from the hiding-in-public dept

We should all know at this point that RFK Jr. is bad at his job as Secretary of HHS. But that simplistic statement apparently needs something of a qualifier. Instead, it appears we should say that RFK Jr. is bad at the parts of his job that he chooses to do. Because, according to a New York Times report, he doesn’t really pay all that much attention to most of HHS’ work.

The Times begins the piece by pointing out that as the Ebola crisis in Africa continues to rage on, already infecting several Americans who were traveling abroad, Kennedy has been mostly absent from briefings on the outbreak. He talks to the very people who could inform him of the goings on there, but he just doesn’t get many briefings on the topic. And that led the Times to try to find out what else Kennedy isn’t bothering to pay attention to. The answer, according to insiders at HHS, is pretty much everything that isn’t one of his pet agenda items.

Mr. Kennedy’s approach to the crisis reflects his broader management of the Department of Health and Human Services, which affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides health care to 40 percent of the population through Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.

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Now, all of this by itself would be some combination of interesting, damning, and explanatory of why so much negative health shit is occurring in America these days. Measles outbreaks, a spate of whooping cough surging, unfilled positions, an ACIP panel that is not allowed to operate because the courts said so, and so on. Having an HHS leader completely out to lunch while we have all of these health threats around us, all so he can go chase vaccine conspiracies, chem-trails, and snakes is not exactly a recipe for good health outcomes in the country. That he’s selfishly saving all of his time for his own personal interests may not be surprising, but it does need correcting.

Kennedy took to ExTwitter to defend himself from the report, which he claimed was very wrong, because he only misses some meetings.

“You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings. However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar.”

RFK Jr. questioned the outlet on whether they bothered to check his public calendar, which is filled with back-to-back meetings that concern his role. He revealed that he’s actively involved in addressing issues and making final decisions, as he summarized his schedule, stating that he works until 11:00 pm. Additionally, he touched on how the outlet used quotes from those employees, some of whom he had fired in the past, further calling into question their credibility and fact-checking skills.

Now, if you want to understand just how completely, pathologically wrong and false Kennedy is willing to be, let’s zero right the hell in on that whole “did you bother to check my public calendar” retort. Why? Well, because by all accounts, Kennedy’s calendar is not in any way public. Multiple groups have filed FOIA requests that have gone unaddressed for years, or else filed lawsuits, in order to get access to his calendar. They can’t get it. The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit over this a year ago. Statnews.com has been after it via FOIA requests for over a year, as well.

But no such calendar, detailing who Kennedy meets with or how he spends his time, has been released by the administration. STAT has been asking the Department of Health and Human Services for Kennedy’s calendar for more than a year, via Freedom of Information Act requests and emails to the press office.

Since last year, STAT reporters have requested the calendars of Kennedy and his principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, multiple times. That has included a request last February for a calendar from Kennedy’s first two weeks on the job and then a request last June for Spear’s calendars since she started in her role. Spear, whose personal office is attached to Kennedy’s, is known to attend nearly every meeting with the secretary. 

The HHS press office did not respond to questions about the public calendar Kennedy described, the number of staffers currently in FOIA offices across the agency, the response times to requests compared to earlier administrations, or which outlets were being restricted by the administration.

It’s one thing to hide your calendar while you’re not fulfilling your obligations as a cabinet member. It’s an entirely different thing to do all of that and try to admonish the press for not checking a public calendar that has never been made public.

Either Kennedy thinks his calendar is public when it isn’t, which is a terrible look for him and his understanding of how his own agencies are operating, or he does know it’s not public, is lying about it, and somehow thinks that nobody will bother to point it out.

So, the open question appears to be whether RFK Jr. is a bumbling fool who isn’t in full command of HHS…or a bad and fairly dumb liar.

So, Secretary Kennedy, once you’re back from an extended lunch and nap session, which is it?

Filed Under: ebola, health & human services, measles, rfk jr., vaccines

Clearaudio did not exactly hide at High End Vienna 2026. The German analog specialist rolled into the show with new turntables, artist editions, and a Rammstein-branded deck that became one of the more talked-about analog products on the floor. Because apparently nothing says precision vinyl playback like industrial metal, LEDs, and a room full of hi-fi people pretending they were always huge Rammstein fans.

But the product that might matter most to real-world turntable owners is a lot smaller and far less theatrical. The new Clearaudio N2 MM cartridge is a moving-magnet design priced at just $290 USD, and that puts it directly in the path of Audio-Technica, Grado, Ortofon, and Sumiko, four brands that already own a lot of space in the affordable cartridge conversation.

The N2 is designed for broad tonearm compatibility, which makes it a practical upgrade for a wide range of turntables. Clearaudio carries over the proven motor assembly from the N1, but adds a new carbon fiber-reinforced housing produced using 3D printing technology, with the goal of improving rigidity, resonance control, and long-term consistency.

The N2 may not have generated the same noise as Clearaudio’s Rammstein turntable in Vienna, but it could prove to be the more relevant product for listeners looking to improve an existing deck without spending high-end cartridge money.

Clearaudio N2 MM Cartridge Targets the Affordable Upgrade Market

The Clearaudio N2 MM cartridge is built around a simple but important idea: control unwanted vibration before it reaches the generator system.

The key change is the new PETG-CF body, a carbon fibre-reinforced engineering polymer that gives the cartridge housing greater rigidity than standard plastic without adding unnecessary mass. Cartridge bodies are not passive decoration. They influence how energy moves through the cartridge, headshell, and tonearm. By using a stiffer, lower-resonance material, Clearaudio is trying to give the stylus and motor assembly a quieter mechanical platform to work from.

That matters because the N2 shares the proven motor assembly of the N1, but moves away from the heavier aluminium body. At 8.5 grams, the N2 is significantly lighter, which broadens compatibility with a wider range of tonearms, including lightweight designs that may not have been an ideal match for the N1. In practical terms, this should make setup easier and reduce the chances of running into compliance, counterweight, or tracking-force issues. Very German problem solving: make it lighter, stiffer, and harder to blame on the tonearm.

Output voltage is rated at 3.3mV, putting the N2 on the same level as Clearaudio’s Concept v2 series. That makes it suitable for standard moving magnet phono inputs without requiring extra gain, a step-up transformer, or other system changes. For most users, the N2 should slot directly into an existing MM setup.

Clearaudio also pays attention to the small installation details. The laser-finished black housing gives the cartridge a more precise, industrial look, while integrated threaded inserts should make mounting more secure and less frustrating than designs that rely on loose nuts and tiny hardware.

At £250, €250, and $290, the N2 is not chasing exotic cartridge money. It is a lightweight, rigid, low-resonance MM design aimed at improving mechanical stability, tonearm compatibility, and everyday usability without turning cartridge setup into a weekend engineering project.

The Bottom Line

The Clearaudio N2’s most interesting feature is not simply that it is another affordable MM cartridge. The hook is the engineering: a 3D-printed PETG-CF carbon fibre-reinforced body, low-resonance construction, 8.5g weight, integrated threaded inserts, and a 3.3mV output that should work with standard MM phono stages. At $290, that puts it directly against the Audio-Technica AT-VM740xML and AT-VM745xML, Goldring E4, Grado Gold4, Grado Opus4, Sumiko Olympia, and the unavoidable Ortofon 2M Blue.

Some of those rivals offer more advanced stylus profiles. Some have stronger name recognition. What Clearaudio brings is materials engineering and resonance control in a lightweight cartridge that should be easier to mount, easier to match, and more practical than a lot of high-end analog hardware wearing a scarier price tag.

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SpaceX is now worth more than Amazon, at least for as long as the rally holds. Shares of the rocket company rose more than 10% on Tuesday, extending a run that began at its market debut and putting it on course to become the world’s fifth most valuable listed company, four trading days after it went public.

The stock was last up 10.1% at $211.80, according to Reuters, which works out to a market capitalisation of nearly $2.8tn if the gains stick. Amazon was last valued at $2.66tn.

The move followed a 19% jump on Monday, the first full day of trading, which itself followed a debut that already ranked as the largest initial public offering ever attempted.

The numbers underneath the rally are unusual enough to merit a second look. More than $1.16bn worth of SpaceX shares changed hands, which Reuters reported was several times the combined trading volume in Nvidia, Microsoft, Tesla, and Apple. A newly listed company outtrading four of the most heavily traded stocks on the market, put together, is not a normal week on the Nasdaq.

Much of that comes down to scarcity. SpaceX’s IPO floated only about 4.2% of the company’s shares, rising to roughly 4.9% once underwriters exercised the greenshoe option in full.

That leaves an extremely thin free float chasing heavy retail demand, the kind of supply-demand mismatch that can move a price far and fast in either direction. A small float is a wonderful thing on the way up.

The starting point was already historic. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share for a $1.75tn valuation, raising $75bn in what TNW and others called the biggest listing on record.

The stock drew demand from retail investors worldwide, including $2.2bn from Japanese buyers alone, a measure of how broad the appetite ran before the first share traded.

The valuation it is now testing rests on a business with one profit engine and several expensive bets. Starlink, the satellite-internet division, generated the bulk of SpaceX’s revenue and effectively all of its operating profit last year, even as its growth maths has got harder and average revenue per user has slipped.

Starship and the xAI operations remain capital sinks that investors are pricing for years of growth they have not yet seen.

For Elon Musk, the arithmetic is personal as well as corporate. The listing handed him a paper fortune large enough to make him a trillionaire, and his and insiders’ voting control of the company survived the float intact. Tuesday’s climb adds to that total on paper, though paper is the operative word while the float stays this thin.

If SpaceX holds the fifth-place spot is a question for the closing bell rather than the premarket tape. A stock that can rise 19% in a day on a sliver of available shares can give the gain back on the same mechanics. For now, a company that was private a week ago is trading just behind Amazon, and the market is still deciding what that is worth.