You’d think the world had run out of challenges for LEGO builders. After all, we’ve seen ‘functional’ lawnmowers, instant-photo Polaroid cameras that spit out LEGO “photos,” and even a ‘working’ rotary phone, all meticulously engineered, all somehow feeling like they’re right at home in the pantheon of LEGO absurdity. Yet, every so often, a builder comes along who ups the ante and rewrites the rules of what counts as “functional.” This time, that crown goes to a Rubik’s Cube, the kind that actually works. Not a blocky facsimile or a fidget toy with half-hearted spin, but a LEGO-built, fully twistable, color-matching, soul-crushing 3×3 Rubik’s Cube that might just be the most precise and satisfying “MOC” (that’s “My Own Creation” for the LEGO uninitiated) you’ll see this season.

Precision is the name of the game with Rubik’s Cubes. Every speedcuber, every fidgeter worth their salt, knows that the difference between a good cube and a mediocre one is measured in microns. A single click or jam, and your whole solve is toast. So making a functioning cube out of LEGO, with its famously not-quite-millimeter-perfect clutch power and those tiny mold-parting lines, feels like tempting fate. Yet here it is, spinning with the kind of smoothness that would make Erno Rubik himself do a double take. The builder, whose project recently surfaced on the LEGO Ideas platform, didn’t just aim for “works in theory.” They built a full-size, color-accurate cube that moves with the same crispness and tactile feedback you expect from a real puzzle.

Designer: Kragle Dog

The mechanism underneath those glossy 3×3 tiles? A clever lattice of LEGO Technic and system bricks, ingeniously stacked and interlocked to mimic the familiar spindle-and-corner arrangement of the original. It’s a feat that takes patience and an obsessive eye for tolerances, because even a fraction of a millimeter’s error can mean the difference between a cube that spins and a cube that simply locks up.

Size-wise, this thing’s a beast. Scale it against a standard Rubik’s Cube, and you’re looking at a puzzle that’s roughly four times the volume of the pocket original, clocking in at 15.6cm or over 6 inches per side. That extra space isn’t wasted, though. It gives the mechanism inside room to breathe and function, letting each axis rotate independently and with minimal play. The outer tiles are color-matched to classic Rubik’s specs, with red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and white plates snapping into place like a proper 80s icon. The result is a cube that looks like it was plucked directly from the world’s nerdiest toy store and dropped onto your desk, ready for a scramble.

“The Rubik’s Cube truly is an iconic toy, shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of the LEGO brick,” says LEGO builder Kragle Dog. “So, being a fan of both LEGO bricks and Rubik’s Cube, I decided to try a new challenge and combine those two legendary toys into one epic idea.” The resulting build uses a staggering 2,216 bricks (that’s just the cube, not counting the base or the Rubik minifigure).

What really gets me is how this project manages to bridge the gap between playful creativity and mechanical purism. Most LEGO MOCs err on the side of whimsy, sacrificing accuracy for charm. Here, though, the builder’s gone full engineer, wrangling LEGO’s sometimes-fussy tolerances into something that actually works. That’s no small feat. The prototype reportedly holds together under repeated twists and turns, resisting the kind of catastrophic blowouts that plague less robust builds. There’s sheer genius in how each piece interlocks, trading the usual friction-fit for a system that’s both sturdy and forgiving. It’s the kind of object that makes you want to pick it up, scramble it, and maybe even try to speedsolve just to see if it can keep up. And no, you’re not allowed to use a Brick Separator to ‘solve’ the cube, even though that’s technically possible.

The flex doesn’t stop at the cube itself. The builder included a custom 357-brick display stand, elevating the puzzle into the realm of functional sculpture. There’s even a minifigure of Erno Rubik, the Hungarian architect who kicked off the global cubing craze back in 1974, complete with his signature hair and a tiny cube of his own. It’s a wink at the history and the culture surrounding the puzzle, and a reminder that behind every great invention is a designer obsessed with the details. The stand’s got just enough visual heft to make it a centerpiece on any shelf, while the figure adds a layer of narrative that most LEGO MOCs skip over in favor of pure form.

If you do want to see this project come to life, it just requires you to vote for it on the LEGO Ideas forum – a platform created for LEGO enthusiasts to share unique creations and vote for their favorite builds. We’ve covered hundreds of MOCs at this point, and I for one continue to be surprised by the kind of ingenuity LEGO builders possess, even after covering this beat for over 10 years!

The post This 2216-piece functional LEGO Rubik’s Cube could be the ultimate desk flex first appeared on Yanko Design.

I received an email from Social Security Administration on July 3, applauding the new 2025 Trump tax law — One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The email said,

The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples.

I read the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This part is not true. The new 2025 Trump tax law doesn’t eliminate federal income tax on Social Security benefits. Social Security is still taxable just as before.

Temporary Senior Deduction

The email from Social Security Administration continued to say:

Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned.

This part is true, but the email failed to mention that the enhanced deduction is only temporary, and it has nothing to do with Social Security anyway.

One Big Beautiful Bill Act created a new $6,000 senior deduction, available only from 2025 through 2028, to seniors 65 and older during those years. It doesn’t matter whether you’re receiving Social Security or not. It doesn’t matter whether you’re even eligible for Social Security or not.

Unrelated to Social Security

If you’re 62 and receiving Social Security, you don’t qualify for this new senior deduction because you’re not 65 yet. Your Social Security is taxable just as before.

If you and your neighbor are both 65, and you’re receiving Social Security but your neighbor isn’t eligible for Social Security because they didn’t pay into it, both of you qualify for this new senior deduction. If you and your neighbor have the same income outside Social Security (pension, interest, dividends, capital gains, etc.), you’ll pay higher taxes than your neighbor when you add your taxable Social Security benefits on top.

If you’re 65 this year and you’re delaying your Social Security, you still qualify for this new senior deduction. When you claim your Social Security next year at 66, your taxes will increase because Social Security is taxable just as before the 2025 Trump tax law.

No Change to AGI

The new temporary senior deduction goes after the standard deduction or itemized deductions. It’s not part of the standard deduction. It’s still available if you itemize deductions. However, it doesn’t lower your AGI. It doesn’t make it easier for you to qualify for things keyed off of the AGI, for example, avoiding higher Medicare premiums under IRMAA. It doesn’t lower state taxes.

No Change to Tax on Social Security

The new senior deduction is just an extra tax benefit for seniors. It has nothing to do with Social Security. It doesn’t remove taxes on Social Security. The new extra tax benefit may be worth more or less than the tax on your Social Security benefits. You have the new tax benefit on one side and the tax on Social Security on the other side. The two are completely unrelated.

It’s like some people saying they picked up $5 on the street and therefore their coffee is free. The two things have nothing to do with each other. You don’t have to buy coffee after picking up $5. The coffee still costs the same whether you picked up $5 or not. The coffee may be more or less than $5. It isn’t free.

Please use my calculator How Much of Your Social Security Benefits Is Taxable? to find out how much of your Social Security benefits is taxable. The new 2025 Trump tax law didn’t change any of that calculation.

Income Phaseout

Not only is the new senior deduction temporary, but it also phases out as your income goes up. You get the full $6,000 deduction if you’re single and your modified adjusted gross income is $75,000 or less ($150,000 or less for married filing jointly; you get $0 deduction if you’re married filing separately).

The modified adjusted gross income is the AGI for most people. You don’t have to add back untaxed Social Security or muni bond interest. The “modified” part is only for foreign earned income exclusion and residents in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

As your income goes up, the deduction is reduced by 6% of any additional income above the $75,000/$150,000 threshold. The deduction disappears when your income is $175,000 or more if you’re single or $250,000 or more if you’re married filing jointly.

The tables below illustrate how the deduction phases out at different income levels. Extrapolate when your income is between the numbers shown in the tables.

Single

Income	Senior Deduction
$75,000 or less	$6,000
$85,000	$5,400
$95,000	$4,800
$105,000	$4,200
$115,000	$3,600
$125,000	$3,000
$135,000	$2,400
$145,000	$1,800
$155,000	$1,200
$165,000	$600
$175,000 or above	$0

Married Filing Jointly

Income	One Person Is 65+	Both Are 65+
$150,000 or less	$6,000	$12,000
$160,000	$5,400	$10,800
$170,000	$4,800	$9,600
$180,000	$4,200	$8,400
$190,000	$3,600	$7,200
$200,000	$3,000	$6,000
$210,000	$2,400	$4,800
$220,000	$1,800	$3,600
$230,000	$1,200	$2,400
$240,000	$600	$1,200
$250,000 or above	$0	$0

[Image Credit: Google Gemini]

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The post Social Security Is Still Taxed Under the New 2025 Trump Tax Law appeared first on The Finance Buff.

APOD: 2025 July 5 – Ou4: The Giant Squid Nebula Difficult to capture, this mysterious, squid-shaped interstellar cloud spans nearly three full moons in planet Earth's sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula's bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. Still, one investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven by a triple system of hot, massive stars, cataloged as HR8119, seen near the center of the nebula. If so, this truly giant squid nebula would physically be over 50 light-years across.

Netflix has a new (sarcastic air quotes) “documentary” out about Ocean Ramsey, who longtime readers and followers know is a serial wildlife harasser who also coordinates massive online harassment campaigns against scientists and conservationists who criticize her. In 15 years on social media, I’ve never gotten more (or nastier) harassment then when I criticized her ... Read More "What Ocean Ramsey does is not shark science or conservation: some brief thoughts on “the Shark Whisperer” documentary" »

If you were looking for some motivation to follow your doctor's advice or remember to take your medicine, look no further than this grisly tale.

A 64-year-old man went to the emergency department of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston with a painful festering ulcer spreading on his left, very swollen ankle. It was a gruesome sight; the open sore was about 8 by 5 centimeters (about 3 by 2 inches) and was rimmed by black, ashen, and dark purple tissue. Inside, it oozed with streaks and fringes of yellow pus around pink and red inflamed flesh. It was 2 cm deep (nearly an inch). And it smelled.

The man told doctors it had all started two years prior, when dark, itchy lesions appeared in the area on his ankle—the doctors noted that there were multiple patches of these lesions on both his legs. But about five months before his visit to the emergency department, one of the lesions on his left ankle had progressed to an ulcer. It was circular, red, tender, and deep. He sought treatment and was prescribed antibiotics, which he took. But they didn't help.

You can view pictures of the ulcer and its progression here, but be warned, it is graphic. (Panel A shows the ulcer five months prior to the emergency department visit. Panel B shows the ulcer one month prior. Panel C shows the wound on the day of presentation at the emergency department. Panel D shows the area three months after hospital discharge.)

Gory riddle

The ulcer grew. In fact, it seemed as though his leg was caving in as the flesh around it began rotting away. A month before the emergency room visit, the ulcer was a gaping wound that was already turning gray and black at the edges. It was now well into the category of being a chronic ulcer.

In a Clinical Problem-Solving article published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week, doctors laid out what they did and thought as they worked to figure out what was causing the man's horrid sore.

With the realm of possibilities large, they started with the man's medical history. The man had immigrated to the US from Korea 20 years ago. He owned and worked at a laundromat, which involved standing for more than eight hours a day. He had a history of eczema on his legs, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes. For these, he was prescribed a statin for his cholesterol, two blood pressure medications (hydrochlorothiazide and losartan), and metformin for his diabetes. He told doctors he was not good at taking the regimen of medicine.

His diabetes was considered "poorly controlled." A month prior, he had a glycated hemoglobin (A1C or HbA1C) test—which indicates a person's average blood sugar level over the past two or three months. His result was 11 percent, while the normal range is between 4.2 and 5.6 percent.

His blood pressure, meanwhile, was 215/100 mm Hg at the emergency department. For reference, readings higher than 130/80 mm Hg on either number are considered the first stage of high blood pressure. Over the past three years, the man's blood pressure had systolic readings (top number, pressure as heart beats) ranging from 160 to 230 mm Hg and diastolic readings (bottom number, pressure as heart relaxes) ranging from 95 to 120 mm Hg.

Clinical clues

Given the patient's poorly controlled diabetes, a diabetic ulcer was initially suspected. But the patient didn't have any typical signs of diabetic neuropathy that are linked to ulcers. These would include numbness, unusual sensations, or weakness. His responses on a sensory exam were all normal. Diabetic ulcers also typically form on the foot, not the lower leg.

X-rays of the ankle showed swelling in the soft tissue but without some signs of infection. The doctors wondered if the man had osteomyelitis, an infection in the bone, which can be a complication in people with diabetic ulcers. The large size and duration of the ulcer matched with a bone infection, as well as some elevated inflammatory markers he had on his blood tests.

To investigate the bone infection further, they admitted the man to the hospital and ordered magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). But the MRI showed only a soft-tissue defect and a normal bone, ruling out a bone infection. Another MRI was done with a contrast agent. That showed that the man's large arteries were normal and there were no large blood clots deep in his veins—which is sometimes linked to prolonged standing, as the man did at his laundromat job.

As the doctors were still working to root out the cause, they had started him on a heavy-duty regimen of antibiotics. This was done with the assumption that on top of whatever caused the ulcer, there was now also a potentially aggressive secondary infection—one not knocked out by the previous round of antibiotics the man had been given.

With a bunch of diagnostic dead ends piling up, the doctors broadened their view of possibilities, newly considering cancers, rare inflammatory conditions, and less common conditions affecting small blood vessels (as the MRI has shown the larger vessels were normal). This led them to the possibility of a Martorell's ulcer.

These ulcers, first described in 1945 by a Spanish doctor named Fernando Martorell, form when prolonged, uncontrolled high blood pressure causes the teeny arteries below the skin to stiffen and narrow, which blocks the blood supply, leading to tissue death and then ulcers. The ulcers in these cases tend to start as red blisters and evolve to frank ulcers. They are excruciatingly painful. And they tend to form on the lower legs, often over the Achilles’ tendon, though it's unclear why this location is common.

What the doctor ordered

The doctors performed a punch biopsy of the man's ulcer, but it was inconclusive—which is common with Martorell's ulcers. The doctors turned to a "deep wedge biopsy" instead, which is exactly what it sounds like.

A pathology exam of the tissue slices from the wedge biopsy showed blood vessels that had thickened and narrowed. It also revealed extensive inflammation and necrosis. With the pathology results as well as the clinical presentation, the doctors diagnosed the man with a Martorell's ulcer.

They also got back culture results from deep-tissue testing, finding that the man's ulcer had also become infected with two common and opportunistic bacteria—Serratia marcescens and Enterococcus faecalis. Luckily, these are generally easy to treat, so the doctors scaled back his antibiotic regimen to target just those germs.

The man underwent three surgical procedures to clean out the dead tissue from the ulcer, then a skin graft to repair the damage. Ultimately, he made a full recovery. The doctors at first set him on an aggressive regimen to control his blood pressure, one that used four drugs instead of the two he was supposed to be taking. But the four-drug regimen caused his blood pressure to drop too low, and he was ultimately moved back to his original two-drug treatment.

The finding suggests that if he had just taken his original medications as prescribed, he would have kept his blood pressure in check and avoided the ulcer altogether.

In the end, "the good outcome in this patient with a Martorell’s ulcer underscores the importance of blood-pressure control in the management of this condition," the doctors concluded.

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In mid-June, a federal judge issued a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration, declaring that its decision to cancel the funding for many grants issued by the National Institutes of Health was illegal, and suggesting that the policy was likely animated by racism. But the detailed reasoning behind his decision wasn't released at the time. The written portion of the decision was finally issued on Wednesday, and it has a number of notable features.

For starters, it's more limited in scope due to a pair of Supreme Court decisions that were issued in the intervening weeks. As a consequence, far fewer grants will see their funding restored. Regardless, the court continues to find that the government's actions were arbitrary and capricious, in part because the government never bothered to define the problems that would get a grant canceled. As a result, officials within the NIH simply canceled lists of grants they received from DOGE without bothering to examine their scientific merit, and then struggled to retroactively describe a policy that justified the actions afterward—a process that led several of them to resign.

A more limited verdict

The issue before Judge William Young of the District of Massachusetts was whether the government had followed the law in terminating grants funded by the National Institutes of Health. After a short trial, Young issued a verbal ruling that the government hadn't, and that he had concluded that its actions were the product of "racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ. community." But the details of his decisions and the evidence that motivated them had to wait for a written ruling, which is now available.

In the meantime, however, the Supreme Court had shifted the ground on a couple of issues. For example, while Young still feels that policy decisions were motivated by discrimination against the LGBTQ community, the United States v. Skrmetti decision limits what he can do about it. Young writes that the decision "leads this Court to conclude that, while here there is federal government discrimination based on a person’s status, not all discrimination is pejorative."

Separately, Trump v. Casa blocked the use of a national injunction against illegal activity. So, while the government's actions have been determined to be illegal, Young can only protect the people who were parties to this suit. Anyone who lost a grant but wasn't a member of any of the parties involved, or based in any of the states that sued, remains on their own.

Those issues aside, the ruling largely focuses on whether the termination of grants violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how the executive branch handles decision- and rule-making. Specifically, it requires that any decisions of this sort cannot be "arbitrary and capricious." And, Young concludes that the government hasn't cleared that bar.

Arbitrary and capricious

The grant cancellations, Young concludes, "Arise from the NIH’s newly minted war against undefined concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion and gender identity, that has expanded to include vaccine hesitancy, COVID, influencing public opinion and climate change." The "undefined" aspect plays a key part in his reasoning. Referring to DEI, he writes, "No one has ever defined it to this Court—and this Court has asked multiple times." It's not defined in Trump's executive order that launched the "newly minted war," and Young found that administrators within the NIH issued multiple documents that attempted to define it, not all of which were consistent with each other, and in some cases seemed to use circular reasoning.

He also noted that the officials who sent these memos had a tendency to resign shortly afterward, writing, "it is not lost on the Court that oftentimes people vote with their feet."

As a result, the NIH staff had no solid guidance for determining whether a given grant violated the new anti-DEI policy, or how that might be weighed against the scientific merit of the grant. So, how were they to identify which grants needed to be terminated? The evidence revealed at trial indicates that they didn't need to make those decisions; DOGE made them for the NIH. In one case, an NIH official approved a list of grants to terminate received from DOGE only two minutes after it showed up in his inbox.

"There is no reasoned decision-making at all with respect to the NIH’s 'abruptness' in the 'robotic rollout' of this grant-termination action," Young concludes. "Based upon a fair preponderance of the evidence and on the sparse administrative record, the Court finds and rules that HHS and, in turn, NIH, are being force-fed unworkable 'policy' supported with sparse pseudo-reasoning, and wholly unsupported statements."

Young also noted that the termination of grants to Columbia University was equally arbitrary. "How the scientific and research activities had any connection with unrest issues on Columbia’s campus is conspicuously never explained," Young noted. "The record evidence certainly reveals none."

A small win against a larger loss

Given all that, it's little surprise that the ruling declares the grant terminations to be arbitrary and capricious. "The Public Officials [at the NIH] in their haste to appease the Executive, simply moved too fast and broke things," Young concluded, "including the law." That provides the legal reasoning behind his earlier decision to restore the cancelled grants, although as noted, this has now been limited to only those grants held by researchers who are covered by one of the organizations or governments that filed the suit.

But Young also appears to lament the fact that he had to intervene here, writing:

The American people have enjoyed a historical norm of a largely apolitical scientific research agency supporting research in an elegant, merit-based approach that benefits everyone. That historical norm changed on January 20, 2025. The new Administration began weaponizing what should not be weaponized—the health of all Americans through its abuse of HHS and the NIH systems, creating chaos and promoting an unreasonable and unreasoned agenda of blacklisting certain topics, that on this Administrative Record, has absolutely nothing to do with the promotion of science or research.

So, while the decision restores money to individual research programs, it does nothing to reverse the larger damage caused by the politicization of funding decisions.

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