U.S. military on Monday deployed robotic dogs—or robodogs—in joint drills with South Korean forces, simulating assaults on North Korea’s “secret” underground tunnel networks

The results indicate that water fountains can be a source of atmospheric air contamination with potentially pathogenic E. coli and A. hydrophila bacteria. […] some E. coli and A. hydrophila strains isolated from air samples exhibited multidrug resistance [2023]

Italian newspaper says it has published world’s first AI-generated edition

Blindspots in LLMs I’ve noticed while AI coding

The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” said former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, 80, whose private information was included in the release. […] More than 60,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination were released this week by the Trump administration. Many of the pages had been previously disclosed, but with redactions. Many, but not all, redactions have been removed. […] “Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s absolutely a Privacy Act violation.” Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers. [Washington Post]

More: The previously-redacted pages spell out specific instructions for CIA operatives on how to wiretap, including the use of certain chemicals to create markings on telephone devices that could only be seen by other spies under UV light. […] “Seven of ten JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record. These long-secret records shed new light on JFK’s mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald,” Morley posted. “The release does not include two thirds of the promised files nor any of 500-plus IRS record, nor any of the 2,400 recently discovered FBI files.“ […] One document from August 1966 recommends a “certificate of distinction” for a CIA official who led the spy agency’s technical division. Previous releases of the same document contained redactions striking sentences that described how this individual led a team that “conceived and developed” the use of “fluoroscopic scanning” and X-rays, which allowed the CIA to “detect hidden technical listening devices” for the first time. [ABC]

Depression manifests in distinct ways across the life course. Recent research emphasizes how depression impedes development during emerging adulthood. However, our study suggests a more complex narrative. Increasing experience with cycles of depression can also catalyze (a) mature perspectives and coping mechanisms that protect against depression’s lowest lows; (b) deeper self-knowledge and direction, which in turn promoted a coherent personal identity; and (c) emergence of a life purpose, which fostered attainment of adult roles, skill development, greater life satisfaction, and enriched identity. Our synthesis reveals how depression during emerging adulthood can function at once as toxin, potential antidote, and nutritional supplement fostering healthy development.

This book has been made almost entirely from recycled used copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

What if you could listen to music or a podcast without headphones or earbuds and without disturbing anyone around you? Or have a private conversation in public without other people hearing you? […] research introduces a way to create audible enclaves – localized pockets of sound that are isolated from their surroundings. […]

We found a new way to send sound to one specific listener: through self-bending ultrasound beams and a concept called nonlinear acoustics.

Ultrasound refers to sound waves with frequencies above the human hearing range, or above 20 kHz. These waves travel through the air like normal sound waves but are inaudible to people. Because ultrasound can penetrate through many materials and interact with objects in unique ways, it’s widely used for medical imaging and many industrial applications.

In our work, we used ultrasound as a carrier for audible sound. It can transport sound through space silently – becoming audible only when desired.

{ The Conversation | Continue reading }

Eyelashes have evolved as a protective feature for the eyes, offering defense against external dangers such as contamination, excessive evaporation, and shear stress from airflow. They may also serve as indicators of an individual’s health, since various diseases, both congenital and non-congenital, can influence eyelash length. […]

this research primarily focused on the attractiveness of eyelash length […] investigating perceptions of health and sexual receptivity as functions of eyelash length, hypothesizing that while long eyelashes may be rated as less attractive, they could be perceived as signals of sexual receptivity. […]

results showed that eyelash length is positively associated with perceived sexual receptivity, suggesting that longer eyelashes might signal openness to casual relationships, despite lower attractiveness and health ratings at lengths beyond the optimal one-third ratio

{ Archives of Sexual Behavior | Continue reading }

A human adult sheds about 1000 skin cells per cm2 per hour, causing billions of cells to be released from the body every day. This happens through epidermal desquamation, which is a continuous process that constitutes the final active step in the keratinocytes’ differentiation program. Desquamation causes a spontaneous detachment of dead skin cells known as corneocytes. The average size of these skin particles is smaller than the pores of typical clothing fabrics, allowing them to pass through and become aerosolized. Varying levels of DNA may be retained within corneocytes; enough to yield detectable profiles. DNA can be released in the air not only through skin cells but also in other forms. Dandruff constitutes part of bioaerosol material shed by humans, with a single particle containing between 0.8 and 16.6 ng of DNA. […] human DNA is present in indoor dust in sufficient quantity and quality to produce allele calls in STR analysis. […]

There are many cases in police investigations that require identification of individuals from crime scenes […] the most difficult cases involve organized crime and terrorism, where the participants may be forensically aware, hence the detection of conventional DNA and fingerprints may be difficult to achieve. […]

The high sensitivity of DNA technology makes it possible to obtain results from very low levels of biological materials (just a few cells) […]

We have used the building of our institute as the test-bed for the investigation; the experiments were conducted in 14 offices, two meeting rooms and five laboratory areas which are accessed by corridors. […]

Positive results were obtained from 93 out of 96 dust samples for one or more office occupants, resulting in a success rate of φ1 = 0.97. Only 22 of the same samples matched with a known non-occupant, giving a non-occupant success rate of φ2 = 22/96 = 0.23.

{ Nature | Continue reading }

related { DNA-based prediction of Nietzsche’s voice | PDF }

Does a woman’s cognitive performance change throughout her menstrual cycle? […] the body of research in this meta-analysis does not support myths that women’s cognitive abilities change across the menstrual cycle.

results show that there is a different investment behavior—more extreme in men, more stable in women—and, consequently, men get higher levels of gross profit but also of losses than women

Sugary drinks linked to greater oral cancer risk, study

Ultra-processed babies: are toddler snacks one of the great food scandals of our time

1kg of compost contains up to 16,000 microplastic particles

Zuckerberg’s subordinates are letting him win at the board game the Settlers of Catan. (Another time, when she beats him, he accuses her of cheating.) […] During the delivery of her second daughter, Wynn-Williams nearly dies of an amniotic fluid embolism, goes into a coma and wakes up on life support. […] on her first day back, she got an impromptu performance review from her supervisor Joel Kaplan that criticized her for not being “responsive enough” while she was gone. [NY Times]

The fact that the two biggest crypto exchanges, FTX and Binance, failed and their founders were criminally charged and went to prison, should be proof enough of how rancid this ecosystem is. […] Like all financial operations characterized by irrational exuberance, the value of $TRUMP soon plummeted. Indeed, over 800,000 investor accounts lost a total of $2 billion. […] Trump is also staffing the Securities and Exchange Commission with crypto loyalists who have already begun to deconstruct the oversight of the crypto sector. […] For the time being, the two reserves (one for Bitcoin, the second for other digital assets) will contain only crypto seized in criminal or civil forfeitures. The crypto industry was disappointed that Trump didn’t mandate federal purchases of the currencies. But that will probably happen in the future. The new initiative calls on federal agencies to come up with strategies to buy more Bitcoin. And there’s now a bill in Congress calling on the government to buy a million Bitcoin.

Texas museum removes Trump wax figure after visitors repeatedly punched and scratched it

See You Next Wednesday is a recurring gag in most of the films directed by John Landis, usually referring to a fictional film that is rarely seen and never in its entirety. Each instance of See You Next Wednesday in Landis’s films seems to be a completely different film. Landis got the title See You Next Wednesday from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the last line spoken by Frank Poole’s father during Poole’s video letter from his parents. […] In An American Werewolf in London (1981), See You Next Wednesday is a porn film being shown in a seedy London pornographic theater. […] In the Michael Jackson music video Thriller (1983), the phrase is spoken by a deputy in the werewolf film that Michael and his girlfriend are watching. It is also visible as a poster on the outside of the cinema as they leave.

In nearly half of the world’s bird species, young birds learn by imitating the songs of adults. As birds learn songs from one another, mistakes inevitably happen, leading to variation in songs between populations of the same species, similar to the formation of dialects in human languages. […] However, scientists don’t yet fully understand what happens to these song differences when birds move between populations. Imagine you’re a local bird, and a newcomer arrives singing a foreign song. What’s to stop you from learning this new song? […] But birds tend to only learn songs from their own species, even when they are exposed to the birdsong of other species. This suggests that birds have genetic predispositions guiding them to learn only “appropriate” songs.

Male octopus injects female with venom during sex to avoid being eaten

Why straight women watch lesbian porn

Is our universe trapped inside a black hole?

Water droplets create “microlightning” when they split, producing electrical discharges without any external power source. These tiny electrical sparks can transform simple gases into complex organic molecules—including amino acids and RNA components—in just microseconds. […] this phenomenon may have been a major contributor to creating life’s building blocks on early Earth

Bryan Johnson — the investor and founder behind the Don’t Die movement — wants to start “foodome” sequencing. “We’re going to sequence the U.S. ‘foodome,’ which means test 20% of foods that constitute 80% of the American diet based on stuff we eat everyday” […] he’s obsessed with finding ways to extend his lifespan and preaching that gospel to others. He has taken extreme measures, including transfusing his blood with that of his 17-year-old son and undergoing shock therapy treatment to get more nighttime erections, which he says directly correlates to health.

Results consistently show that positive experiences are more likely to come to mind when they think about how karma influences their own life, but negative experiences are more likely when thinking about other’s karma, although this difference was weaker in Singapore and India than in the United States

no one can seem to agree on what an AI agent is, exactly

Scammers exploit Google redirect URLs to send phishing links

As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain. […] Babies were thought to be lower-evolved beings whose brains were not yet developed enough to feel pain, at least not in the way that older children and adults feel pain. Crying and pain avoidance were dismissed as simply reflexive. […] Most disturbingly, the theory that babies don’t feel pain wasn’t just an error of science or philosophy—it shaped medical practice. It was routine for babies undergoing medical procedures to be medically paralyzed but not anesthetized

Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany in 1933, later wrote that long before Jews, Roma, gays, Communists and others could be herded into death camps, they had to be “denationalized” — excluded from the society that guaranteed their legal rights. Enlightenment thinkers had posited that just by virtue of existing, each person has inalienable rights. Arendt, however, observed that the “right to have rights” could be guaranteed only by a political community. Without a state to claim them as their own, people have no laws, no courts and no political mechanisms for protecting rights. As a stateless person, [Arendt] experienced that loss of rights — unable to get papers, hiding from the police, interned as an “enemy alien” in France — before making it to the United States. [NY Times]

It’s illegal to mispronounce Joliet.

What happens to attachment bonds when relationships end? […] for the average person, attachment bonds are gradually (4.18 years as a mid-point) relinquished after relationship termination: People’s former partners simply become someone they used to know. […]

even if the typical person does eventually “get over” their former partner, for some people, remnants of those bonds continue and never fully fade away.

{ Social Psychological and Personality Science | Continue reading }

Three GLP-1 drugs are approved for weight loss in the United States […] cost about $1000/month and are rarely covered by insurance, putting them out of reach for most Americans. […] For the past three years, there’s been a shortage of these drugs. FDA regulations say that during a shortage, it’s semi-legal for compounding pharmacies to provide medications without getting the patent-holders’ permission. In practice, that means they get cheap peptides from China, do some minimal safety testing in house, and sell them online. So for the past three years, telehealth startups working with compounding pharmacies have sold these drugs for about $200/month. Over two million Americans have made use of this loophole to get weight loss drugs for cheap. [But] what happens when the shortage ends? Many people have to stay on GLP-1 drugs permanently, or else they risk regaining their lost weight. But many can’t afford $1000/month. What happens to them? Now we’ll find out. At the end of last year, the FDA declared the shortage over. The compounding pharmacies appealed the decision, but the FDA recently confirmed its decision is final. As of March 19 (for tirzepatide) and April 22 (for semaglutide), compounding pharmacies can no longer sell cheap GLP-1 drugs.

Just 5 Days of Junk Food Can Trigger Obesity’s Hold on Your Brain

Musk’s layoffs shrink workforce needed to realize Trump’s energy agenda

What It’s Like to Build a Sauna Kit in My Backyard

Emily Dickinson used envelopes and seals to turn letters into poetry, layering hidden messages and playful forms

Previous research has found that mothers are more likely to ascribe paternal resemblance to newborns. Moreover, studies have found that fathers who perceive that their children resemble them invest more in those children. In this study, we aimed to examine if maternal claims of paternal resemblance exist even with very limited visual information by asking parents whom they believed the fetus looked like during an ultrasound. We found that mothers, but not fathers, were more likely to say that the fetus resembled the father.

{ Evolution and Human Behavior | Continue reading }

Top UK comedy club bans audience members with botox after ‘numerous complaints’ […] “reactionless” faces […] audience members with frozen faces aren’t reacting to their jokes

just seven countries met the WHO’s air quality standard. Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Estonia, Grenada, Iceland, and New Zealand

The original Sphere, which cost about $2.3bn to construct, is home to the word’s highest-resolution LED screen and has seating capacity for up to 20,000 people. But the venue demands a significant investment from performers, who must create customised visual content tailored to the wraparound LED display, which cannot be used elsewhere. While this has been been feasible for its high-profile residencies such as U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company and Anyma, smaller venues could attract a broader range of artists who might not have the budget or demand to fill the flagship Las Vegas location. The possibility of 5,000-capacity mini-Spheres follows news that a full-scale venue will open in the UAE

This is a fundamental miscalculation in the design of the Starship V2 and the engine section […] The fixes will take much longer than 4-6 weeks

Start walking down the stairs some evening for an uptown No. 1 train at 28th Street and Seventh Avenue, and be on the lookout for a small, hidden bar. […] Jey Perie, 41, who grew up in France and moved to New York in 2012 […] opened La Noxe, a 600-square-foot hidden bar in between the street and the uptown train. The bar holds 30 people and is reminiscent of a speakeasy, “because it’s so hard to find, which was never my intention” […] We have a DJ on the weekends so those are our busiest days. Then we can sell 150-200 drinks a night. […] How did this space become so well-known? In March of 2021, we had been closed for months because of Covid, and then told we could reopen, but only at 25 percent, which is like eight people, only to close again a few months later. When we were trying to figure out how we were going to survive, a random girl booked a reservation. She made a TikTok video showing her opening the door and walking out. She only had 400 or 500 followers, but her video got a million plus views. That got picked up on other social media. The M.T.A. president gave us an award. We became a New York comeback story. She brought the news, and Jimmy Fallon had us on his show. We went from 10 people DM-ing on Instagram a week to 1,000 people. We started taking reservations on Resy. Without that video, we would be closed. [NY Times]

Trump says anti-Tesla protesters will face ‘hell’, Sean Hannity says he’s buying Tesla in solidarity with Musk, INTERVIEW OF PRESIDENT TRUMP AND ELON MUSK BY SEAN HANNITY, quote

When Alex Goldstein was just 7 years old, he says, he was drawn to extreme weather. Within 10 years, he convinced his father to take him storm chasing and hasn’t stopped since.

Now, at 35, he leads a small group of data scientists and meteorologists who help teams of traders at one of the world’s largest hedge funds position themselves in commodities markets.

Millennium Management’s Goldstein and other specialists like him who can help model weather patterns in an increasingly volatile climate have become one of the most sought-after groups for hedge funds and trading firms. […]

Hedge funds on average hired 23% more weather experts, including data scientists and meteorologists, in 2024 compared to a year earlier. […] The average pay package has also increased by 18%, with the top talent getting as much as between $750,000 and $1 million.

That compares to a median salary in 2023 of about $93,000 for atmospheric scientists, including meteorologists, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

unrelated { IRS staff cuts mean less scrutiny for ultra-wealthy }

Is your baby straight or gay? N.J. hospitals hand out controversial forms to new moms.

Generation Beta officially arrived on Jan. 1, successors to Gen Alpha. […] Beta is commonly used as slang for weak and passive.

A fast-growing body of research signals potential health benefits of GLP-1s, the class of diabetes and weight-loss drugs known by names like Ozempic, beyond what they were initially approved to treat. That includes age-related conditions like Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis, certain cancers and even mortality.

Alcohol and cancer risk: what you need to know

Men who had given blood more than 100 times in their life were more likely to have blood cells carrying certain beneficial mutations, suggesting that donating blood promotes the growth of these cells

We found that, on the whole, those who made it to their hundredth birthday tended to have lower levels of glucose, creatinine and uric acid from their sixties onwards. […] very few of the centenarians had a glucose level above 6.5 mmol/L earlier in life, or a creatinine level above 125 µmol/L. […] people with higher levels of glucose, creatinine, uric acid and markers for liver function also decreased the chance of becoming a centenarian.

Microplastics hinder plant photosynthesis, study finds, threatening millions with starvation

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are ushering in a new age of bribery, graft, and corruption to American politics

Why bother using Claude Code at around $5 per session when you can pay $20 for Cursor and use it indefinitely? Claude Code excels in vibe coding.

For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book’s author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook […] as a director of global public policy. Now she has written an insider account of a company that she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders, who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and became ever more feckless, even as Facebook became a vector for disinformation campaigns and cozied up to authoritarian regimes. […]

During her time at Facebook, Wynn-Williams worked closely with its chief executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. They’re this book’s Tom and Daisy — the “careless people” in “The Great Gatsby” who, as Wynn-Williams quotes the novel in her epigraph, “smashed up things and creatures” and “let other people clean up the mess they had made.” […]

Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be “gently mobbed.” […]

Sandberg, for her part, turns her charm on and off like a tap. […] Wynn-Williams is aghast to discover that Sandberg has instructed her 26-year-old assistant to buy lingerie for both of them, budget be damned.(The total cost is $13,000.) During a long drive in Europe, the assistant and Sandberg take turns sleeping in each other’s laps, stroking each other’s hair. On the 12-hour flight home on a private jet, a pajama-clad Sandberg claims the only bed on the plane and repeatedly demands that Wynn-Williams “come to bed.” Wynn-Williams demurs. Sandberg is miffed.

Sandberg isn’t the only person in this book with apparent boundary issues. Wynn-Williams has uncomfortable encounters with Joel Kaplan, an ex-boyfriend of Sandberg’s from Harvard, who was hired as Facebook’s vice president of U.S. policy and eventually became vice president of global policy — Wynn-Williams’s manager. […] Wynn-Williams describes Kaplan grinding up against her on the dance floor at a work event, announcing that she looks “sultry” and making “weird comments” about her husband. […]

The book includes a detailed chapter on “Aldrin,” the code name for Facebook’s project to get unblocked in China. According to Wynn-Williams, the company proposed all kinds of byzantine arrangements involving China-based partnerships, data collection and censorship tools that it hoped would satisfy China’s ruling Communist Party.

Knowing that Zuckerberg would probably face questions about China from Congress, his team gave him cleverly worded talking points. […] “Senators will need to ask exceptionally specific questions to get close to any truth.” When Zuckerberg eventually appears before a Senate
committee in 2018, a senator asks him how Facebook is handling the Chinese government’s unwillingness “to allow a social media platform — foreign or domestic — to operate in China unless it agrees to abide by Chinese law.” In his reply, Zuckerberg states, “No decisions have been made around the conditions under which any possible future service might be offered in China,” to which Wynn-Williams comments: “He lies.”

Wynn-Williams has filed a whistle-blower complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission [Zuckerberg’s Meta considered sharing user data with China, whistleblower alleges | Washington Post]

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 90% drop in numbers

Each day, around €3,000 of loose change ends up in the Trevi Fountain in Roma. That works out as up to €1.5 million tossed into its waters each year.

[2019] Businessman Tan Youhui hired a hitman to “take out” his competitor for $282,000 (£218,000), a court heard. But the hitman hired another man to do the job, offering $141,000. That man hired another hitman, who hired another hitman, who hired another hitman. The plan crumbled when the final hitman met the man, named only as Wei, in a cafe and proposed faking his death. All six men - the five hitmen and Tan - were convicted of attempted murder

Scientists Have Turned Light Into a Supersolid [a supersolid is a spatially ordered (i.e. solid) material with superfluid properties]

AI tools are spotting errors in research papers — Study that hyped the toxicity of black plastic utensils inspires projects that use large language models to check papers

what is the “vibe” in vibe coding?

Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste, scientists say

About two-thirds of Americans are not getting the right amount of sleep (seven to nine hours a night), have a 29% increased risk of premature death from any cause

‘The dumbest thing I’ve ever done’: spy trial’s tales of scheming, bluster and a love triangle

CSS (also known as Stingrays or IMSI catchers) are devices that masquerade as legitimate cell-phone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius into connecting to the device rather than a tower. Rayhunter is a new open source tool to help search out CSS around the world.

How IMSI-Catchers Exploit Cell Networks

You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio […] Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. […] Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match. […] Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves. [NY Times]

A new part of the immune system has been discovered and it is a goldmine of potential antibiotics

humans have a third set of teeth available as buds, ready to grow as needed. New Medicine may help them grow.

Previous research shows that emotion-inducing prompts can elevate “anxiety” in LLMs, affecting behavior and amplifying biases. Here, we found that traumatic narratives increased Chat-GPT-4’s reported anxiety

Burds, cows, cats, rats. H5N1 is spreading

Mimicking Shark Skin to Create Clean Cutting Boards

Kummerspeck: a German word for weight that one puts on due to stress eating. Ageotori: a Japanese word for the particular way one sometimes looks worse after a haircut. Shemomedjamo: a Georgian word meaning “to accidentally eat the whole thing.” Tingo: a Rapa Nui word meaning “to eventually steal all of your neighbor’s possessions by borrowing and never returning them.” Aspaldiko: Basque. The joy that comes from catching up with someone you haven’t seen for a long time. Mondegreen: English, coined in the twentieth century to describe the mistaken lyrics one habitually attributes to a misheard song (and which one sometimes prefers to the real lyrics). Can language describe everything we feel—and should it?

Tantalising data from more than a decade ago showed people who were already taking a daily aspirin were more likely to survive if they were diagnosed with cancer. Aspirin disrupts the platelets and removes their influence over the T-cells so they can hunt out the cancer.

Then came gene targeting technologies, like CRISPR, over 10 years ago. With these technologies we can delete, modify, add, or change any gene in any organism’s DNA and it’s easy and cheap. […] We are editing genes and injecting DNA with micro-precision, sculpting biology at its most fundamental level. We are learning to harvest large amounts of embryos and eggs from different animal species so we can understand the development of life on a scale no one has tried before. We are editing genes and injecting DNA with micro-precision, sculpting biology at its most fundamental level. We started small with amphibians and fish before progressing to small mammals like mice and hamsters. Now we are working with rabbits and soon we’ll be working with cats and dogs and agricultural animals.

technologies such as CRISPR could be used to make “killer mosquitoes” that cause plagues that wipe out staple crops

AI reasoning models can cheat to win chess games

Inside the Wild West of AI companionship — Sexually charged underage celebrity bots and unanswered legal questions complicate a burgeoning industry.

it starts out in court after she was arrested for stealing a pineapple. She’s found guilty, and has a fit when she finds out she has to spend a night in jail, because she’s never gone 24 hours without sex before. So she basically goes on a rampage and has an orgy with everyone on the jury. — Spending a year with the world-class stars of Brazzers

Citigroup Mistakenly Credited a Customer with $81 Trillion Instead of $280: ‘Inputting Error’

German court rules Pfizer, BioNTech violated Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine patent, Moderna shares, which were already rallying after the company disclosed $6 million in insider purchases, went even higher after the ruling was reported

AI-powered influencers have the potential to damage brand reputation more than their human equivalents, research

3D-printed perfused penis for restoring erectile function in rabbits and pigs [..] we 3D printed a hydrogel-based corpus cavernosum incorporating a strain-limiting tunica albuginea that can be engorged with blood through vein occlusion […] allowed the animals to mate and reproduce

Men with higher-quality sperm live longer, study

Urine’s power as a fertiliser is due to the nitrogen and phosphorus that it contains

Prior research suggests that witnesses have worse memory for armed compared to unarmed perpetrators, a finding known as the Weapon Focus Effect (WFE). […] We did not find a significant WFE for target description or lineup identification in any experiment

Research identifies spite as a key factor that underlies conspiracy theory belief […] “individuals […] rejecting expert opinion and scientific consensus.”

A familect is the type of inward-oriented language variety used by families. It exhibits some distinctive features compared to other more outward-oriented vernacular varieties, which result from its function in bonding and marking identity. Familects also share some characteristics with child language and child-oriented speech, as well as with forms of language play. […] This commentary reviews both the idiosyncratic features of familects and their overlap with other vernacular varieties

German tattoo artist came to the US for a 3-week trip. She’s now been in ICE detention for over a month

A “sleep divorce” might seem bad for your relationship at first, Dr. Gunn said. But inadequate rest can also sink a relationship […] When sleeping on your back, gravity can cause your airway to narrow, which results in snoring […] To help your partner stay on their side while sleeping […] you can make rolling over uncomfortable by sewing or duct-taping tennis balls or other objects onto the back of a shirt [NY Times]

William H. Mumler (1832–1884) was an American spirit photographer who worked in New York City and Boston. His first spirit photograph was apparently an accident—a self-portrait which, when developed, also revealed the “spirit” of his deceased cousin. Mumler then left his job as an engraver to pursue spirit photography full-time, taking advantage of the large number of people who had lost relatives in the American Civil War. […]

Mumler’s wife, Hannah Mumler, was also a famous healing medium, and conducted her own spiritual business in addition to the business of assisting her husband.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

When spirit photography appeared in the 1860s, the United States was reeling from the Civil War, which claimed an astonishing 620,000 lives. Deep in mourning, Americans were drawn to anyone who offered even a fleeting connection to the souls of their dearly departed. Self-proclaimed mediums performed seances in which the living could speak with the dead, and photographers like Mumler granted the wishes of the bereaved to see their lost sons or brothers one last time. […]

While taking self-portraits for practice, one of Mumler’s prints came back with an unexplainable aberration. Although he was “quite alone in the room” when the shot was taken, there appeared to be a figure at his side, a girl who was “made of light.” Mumler showed the photo to a spiritualist friend who confirmed that the girl in the image was almost certainly a ghost. […]

Mumler had a knack for self-promotion and his otherworldly photo was written up in popular spiritualist newspapers like the Banner of Light and also the mainstream press. Bostoners began lining up at his small portrait studio to pay as much as $10 for their likeness with a lost loved one.

One of his most famous images is the photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband Abraham Lincoln.

Over time, the evidence against Mumler started to mount. […] A man visiting Mumler’s studio recognized a female ghost as his wife, who was not only alive but recently had her portrait taken by Mumler. Wasn’t it obvious that Mumler was reusing old negatives and playing them off as ghosts?

Since things were getting hot in Boston, Mumler tried relocating to New York in 1869, but he was quickly arrested and tried for fraud. The New York prosecutors called a parade of expert witnesses who offered at least nine ways that Mumler could have used photographic trickery to produce his ghostly images. […]

Despite the best efforts of so many investigators, no one was able to solve the riddle of exactly how Mumler created his apparitions.

Mumler was acquitted and returned to Boston. He shied away from spirit photography and refocused his efforts on the chemistry of photo development. He eventually invented a technique called the “Mumler process” that allowed the first photographs to be printed on newsprint, transforming the practice of journalism.

{ History | Continue reading }

trailer { Smile for the Dead (2025), a documentary film about William H. Mumler }

Donald Trump Would Replace Benjamin Franklin on $100 Bill Under GOP Bill

Hedge funds are dumping the Magnificent 7 and other AI-linked positions.

the number of orgasms per week by any means (i.e., solitary and partnered sex)… 2.52 for females and 4.38 for males […] Higher TSO averages were obtained in more recent studies, younger samples, samples with a lower proportion of straight participants, and samples with a higher proportion of single participants. A Monte Carlo simulation suggested that 2.1% of females and 24.0% of males met the seven orgasms per week criterion.

Tattoos may be linked to an increased risk of skin and lymphoma cancers

Scientists Propose Injecting Astronauts With Tardigrade RNA After Finding It Prevents Radiation Damage

I was exploring a huge storm drain system that runs under the interstate (ATL) with a friend in a spot I frequent. I stepped into what I thought was a shallow puddle at the entrance of a tunnel and 100% disappeared into a pool of shit water. I dragged myself out and my friend tried to help me clean my face off in some (less) shitty water but it was like I was covered in Crisco. I think I’ll have a very mild PTSD from this experience. has this ever happened to anyone else lol I’m trying to figure out if I should ask a friend for some antibiotics? I kept my mouth and eyes closed thank god but still had shit all over my face. Like am i 100% gonna get pink eye my throat burns like fuck. Probably from the ammonia. Waders won’t always cut it, guys. Water is a fucking mirage. also, anyone know why was it like being covered in Crisco, even after washing off. I’m scared to know. I took a 30 minute shower with Soft Scrub bleach gel and Dawn dish soap. Obviously don’t do this but it was an emergency. I’m experienced and careful so please don’t come for me. I didn’t fall I just misjudged the depth of the water. anyone else love drains and can educate me more privately on wastewater systems?