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The Federal Trade Commission’s Latest Frivolous Antitrust Suit Takes Aim at Amazon

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) new antitrust lawsuit against Amazon is an amazing exercise in hubris and absurdity.

In a complaint filed Wednesday, the agency alleges that Amazon’s incredibly popular Prime program is a scam. Prime—a monthly or yearly subscription program that confers many benefits, including free shipping and tons of streaming content, to Amazon customers—is too easy to sign up for and too hard to cancel, the FTC alleges.

“Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime,” the agency said in a statement. “Amazon also knowingly complicated the cancellation process for Prime subscribers who sought to end their membership.”

But these claims of deception fall apart upon close examination (as noted by my colleague Eric Boehm yesterday). The FTC’s complaint revolves around mundane moves by Amazon, like conspicuously asking non-Prime customers if they want to sign up or requiring Prime subscribers to click through several screens to unsubscribe.

Patrick Hedger, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, noted that it took him under a minute and required just six clicks to cancel his Prime account—fewer clicks than it takes to submit a public comment on the FTC website.

Like many major companies, Amazon has some flaws. But the argument that it’s broadly harmful to consumers—let alone so harmful that it requires the intervention of the federal government—is so far removed from reality that only government bureaucrats with an ax to grind could make it with straight faces. (In fact, Amazon routinely garners extremely high favorability ratings in consumer polls.)

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Huge Lost Maya City Has Emerged From the Jungle in Mexico

Mexican archaeologists harnessed the potential of LiDAR drones to undertake an extensive survey of the Yucatan Peninsula, yielding the remarkable discovery of a once-forgotten city. This extraordinary find includes pyramids, a ball court and sacred spaces distinguished by the presence of meticulously crafted stone columns.

Mexico’s National Institute for Anthropology and History ( INAH) has just announced that a team of archaeologists have identified a jungle-locked, ancient Maya city. Discovered deep in southern Mexico, the previously unknown city comprises large pyramids, stone columns, three plazas with “imposing buildings” and other sacred stone structures arranged in concentric circles.

INAH said the city is located in the state of Campeche, in the Balamku Ecological Reserve on the country’s Yucatan Peninsula . Archaeologists have named this lost Maya city in Mexico Ocomtun, which in the Yucatec Maya language means “stone column.” Speculatively, INAH said the city would have been an important Maya center for the entirety of the peninsula’s central lowland region, between 250 and 1000 AD.

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UKRAINE BLOCKS JOURNALISTS FROM FRONT LINES WITH ESCALATING CENSORSHIP

AFTER UKRAINIAN FORCES regained control of the port city of Kherson last November, following eight months of Russian occupation, some journalists entered the liberated city within hours. Without formal permission to be there, they documented the jubilant crowds welcoming soldiers with hugs and Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian officials, who tightly control press access to the front lines, responded by revoking the journalists’ press credentials, claiming that they had “ignored existing restrictions.” 

In the months since then, as Ukraine has sought to liberate more territory occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government has intensified its efforts to control the narrative of the war by tightening journalists’ access to the conflict. “After that, things started getting worse. … They have tried to place more control on journalists,” Katerina Sergatskova, editor-in-chief of Zaborona Media, an independent Ukrainian publication, told The Intercept. “Now it’s really hard to make reports from Kherson, for example.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, Ukrainian authorities have threatened, revoked, or denied press credentials of journalists working for half a dozen Ukrainian and foreign news outlets because of their coverage, the news outlet Semafor reported earlier this month. In one recent example, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense did not renew the press credentials of a Ukraine-based photographer who accused the country’s security services of subjecting him to interrogations, a lie detector test, and accusations that he was working against Ukraine’s “national interest.” Government officials restored Anton Skyba’s accreditation last week, following a pressure campaign by colleagues and press freedom advocates, who have been denouncing tightening restrictions on media access to the front lines. But the episode put a spotlight on tensions between Ukrainian authorities and the journalists covering the conflict that have quietly escalated in recent months. Veteran war correspondents, for their part, are accusing Ukrainian officials of making reporting on the reality of the war, with rare exceptions, nearly impossible.

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Boston First Responders Horrified to Find Four Children at Transgender-Drag Party with a Dead Body and Drugs and Sex Toys Scattered Throughout the Home

In a disturbing incident, four children were discovered in a squalid apartment filled with “alcohol, drugs, sex toys” and a deceased man, as reported by first responders and city officials.

Boston Fire Department first responders were called to a public housing complex for a man in cardiac arrest on Saturday morning.

What they found was horrifying! The crew found themselves confronting far more than a routine medical emergency.

“This is sickening,” City Councilor Michael Flaherty said. “I was informed by people at the scene that there were drugs, alcohol, sex toys all around the apartment as well as a dead body on the floor.”

The apartment was described as being in “extremely unsanitary conditions,” with approximately six adults present, all appearing to be male.

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US approves chicken made from cultivated cells, the nation’s first ‘lab-grown’ meat

For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves.

The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.

The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.

“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.

The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.

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Philadelphia Considers Zoning Restrictions on Still-Illegal Recreational Pot Shops

Recreational marijuana isn’t legal yet in Pennsylvania. That hasn’t stopped Philadelphia politicians from trying to future-proof their zoning ordinances to block recreational sales.

Philadelphia Councilmembers Brian O’Neill and Curtis Jones have proposed amendments to the city’s zoning code that would preemptively prohibit existing medical marijuana businesses in two overlay districts they represent from participating in recreational sales.

The prohibition would affect five existing medical marijuana stores, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported on the zoning amendments earlier today.

The immediate practical impacts of the amendments are minimal, given that recreational marijuana is still illegal in Pennsylvania. State lawmakers are nevertheless working on various proposals for legalizing recreational sales. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has endorsed legalizing (and heavily taxing) recreational sales.

Industry advocates say this will unfairly penalize existing medical marijuana businesses when recreational sales are eventually legalized, all because they opened up in the wrong part of town.

“If you set up a system where four or five stores can’t sell adult use and then 16 can, people are going to go to the ones” that can sell to recreational customers, says Jamie Ware, president of the Pennsylvania Cannabis Coalition (a trade association).

Ware is also a senior vice president with Holistic Industries which operates one of the Philadelphia dispensaries that would be affected by O’Neill and Jones’ zoning amendment.

Existing businesses, she notes, are locked into longer-term commercial leases, so they can’t easily move to avoid the restrictions. If the current medical system is any guide to how future recreational businesses will be regulated, transferring a license to a new location would require state approval and could take years.

O’Neill did not immediately respond to Reason‘s request for comment. Jones told the Inquirer that while medical sales haven’t created problems, recreational sales will bring a less desirable crowd, necessitating the restrictions.

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Summer solstice celebrations: Rituals for the longest day of the year at Stonehenge and around the world

In 2023, the longest day of the year falls on Wednesday 21 June – the same date as last year – although it can be any date between 20th and 22nd of the month.

This is known as the summer solstice, and it is a time of great importance for some religions, while for other people, it is simply a day to enjoy the (hopefully) bright summer weather well into the evening.

According to Greenwich Museums, the summer solstice will take place on Wednesday 21 June at 3.58pm.

It says: “While most people consider the summer solstice to be a day, it is in reality an exact moment in time that falls upon that day. This moment comes when whichever hemisphere you’re in is most tilted towards the sun.”

The summer solstice marks the beginning of summer by the astronomical calculation, with the season lasting until the autumnal equinox, which this year lands on Saturday 23 September.

The simpler meteorological definition splits the year into four seasons of three full months apiece, with summer beginning on 1 June and lasting until 31 August.

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The FBI Declassifies Data on a Famous Cryptozoologist / Ufologist


If you’re interested in UFOs, aliens and mysterious creatures, you’ll definitely want to see this: in just a couple of days ago, the FBI declassified its file on Ivan Sanderson (monster-hunter, author and Flying Saucer chaser). There are some intriguing stories in the file. And, one or two characters provide intriguing material. As I said, the man in person was the late Ivan Sanderson. If you’re not acquainted with him, here’s a bit of material on the man and his work. The American Philosophical Society said: “In the 1950s Sanderson became increasingly interested in the study of the unexplained, including cryptozoology and ufology. Sanderson founded the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) to look into such topics as UFOs, the Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch, the abominable snowman, and the Bermuda Triangle among others.” Indeed, throughout his life, Sanderson traveled everywhere and had wild encounters of the monstrous nature. There was, however, something else: namely, the interest of Sanderson by the FBI. With that said, let’s see what J. Edgar Hoover’s agents have in their website. Don’t miss it. You’ll want to read it for yourself.

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Titan Sub: OceanGate CEO Didn’t Want to Hire ’50-Year-Old White Guys’ Because They’re Not ‘Inspirational’

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who went missing aboard his Titan submersible vessel along with four other passengers on Sunday, told an interviewer he didn’t want to hire a bunch of “50-year-old white guys” like other submarine companies because he wanted his team to be “inspirational.”

“When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there but they typically have gentleman who are ex-military submariners and you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told a representative with Teledyne Marine.

“I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology but a 25-year-old you know who’s a subpilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational,” Rush continued. “So we’ve really tried to to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new.”

“We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, is related to safety and some of the the preponderance of checklists things we do for risk assessments and things like that, that are more aviation related than ocean related and we can train people to do that. We can train someone to pilot the sub, we use a game controller so anybody can drive the sub.”

Rush’s Titan sub went missing on June 18th while descending to the Titanic wreck site off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada in the Atlantic Ocean and has not been heard from since.

“On Tuesday, US Coast Guard officials said at a 1 p.m. ET news conference that the submersible has about 40 hours of oxygen left,” CNN reported.

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BLACKROCK RECRUITER SAYS $10K ‘CAN BUY A SENATOR,’ CALLS UKRAINE WAR ‘GOOD FOR BUSINESS’

A recruiter for BlackRock said that the asset management firm is able to “buy a senator” for $10,000 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “good for business,” according to a video recorded by an undercover journalist. 

“You could buy your candidates. First, there is the senators. These guys are f***ing cheap. Got 10 grand? You can buy a senator. I’ll give you 500k right now. It doesn’t matter who wins, they’re in my pocket,” BlackRock Recruiter Serge Varlay said in a video published Tuesday by the O’Keefe Media Group, which was founded by guerilla journalist James O’Keefe.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, can “run the world,” he also said in the video.

BlackRock is also financially benefitting from the war in Ukraine, according to Varlay.

“Ukraine is good for business, you know that right? Russia blows up Ukraine’s grain silos and the price of wheat is going to go mad up. The Ukrainian economy is tied very largely to the wheat market. The price of bread, literally everything goes up and down. This is fantastic if you’re trading,” Varlay also said. “Volatility creates opportunity to make profit. War is real f***ing good for business. It’s exciting when s*** goes wrong, right?”

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