COFFEE ACHIEVERS: Coffee lovers gain 1,000 steps a day, but get less sleep, study shows.

The research also looked at coffee’s effect on heart palpitations, a relatively common experience for healthy coffee drinkers. The study found that in healthy men and women, coffee did not cause a common type of palpitation known as premature atrial contractions, even though some health authorities have warned that this could be a side effect of drinking coffee.

But coffee consumption can lead to an increase in another type of heart palpitation, known as premature ventricular contractions. These extra or irregular heartbeats are fairly common and benign. Almost everyone experiences them on occasion, and while they can be unnerving, most experts say they’re not usually a cause for concern in healthy people.

Drink up!

LEAVE THE UN: UN Secretary-General Melts Down, Claims Global Warming of Glaciers Will Cause Catastrophe.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: ‘Greatest Lie’ Silenced by Woke Mob, Media Silent. “It deserves to be seen and heard. That isn’t too much to ask … is it?”

HMM: WMD Weapons Inspector: Bush, Blair Should Have Faced Charges for Iraq War Crimes.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Virgin Orbit’s Swift Descent.

Virgin Orbit paused all operations March 16, furloughing all of its more than 750 employees. It’s reportedly scrambling to avoid a bankruptcy filing. The company was founded in 2017 by billionaire Richard Branson.

Up to now, there’s been a relatively limited number of space startups able to demonstrate a strong enough track record to threaten SpaceX’s vice grip on government contracts. These include Relativity Space, which is gearing up for its third launch attempt of its first 3D-printed rocket this week. There’s also Impulse Space, which will launch its first satellite to transport payloads in space on a SpaceX flight by the end of this year and is also partnering with Relativity to send a lander to Mars. And Long Beach-based Rocket Lab is also a player, having sent a reusable rocket into space on July 4 of last year.

But each of these companies has found the road to launch is often packed with speed bumps, and none have been able to truly challenge SpaceX’s dominance of regular, affordable launches.

It remains to be seen how the fallout from Virgin Orbit’s collapse affects its big sister company, Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit is technically a spinoff of Virgin Galactic – another space-focused pet project of Branson that’s focused on commercial spaceflight (focused on human space tourism, rather than cargo).

It’s easily the most exciting time for space enthusiasts since the race for the Moon but not all of these startups can survive.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Who Is Directing the Annoying Trump/Bragg Soap Opera? “Trump is so good at this that, at some point in the last few days, it almost seemed as if control of the situation shifted from Bragg to him. It was Trump, not Bragg’s office, who told the public that he would be arrested on Tuesday of this week. When that didn’t happen, it made Bragg look weak.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Kazakhstan’s seizure of Russian space assets threatens the Soyuz-5 rocket.

Russia has already spent nearly $1 billion on the development of the new Soyuz-5 rocket and plans for its launch site and ground services. When Ars wrote about the rocket’s development in 2017, it was slated to debut in 2021. Now it is unlikely to debut before at least 2024—and given the current dispute with Kazakhstan, it likely will be delayed much longer into the future.

There are some interesting and complicated politics at play between the two countries. Kazakhstan has nominally been a sovereign nation since 1991, but in the last three decades, it has maintained close ties to Russia and lies well within the Russo-political sphere.

However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have changed the calculus of this relationship. Namely, Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, apparently sees Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine as a window of opportunity to assert greater autonomy for Kazakhstan.

Russia keeps paying a bigger and bigger price for Putin’s stupid war in Ukraine.

CHRIS QUEEN: Georgia Passes a Bill Against Transing Kids, but Does It Do Enough?

I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB:

DeSantis Privately Called for Google to Be ‘Broken Up.’In previously unreported comments made in 2021, DeSantis said technology companies like Google “should be broken up” by the U.S. government.

DeSantis, widely considered a presidential hopeful, made the remarks at an invite-only retreat for the Teneo Network, a “private and confidential” group for elite conservatives. ProPublica and Documented obtained video of the event.

“They’re just too big, they have too much power,” DeSantis said. “I think they’re exercising a more negative influence on our society than the trusts that got broken up at the early 20th century.” He added that large tech companies “are ruining our country. They’re a very negative influence. And so I think you need to be strong about it.”

Previously: Hotel Googlefornia.

Even if you don’t use Google, the Menlo Park data giant still has you and some of your most deeply personal information deep in its servers. Gizmodo’s Kashmir Hill took on a “monumental challenge,” according to the latest from Forbes, of not merely giving up Google’s many services, but actively blocking all communication with every single one of Google’s services on all her devices.

In other words, Hill didn’t just stop using Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Waze, etc., she got “the help of a Motorola engineer who designed a custom VPN (virtual private network) that restricted all of her devices — laptops, phones, smart speakers, everything — from talking to Google servers.”

The result? It pretty much broke her access to the internet.

I’m not generally a fan of antitrust. But when a consumer must remain a profit center for Google or give up anything internet-connected, there’s a clear market failure.

IT ISN’T HELPING: America’s Military Leaders Swear ‘Wokeness’ Isn’t Reason Why Recruitment Sucks.

SAD: Amazon kills DPReview, the best camera review site on the web. “While far fewer people are buying standalone digital cameras in 2023 than they were in 2013, or for that matter 2003, the enthusiast and professional market remains strong and the cameras themselves have gotten incredibly good.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: When Your Samsung Smartphone Lies: Who Took That Picture You Just Took? “Samsung got caught faking pictures users took of the moon by using AI to create details that the camera never captured. This raises questions about art, skill, artificial intelligence, and… magic.”

Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

UM…: Revolutionary ‘Life Hack’ Teaches People How to Make ‘Fresh Pasta’ From Pasta.

Exit Question: When did “doing stuff” become “life hacks?”

TOLERANCE:

2024: Trump Continues to Increase His Primary Lead Over DeSantis After Indictment Threat.

NOT ALL KILLER DRONES FLY: Faster, Traxxas! Kill! Kill!

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Russia’s Latest Battlefield Antiques and the New, New World Order. “The establishment of a new New World Order races along as some of Russia’s oldest tanks creak their way towards battlefields in Ukraine. Making laws or sausages has nothing on how messily history is made, so join with me as I show you how two seemingly unrelated stories are reshaping the world.”

BREAKING: Trump Grand Jury Session Abruptly Canceled.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Child mortality is rising at the fastest rate in 50 years.

Pediatric death rates are rising mostly because of injuries, as opposed to diseases such as cancer and COVID-19. Boys are dying at nearly twice the rate of girls. Black and Hispanic boys are dying in homicides at much higher rates than non-Hispanic whites.

But researchers found the death rate rising for children of both genders and multiple races and across several causational categories, from car accidents to drug overdose.

I wonder how much of this deadly risk-taking is due to kids not being allowed to take safer risks when they’re younger.

HMM: Soros-Funded DA Alvin Bragg May Have Hidden Exculpatory Evidence in Trump Case.

GIVE A COMMIE AN INCH, HE’LL KILL A MILLION: Portland communist group is erecting dangerous homeless encampments next to people’s houses. “A Portland, Oregon woman is speaking out after a homeless man repeatedly threatened to burn her house down when she confronted him about his tent, which had been set up next to her house by a communist Antifa-linked group accused of exploiting the city’s unhoused for profit.”

WHY, IS THERE GAIN-OF-FUNCTION RESEARCH GOING ON IN WUHAN? Big Pharma Developing Bird Flu Vaccines ‘Just in Case.’

DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Michigan Is Headed Back to Rust Belt Poverty.

From the 1970s to the early 2000s, Detroit lost nearly half its population. Whole neighborhoods were bulldozed, and homes were selling for less than $10,000 as poor and minority residents fled the area’s crime, lousy schools, high unemployment and political corruption.

If you traveled to Florida or Arizona, you saw lots of Michigan license plates.

But then, Michigan began to reform itself with tax cuts and leaner and cleaner government. One big reform was Michigan became a “right to work” state. The state went through an amazing economic renaissance. According to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “Rich States, Poor States” report (which I co-wrote), few states rose on economic competitiveness faster than the home of the Wolverines. Prosperity returned.

Now the shine is off the engine. The Democrats took back control of the politics in the state, and the first thing they did was repeal “right to work” — a big wet kiss to the union bosses for all those campaign contributions.
…
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), a stooge of the unions, will sign the bill into law. And Michigan is about to see a return to the Rust Belt era.

Gooder and harder, Michigan.

BAILOUT ALL THE THINGS! Administration Mulls Bailout for All Depositors in Case of Bank Emergency.

YOU DON’T SAY: The expert who pioneered ‘quantitative easing’ has seen enough: Central banks are too powerful and they’re to blame for inflation.

Previously: Joe Biden, Milton Friedman, and the Tyranny of Tiny Minds.