption for Chinese-Made Chips Through August

The exemption covers key technologies such as graphics processing units (GPUs), which are central to the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. First enacted in 2019 under Trump’s initial term, the tariff has remained on hold to avoid disrupting tech supply chains.

[Emphasis mine]

[I won't resist at least occasionally sucumbing to the initialism TACO, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. Sorry.] [Not really.]

Plenty, over the years

Germany: 20,000 evacuated in Cologne as WWII bombs defused

The evacuated area includes the entire old part of the city, 58 hotels, three Rhine bridges, the town hall, the railway station in the district of Deutz, which lies across the Rhine from the city center, museums, a hospital and two care homes. 

 WWII ended 80 years ago.

The DOGE dodge

Trump Frees Medicare Fraudster Behind $200M Scam Targeting Vulnerable Patients

He and his partner, Marianella Valera, submitted 866,000 false claims and collected more than $87 million, exploiting patients incapable of basic functions, according to prosecutors.

After all the talk about rooting out fraud and corruption… 

Well, that didn't last long

What 'Russia's Pearl Harbor' Says About Trump's Golden Dome 

With drone swarms now capable of crippling billion-dollar military infrastructure for a fraction of the cost, military analysts who spoke to Newsweek say the United States must reevaluate whether its missile defense priorities are geared for the future—or stuck defending a past that no longer exists.

"Russia's Pearl Harbor" was nothing at all like Pearl Harbor except for the fact that a large number of aircraft were destroyed on the ground. But that aside.

The Golden Dome (because iron is not Trumpy enough for Trump) over North America was a useless idea to begin with; it's inevitable obsolecence has just been dramatically accelerated. 

Not clear is not good

FEMA staff confused after head said he was unaware of US hurricane season, sources say 

The remark was made by David Richardson, who has led FEMA since early May. It was not clear to staff whether he meant it literally, as a joke, or in some other context.

The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday [June 1] and lasts through November.

Forecasters say it might be more active than usual.

Better find out.

I'm just guessing…

Russia and Ukraine to hold more peace talks after Kyiv hits nuclear-capable bombers

 

…this is going to be quite the jolly affair. Not. 

Or is. It may be going on right now. (Right now is 10:25 UTC, June 2.)

Would it be fun to listen in?

And no more Lucky Penny Day?

See a penny, pick it up? In the future, probably not as often — and, some say, that matters 

For example, a bedrock of American culture is the price tag ending in $.99, somehow trying to convince buyers that the 1-cent difference keeping the cost from the next dollar makes it a good deal…. What happens to that price now?

Lucky Penny Day is, or was, May 23. 

Who was Miss Atomic Bomb?

The woman, the mystery and the man who solved it 

Las Vegas sought to capitalize on [the atomic] craze, and in 1957 sent a photographer out on assignment to shoot a promotional ad for nuclear tourism. He got an idea to capture the lead dancer at the Sands Hotel in a swimsuit in the shape of a fluffy mushroom cloud. In the photo, the high-heeled showgirl is smiling with arms outstretched as the desert unfolds behind her like a stage.

Hard to imagine getting that idea, but the rest is history. 

When curiosity knows no bounds

Astronomers discover strange new celestial object in our Milky Way galaxy

Located 15,000 light-years away in a region of the Milky Way brimming with stars, gas and dust, this object could be a highly magnetized dead star like a neutron or white dwarf, Curtin University’s Ziteng Andy Wang said in an email from Australia.

Or it could be “something exotic” and unknown…

A single light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.