If you see ads pointing you to votesafe.org to check your voter registration, read this first.

VoteSafe is run by America PAC, Elon Musk's super PAC. It is not a government site. Its own footer says "Paid for by America PAC."

It also doesn't register anyone. The flow ends by telling you to download a PDF, print it, and mail it in yourself.

Its privacy policy (updated Aug 29, 2026) lets America PAC share your info with "business partners" for targeted marketing, or sell it. That includes whether you're registered to vote and "how you submit your vote." Popular Information found your address going to Facebook and Google, a hashed email to The Trade Desk, your usage to X, and a device fingerprint that survives cookie deletion.

VoteSafe also white-labels voter sites for allied groups, including Sentinel Action Fund and Ready to Register. North Carolina's election board warned in July that Ready to Register mailings used an outdated form, went to deceased voters, and had QR codes that could pre-populate other people's data.

To check your registration, use your state's official portal, https://vote.gov, or https://vote.org. None of them sell your data.

Sources:
https://popular.info/p/the-hidden-dangers-of-musks-votesafeorg
https://votesafe.org/privacy-policy
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00879510/
https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2026/07/01/bulk-voter-registration-mailings-cause-voter-confusion-additional-work-counties

🧱 The secret ingredient holding the Great Wall of China together is sticky rice.

Ming Dynasty masons (1368-1644) mixed boiled sticky rice soup into their lime mortar. The result was a tough, flexible, water-resistant binder that has held brick sections together for around 600 years.

The chemistry: sticky rice is packed with amylopectin, a complex starch. In 2010, chemists led by Bingjian Zhang at Zhejiang University found that amylopectin acts as a template, steering calcium carbonate crystals into a dense, interlocking structure instead of large brittle chunks.

That compact microstructure is why some wall sections have shrugged off earthquakes and still keep weeds out of the seams centuries later.

Read more:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar9001944
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/100608-sticky-rice-mortar-china-science
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100530093704.htm

#chemistry #history #engineering