President Donald Trump lost the popular vote in the 2020 election by 4.4%. That hasn’t stopped him, though, from latching on to a highly unusual Census Bureau report published Tuesday afternoon that allegedly found less than two-hundredths of a percent of voters in that presidential election were noncitizens.

According to the report, 24,000 out of 128 million voters in the 2020 presidential election were ineligible “non-citizen” voters. Unnamed authors of the seven-page report, partially titled “A Beginning Analysis,” said the bureau still has to analyze 32 million voter records. According to Pew, some 158.4 million ballots were cast in the 2020 election. The Census Bureau’s report found 159.9 million ballots were cast in the election.

“The Census Bureau’s library of administrative records makes it uniquely capable of compiling and publishing statistics on election crime and other forms of fraud,” the report concludes, echoing the Trump administration’s prior attempts to link election and social service spending fraud to immigration.

The Census Bureau report comes after Trump has sought to lean on the statistical agency to uphold his administration’s monomaniacal goal of delegitimizing the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump used the report’s findings to urge the passing of the SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter suppression bill that Trump has been pressuring Congress to pass for months, but which does not have widespread support even among Republicans  in Congress. 

“On the first 128,000,000 Voters,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “the Census Bureau proves that over 24,000 non-citizens voted illegally! The Census Bureau is going to analyze the next 32,000,000 Voters, and this number will explode. I WON THE ELECTION!”

Howard Lutnick, the secretary of the Department of Commerce, under which the Census Bureau falls, backed his boss in a post on X touting the report.

Experts have told TPM that there is “absolutely no basis” to Trump and the MAGA movement’s claims about noncitizen voting. Trump and Republicans have been propping up conspiracy theories about noncitizens voting en masse for Democrats in federal elections for years. Nevermind that the findings of Tuesday’s Census Bureau report obviously does not support any claim that the 2020 election was somehow rigged by a crush of ineligible, noncitizen voters. The bureau’s analysis diverts from normal operations in several ways, researchers and public data experts said Tuesday, which makes the veracity of its findings impossible to confirm.

“It lacks transparency and accountability,” Beth Jarosz, a senior fellow in demographic and socioeconomic analysis at the Georgetown University Massive Data Institute, told TPM.

Neither the Census Bureau nor the Commerce Department immediately responded to TPM requests for comment.

The Census Bureau used a roll of private voter data, compared with various federal data sources, to substantiate its finding. That’s unprecedented, Jarosz said.

“[O]ne of the red flags in the report is that the Census Bureau, when they start to use a new data source, typically goes through a very extensive process of trying to understand the data quality,” Jarosz said. “And I don’t see any evidence that they did that.”

On X, Omar Noureldin, senior vice president of policy and litigation strategy at Common Cause, said the Census Bureau doesn’t collect the information it would have needed to publish definitive findings about alleged noncitizen voting.

“The 2020 Census did not collect citizenship status, and the Census Bureau does not have a comprehensive individual ‘citizenship records’ file to definitively match against voter rolls,” Noureldin wrote. The type of data the Bureau did use in its report, according to its own methodology, “are modeled population estimates, not evidence that 24,000 people voted illegally,” he continued. 

The report doesn’t list any authors or even a bureau department from which the report came. According to Mike Schneider, an Associated Press reporter who covers the Census Bureau, that’s atypical.

“Every other report on the bureau’s ‘Census Publications’ site is credited to a statistician, economist, demographer or researcher,” Schneider wrote on his Substack.

Not even a department within the bureau is listed on the completely anonymous report. The report says its data was analyzed and published with “high confidence,” but lacks any definition on what high confidence means.

Tuesday’s report references legislation from 1902 which made the Census Bureau into a permanent governmental entity and empowers the Bureau to “collect statistics related to… crime, pauperism, and benevolence, including prisoners, paupers, juvenile delinquents,” and the like. The report’s authors cite this provision as giving the Bureau authority to “compile and

publish information on crime.”

This is an oversimplified interpretation of that provision, Mark Mather, the associate vice president of programs at the Population Reference Bureau, said in a data user forum. The legislation’s provision authorized the decennial Census to count “people already in institutions,” Mather wrote, not to identify “potential lawbreakers.”

“I’m concerned about the potential chilling effect of this work,” Mather continued, saying the report “sends a potentially troubling message about how administrative data shared with the Census Bureau might be used.”

Just in the last two months, the administration has:

• Thrown out long-awaited plans to update race and ethnicity data collection;
• Eliminated an umbrella of highly technical, statistical privacy methods, which will result in less published data from the bureau;
• Proposed adding a question to the 2030 Census to identify and eliminate noncitizens from the total population count, and;
• Proposed a regulation that would eliminate the collection of race and ethnicity data for the first time in census history.

The Department of Justice since 2025 has continued escalating its efforts to obtain voter roll data from states. Federal judges have dismissed 23 DOJ suits against states which have refused to turn over voter information.

Not to make light—or lightning, I guess—of a man’s death, but when an active volcano known for spewing molten rock and ash and occasionally producing volcanic lightning has signs telling people to please be careful because the area is experiencing intense volcanic activity, it’s probably best to abide by the sign’s wisdom.

According to the Associated Press, a 29-year-old Kansas man died Sunday after being struck by lightning while hiking on Sicily’s Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano.

Rescuers found the man alone in an exposed area around 4,600 feet above sea level. He was airlifted to a hospital in Catania in cardiac arrest and was later pronounced dead. His name has not been released.

Kansas Man Dies After Being Struck by Lightning on Mount Etna

Local authorities had restricted access to parts of the volcano because of recent heightened activity, some of which, namely its volcanic ash, had disrupted flights at nearby Catania Airport. The area where the man was reportedly found, Valle del Bove, had been closed to hikers, according to local fire officials.

The source of the lightning is up for debate. Weather forecasts had predicted thunderstorms in Sicily on Sunday, but lightning can also be generated by volcanic eruptions, which create electrical charges when ash particles collide, creating terrifying electrical bolts nestled within the ominous dark plumes billowing out of a vent. Officials say that more people have died from lightning strikes on Etna in recent decades than from the volcano itself.

The last time someone died from an eruption-related incident was in 1987.

The post 29-Year-Old Tourist Killed by Lightning While Hiking Sicily’s Active Mount Etna appeared first on VICE.

If any lesson can be taken from the extremely, laughably ugly animated film Niu Lai, as it dominates the Chinese box office, blowing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey out of the water, it’s probably that people will always love a viral, memeable disaster just as much, if not more, than a meticulously crafted masterwork. And they will come out in droves so they, too, can be in on the joke.

Niu Lai is an 86-minute animated film about a newborn calf learning life lessons or some such s—t. It went from making roughly 7,700 yuan in its first 10 days to more than 14.9 million yuan, according to The Guardian, after social media turned the too-earnest-and-scrappy-for-its-own-good movie into a national joke.

If you haven’t seen any footage, it looks like the animation you see in a late-90s children’s TV show. Like ReBoot, but much worse. Probably closer to the more recent Adult Swim show Xavier: Renegade Angel, but Xavier had the benefit of looking shitty on purpose. Niu Lai was made over five years by just two people, a mother-son filmmaking duo. It had no marketing, no trailer, and almost no audience.

Then some of the few people who did see it started posting clips recorded in the theater showing off its bizarrely bare-bones visuals, and it took off.

An Animated Movie With Almost No Audience Became a Hit After Everyone Started Mocking It

That puts Niu Lai into the proud cinematic tradition of movies that become successful because they sucked real hard. American film history is littered with films with more ambition than budgets and filmmaking know-how could support, creating a whole subgenre we affectionately call “so bad it’s good.”

I feel like we’ve been seeing fewer and fewer of these in recent years. There used to be a whole lower-middle class of filmmakers and film financiers who seemed to specialize in making objectively terrible movies that were still undeniably watchable. The kinds of movies that were the bread and butter of podcasts like How Did This Get Made and the legendary show Mystery Science Theater 3000 before it, along with countless local TV hosts like Elvira and Joe Bob Briggs.

While I haven’t seen the whole thing, from everything I’ve read and seen online, Niu Lai is bad in a way a lot of things aren’t bad anymore. In an era where things are bad because they were run through AI, which only knows how to make things aggressively subpar using a factory process that churns out a sea of sameness, Niu Lai is a special, handcrafted kind of bad that used to be an abundant resource and has sadly dried up like the rivers and lakes being chugged by data centers. It’s quaint. It’s cozy.

It has the distinct whiff of human-made garbage, and that’s exactly why it’s made millions.

The post The ‘Worst Animated Movie Ever’ Is Somehow Becoming a Box Office Hit appeared first on VICE.

Amazon is bringing Alexa Plus to Fire TV device owners in the US for free. Starting today, users in the US with an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember smart TV, or other TV with Alexa Plus built in, including those from Panasonic and Hisense, will get access to the more conversational AI assistant.

Previously, Amazon made Alexa Plus available to Fire TV customers with a Prime or Alexa Plus subscription. But now, everyone will get access to Alexa Plus, which can provide movie recommendations based on your mood, help you jump to specific scenes, and answer questions about what you're seeing on-screen. It can also connect to your …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Jason Statham's upcoming film Mutiny is set to hit theaters on August 21st, but for at least an hour today it was available to stream in full on the US version of Amazon Prime Video. My colleague Dominic Preston was able to verify that all 1 hour and 35 minutes of the movie was available to watch on Amazon's streaming platform, though it now shows as "unavailable." The Mutiny website and marketing materials state that it'll only be available in theaters when it's officially released in two days.

There's nothing to suggest that this was released on Prime Video intentionally, or that it's intended to be some marketing stunt - neither the Punc …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon says its drone delivery service will reach "nearly 500 cities and towns in the United States" by the end of this year, increasing its coverage by six times compared to the current footprint. Prime Air deliveries will soon be launched in the Chicago, Illinois; Syracuse, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; and Boise, Idaho metro areas, according to Amazon's announcement, with "more communities to come later this year."

These will join 11 locations across the US where Amazon already offers drone deliveries, with each Prime Air site serving an area of approximately 175 square miles. The service aims to quickly deliver packages o …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Apple AirTag may be a jack-of-all-trades - people use it for keeping track of keys, suitcases, backpacks, purses - but I think the most logical use case for it, by far, is keeping track of your pet. I attach it to my corgi Jelly's collar via a matching silicone holder. Have I ever once truly needed it to find her, and do I think she'd ever run off on me? No - she's a pretty loyal herding dog, so she likes to keep an eye on her parents - but just like whatever else you may attach an AirTag to, there's a significant chance that the one time you truly need it, you'll be thanking God that you had it. (Kind of like insurance.)

I think it'd b …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) and incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) are set to face off in the general elections following Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary. The other two candidates in Alaska’s crowded 16-person Senate field have not yet been called. 

As of 8 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Peltola had 48% of the vote and Sullivan had 42.8% with 80% of votes in. 

This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Republican voters in Florida rejected Rep. Cory Mills’ reelection bid in Tuesday’s primary, Decision Desk HQ projects, shutting out of Congress a lawmaker who is facing allegations that he assaulted a woman and threatened to publicize nude videos of a former girlfriend, among other possible misconduct.

Ryan Elijah, a former local Fox television news anchor, is the GOP nominee in the district, which President Donald Trump won by 12 percentage points in 2024.

Mills campaigned heavily on the president’s endorsement, which Trump renewed in February, months after the allegations against Mills surfaced. 

Today, it seems everyone is expecting perfection from those around them, but rarely from themselves. When it comes to dating, we have ridiculously high standards for one another, from appearance and personality to communication style and availability. While respect, kindness, and love are must-haves, no partner will ever be the perfect partner.

However, there are certain behaviors worth addressing in our partners or relationships, as they can damage even the healthiest of connections. One such pattern is defensiveness. In relationships, defensiveness can quickly and unintentionally spiral into a controlling behavior or manipulative reaction. 

“Defensiveness rarely controls a partner by actually telling them what they can or can’t do,” says Giulia P. Davis, LMFT, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and Founder of Mycelia Therapy. “It controls by making certain conversations so difficult that eventually the other person stops bringing them up.”

While everyone gets defensive from time to time—and some defensiveness is necessary for self-protection—too much can prevent the other person from feeling heard or understood.

Impacts of Defensiveness on Relationships

A defensive individual can unintentionally dissuade their partner from sharing concerns or starting hard conversations. It can feel intimidating, frustrating, and downright exhausting when met with denial or blame-shifting every time you voice your feelings.

“It’s common for individuals to develop habits in which they are cautious with how they express themselves in these relationships,” says Davis. “Individuals will often practice conversations before expressing them; use softer language; wait until ‘the right’ time to bring up an issue; refrain from bringing up issues because there could potentially be an argument.” 

Many people in such relationships believe they are in a healthy dynamic because they “never fight!” or “rarely disagree!” Really, they’re just avoiding conflict altogether rather than resolving it.

“Sometimes, this relationship appears to have less conflict than others, but there is still resentment building as the defensive partner is shocked when they find out about an issue after many months or years of ignoring/avoiding it,” Davis explains. “This is due to the fact that the non-defensive partner has had to keep a running record of everything they did not feel safe enough to address.”

How to Address Your Partner’s Defensiveness

You might be wondering, “How could I possibly address my defensive partner without them becoming, well, defensive?” According to Davis, you should wait until after you both have calmed down before bringing it to their attention. 

“I wouldn’t recommend calling someone ‘defensive’ in the middle of an argument,” she shares. “That usually just creates another argument. It’s much more productive to talk about the pattern when both people are calm.”

Davis recommends gently highlighting the behavior by sharing your experience after an argument. For example, maybe you feel that every time you voice a concern or hurt feelings, your partner denies their part in it, turning it into a fight or debate rather than a healthy, productive conversation. By sharing this with them after the fact (when you’re both no longer heated), you’re revealing your side without attacking them. Hopefully, this prevents further defensiveness.

“Then ask for something very specific,” Davis adds. “Before explaining or defending their side, can they simply acknowledge what their partner is feeling? That small change can make a big difference.”

The post This Common Habit Is Quietly Destroying Your Relationship appeared first on VICE.

Framework has refreshed its 12-inch convertible laptop, introducing Intel's latest Core Series 3 processors, expanded hardware customizations, and a pre-built Linux option. The cheapest pre-built base configuration for the Framework Laptop 12 now starts at $699 - $100 less than the previous version when it launched last year. Preorders are open now, with the first wave of deliveries expected to ship in October.

That pre-built base configuration is only available in green, and includes an Intel Core 3 304 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. It also comes preloaded with Linux Fedora 44 KDE Plasma, a decision brought on by Framework finding …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Klasse Wrecks is a record label and publishing company based in London and Hong Kong. I haven't listened to their records or cassettes yet, but I've been tempted to buy some of their 22 KFAX zines. 

Each is about 100 pages long and consists of black-and-white reproductions of logos. — Read the rest

The post Logos of the early UFOlogy scene and Japanesel love hotels appeared first on Boing Boing.

Wendy N. Wagner has announced that she will be stepping down as editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine to focus on writing, with the December 2026 issue being her last. Wagner wrote,

On the plus side, I’m simply returning the reins to our founder, John Joseph Adams. I am absolutely thrilled to see what he’ll do now that he’s had a bit of rest; his amazing work as a horror short fiction editor is what got me excited about short fiction in the first place! You can all look forward to a 2027 packed with thrilling and chilling new horror and dark fantasy.

I expect to spend the next few months feeling sad to say to goodbye and excited for the future. This magazine is such a special place, and the work we do here is so full of magic and delight. For a place called “Nightmare,” it’s actually a dream.

Wagner has also stepped down as senior editor at Lightspeed and is named Emeritus staff. In her place, associate publisher Christie Yant will assume the role of senior editor.

For more information, see the official announcements in Nightmare and Lightspeed.

The post Editorial Changes at <i>Nightmare</i> and <i>Lightspeed</i> appeared first on Locus.

Robin Williams' children are taking over their father's Instagram account after his daughter spoke out against the use of his AI likeness, as reported earlier by The Wrap. In a post on Tuesday, Zak, Zelda, and Cody Williams write that they want the late actor's Instagram profile to be a "safe, trusted place where the stories, photos, videos, and memories shared reflect his legacy with authenticity, warmth, and care."

A story posted to Zelda Williams' own Instagram account expands on the decision to bring back her father's profile, saying that it's meant to help combat "rampant AI abuse," according to The Wrap:

I'm sorry if anyone found Da …

Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI is announcing security updates following the July news that its AI broke out of a sandboxed environment and accidentally hacked Hugging Face, including improvements to its research environments, monitoring, and alignment techniques. The company had already put the brakes on a new model, Astra, that it thinks could have "critical" cybersecurity capabilities, and the company says it instituted a two-week pause in reinforcement learning (RL) training on its "latest models intended for deployment" while it tightened up security. The company's "largest planned frontier RL run remains on hold."

For its frontier model research, OpenAI now r …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sony's Pulse Elevate wireless gaming speakers are launching on November 12th and will cost $219.99, the company announced on Tuesday. Announced nearly a year ago, the speakers are compatible with a PS5, PlayStation Portal, PC, and Mac, and they include "studio-inspired planar magnetic drivers" that offer "lifelike sound across the entire audible spectrum," Sony says. They also include a built-in mic for voice chat, Sony's PlayStation Link low-latency tech, and charging docks for topping up the batteries.

The Pulse Elevate speakers come in two colors, black and white, and preorders begin on September 1st at 10AM ET in the US or 10AM local t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

I took a home blood test today, and it included a reusable heat pack. These things have been around since the 1970s, but this was the first time I've used one. It's a plastic pouch with liquid inside and a small metal disc stamped with many dents. — Read the rest

The post How reusable heat packs work appeared first on Boing Boing.

Apple is once again overhauling App Store rules in the European Union, which the company says will resolve its "disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution." As part of the changes, every developer that distributes apps will be moved to a single set of business terms, and digital transactions for apps distributed outside of the App Store will be subject to a Core Technology Commission fee of 5 percent.

The new terms go into effect on October 1st. They will include a 26 percent commission for App Store apps that use Apple's in-app purchase system, or a 20 percent fee for developers using alternate payme …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Tesla Cybercab, that golden two-seater central to Elon Musk's robo-supremacist ambitions, is finally nearing its public launch. Whether or not the no-steering wheel and no-pedal vehicle is actually ready for public roads, let alone customers, remains very much in doubt.

According to The Information, Tesla is planning a public launch of the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, as soon as this month. The driverless vehicle has been popping up around the country, although often with a steering wheel and pedals, as employees are continuing to gather data. Tesla employees have been testing the fully driverless version on private roads around the compa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Peacock is raising prices across its streaming plans once again, with the company's cheapest ad-supported Select tier going from $7.99 to $8.99 / month, as reported earlier by Variety. The Premium plan with ads is increasing from $10.99 to $12.99 / month, while the ad-free Premium Plus plan is getting the biggest hike, jumping from $16.99 to $19.99 / month.

The price change goes into effect on August 18th for new or returning subscribers, and affects the streamer's annual plans as well. Existing subscribers will see the price change on their next billing date on or after September 17th. Peacock has steadily hiked its prices over the past fe …

Read the full story at The Verge.