Elon Musk, new co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency declared this week that the new outfit will seek to audit the IRS.
It started with Musk asking X users what they think should happen to the IRS budget, given that it just asked for an increase of $20 billion.
Musk then responded to a post imagining the IRS being audited.
Is Musk serious? Probably.
X owner Elon Musk has fired back at the news that British MPs will “summon” him to their parliament to address allegations of spreading ‘disinformation’.
GB News reports that “An inquiry in the House of Commons is meaning to investigate the rise of ‘harmful’ AI content online by calling tech heavyweights to probe the ‘spread of content that can mislead and harm.’”
The report adds that “Labour’s select committee chairwoman, MP Chi Onwurah has called on the Tesla and SpaceX owner to explain his alleged ‘promotion of pure disinformation.’”
Musk responded in typical fashion on X, writing that British MPs “will be summoned to the United States of America to explain their censorship and threats to American citizens.’”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is investing $9.4 million to develop a vaccine designed to reduce the number of methane-producing microbes in a cow’s stomach, Agriland reported.
The funding comes from his Bezos Earth Fund, a philanthropy he established with $10 billion in 2020. The fund intends to distribute all of its money by 2030, by funding projects to “fight climate change and protect nature.”
Researchers at the United Kingdom’s Pirbright Institute and Royal Veterinary College, and New Zealand’s AgResearch are among the groups receiving funding to research how a vaccine could reduce the methane emitted by cows as they digest and expel food through manure, flatulence and burping.
“Vaccines have proven to be an incredibly cost-effective way to deliver global health solutions,” said Bezos Earth Fund President and CEOAndrew Steer in a press release. “If we can apply this approach to vaccinate cattle and reduce emissions, the scalability and impact could be phenomenal.”
Although scientists have sporadically researched methane vaccines for over four decades, no vaccine yet exists. The project’s first goal is to show that such a vaccine is possible.
“This grant is a moonshot for proof-of-concept — risky bets like this are essential to tackling the climate crisis,” Steer said, according to Agriland.
The researchers will study how methanogens, or methane-producing microbes, colonize the digestive tract of calves and how their immune system responds to those methanogens.
The FDA has approved the first phase of human trials for a self-amplifying mRNA bird flu vaccine developed by Arcturus Therapeutics, funded by the US government and the Gates Foundation. This vaccine, targeting the H5N1 virus, introduces an enzyme prompting cells to produce more mRNA, leading to sustained antigen production, which experts warn could lead to prolonged immune activation and unknown health risks.
Epidemiologist Dr. Nicolas Hulscher described the FDA’s approval as an opportunity for Arcturus to “experiment with injecting humans with H5N1 bird flu replicon mRNA.” The clinical study is funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of HHS focused on pandemic preparedness. Arcturus also recently received a $928,563 grant from the Gates Foundation, which has long supported mRNA research.
Arcturus claims self-amplifying mRNA vaccines can provide immunity with smaller doses. However, Hulscher warned that even a small dose might be more hazardous due to the vaccine’s self-replicating nature, as the extent of antigen production cannot be precisely measured or controlled.
Bill Gates was interviewed at an Aspen Ideas Festival in 2010 and said that the USA must get medical costs under control and re-examine its funding priorities to prevent its education system from further erosion. He said medical costs are dominating state and federal budgets in the form of Medicare and other payments, and fewer funds are available for education.
Gates told Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson that the USA had demonstrated an unwillingness to question if “spending $1 million on the last three months” of a person’s life is a cost-effective direction, especially considering the same amount of money can keep 10 teachers employed.
He called for the nation to do a better job of examining the benefits of costly end-of-life medical care. “That’s called the death panel and you’re not supposed to have that discussion,” Gates said, taking a jab at critics of the health care bill that the US Congress had considered earlier that year.
Attorneys for X Corp., the Elon Musk-founded firm that took over Twitter and rebranded it as X, have filed a notice of appearance in the bankruptcy case of Alex Jones and his Infowars platform.
On Thursday, The Onion purchased InfoWars at auction and plans to transform it into a satirical take on the iconic brand.
NBC News reported, “The Onion plans to shutter Jones’ InfoWars and rebuild the website featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators, according to a person with knowledge of the sale.”
On the same day, a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas ordered an evidentiary hearing to scrutinize the transparency of the auction process.
Jones, in a video posted to X on Thursday, accused Connecticut Democrats and The Onion of orchestrating a backdoor deal to claim the platform. “They said, ‘It was competitive,’” Jones said.
“They changed all the bidding rules and made it secret two days ago. I had a bad feeling about this.”
Remember when major companies including Disney pulled their advertising from X after Elon Musk took over, and then Elon told them to go fuck themselves?
Well, they’ve come crawling back.
Musk is suing Soros funded rabid leftist organisation Media Matters for suggesting that the ads were appearing next to “hate speech.”
In the meantime it appears that the huge companies involved have finally realised that shutting off their reach to half the planet on the world’s biggest platform isn’t the smartest of ideas.
Elon Musk’s X has initiated legal action against the state of California, seeking to prevent the enforcement of a new statute mandating that major online platforms either remove or label deepfake election-related content, as a violation of the First Amendment, particularly for its impact on memes and satire.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
The legal challenge was presented in a federal court earlier this week, focusing on legislation designed to curb the influence of artificially altered videos, images, and sounds, collectively known as deepfakes. The legislation is poised to become effective on January 1.
The law in question, Assembly Bill 2655, was signed as part of California’s efforts to safeguard the integrity of the upcoming 2024 US presidential election from the risks posed by technological manipulation. Governor Gavin Newsom, having clashed with Musk following Musk’s sharing of a parody video of Vice President Kamala Harris, aims to mitigate these alleged risks.
The legislation has sparked concerns among tech giants and free speech supporters, who understand that it suppresses user engagement and stifles free discourse and satire under the guise of curbing misinformation.
Arcturus Therapeutics, a company specializing in mRNA-based pharmaceuticals, quietly announced Monday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval for its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for ARCT-2304, a self-amplifying mRNA (sa-mRNA) injection targeting the H5N1 avian influenza “bird flu” virus.
The FDA has recently come under fire for “failing to meet safety requirements” and “failing to prioritize scientific data quality delivered from FDA laboratories,” according to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The new Arcturus trial, funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), aims to assess ARCT-2304’s efficacy in preventing pandemic influenza and plans to enroll around 200 healthy adults across the United States.
“Arcturus is actively engaged with the U.S. government to prepare for the next pandemic, and clearance to proceed into the clinic with our STARR® self-amplifying mRNA technology is a key step in this important process,” said Joseph Payne, President & CEO of Arcturus Therapeutics in a press release.
“The Phase 1 clinical trial is designed to evaluate the safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity of ARCT-2304 as a potential vaccine to protect against the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza.”
Presdient elect Trump has officially announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will head a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In a press release, Trump noted “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement.”
Trump added, “It will become, potentially, The Manhattan Project of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of DOGE for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, The Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.”
“I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans,” Trump continued, adding “Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending.”
“They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the US Government accountable to WE THE PEOPLE,” Trump declared.
Hellbound and Down 
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