Sometimes, a major discovery is exactly what you were hoping not to find. That’s the case with a team at Penn State who seem to have recently closed the door on any new physics stemming from a longstanding discrepency in the magnetic moment of the muon. It turns out, the model was fine, and we just needed better calculations.

The Muon is a heavier cousin to the electron. Like the electron, it has an intrinsic magnetic moment, but the traditional methods to calculate it did not quite match experiments, which was very exciting because it made us hope our models could be improved. Rather than try the traditional approximation methods for the unsolvable equations, the group at Penn State set up what you can think of as the Quantum Chromodynamic equivalent of a Finite Element Model (FEM) simulation–a grid of discrete steps in space and time. Tiny ones, of course, because the muon, like the electron, is a point-like particle with no lower size limit. In any case, according to their paper in Nature, after a decade of refinement and increasingly expensive supercomputer runs, the mystery can be put to bed. Instead of the discrepancy that so exited physicists 25 years ago when it was first found, theory and experiment now match to 11 digits, or a 0.5 sigma discrepancy, if you prefer.

Statistically, the Standard Model works– and that kind of sucks. It sucks, because it’s the gaps in the model where new physics are possible, and everyone has been pushing at those few gaps for the last 50 years to try and find what might be behind the standard model. Even [Zoltan Fodor], the principle investigator behind this project, is sad to see it work out. Sure, it’s a feather in his cap to get the calculations right at last–but ask anybody in the field, and they’d rather keep the door open to new physics than be right. We were certainly hoping it was something novel, last time the topic came up.

You might think muons are the last thing a hacker would ever encounter, but since there’s a steady rain of them from the sky in the form of cosmic rays, it’s not only easy to interact with them, you can actually put them to practical use– like muon tomography, or navigation indoors and underground.

Header Image Credit: Dani Zemba / Penn State

from the but-who-will-remember-the-good-things-about-Harry-Byrd dept

The state of Virginia is trying to break with its racist past. It’s not pretending it doesn’t exist. But, better late than never, it’s trying to undo some of the damage still being perpetrated by Virginians and their legislators. Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a bill into law that stripped confederate-friendly organizations of their tax exempt status. (She also signed a bill that ended the production of specialty license plates featuring Robert E. Lee.)

Now, there’s a legitimate argument to be made against this legislation. (And a more nuanced argument to made in favor of it.) And we’ll get to all of that in a moment.

But not yet. That’s why you’re getting the headline I gave you, because I’m not the one making a nuanced argument for or against this bill. And that’s why The Federalist is getting all the bile I can fit into a handful of words because it for goddamn sure isn’t making any valid arguments in support of letting historically racist organizations continue to operate as tax exempt entities.

Hayden Daniel (scope the rest of his output to confirm your suspicions about this Federalist contributor) of The Federalist seems to think that separating confederacy supporters from state tax exemptions is one of the more noxious violation of rights he’s ever had the opportunity to witness.

Spanberger’s signature represents, as The New York Times put it, part of “a yearslong Democrat-led push to shake off the state’s legacy as the capital of the 11 Southern, slaveholding states that seceded from the country in the 1860s.”

And indeed it has been a years-long campaign by the left to erase Virginia’s, and America’s, history. The era that began with the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009 and reached its fever pitch during the fiery George Floyd riots of summer 2020 saw the slow but sure disappearance of Confederate history from the public sphere. 

“Erase history.” What a convenient turn of phrase. Making entities like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (whose splash page pic looks about as inclusive as a “Gone With The Wind” cast photo) and the Sons of the Confederacy continue to do the apparently essential work of reminding people that there are still plenty of racists in Virginia without a state-sanctioned leg up is hardly “erasing history.” Everyone will remember the Civil War and the racists who lost the war they started because they were hooked on free, imported labor.

And try as you might, you’re not going to find Daniel arguing against the deliberate erasure of history being perpetrated by the Trump administration, which is steadily stripping parks and national monuments of anything that might portray white Americans as anything but fault-free heroes and saviors. (In fact, a perfunctory search immediately surfaces the opposite: The Federalist’s active participation in this administration’s bigoted erasure of US history.)

That’s the way it always goes with these people. The only history they think needs to be preserved is the stuff when white males were legally considered to be the owners or overseers of every other race and sex. These are people who yearn for simpler times when women and minorities couldn’t vote and people were willing to die to keep white Christian nationalists in power.

Moving on from this complaint about (non)erasure of Hayden Daniel’s favorites parts of US history, he then decides to pretend that white people who love the confederacy have been terrorized by people who don’t.

During a BLM riot in Richmond, Virginia, in May 2020, extremist agitators attacked the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy with “incendiary devices.” The building, deeded to the organization by the state in 1950, was filled with countless Civil War-era documents and artifacts. The resulting fire and destruction caused $4.1 million in damage to the building and its contents, according to a lawsuit filed by the UDC. The wanton vandalism that night also extended to the multiple Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue, including the famous equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee that was removed in 2021.

Wow, man. That’s rough. It’s almost as though it outweighs the decades of torture and slavery that were followed by more decades of terrorism perpetrated against Blacks by people who just couldn’t accept that non-white humans were actual human beings. A statute goes down and a pro-confederacy HQ gets torched and this nation is nowhere near breaking even in terms of what this state’s “legacy” is when it comes to slavery and the treatment of those who were only allowed their freedom after enough Virginians had died trying to prevent their emancipation.

Summing things up, Daniel veers into the hyperbolic:

[T]his law signed by Spanberger constitutes a new escalation. It is no longer about pieces of paper that need to censored or statues of bronze that need to be ripped down; it is about people who need to silenced and punished for daring to believe that America, and the South in particular, has its own unique identity independent of the left’s racialist and globalist dogma.

Spanberger is sending an unequivocal message — it’s open season on those who would honor American history and the heritage of their ancestors. And the full force of the state will be used to quash them.

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I have no idea why you would want to “honor” that particular sliver of American history or celebrate the “heritage” left to you by racist slaveholders and the descendants that love them. You’re not using words like “history” and “heritage” because you don’t want Americans to ever forget the horrors we inflicted on others during our history. You’re just an awful person who wants similarly awful people to continue to be awful without fear of consequence.

A people without a history, or who are ashamed of their history, are easily manipulated by the whims and ambitions of the dystopian, tyrannical left. 

Tell that to Trump, you mook. You aren’t actually ashamed of this history. You — and the people running the party you love — are secretly proud of their racist past and bigoted present. That doesn’t make you immune from manipulation. It just means the people who subject you to their whims and ambitions not only won’t be members of an opposing political party, but they won’t be any smarter than you think you are.

Now… having said all that, here’s the argument against this law, which does make sense:

The new law strips property tax exemptions from the pro-Confederate groups, while leaving them in place for all the others. That’s pretty obvious discrimination based on political ideology. The Virginia state legislature could end this tax exemption for all the groups in question, or reduce it in various ways. It could eliminate some groups but not others based on nonideological criteria. But it cannot do so based purely on the views of the groups in question.

Such viewpoint discrimination with respect to tax exemptions and government benefits is a potentially very dangerous tool that government can use to penalize opposition (even as it rewards its supporters). If courts were to uphold the Virgina law against First Amendment challenges, it would set a dangerous precedent that state and federal officials of various political stripes could exploit to target their opponents.

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That’s the argument Hayden or anyone else from the Federalist could have made. That would have clearly demonstrated the inherent danger of giving the government the legislated power to engage in viewpoint discrimination. But no one at the Federalist is apparently capable of coming up with cogent, nuanced arguments, not when the livelihood of people who resolutely celebrate the racist losers of America’s only Civil War (to date!) is on the line.

Beyond that, there’s the question of whether or not tax exempt status is government speech, which means viewpoint discrimination may actually be lawful if the government prefers not to throw tacit support to groups it doesn’t care for. That doesn’t make it much better than openly violating the First Amendment, but it does give it something to work with if this law is challenged in court.

For now, the sons and daughters of the confederacy will have to try to make do without their tax exempt status. On the hardship continuum that involves the Confederacy, this doesn’t even amount to a rounding error.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, abigail spanberger, celebrating losers, free speech, racism, slavery, virginia

Companies: sons of confederate veterans, the federalist

Astrobotic engineers went all out on their Chakram prototypes, doing a series of hot-fire tests that dwarfed anything previously done with this type of hardware. Two rotating detonation engines together clocked over 470 seconds of operation throughout eight runs at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, one of which lasted a whole 300 seconds without any hitches, and the entire time each engine delivered a solid 4,000 pounds of thrust as steady as can be.

These tests were conducted a few weeks ago and completed on a shoestring budget of just $1.5 million dollars. Every significant firing met the mark for a steady working temperature exactly, and when the crew disassembled the hardware for a thorough inspection later on, they couldn’t locate a single inch of obvious damage. This lot was put together by a small group of designers and builders with the help of two NASA contracts and a direct arrangement with the Marshall Center, and if you ask me, they’ve done far more than expected.

LEGO Technic NASA Artemis Space Launch System Rocket Building Toy for Boys & Girls – STEM Learning…

• BUILD AN OFFICIAL NASA ROCKET – Kids prepare to explore outer space with the LEGO Technic NASA Artemis Space Launch System Rocket (42221) building…
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• STEM BUILDING TOY FOR KIDS – This educational rocket kit was created in collaboration with NASA and ESA to showcase the authentic system that will…

Rotating detonation engines operate on a simple but powerful concept: mix your fuel and oxidizer in a ring-shaped chamber, fire it up, and then send a shockwave around in circles at supersonic speed, squeezing as much energy out of the propellant as possible. As a result, you get improved efficiency, lighter hardware, and the ability to carry a lot more payload or drive a long distance on one tank.

Astrobotic believes this technology will be very useful on its upcoming lunar landers, as the business has already contracted with NASA to send cargo to the Moon, and its next lander, Griffin, is scheduled to launch this year. Adding a Chakram engine to future landers could allow them to carry greater mass to the lunar surface or remain in orbit for longer periods of time. It also appears that the concept would fit in well with the company’s work on reusable rockets and orbital cargo ships that would transport stuff between Earth and Moon.

Next, the team plans to install regenerative cooling channels to allow the engine to run for longer periods of time without overheating. They’ll also work on a mechanism to adjust the thrust during flight, and as the design progresses, they’ll seek to trim it down and make it lighter. Each tiny adjustment brings them closer to using this technology in real-world space missions.

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock is meticulously engineered to reduce the cable clutter and streamline your daily routine. Featuring 2 dedicated wireless charging surfaces, you can power up your phone and AirPods easily. In addition, you can charge your Apple Watch with the built-in charger mount. Stylish and compact, the dock is perfect for your tabletop, desk, or nightstand and will effortlessly charge your everyday essentials in one convenient place. It’s on sale for $33.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Silicon Valley tends to tolerate a certain amount of founder exaggeration when pitching investors, often dismissing it as part of selling a vision. But some choices cross the line and can lead to jail time for founders and scandal for their investors.

A case in point is Joseph Sanberg, whose once high-flying fintech startup Aspiration Partners was backed by a roster of tech celebrities, including former Microsoft CEO and current Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. In August 2025, Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and defrauding multiple investors and lenders, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Ahead of sentencing, which is scheduled for Monday, victims were invited to describe their experience with Sanberg to the judge. Ballmer did so, and publicly. Ballmer’s lawyers said in the letter that he has lost money, been vilified, and that the NBA is investigating allegations stemming from the association.

Sanberg co-founded green fintech startup Aspiration Partners, which offered what it called sustainable banking services like credit cards and investment products that avoided fossil fuels. The startup promised to “automatically plant trees with every card purchase.” In 2021, it announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger at a value of $2.3 billion, though that transaction never took place.

The DOJ alleged that Aspiration booked and recognized revenue from entities held by Sanberg, who made the company appear as if it had a steady stream of customers and revenue that it didn’t actually have. The agency further alleged he defrauded investors by showing them a fabricated letter from Aspiration’s audit committee that said the company had $250 million in available cash and equivalents when it had less than $1 million. The DOJ alleged that Sanberg, along with a board member who also pleaded guilty, falsified financial records to obtain $145 million in loans.

When Ballmer shared his letter on X, asking the judge to consider the harm done to him in sentencing, he wrote, “I was duped and feel silly about that. Everyone who believed in Aspiration, including employees, customers and investors, was also duped. Everyone is still tallying the losses.”

The letter says that Ballmer invested a total of $60 million in the company, and lost all of it. Ballmer was not only an investor, but had contracted with Aspiration to provide carbon-offsetting programs for the Clippers and its stadium. Aspiration also became a major Clippers sponsor.

The billionaire said in the letter that not only did he lose that money, his reputation was negatively affected. He used the letter to deny the reporting of a multi-part series from famed sports podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out that delved into the relationship between the Clippers and Aspiration. The podcast made allegations that Aspiration helped sidestep the salary cap for a star Clippers player. Ballmer’s lawyers called those allegations “misapprehension or intentional disregard of the facts,” in the letter.

Ballmer’s letter also said that as a result of the association with this company, the podcast and other public attention of it, he’s been named in lawsuits. Meanwhile, the NBA said in its own letter regarding Sanberg’s sentencing that it’s investigating the salary cap allegations and Sanberg has been providing evidence, ESPN reported.

While the basketball world is embroiled in all of these downstream developments, the message founders can take from it is clear: If one fabricates financial documents to raise capital, the outcome will very likely be prison.

The Ballmer Group did not respond to our request for comment.

It’s about that time of year. National Pool Opening Day is tomorrow, April 25, and summer is almost here, which means pool owners everywhere are getting ready to unveil the horrors of whatever happened during the off-season. Most of the Beatbot lineup is on sale at Amazon and Beatbot’s own storefront, with prices starting at $499. Beatbot makes many of the best pool-cleaning robots we’ve tested, and we’ve highlighted our top picks below. Note that the discounts are scheduled to end on April 26, though items may sell out sooner. Happy pool party season! (Drop me an invite!)

Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra for $2,649 ($500 Off)

Our favorite robotic pool cleaner overall, the AquaSense 2 Ultra has what WIRED contributor Chris Null called “near-perfect cleaning capabilities.” It has six hours of battery life and AI-powered debris detection, and it can handle cleaning the floors, walls, and waterline. You’ll get a charging stand as well. Be aware that this cleaner weighs nearly 30 pounds, so be sure to eat your protein so you can lug it out of the water when the job is done. Even though it floats, it can still feel pretty hefty. The AI debris detection sets this model apart, as do the five cleaning brushes and frankly oversized battery capacity. If you want the fanciest pool cleaner we’ve tested, and you don’t want to pay full price, this deal is up your alley.

Beatbot Sora 30 for $749 ($200 off)

The Beatbot Sora 30 offers great value for the price. It tends to fluctuate between this discounted price and its full thousand-dollar MSRP, and we have yet to see it sell for less than it is right now. It has excellent battery life and more than enough power and features for daily pool cleaning needs for most users. It doesn’t have a surface skimmer—you might want the pricier Sora 70 (on sale for $1,200; $300 off) for that—but otherwise it’s capable of cleaning your pool floor, walls, and waterline. It’s easy to use with the companion app, and it floats when it’s done cleaning for easy retrieval. If you don’t need a surface skimmer or you don’t want to drop a ton of cash, this middle-of-the-road robot is worth considering.

Beatbot iSkim Ultra Robotic Pool Skimmer for $649 ($350 off)—Clip the Coupon

The best surface skimmer has sensors that prevent it from slamming into your pool walls while it cleans. Unlike many other robots in this category, it actually slows down and turns while it’s skimming. It does have a basket-eject button on the front that sometimes gets depressed by accident, though this might not be an issue depending on your pool shape, and it’s not so much a deal-breaker as it is a thing to be aware of. Snag this model if you want to keep the surface of your pool clean automatically, but you don’t mind manually cleaning the walls and floor.

More Beatbot Deals

Here are some more pool cleaner discounts for your perusal, on models with slight variations from those we recommend above.

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from the playing-favorites-with-religions dept

In June 2025, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court upheld what would seem to have been an extremely obvious conclusion reached by the federal court handling the case: yes, it definitely violates the Constitution to mandate the posting of a religious text in every classroom in Louisiana. This wasn’t about displaying an assortment of “foundational texts” as its defenders (disingenuously) claimed: It was about pushing their preferred religion on students by any means possible.

Last June, the Fifth Circuit exposed the hypocrisy of the mandate while upholding the lower court’s injunction blocking its enactment:

It is also unclear how H.B. 71 ensures that students in Louisiana public schools “understand and appreciate the foundational documents of [its] state and national government” when it makes displaying those “foundational” documents optional, and does not require that they also be printed in a large, easily readable font. La. R.S. § 17:2124(A)(9). When the Ten Commandments must be posted prominently and legibly, while the other “contextual” materials need not be visible at all, the disparity lays bare the pretext.

If only that had been the end of the story. Presumably, enough Fifth Circuit judges preferred to reach a different conclusion that the appellate court decided to take another look at it using its full slate of judges. Since this is the Fifth Circuit we’re talking about, you already know how that turned out.

This time, the majority pretended it was simply impossible to tell if this Louisiana law actually violated the Constitution. The only way to be sure was to let the state enact it first and allow the courts to deal with any rights violations after they’ve occurred. The injunction was lifted, with the majority claiming Supreme Court precedent (that hasn’t actually been overturned by the Supreme Court) is no longer valid when it comes to discussing possible Establishment Clause violations.

That same argument — that the three-prong test created by the Supreme Court in 1971’s Lemon v. Kurtzman, which dealt with another set of church/state separation issues. This is the test:

• The “Purpose Prong”: The statute must have a secular legislative purpose.
• The “Effect Prong”: The principal or primary effect of the statute must neither advance nor inhibit religion.
• The “Entanglement Prong”: The statute must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

While a handful of judges (you can guess which ones) have opined that the “Lemon test” is dead, having been “abrogated” by more recent decisions, the Supreme Court has never issued a ruling overturning it. In fact, elements of the test were still being applied more than 30 years later.

Nonetheless, the Fifth Circuit — as it did earlier this year during its en banc review of the Louisiana law — says Lemon is dead [PDF] and, therefore, pretty much any law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms doesn’t violate the Constitution.

We conclude the Texas law does not violate either the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause. Here is a summary of our reasons.

First, the Establishment Clause. Plaintiffs primarily claim we are bound by Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (per curiam), which invalidated a similar Kentucky law decades ago. We disagree. Stone applied an analysis—the “Lemon test”—which confounded courts for decades. See Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). Mercifully, the Supreme Court jettisoned Lemon and its offspring some years ago. See Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist., 597 U.S. 507, 534 (2022) (recognizing the Court has “abandoned Lemon”). With Lemon extracted, there is nothing left of Stone.

After deciding Lemon (and Stone) no longer applies, the majority moves on to say even if it did, there would be no constitutional violation because:

No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin…

While it is true that the law makes no demands of teachers or students to do anything more than be in the same room as a Ten Commandments poster that “must be visible” to all students from up to 16 feet away, it’s quite obvious that this law is crafted to sneak a bit of the state’s preferred religion (at least in terms of those writing, supporting, and defending this law) past the protections of the Constitution.

It’s obvious from the statements they made while pushing this bill through the legislature. And it’s just as obvious now that the law has been given a free pass by the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, called the ruling “a major victory for Texas and our moral values.”

“The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day,” he said.

Pretty bold to use the royal “our” to mandate a specific set of moral values be posted prominently in taxpayer-funded public schools. It’s even bolder when it directly contradicts the desires of prominent members of this particular religious community — something that was pointed out by the dissenting judges in Fifth Circuit’s ruling on the Louisiana Ten Commandments law:

Indeed, every faith-based organization before us—on behalf of thousands of members—and every clergy and devout plaintiff agree that Louisiana must not pick and post specific scripture that the state commands will confront children in state classrooms. All religious voices submitted to us, barring one individual, oppose Louisiana’s attempt to select, inculcate, and enforce this version of gospel text in compulsory public education.

The people with power are pushing religion on kids against the wishes of the clergy and “devout plaintiffs.”

There’s a dissent attached to this ruling as well. This one tackles the Fifth Circuit majority’s decision to rely twice on its presumption that Lemon is dead law to hand Bible-thumping legislators wins in two states:

In Van Orden, despite applying a historical approach instead of Lemon, the plurality cited Stone as a “limit[] to the display of religious messages or symbols” and “an example” of the Court’s “vigilan[ce] in monitoring compliance with the Establishment Clause in . . . schools.” “The placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds,” Van Orden explained, is “a far more passive use of those texts than was the case in Stone.” […] This is because “[t]he display [was] not on the grounds of a public school, where, given the impressionability of the young, government must exercise particular care in separating church and state.” Id. at 703 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment) (citing Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 592 (1992); Stone, 449 U.S. 39). And, unlike in Van Orden, “the text” of the Ten Commandments in Stone “confronted elementary school students every day.”

Van Orden recognized Stone’s viability, notwithstanding Lemon, given the special “concerns that arise in the context of public elementary and secondary schools.”

The Fifth Circuit majority — like the defendants whose unconstitutional law it has allowed to be enacted — cherry picks from post-Lemon Supreme Court jurisprudence to arrive at the conclusion it wants, rather than one the Constitution (and actual Supreme Court precedent) dictates. With two of the three states in the circuit already have been given a green light to mix church and state, it’s up to Mississippi to get this bill signed by the governor so the Fifth can complete its three-state sweep of the Establishment Clause.

Filed Under: 10 commandments, 1st amendment, 5th circuit, establishment clause