Last summer, the California coast had an unusual threat for surfers in the form of Otter 841, who had a passion for stealing surfboards while evading the authorities. With the start of the 2024 season, Otter 841 is back, and just as ready to cause havok as she was last year.

As reported previously on the Blue, the the Reykjanes peninsula had an eruption in the proximity of the town of Grindavík several months back, however the emergence had settled down after about a week of activity...until a new emergence opened up in the Sundhnuk crater. (SLYT live feed)

Facing the potential of a ruinous $20B decision against them in the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, the NCAA and the major conferences are coming to a settlement that will see college athletes recieve revenue sharing, as well as former athletes being eligible to recieve damages for payments wrongly withheld.

This is a culmination of over a decade of litigation over the antitrust violations in college athletics, starting with O'Bannon establishing that players' NIL rights had value, followed by the Alston ruling definitively laying out that the NCAA did not have an antitrust exemption, opening the door for the House class action lawsuit - and the way the NCAA's arguments went over like lead balloons at those hearings has pushed them to the settlement table. Further emphasizing the losses in courts of law are the two injunctions the NCAA has had placed on their policies: first, they were enjoined over limiting transfers through the transfer portal, then an attempt to sanction Tennessee over NIL payments resulted in the Tennessee and Virginia AGs suing, resulting in an injunction on the NCAA's NIL rules. In addition, Dartmouth men's basketball players won a major win for labor with the regional NLRB ruling that they are in fact employees, leading them to pursue unionization, which the school is fighting. In addition (and likely to the death of OJ Simpson bringing new scrutiny to the decision) the Heisman Trust has reinstated Reggie Bush as the 2005 Heisman winner, further weakening the NCAA's position. It is in that context that the NCAA is coming to the negotiating table - having lost over and over, they are staring down a loss that would end the organization. And there's still a chance the cart gets upset - while the lion's share of the damages are due to the behavior of the major conferences, it's the non-majors who are being told to pay the majority of the settlement, which they are pushing back on.

Buckingham Palace has revealed King Charles III's first official post-coronation portrait, and the work by artist Jonathan Yeo has proven to be...divisive in its design.

The portrait, awash in a red that melds with the subject's uniform, has raised a good deal of commentary/snark about the design, as well as the sort of media that it fits into or was taken from.

After departing the BlueSky board of directors, Block Head and social media mogul Jack Dorsey gave an interview with venture capitalist Mike Solana in which he explained that Twitter rejecting advertisers is a blow for free speech and BlueSky is repeating the mistakes of Twitter, like moderation.

Needless to say, this has had tech pundits wondering if Dorsey actually understands what social media users want, while BlueSky staff pointed out the moves were to effectively accomplish BlueSky's goals (especially after Twitter's acquisition precluded the idea that it would adopt BlueSky as a protocol.) (Thread title courtesy of Mefi's Own jwz and his observations on the matter.)