We're Toast 65

It's well past time for another one of these posts. 

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Our toasting Earth

• Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger. "Recent studies link human-caused warming to more powerful, more destructive storms worldwide."
• Anthropic’s new AI tool has implications for us all – whether we can use it or not. "Mythos, the company claims, has found vulnerabilities in every major browser and operating system. In other words, this new AI model might be able to help hackers disrupt much of the world’s most important software."
• The emerging danger of post-hurricane heat waves. "With global warming making people increasingly dependent on air conditioning, power failures from hurricanes followed by heat waves are creating increasingly hazardous risks to health."
• Key ocean current is slowing at locations around the Atlantic (archive link). "Measurements by buoys at four latitudes in the western Atlantic provide the strongest evidence yet that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening,"
• MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science. "When a political movement believes that ignorance is strength."
• Sustaining the Unsustainable. "Trump’s spectacle of force cannot hide the truth: America is meeting the appetites of the present by stripping future generations of stability, dignity, and hope."
• Earth's Population Has Surpassed The Planet's Capacity, Study Suggests. "Based on more than two centuries of population data, a team led by Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia found humanity is living well beyond the bounds of what our planet can support long-term."
  
• Scientists issue warning on concerning phenomenon observed in food chain: 'Urgent need for us to take action'. "Scientists studied the presence of microplastics along Goa's coast, finding that every animal in the food chain was affected."

Featured Links - April 15, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Docks waiting for summer

• The Cascadia Subduction zone isn’t shutting down – but it’s more complicated than we thought. "But while the discovery is real, the interpretation that the subduction zone is winding down gets ahead of the science. What the new research actually shows is far more complex — and more interesting. But before we can understand what this tear means, we need to go back to plate tectonic theory."
• Helium Is Hard to Replace. "One such supply chain that’s suddenly getting a lot of attention is helium. Helium is produced as a byproduct of natural gas extraction: it collects in the same underground pockets that natural gas collects in. Qatar is responsible for roughly 1/3rd of the world’s supply of helium, which was formerly transported through the Strait of Hormuz in specialized containers. Thanks to the closure of the strait, helium prices have spiked, suppliers are declaring force majeure, and businesses are scrambling to deal with looming shortages."
• 5 takeaways from NASA’s biggest test in decades. While successful, there are a lot of things that will have to be addressed before the next Artemis mission. 
• Bad as Trump Is, What Follows Him May Be Worse. "The fight to define MAGA’s future is turning ugly—and more extreme."
• Trump, Pope Leo and the Lessons of 1933. "There is no way that in this new age of fascist threat, the Church is going to forget the lesson of the Reich Concordat."
  
• Solar panels are creating an unexpected effect by forming rainfall clouds and thriving oases in the middle of the desert. 
• Yellowstone's magma source may be closer than thought, reshaping hazard models. "Now, a research team from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has developed a comprehensive three-dimensional geodynamic model of western North America that simulates the present-day dynamics of both the lithosphere and the underlying convecting mantle, revealing a mechanism for magma generation beneath supervolcanoes."
• This founder helped build SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now he’s building a ‘fighter jet for orbit.’ "The company is developing a technology called solar thermal propulsion. Today’s standard satellite engines either burn chemical fuel or convert the sun’s energy to electricity, using that to power efficient but low-powered thrusters. Portal’s engines would instead concentrate the heat of the sun, using that to heat propellant and move the spacecraft along at high speed."
• How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran (archive link). "Intelligence, targeting and damage assessments are accelerating thanks to military versions of software now remaking business and daily life."
  
• Chinese Electrotech is the Big Winner in the Iran War. "An energy-hungry world is being pushed away by America and into China’s arms."
• This Experimental Drug Could Be a Game Changer for Pancreatic Cancer. "In a Phase III trial, Revolution Medicines' daraxonrasib almost doubled the survival length of people with advanced pancreatic cancer." 
  
• Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound. 'A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution."
• SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here's how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky. "'These launches affect everyone,' says one astronomer."

2026 Locus Awards Top Ten Finalists

The top 10 finalists for the 2026 Locus Awards have been announced. The awards are voted on by subscribers to Locus Magazine and will be announced on May 30. 

These are the finalists for best science fiction novel.

• The Folded Sky, Elizabeth Bear (Saga; Gollancz) 
• Picks & Shovels, Cory Doctorow (Ad Astra; Tor) 
• Notes from a Regicide, Isaac Fellman (Tor) 
• When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga) 
• All That We See or Seem, Ken Liu (Saga; Ad Astra) 
• Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler (MCD; Weidenfel & Nicolson)
• Slow Gods, Claire North (Orbit US; Orbit UK) 
• Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz) 
• The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK) 
• Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) 

I've only read the Ray Nayler novel, though there are three or four on the list that I plan to read at some point.

You can read most of the short story and novelette finalists online with links provided in the article. 

2026 World Press Photo Contest Winners

The winners of the 2026 World Press Photo Contest have been announced. They present "outstanding work from photojournalists and documentary photographers worldwide, connecting global audiences to the most pressing stories of our time."

I'll have to keep an eye out to see if they will be displayed in Toronto. I've seen a couple of the contest winners' exhibitions and it's definitely the best way to see them. 

Amateur Photographer has an article that displays some of the most striking photos in a larger format than the contest website. 

Photo of the Week - April 12, 2026

This week's photo is of a wheelchair ramp on the Lake Ontario waterfront in Pickering. There is a raised walkway along the beach with ramps leading down to the sand and this ramp. 

Beachfront wheelchair ramp

Saturday Sounds - Bruce Hornsby - Indigo Park

I've been a fan of Bruce Hornsby since the late 1980s and have seen him perform a couple of times (once in 1992 with the Grateful Dead and in 1993  with his band). He's released consistently enjoyable music since then and his latest album, Indigo Park, is no exception. 

Relix published an in-depth profile of Hornsby and the album recently. 

As he is tracking the unexpected origins of “Indigo Park”—the title-track of the new, 10-song studio set he’s scheduled to release on April 3 via Zappo Productions/Thirty Tigers—Hornsby is sitting in a hotel room in Houston, before a solo set at The Heights Theater, and then he’s off to a college town about an hour away. The Virginia-based musician is quick to mention at the top of his Zoom interview that, despite over four decades on the road, he’s never played this particular venue before. And that desire to experience fresh musical situations has continued to guide the pianist through an unexpected latter-career renaissance that’s led to the release of four albums in five years—2019’s Absolute Zero, 2020’s Non-Secure Connection, 2022’s ’Flicted and 2024’s Deep Sea Vents—a prolific second act scoring films and his own version of a Never Ending Tour with his veteran band, the Noisemakers. In that time, he’s also naturally aged into a gracious elder stateman, collaborating with improv-forward favorites like Goose and Eggy on stage and working closely with a new generation of indie-rock icons in the studio.

There are two songs written with the Dead's late lyricist, Robert Hunter, and collaborations with several musicians, including Bonnie Raitt and the late Bob Weir. I've listened to the album a couple of times and like it a lot. If he was coming to Toronto on his current tour, I'd probably be going. 

The Pentagon Is Going After the Catholic Church

Back in January, the Pentagon had a meeting with a US cardinal in which they basically threatened the Catholic Church and mentioned the Avignon Papacy. That was a period in the 14th century in which the French kidnapped the pope, keeping the papacy in France for 70 years. 

I hadn't heard about this until seeing a post today from Dean Blundell. I did check and there are multiple news sites also reporting about the meeting (here and here, for example).

Pope Leo will not be visiting the US for the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of 1776.  Instead, he'll be visiting the island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily, where many African migrants arrive.  

I very much doubt that Pope Leo will visit the US as long as the Trump administration remains in power. And I do not doubt that the Catholic Church and the papacy will be around long after the Trump administration fades into unhappy memory.