CEOs are quietly realizing the AI replacement plan has a problem.

 

Gee, AI needs to become cost conscious.  The whole computer biome is a default to maximum computation and obviously the AI will slavishly recalculate the same decision it made yesterday and the day before.  engineers are simply too lazy to work like that.

and away goes your billing on an exponential curve.

Let us now see if they can fix this.

Sir Escanor (𝘏𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘚𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳)

@EscanorReloaded

CEOs are quietly realizing the AI replacement plan has a problem.

Two problems, actually.

One: the token costs for running AI agents are now exceeding what they were paying the employees they fired.

Two: when the tokens run out, the AI stops. Just stops. No continuity. No workaround. Just a spinning wheel where your workforce used to be.

You fired humans to save money and bought a subscription that bills you into a corner.

The employees you let go knew what to do when things broke.

The AI just invoices you for the outage.

And then there’s the permission problem nobody wants to talk about.

To do its job, the AI agent needs access. Full access. Your systems, your patents, your contracts, your future plans. Everything you spent years building, handed over to a process that has no loyalty, no discretion, and no skin in the game.

You didn’t hire a replacement.

You gave a stranger with no soul the keys to everything you own. 

Enjoy.

Something very interesting is beginning to emerge from inside the AI industry itself...

Written by Donna Hancock Date: 05-28-2026 Subject: Robots and Artificial Intelligence

The company that bet its future on AI just told 100,000 engineers to stop using its best tool because it was bleeding them dry

Something very interesting is beginning to emerge from inside the AI industry itself.

For the past two years we have been told that AI would replace human workers, dramatically reduce costs and create unprecedented efficiency across every sector of the economy.

Markets soared on that promise.

Companies fired staff, announced "AI integration" and watched their stock prices rise accordingly.

But now some of the first major cracks are beginning to appear in the narrative.

Microsoft has reportedly started canceling large numbers of internal Claude Code licenses after costs spiraled far beyond expectations as engineers increasingly relied on the system.

Uber executives admitted their AI budgets were effectively blown apart within months of deployment.

Even Nvidia's own VP of Applied Deep Learning openly stated that for his team, the cost of compute had become "far beyond the costs of the employees."

What is becoming apparent is that large scale AI deployment may not actually reduce costs in the way investors were led to believe.

Quite the opposite.

The more powerful these systems become, the more they are used. The more they are used, the more tokens, processing power, energy, infrastructure and compute they consume. And at enterprise scale those costs become enormous.

The assumption was that companies would replace expensive humans with cheap AI.

Instead, they may end up needing: expensive humans supervising extremely expensive AI systems running on staggeringly expensive infrastructure.

And that changes the economic equation entirely.

The Sumerian Tablet Listing 5 Species That Existed Before Humans — And How Each One Ended

firstly, ignore the use of the word species here. Secondly, insectoids used hive minds extensively during the Carboniferous. this is important new information.

This is one more transmission of antidiluvian knowledge, quite similar to genesis.

The hard part is grasping the translation transitions taking place ,but it is mostly from high level into a Bronze Age lexicon and back out.  so not completely impossible.

It literally tells us that neanderthals deminished and died out.  We suspected as much but had zero confirmation. This is unexpected confirmation. survivals may still exist only because we have exactly one report.  bigfoot is doing much better with the same constraints.

all this tells us that sumarian Text was informed by access to antidiluvial records and all of it needs to be taken seriously.

As I have posted ,Genesis is a translation from an antidiluvial text created on the heels of the pleistocene nonconformity and we also include the kolbrin Bible as well.  both provide an extensive survival report that conforms to a craft leaving and then returning with repopulation support and materials.  Think UFO the size of a football field.  Think 2000 year stand by some place else besides on Earth.  This will soon be possible and mankind certainly understood what was coming.

Ages are described accurately and this cannot be luck.

The Sumerian Tablet Listing 5 Species That Existed Before Humans — And How Each One Ended

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bumwBvTLgYc

In 1893, a team from the University of Pennsylvania pulled a clay tablet slightly larger than a man's hand from the excavation trenches at Nippur. It was cataloged as CBS 10673, packed into a crate with several hundred other fragments, and shipped to Philadelphia, where it sat in the basement of the Penn Museum for over sixty years, classified as a cosmogonic fragment, Old Babylonian copy, partial text. The first partial translation was attempted in 1956 by Samuel Noah Kramer, the same Kramer who spent decades assembling Sumerian myths from shattered pieces scattered across twenty museums worldwide. He translated the upper third, assigned it to the category of creation narratives, and moved on to better-preserved material that he considered more urgent. The lower two-thirds of CBS 10673, covered in dense cuneiform script arranged in two tight columns with unusually small sign spacing, remained untranslated until 2004. No one prioritized it. No one had reason to.

Null Source investigates CBS 10673, an ancient clay tablet from the University

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0:00In 1893, a team from the University of
0:02Pennsylvania pulled a clay tablet
0:04slightly larger than a man's hand from
0:06the excavation trenches at Nepur. It was
0:09cataloged as CBS 10673,
0:13packed into a crate with several hundred
0:15other fragments and shipped to
0:16Philadelphia where it sat in the
0:18basement of the Pen Museum for over 60
0:20years. Classified as a cosmogonic
0:22[music] fragment, Old Babylonian copy,
0:25partial text. The first partial
0:28translation was attempted in 1956 by
0:30Samuel Noah Kramer, the same Kramer who
0:33spent decades assembling Sumerian myths
0:35from shattered pieces scattered across
0:3720 museums worldwide. He translated the
0:40upper third, assigned it to the category
0:42of creation narratives and moved on to
0:44better preserved material that he
0:46considered more urgent. The lower two/3s
0:49of CBS 10673
0:51covered in dense cuniform script
0:53arranged in two tight columns with
0:55unusually small sign spacing remained
0:58untransated until 2004. [music]
1:01No one prioritized it. No one had reason
1:03to.
1:06When a team at the Oriental Institute in
1:08Chicago finally worked through the full
1:10text, what they found did not match
1:12Kramer's classification.
1:14The tablet does not describe the
1:15creation of humanity. It describes what
1:18existed before humanity. Five distinct
1:21species, each named with its own
1:23Sumerian compound term, each given a
1:26physical description, a function, and a
1:28duration of existence. And for each of
1:31the five, the tablet provides a specific
1:33mechanism of destruction. Not a single
1:36flood, not generic divine wrath. five
1:40separate extinction events described
1:42with structural detail that appears
1:43nowhere else in the surviving Cuneaform
1:45corpus. The tablet has been on
1:48restricted access since 2011. The stated
1:51reason is conservation. The conservation
1:54work has not produced a single published
1:56status report in 14 years. If you are
1:58here because the artifacts, the
2:00restricted tablets, the parts of the
2:02archaeological record that do not fit
2:04the textbook version of history interest
2:06you, subscribe.
2:09We investigate one of these cases every
2:12week. Now, let me show you what the
2:14tablet actually says about the five
2:15species that came before us.
2:19The tablet opens with a period the
2:21Sumerianss called Naml Gala, a phrase
2:23Kramer rendered as the age of lordship.
2:26The 2004 team proposed an alternative.
2:30Namlu gala functions not as a
2:32description of governance but as a
2:34temporal marker. An era defined not by
2:36who ruled but by what lived. The first
2:39species is called olu which breaks down
2:42into ool meaning primordial and doo
2:45meaning to shape. The ool du are
2:48described as beings of the water and the
2:50stone who moved without legs and built
2:52without hands. Their size is given in
2:54Sumerian architectural units suggesting
2:57organisms between 3 and 5 m in length.
3:00Their function is stated plainly. They
3:03prepared the ground. The mechanism of
3:05their ending reads, "The sky burned and
3:08the waters turned to powder."
3:10A 2016 paper in the proceedings of the
3:13National Academy of Sciences documented
3:16chemical signatures at the Peran Triacic
3:18boundary 252 million years ago, the
3:22largest mass extinction in Earth's
3:23history.
3:26The signatures indicated extreme
3:28atmospheric heating and ocean
3:29acidification so severe that marine
3:32carbonate structures dissolved. The
3:35waters turned to powder is not poetic
3:37metaphor. It is what happens to a
3:39calcium carbonate ocean under
3:41catastrophic acidification.
3:43The second species, Guirgal, translates
3:46as great boned form. They walked on the
3:48land the Udu had prepared, consumed
3:51vegetation, and their bones were as the
3:53pillars of a temple. Their ending came
3:56through the fire from the outer
3:57darkness, a grammatical construction the
4:00Sumerians reserved specifically for
4:01events originating beyond Earth's
4:03atmosphere. The Cretaceous Paleogene
4:06extinction 66 million years ago, a
4:09bolide impact, fire from the outer
4:12darkness. And the species it destroyed,
4:15great boned vegetation consumers whose
4:17skeletons were as temple pillars, bear a
4:20resemblance to sorapod dinosaurs that is
4:22difficult to attribute to coincidence.
4:25Two species, two extinctions,
4:29both described by people who had never
4:31seen a fossil.
4:33The remaining three entries maintain the
4:35same pattern. And the fifth one is the
4:37most disturbing of all.
4:40The third species is designated ashagar,
4:43a compound that has generated more
4:45disagreement than any other term on the
4:47tablet. Ash means singular. Mei refers
4:51to the divine laws governing reality.
4:54Gar means to place. Together the ones
4:57who set the singular law. They are
4:59described as small, numerous, dwelling
5:02in structures built from the earth
5:03itself, operating as a collective rather
5:06than as individuals. The scribe uses a
5:09phrase with no parallel in any other
5:10Sumerian text. They thought with one
5:13body. Individual cognition expressed
5:16through collective behavior. But the
5:18significant element is their
5:19destruction. The breath of the world
5:22changed and the ashmagar could not
5:24change with it. Their structures
5:25endured, but the builders did not.
5:28Paleontologists studying the late
5:30Carboniferous period have documented
5:32exactly this.
5:34Atmospheric oxygen levels reached 35%
5:38supporting arthropods of extraordinary
5:40size, dragon flies with 70 cm wingspans,
5:44millipedes over 2 m long, scorpions the
5:47size of dogs. These organisms built
5:50extensive burrow networks across
5:52multiple continents. When oxygen levels
5:54crashed during the transition to the
5:56perian, their passive tracheal
5:58respiratory systems could not function.
6:01The breath of the world changed. Their
6:03trace fossils survived. The builders did
6:06not. A Sumerian scribe writing around
6:091800 B.CE described an extinction
6:12mechanism that modern paleontology would
6:14not formally document until Robert
6:16Burner's atmospheric oxygen models at
6:19Yale in the 1990s.
6:21The scribe did not have isotope analysis
6:23or sediment cores. He had a tradition
6:26that told him a species had once
6:28breathed differently and died when the
6:30air betrayed them. The question is not
6:32whether this correspondence is real. The
6:35question is where the tradition came
6:37from.
6:39The fourth entry introduces Lunaur, a
6:42compound that translates as the near
6:44humans of the other land. The physical
6:47description is the most detailed on the
6:49tablet. The Luna Kurr walked upright,
6:52used stone tools, wore animal skins, and
6:55made sounds that carried meaning but
6:57were not speech. They were stronger than
6:59humans with thicker bones and skulls
7:01that sloped where ours are flat. They
7:04lived in caves. They buried their dead,
7:06and they existed alongside the earliest
7:08humans for many counted seasons before
7:11they disappeared. Their ending has no
7:13catastrophe. The tablet says simply that
7:16the new ones came and the Luna curr grew
7:18fewer and fewer until the last of them
7:21slept and did not wake. In 2010, Svante
7:25Pabo at the Maxplank Institute published
7:27the first Neanderthal genome.
7:30Neanderthalss coexisted with modern
7:32humans for approximately 5,000 years.
7:35They used tools, wore skins, buried
7:38their dead with apparent ritual intent.
7:41Their bones were denser. Their skulls
7:44featured pronounced brow ridges and a
7:46sloping posterior cranium. They
7:48communicated using a vocal apparatus
7:50that lacked the descended larynx,
7:52enabling full human speech. They made
7:55sounds that carried meaning but were not
7:56speech. Their populations declined
7:59gradually as modern humans expanded into
8:01their territories. The last known groups
8:04survived in southern Iberia until
8:06approximately 40,000 years ago. They
8:09grew fewer and fewer until the last of
8:11them slept and did not wake. The
8:13Sumerianss emerged around 4,500 B.CE.
8:17The Neanderthalss disappeared around
8:1940,000 years ago, a gap of 35,000 years.
8:23No oral tradition survives that span
8:25without written records. And yet CBS
8:2910,673
8:31describes a species matching the
8:33Anderthalss in every particular the
8:35tablet addresses. [music] anatomy,
8:37behavior, tools, communication, and the
8:40exact demographic pattern of their
8:42decline.
8:44Either the scribe invented a description
8:46that aligns perfectly with a hominin
8:48species he could not have known about,
8:50or the information came from a source
8:52that preserved knowledge across a time
8:54span that should have erased it
8:56completely.
8:58The fifth entry is the shortest and the
9:01[music] most difficult. The species is
9:03designated an shaga, those of the inner
9:06heaven. The physical description is
9:08almost absent. Instead, the text
9:10describes capabilities. The anshaga knew
9:13the counting of all things. They built
9:15structures that moved the stars in their
9:17vision. They spoke across distances
9:19without sound. And they held the mi, the
9:22divine laws, not as gifts from the gods,
9:25but as possessions earned through their
9:27own understanding. This is the only
9:29species on the tablet described as
9:31possessing technology, not tools,
9:34technology. And the mechanism of their
9:36destruction is not environmental.
9:38[music] The text says the anaga reached
9:41for the fire of the gods and the fire
9:42consumed them. They burned from within
9:45and the land they stood on became glass
9:47and the water they drank became poison
9:50and their children were born twisted for
9:52seven generations until none were born
9:54at all.
9:56The 2004 translation team published this
9:59passage with a [music] footnote that has
10:00been cited more than any other element
10:02of their work. The footnote reads, "The
10:05description is consistent in its
10:07structural elements with the known
10:08effects of ionizing radiation exposure
10:11on biological populations, [music]
10:13including acute radiation syndrome,
10:16environmental vitrification, water table
10:18contamination, and multigenerational
10:21terratogenic effects leading to
10:23reproductive failure.
10:25In 2005, a geological survey in
10:27Rajasthan documented deposits of fused
10:30silica glass in strata dating to
10:33approximately 2,000 BCE.
10:36The chemical composition did not match
10:38meteorite impact signatures. The trace
10:40element ratios were closer to trinitite,
10:43the glass created at the Trinity nuclear
10:45test in 1945, than to any natural
10:48formation. The anaga are the species on
10:51CBS 10673
10:53that most closely resembles humanity.
10:56Technological, mathematical, ambitious,
11:00destroyed not by an external force but
11:02by their own achievement.
11:05The tablet does not say whether we are
11:07the same species returning or a new
11:10attempt. It simply records what happened
11:12to the last civilization [music]
11:14that reached the level we are
11:15approaching now.
11:18Five species, five extinctions, each
11:21described in language that maps onto a
11:23real event in Earth's biological
11:25history. The correspondences are
11:28structurally specific. Marine organisms
11:30destroyed by ocean acidification.
11:33Large terrestrial fauna destroyed by
11:35boli impact. Giant arthropods destroyed
11:38by atmospheric oxygen collapse. Near
11:41humans gradually replaced by modern
11:42humans. A technological civilization
11:45destroyed by its own fire. The order on
11:48the tablet does not follow strict
11:50chronological sequence. The oxygen crash
11:52preceded the Peran Triacic event, but
11:55the tablet lists them in reverse. This
11:57has been used as an argument against the
11:59correspondence, but independent
12:01researcher Daniela Morasini in a 2019
12:04paper accepted for conference
12:06presentation at the European Association
12:08of Archaeologists and then withdrawn
12:10before delivery under unexplained
12:12circumstances argued that the tablet is
12:15organized not chronologically but
12:17hierarchically. Each species is more
12:20complex than the last.
12:23Water creatures, land creatures,
12:26collective builders, near humans,
12:28technological civilization, a ladder of
12:31increasing sophistication, each rung
12:33destroyed by a different mechanism,
12:35building toward one implicit question
12:37the tablet never explicitly asks, but
12:39that its entire structure makes
12:41unavoidable. If every species before us
12:44was destroyed, what destroys us? The
12:47fifth entry answers it. The fire of the
12:49gods is not punishment. It is not
12:51judgment. It is a threshold. A
12:54technological milestone that every
12:56sufficiently advanced species eventually
12:58reaches. And that according to the
13:00record preserved on this single clay
13:02tablet in a Philadelphia basement, none
13:04has survived. The scribe at Nepur did
13:07not editorialize. He did not warn. He
13:10simply documented what his tradition
13:12told him had happened five times before
13:14and arranged it in the only order that
13:16mattered, the order of what each species
13:18was capable of when it died.
13:22CBS 10,673
13:25was placed on restricted access in 2011,
13:297 months after the full 2004 translation
13:32was first cited in a popular science
13:34publication. A New Scientist article
13:36that drew attention to the extinction
13:38correspondences and generated
13:40significant public interest. The stated
13:42reason is conservation, but several
13:45details resist routine explanation.
13:47Conservation restrictions typically
13:49limit physical handling while
13:51maintaining catalog visibility. CBS
13:5410673 was removed from the museum's
13:56searchable electronic catalog in the
13:59same 2018 update that removed CBS 8534,
14:03the chromosome tablet held in the same
14:05institution. The accession number exists
14:08in the original 1893 printed ledgers,
14:11but the digital record has been thinned.
14:1414 years is an extraordinarily long hold
14:16for a tablet of this size. The Pen
14:19Museum has conserved tablets in worse
14:21condition within two to three years.
14:23[music] No status report has been
14:24issued.
14:27Formal access requests from three
14:29independent researchers between 2015 and
14:322023 were declined using identical
14:34language. The same sentences, same
14:37phrasing, same institutional template
14:39applied to two tablets that happened to
14:41contain the two most anomalous texts in
14:44the museum's Nepur collection.
14:46A junior member of the 2004 translation
14:49team speaking off the record in 2018
14:52said only that the institutional
14:54response to the tablet's public
14:55visibility had been chilling and that
14:58further work on the text was unlikely to
15:00receive university support. These are
15:03not the words of people who believe they
15:04translated a routine creation myth. The
15:07team leader has not published on
15:09Sumerian cosmogonic material since 2011.
15:12His academic output shifted entirely to
15:14administrative texts and economic
15:16records, the least controversial
15:18category of cuneaifor scholarship. The
15:21pivot was never publicly explained.
15:25CBS 10673
15:27does not answer its own question. It
15:30describes five species, five
15:32destructions, five clearings of the
15:34biological stage, each making way for
15:36something more complex, more capable,
15:39more dangerous. It places humanity at
15:42the end of this sequence, not as the
15:44pinnacle of creation, but as the latest
15:46iteration in a cycle that has repeated
15:48five times before. And it gives the
15:50fifth destruction a cause that is not
15:52geological, not astronomical, not
15:55atmospheric. It is technological,
15:58self-inflicted.
15:59The anaga, the heart of sky beings, had
16:02mathematical knowledge, long-d
16:04distanceance communication, structures
16:06that altered their perception of the
16:08cosmos. If they existed and destroyed
16:11themselves at the threshold described on
16:13the tablet, then we are not pioneers. We
16:16are followers on a path that has been
16:18walked before, approaching a fire that
16:20has burned before. The geological
16:22evidence is thin. Fused glass in
16:25Rajasthan and Libya.
16:28Anomalous signatures in strata that do
16:31not match known natural sources. None of
16:33it conclusive. All of it contested. But
16:36the tablet's description is on the clay.
16:39It has been read. It says what it says.
16:42And it sits in a museum basement in
16:44Philadelphia, restricted, uncataloged in
16:47the digital record, waiting for someone
16:49to ask why a 3,800-year-old scribe
16:52described five mass extinctions with
16:54structural accuracy a modern
16:56paleontologist would recognize, and why
16:59the institution holding this record has
17:01spent 14 years making it harder to see.
17:04The Sumerians did not have carbon dating
17:06or genome sequencing or atmospheric
17:08modeling. They had clay and reads and a
17:12tradition they said came from beings
17:13older than themselves. What they wrote
17:16on CBS 10673
17:18either represents the most extraordinary
17:20coincidence in ancient literature or the
17:23most extraordinary inheritance. The
17:25tablet does not tell us which. It
17:27records what came before and how each
17:30version ended.
17:32And it leaves the sixth ending ours.
17:37If this changed how you think about what
17:39the Sumerianss actually knew, subscribe.
17:42Next week, we are looking at another
17:44tablet from the same Nepur collection.
17:47One that describes not what lived before
17:49humans, but what was done to human
17:51biology after we were created. The video
17:54on screen goes deeper into the
17:56restricted material at the Pen Museum.
17:59Click it. The archive is larger than


18:01they want you to know.

University of California's woke decision to ignore STEM applicants' SAT scores to boost 'equity' backfires with oh-so-predictable consequences

Let us understand something.  SAT preparation is a thing.  That preparation ensures you have reached a basic treshold. I wrote those tests back in 1966 with minimal preparation  in Ontario where they were not even important.  since then preparation has become a real thing.

Entering any math program without that baseline is a mistake and here is also where talent matters.  No even talented teenage couch potato ever got recruited by the NBA.  Same problem.  It takes both taent and setious application. to compete at this level.  The body and mind need to transition.

University entrance should plausibly be restricted to a 1400 combined SAT.  and augmented by colledge level preparation for those not meeting this standard.  We want the A team and the B team.  The fluff merchants stay C team and that is still a majority.

University of California's woke decision to ignore STEM applicants' SAT scores to boost 'equity' backfires with oh-so-predictable consequences, as professors beg for help

By SOPHIE GABLE, US REPORTER

Published: 10:59 EDT, 28 May 2026 | Updated: 11:24 EDT, 28 May 2026

The University of California's landmark decision to eliminate standardized testing has now come under scrutiny as professors shed light on the extreme proficiency failures undergraduate students have demonstrated.

Multiple mathematics professors and one law professor at UC Berkeley authored an open letter calling on the university administration to mandate the SAT and ACT for the fall 2027 semester.

More than 600 professors have signed the letter, pushing back on the argument that standardized tests eliminate equity in the application process.

'The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,' the professors said.

'Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome.'

Standardized tests have been a frequent subject of debate in academia. Those in opposition have argued that students who can afford standardized test preparation and attend well-funded high schools have an advantage over lower-income communities.

In 2020, the Board of Regents unanimously voted to suspend standardized testing requirements through 2024 and eliminate them altogether by 2025.

John A. Pérez, the chair of the board at the time, hailed the decision as an 'incredible step in the right direction.'

Professors at UC Berkeley have argued in an open letter to bring back standardized test requirements

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The University of California eliminated test requirements in 2020 after a significant push from students and advocacy groups that even included a lawsuit

John A. Pérez, the chair of the Board of Regents in 2020, praised the decision to eliminate test score requirements

The decision came after a 2019 lawsuit filed by UC students, the Compton Unified School District and other advocacy groups claimed that college entry tests discriminate against applicants based on their socioeconomic status.

After the Board of Regents voted to phase out the tests, students argued that allowing voluntary submissions did not eliminate the discriminatory practices.

UC later reached a settlement with the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and the university eliminated standardized tests in the application process.

Six years later, professors have said that the decision, coupled with the impacts of the pandemic, has poorly impacted students.

'We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,' the professors wrote.

Mathematics professors Zvezdelina Stankova, Svetlana Jitomirskaya, John W Lott and Mina Aganagic authored the letter alongside law professor Chris Jay Hoofnagle.

The professors noted that mathematics in particular proved to be a struggle for undergraduates.

The letter noted that at least 20 percent of Berkeley first-semester calculus students showed a lack of proficiency in their exams.

Zvezdelina Stankova argued that returning to the standardized test requirement ensures equity, rather than eliminating it

Mathematics professors Zvezdelina Stankova, Svetlana Jitomirskaya, John W Lott and Mina Aganagic authored the letter alongside law professor Chris Jay Hoofnagl

Five UC Berkeley professors authored the letter, but hundreds have signed it in support

All University of California campuses have been accepting applicants in recent years without considering their standardized test scores, a decision that is now facing intense scrutiny from professors

Stankova argued that standardized tests ensure equity rather than diminish it. She said that in her 30-year teaching career, her 2023 calculus II class stood out as an unprecedented challenge.

'Something had changed drastically. The bottom was taken out, and there were 25 to 30 percent of the students who were in free fall. There was nothing you could do for them. They were just not prepared,' she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

She noted that she understood the letter would be controversial, but argued that she does not believe reinstating standardized tests will harm diversity or equity.

'I actually see it helping it, because you have right now the lack of SATs hurting the underrepresented minorities,' Stankova argued.

'You give them a ticket, an entrance ticket to a great university system like UC, only that they fail. How is that diversity?'

Advocates for eliminating standardized tests have pointed to the record number of applications UC received in 2021.

The university admitted a record number of students, hailing the class as its largest and most diverse ever.

Administration officials also loosened application requirements that year, following a challenging learning environment brought on by the pandemic, including modifications to deadlines and letter-grade thresholds.

The Board of Regents unanimously voted to eliminate test scores in 2020. The new board has not publicly said whether they will return to the requirement

Over 600 professors across UC campuses from varying disciplines have signed the letter in support of bringing standardized tests back

UC spokesperson Rachel Zaentz told the Daily Mail in a statement, 'In light of concerns raised by UC faculty about student preparedness for undergraduate study, in March I called upon our systemwide faculty Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) to address timely topics tied to students’ college readiness and UC’s admission process.

'BOARS is in the process of proposing a roadmap of policy work and partnership building with other state and K-12 education leaders in the next academic year and beyond.'

Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of the UC systemwide Academic Senate, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle that he has heard 'concerns raised by UC faculty about student preparedness for undergraduate study.'

He added that the board 'is in the process of proposing a roadmap of policy work and partnership building with other state and K-12 education leaders in the next academic year and beyond.'

The university stressed that mathematics proficiency has been a challenge due to periods of remote instruction during the pandemic, suggesting that standardized tests were not solely to blame.

The Daily Mail has reached out to the Board of Regents for comment.

Record-breaking apartment building 3D printed in just 34 days

This is promising.All the finishing still takes months but the shell is printed eliminating concrete forms if i got it right.  That matters because all that can be done on the fly while even running modifications.

four story blocks are pretty well the working standard and able to provide an optimal foot print.  We have already settled on this.

now we can work at pulling the cost down.

Record-breaking apartment building 3D printed in just 34 days

By Adam Williams

May 28, 2026

F

France's ViliaSprint² is Europe's largest 3D-printed apartment building

Plurial Novilia

Europe's largest 3D-printed apartment building has been completed in France. Containing 12 social housing apartments spread across three floors, the project's printing process was carried out in just 34 days.

ViliaSprint² was created by developer Plurial Novilia, with designer HOBO Architecture, and printed by PERI 3D Construction using a COBOD BOD2 3D printer, which is the same type used in the previously covered 3D-printed data center and earthquake-resistant house. It's positioned next to another very similar building by the same developer, which was constructed using traditional techniques and took three months longer to complete.

ViliaSprint² was completed three months faster than a neighboring conventionally constructed building

Plurial Novilia

According to COBOD, ViliaSprint² is the first building in France in which both the load-bearing structure and all walls were printed directly on-site. The COBOD BOD2 printer extruded a cement-like mixture supplied by Holcim in layers to build up the basic shell. This printing was originally planned to last 50 days but took just 34 days in all, with three human operators overseeing the work. The rest of the build process, including traditional construction work by human builders like adding the roof, windows, and wiring, began in March 2025 and was completed in early 2026.

"The curved facade and rounded floorplan are only economical because of 3D printing, complex geometries that would add significant cost with conventional formwork come at no premium," says COBOD. "On-site concrete production further reduces transport emissions. The optimized form also saved approximately 10% of concrete volume. The building integrates perlite insulation, timber balcony structures, 500 sq m (5,400 sq ft) of photovoltaic panels, and a hybrid gas/heat pump system by Atlantic Systèmes, achieving around 60% energy self-sufficiency in compliance with France's RE2020 2025 [green building] targets."

The interior consists of 800 sq m (8,611 sq ft) of living space, spread over the three floors. Each of the dozen social housing apartments also comes with its own balcony.

Each of the apartments in ViliaSprint² opens onto its own balcony area

Plurial Novilia

As far as we can tell, the ViliaSprint² could actually be the world's largest 3D-printed apartment building, but with this construction space being so decentralized and fast-moving, perhaps we've missed one. Let us know in the comments if you know of something larger.

Looking to the future, Plurial Novilia and its partners are planning another larger project containing approximately 40 apartments using two 3D printers simultaneously. The aim is to reduce print time by a factor of four and lower costs to that of conventional construction.

The Quiet Collapse Under The Market's Surface...It's Getting Louder

rivate credit is typically illiquid and difficult to price.  Yet we have eras of enthusiasm because they can promise Yeilds  that are in short supply.  when that stalls, you worry.

Worse we have a following demographic shrinkage underway which undermines the whole structure.

consumption has to shrink.

The Quiet Collapse Under The Market's Surface...It's Getting Louder

Wednesday, May 27, 2026 - 08:00 AM

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/quiet-collapse-under-markets-surfaceits-getting-louder

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

The market is hypnotized by headlines out of the Middle East. Every missile strike, every oil spike, every rumor about escalation with Iran sends volatility dealers and gamma-chasing algorithms into another violent intraday swing.

But beneath the geopolitical theater, a dangerous story continues to deteriorate quietly in the background: multiple areas are cracking in a way that looks increasingly systemic, and almost nobody wants to talk about it. But I won’t shut up about it.

Why? Try this on for size. According to Fitch Ratings, the U.S. Private Credit Default Rate just hit another all-time high. Fitch reported that the trailing twelve-month private credit default rate rose to 6.0% for April 2026, up from 5.7% in March and the highest level since the firm began tracking the data in August 2024.

The model-based default rate climbed to a record 4.8%, while the privately monitored rating default rate remained an astonishing 9.7%. Those are accelerating cracks.

Fitch recorded 10 private credit default events in April alone, heavily concentrated in industrials, manufacturing, and business services. More importantly, the composition of those defaults matters. The majority were not traditional payment misses. Seven involved distressed maturity extensions, lenders kicking maturities one to two years down the road simply to avoid recognizing immediate failure. The remaining defaults largely involved borrowers introducing payment-in-kind interest structures instead of paying cash interest.

This isn’t normal business operations for private credit. Instead it’s like running a triage at an emergency room. Extending and pretending while hoping magic liquidity comes out of nowhere and saves the day is a strategy popular on Wall Street. The only problem is when that liquidity never arrives, the chaos is multiples larger than it would have been if these businesses had done the right thing years prior.

The most alarming detail from Fitch may be this: in the April trailing twelve-month period, Fitch counted 81 unique defaulters generating 99 separate default events — the highest number ever recorded since tracking began. More than half of all default activity came from interest deferrals or PIK structures replacing actual cash payments.

In plain English, companies are increasingly surviving by pretending they are solvent when they aren’t.

Healthcare providers remain among the worst areas, while consumer products posted an extraordinary 11.1% default rate. Industrials and manufacturing surged to a 9.1% default rate, nearly doubling year-over-year. Fitch itself warned that prolonged Iran-related inflation pressure and higher energy costs could further weaken consumer demand and increase rating pressure on industrial issuers.

As I’ve written for the last year (at least), private credit was sold as a superior replacement for traditional banking risk. Investors were told that direct lenders had tighter covenants, better borrower visibility, superior workout flexibility, and floating-rate protection. What actually happened was a decade-long explosion of leverage financed by ultra-cheap money and dependent on permanently low defaults.

Now rates are higher, refinancing windows are shrinking, and many of these companies were never structurally viable at current borrowing costs.

I have already argued repeatedly that rates likely need to go higher from here because inflation pressures remain embedded throughout the system. The bond market understands this. Long-end yields continue to scream that inflation expectations are not anchored, fiscal credibility is deteriorating, and Treasury supply is becoming overwhelming. And the problem is simple: every additional increment higher in rates worsens private credit defaults materially.

A massive portion of these borrowers are floating-rate structures. Every basis point increase directly raises debt servicing costs for already fragile companies. Many sponsors are now choosing between injecting fresh equity into deteriorating businesses or simply extending and pretending until the market forces recognition.

At the same time, the U.S. consumer is visibly weakening. Auto loan delinquencies and credit card delinquencies that are 90+ days past due have already returned to levels last seen during the 2008 financial crisis. Households have burned through excess savings, financing costs have exploded, and inflation continues to erode purchasing power.

The consumer exhaustion is no longer theoretical. The only question is whether or not consumer exhaustion even matters. During Covid, when the Fed printed a metric fuck ton of cash in the absence of having an actual economy, consumer behavior — sitting at home and drinking beer, if you were me — didn’t matter. But now, with the Fed’s inability to paper over the entire economy again due to inflation, consumer behavior may actually matter.

Now the Federal Reserve — and potentially the incoming Fed Chair — is trapped in an impossible position. Inflation remains too sticky to justify aggressive easing. The bond market is revolting against fiscal expansion and demanding higher yields. Yet the real economy, particularly lower-income consumers and heavily leveraged borrowers, is weakening rapidly beneath the surface.

There are no clean choices left. Cut rates too early and inflation risks reigniting while bond yields surge even higher in response. Keep rates elevated and the pressure wave moving through private credit, consumer lending, commercial real estate, and corporate refinancing only intensifies.

Meanwhile, equity markets continue trading like geopolitical prediction markets. The Iran conflict has become the dominant headline catalyst for every daily gamma swing we now call a stock market. Algorithms chase oil, defense stocks, and volatility spikes while investors remain fixated on the next military escalation.

But behind the scenes, the underlying financial plumbing continues to deteriorate.

Private credit defaults are rising to records. Consumers are rolling over. Delinquencies are back at crisis-era levels. Bond market stress is intensifying. And leverage built during the zero-rate era is finally colliding with the reality of sustained capital costs.

Markets can ignore structural deterioration for a surprisingly long time, but eventually, reality forces recognition.

Like a drunk finally waking up clear-headed after a long night, at some point this market will sober up and realize that beneath the geopolitical distractions, the foundation itself has been quietly cracking the entire time. In the meantime, here’s a couple ideas I’ve thrown around about trying to sidestep a bond crisis, should it occur: What To Own Before A Bond Market Crisis

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What Do They Have Planned? Scientists Are Projecting That The Population Of The World Could Fall By 50 Percent By 2064

This is about potential pandemics.  While tyhis is a real risk, it is typically stabalised by self isolation and cell phones make that super easy today.

My greater concern is the global drop in birth rates.  This alone can produce a steady global decline which we are already seeing.

That is the real existential threat and not overpopulation.

What Do They Have Planned? Scientists Are Projecting That The Population Of The World Could Fall By 50 Percent By 2064

May 26, 2026 by Michael

https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/what-do-they-have-planned-scientists-are-projecting-that-the-population-of-the-world-could-fall-by-50-percent-by-2064/

The global elite have been warning about overpopulation for a long time. Many of them are convinced that humanity is the greatest environmental threat that our planet faces, and so they believe that dramatically reducing the number of people walking around should be a top priority. A number of very twisted measures have been implemented in an effort to advance that agenda, but the population of the globe has continued to grow. Needless to say, this has greatly frustrated population control advocates. The things that they have been doing are not working fast enough, and there are some that are pushing for more extreme measures.

Getting rid of large numbers of people is not easy, but scientists at the University of Milan are projecting that we could see a massive population shift during the years ahead.

In fact, they are claiming that the population of the world could fall by 50 percent by the year 2064…

Earth’s population currently sits at 8.3 billion people – but it could crash within the next 40 years, experts have warned.

Scientists say that, in a worst–case scenario, humanity could potentially be halved by the year 2064.

Could you imagine 4 billion people being erased from the planet in less than 40 years?

The researchers at the University of Milan are saying that their projections are based on a “deliberately conservative” worst case scenario…

‘Under a deliberately conservative worst–case assumption that Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity suddenly dropped to around two billion people, our model predicts a rapid global population decline, with humanity potentially halving by around the year 2064.’

In order to hit the number that they are talking about, billions of people would have to die.

Just think about that.

Ultimately, these researchers are envisioning a world with a “carrying capacity” of just two billion people…

But in a ‘worst–case illustration’ Earth’s carrying capacity could plummet to just two billion, they warned.

This would mean that the maximum number of people our planet could sustain indefinitely would be around a quarter of its current population.

And, in turn, it would trigger a crash which could see the number of people on Earth halved.

So what are some things that could kill billions of people?

As I detailed extensively in my last book, nuclear war and the nuclear winter that follows could kill billions of people.

Widespread global famines could also achieve that goal, and it appears that widespread global famines are rapidly approaching.

But perhaps the easiest way to kill billions of people would be a global pandemic with a very high death rate.

Right now, Bundibugyo virus is spreading like wildfire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Unlike other forms of Ebola, there is no cure for Bundibugyo virus.

We are being told that it has a death rate of between 25 and 50 percent, and so once you get it there is a very good chance that you will die.

Some of the symptoms include fever, headache, nausea, abdominal pain, intense weakness, nosebleeds and vomiting blood.

A lot of people that didn’t take this outbreak seriously are starting to pay attention now that two suspected cases have popped up in Italy…

TWO suspected Ebola cases have been detected in northern Italy in the past 24 hours, triggering a health alert.

A man, 31, and a woman, 33, developed a high fever, nausea, vomiting and intestinal problems – symptoms of the deadly virus – after returning from Uganda.

The cases concern a man from Bulgarograsso and a woman from Lurate Caccivio, had spent three months in the East African country working in humanitarian aid.

Other members of their families were travelling with them, but it is still unclear if they are also presenting with any symptoms.

Hopefully authorities in Italy have isolated those two individual in time.

Because it appears that this version of Bundibugyo virus spreads very easily.

At this stage, we are being told that the outbreak in central Africa “is spreading faster than efforts to contain it”…

The deadly outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is spreading faster than efforts to contain it, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said those responding to the epidemic were “playing catch-up” because of delays in detecting cases.

Nobody has any idea how many people are actually infected.

And more people are dropping dead with each passing day.

One official with the International Rescue Committee has ominously declared that “warning signs are flashing red”…

“The initial failure to detect this outbreak has allowed it to spread to several areas of Ituri province in northeast DRC, where the first cases were identified, as well as to North Kivu (just to the south of Ituri) and South Kivu provinces, and now Uganda,” the International Rescue Committee, one of the aid groups on the ground, said in a report published on Tuesday.

With cases reported in key population centers such as Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Kampala in Uganda, there is a significant risk of onward spread of the disease, the group assessed.

“The warning signs are flashing red,” Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies for the group, said in a statement.

Global health authorities are openly admitting that they do not have this outbreak under control.

And it certainly does not help that some victims have been running away from treatment centers…

Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have reported a disturbing new trend of patients fleeing from treatment centers when they come under attack from angry mobs – something that is happening with increasing frequency, as youths in the eastern Congo demand the remains of friends and family be handed over for funerals, in defiance of outbreak protocols.

When victims run back to their family and friends, they are just going to spread the disease to others.

And in some cases, mobs of young people are actually attacking treatment centers…

First on Saturday and again on Sunday, residents of Mongbwalu town in the DRC attacked the Mongbwalu general referral hospital.

Dr Richard Lokodu, medical director of the facility, told Reuters that 18 Ebola patients had fled on Saturday after “unidentified individuals” burned tents, erected by Médecins Sans Frontières, where patients were being isolated.

The hospital came under four waves of attacks on Sunday, he added, by young people mobilised by relatives of a religious leader who died of Ebola. Seven other patients escaped and Congolese police and soldiers had to intervene to restore order.

This is an unmitigated disaster.

Bundibugyo virus is going to spread all over the region, and perhaps that is what was intended.

Can you imagine the panic that we will witness if this horrifying disease starts spreading in the United States?

Authorities have already ordered enhanced screening for anyone entering the U.S. from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan…

Officials in the US said on Friday that people returning to the US from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan would need to fly to one of three US airports for screenings: Washington Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia; and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.

Bundibugyo virus is not supposed to transmit easily from person to person.

But this version does.

Healthcare workers that have taken extreme precautions are even catching it.

We could potentially be just weeks away from a major global health scare.

I will be watching this outbreak very closely, and I think that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than we are being told.

Space-Squatters Will Open The Final Frontier

Sooner or later, we will have gravity ships available and this makes free lance economics possible.  Them you penetrate rock anywhere and secure it as a living space.

a few other problems to solve but that certainly starts it all.

This is not far fetched at all.

Space-Squatters Will Open The Final Frontier

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 - 08:25 PM

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/space-squatters-will-open-final-frontier

Authored by Rainer Zitelmann via American Greatness,

When we talk about the future of mankind in space, we should learn from history.

Squatters played a crucial role in the settlement and economic development of the American West. Long before government institutions were firmly established, settlers moved onto unclaimed land, built homes, cultivated farms, and created entire communities without initially possessing formal legal title to the land they occupied.

In many cases, these settlers were the true pioneers of westward expansion. They established the foundations of economic life—farms, towns, trade networks, and local infrastructure—while the state often arrived only later. The expansion of the American frontier was driven less by central planning in Washington than by millions of individuals acting on their own initiative.

What made the squatters especially important was that they created facts before the law recognized them. They settled the land first and expected legalization afterward. Over time, American lawmakers accepted this reality and introduced legislation allowing settlers to obtain formal ownership of the land they had improved and cultivated.

The squatters embodied a distinctly American idea: that those who productively use land should have the right to own it. This belief stood in sharp contrast to the European tradition of aristocratic landownership and became deeply connected to the American ideal of the independent entrepreneur and pioneer.

Their activities transformed vast territories into economically productive regions. By cultivating land, building businesses, and creating communities, squatters helped turn the frontier into one of the most dynamic areas of economic growth in the nineteenth century.

Some economic historians view the squatters as an early example of how property rights emerge from below—through use, investment, and social recognition—before they are formally recognized by the state.

What we need in the future are space squatters. The crucial difference from the historical squatters of the American West is this: on other celestial bodies, there is currently no ownership at all. The land belongs to nobody. And unlike in the settlement of the American frontier, there is no indigenous population whose rights could be violated.

According to Article II of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, states are prohibited from appropriating celestial bodies or territory in outer space. Whether this prohibition also applies to private individuals and private companies remains controversial among space lawyers.

The treaty says nothing explicitly about whether private individuals are permitted or prohibited from owning celestial bodies or land on celestial bodies. At the time, nobody imagined that entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos might one day finance private space exploration with their own fortunes.

Some legal scholars, therefore, argue that national sovereignty ends where outer space begins. In their view, the treaty prohibits national appropriation of the Moon, Mars, or asteroids—but not private ownership. Their interpretation relies on a classic legal principle: expressio unius est exclusio alterius. If a treaty explicitly prohibits one category of actors—namely, states—then other actors not mentioned may remain unrestricted.

So who should have the right to acquire property in space? My answer in my book New Space Capitalism is straightforward: Those who have the financial means to get there, develop, and use the land. For instance, if SpaceX succeeds in reaching Mars and starts to build permanent settlements on the Red Planet, then the ownership of land should go to SpaceX first. Not of the entire planet, of course, but of a practicable area, for example, the size of Singapore. The surface area of Mars is 200,000 times that of Singapore, so SpaceX would initially only own 0.0005 percent of Mars. That would be enough to develop multiple settlements, but not so many that others would no longer have a chance.

SpaceX could fund its flight and development costs by listing the land on Mars in a real estate investment trust (REIT). The price would then be determined by the market. Most people would buy shares not to live there themselves, but in the hope of value appreciation. Future colonists could also receive preferential access to shares or land rights as an incentive to settle and remain on Mars for several years. In this way, private ownership would become a mechanism for attracting pioneers willing to take extraordinary risks.

We need private property in space. Without it, the conquest, settlement, and economic development of the Moon, Mars, and asteroids will remain impossible. More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle observed, “Property that is common to the greatest number receives the least attention.” The history of the twentieth century confirmed his insight. Every socialist experiment that abolished private property ultimately failed. Why should a system that repeatedly failed on Earth suddenly succeed on Mars?

No—what humanity needs are pioneers of space, space squatters, just as America once needed squatters to settle the frontier. The difference is that this time, no one will be displaced, because the celestial bodies belong to no one at all.

Rainer Zitelmann is the author of the book New Space Capitalism, which will be published by Skyhorse in early June.