Monitoring marine litter from space is now a reality

A lack of sleep can make it extraordinarily difficult to retain information. Two new studies uncover why this is and what is happening inside the brain during sleep and sleep deprivation to help or harm the formation of memories.

The con artists take on false online identities and spend months financially grooming their victims to get them to invest on fraudulent cryptocurrency websites. It’s theft at a scale so large that investigators are now calling it a mass transfer of wealth from middle-class Americans to criminal gangs. Last year, the FBI estimates, pig butchering scams stole nearly $4 billion from tens of thousands of American victims, a 53% increase from the year before.

Social-Media Influencers Aren’t Getting Rich—They’re Barely Getting By — Platforms are paying less for popular posts, brands are pickier about partnerships and a possible TikTok ban looms

‘mathematicians can’t agree on the definition of what makes two things equal

Nietzschean Language Models and Philosophical Chatbots: Outline of a Critique of AI

Chinese scientists and engineers are applying ChatGPT-like technology to sex robots, aiming to create interactive, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered companions

Shelly’s Leg (1973-1977) was Seattle’s first disco, an unapologetically gay establishment that welcomed revelers of every sexuality

Flashback: humansnotinvited.com

American Airlines passenger gagged and bound with duct tape to her seat after being accused of attempting to open an aircraft door mid-flight […] after drinking a neat Jack Daniels

One of the most coveted beauty products among teenagers is a creamy, fragrant lotion that comes in a tangerine-colored plastic tub. Called Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, it is sold for $48 by the beauty brand Sol de Janeiro. According to Sol de Janeiro, a jar of Brazilian Bum Bum Cream is sold every six seconds.

Stock-obsessed Gen Z are using astrology and tarot to invest

Researchers turn wool and hair offcuts into graphite for lithium batteries […] About 70 per cent of the world’s graphite, a key component in lithium batteries, comes from China.

U.S. government Sues Adobe and Executives for Hiding Fees, Preventing Consumers from Easily Cancelling Software Subscriptions

The Excel World Championship

How I Made Trading Cards with E- Ink Displays

The first rule of avoiding scam calls is to never answer unknown numbers, and even some known ones.

Through a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging methods, experiments have identified sensory, perceptual, emotional and cognitive processes that make important contributions to our psychological experiences of art, in particular the emergence of aesthetic preferences. Here we conduct a selective review of this literature that will provide readers without a background in the neurosciences a first introduction into what we have learned so far

Which of these shapes is bouba and which is kiki?

Pelvic floor muscle training, more

Wells Fargo Fires Over a Dozen for ‘Simulation of Keyboard Activity’

One of the bigger discussions happening right now on the internet is whether a “Remote Amazon Tribe” has become “addicted to porn” as a result of getting SpaceX’s Starlink internet. […] The Marubo people have been using the internet long before Starlink came to their village

Subvocalization: Why Do We Have A Voice In Our Heads When We Read?

How Data-Fueled Neurotargeting Could Kill Democracy the technique, which weaponizes emotional data for political gain, could erode the foundations of a fair and informed society

Where are the Female Composers? Evidence on the Extent and Causes of Gender Inequality in Music History

A new study finds that people today who eat and exercise the same amount as people 20 years ago are still fatter. First, people are exposed to more chemicals that might be weight-gain inducing. Pesticides, flame retardants, and the substances in food packaging might all be altering our hormonal processes and tweaking the way our bodies put on and maintain weight. Second, the use of prescription drugs has risen dramatically since the 1970s and ’80s. Prozac, the first blockbuster SSRI, came out in 1988. Antidepressants are now one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S., and many of them have been linked to weight gain. Finally, Kuk and the other study authors think that the microbiomes of Americans might have somehow changed between the 1980s and now. It’s well known that some types of gut bacteria make a person more prone to weight gain and obesity. Americans are eating more meat than they were a few decades ago, and many animal products are treated with hormones and antibiotics in order to promote growth. All that meat might be changing gut bacteria in ways that are subtle, at first, but add up over time. Kuk believes that the proliferation of artificial sweeteners could also be playing a role.

On average, for every 555 million molecules of water, one is split into a negatively charged OH⁻ and a positively charged H⁺. And this actually matters a lot, in chemistry. It’s the reason we say water has pH 7.

The Missing Post Office is an artwork by Japanese artist Saya Kubota. It is a “post office” where undeliverable letters are collected The Missing Post Office receives mail from all over the world. Addressees include deceased individuals, future descendants, first loves to whom the writers were never able to express their feelings, themselves, and long-time favorite items.

Missouri Restaurant bans women under 30, men under 35, wants a ‘grown and sexy’ vibe

Entertainment Media as a Source of Relationship Misinformation We discuss two ways that relationship misinformation can appear in entertainment media – in the form of blatant claims and subtle content – and we provide an example of each from reality television.

study uncovers brain differences in sexual desire disorders in men and women […] HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder), characterized by a persistent lack of sexual interest causing significant distress, affects about 10% of women and 8% of men. […] Women with HSDD exhibited greater activation in limbic regions such as the amygdala, striatum, and thalamus, which are associated with emotional processing and sexual motivation. In contrast, men showed greater activation in the visual cortex, indicating a heightened sensitivity to visual sexual cues.

In the morning, you report that you barely slept at all. Yet according to the test—polysomnography, the gold standard for sleep measurement—you slept all night. […] these people showed pockets of arousal in the form of fast brain waves during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. REM is the stage in normal sleep when your brain should completely disconnect from the systems that keep you aware and vigilant People with subjective insomnia with this interrupted REM do not experience their sleep as restful. When wakened, they reported having had thoughts similar to those when awake […] They were less likely to have immersive dreams […] interrupted REM is strongly linked to disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety.

No evidence sperm counts are dropping, researchers find

Depression and memory decline are intimately linked […] those with higher depressive symptoms were more likely to experience faster memory decline, while those who started off with a poorer memory were more likely to develop depressive symptoms during the study period.

Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines ingest the most microplastics among 109 countries, according to a study by Cornell University researchers. Indonesians, the top consumers of microplastics, were found to ingest about 15g of microplastics per month – equivalent to three credit cards – with the majority of plastic particles coming from aquatic sources such as fish and seafood. Indonesians’ daily consumption of microplastics increased by 59 times from 1990 to 2018.

More than a century ago, flamingos disappeared from Florida, when hunters nearly drove them to extinction in the quest for their fashionable — and highly profitable — plumage. Now they’re back, likely transported by Hurricane Idalia last August.

dolphins and parrots address conspecifics by imitating the calls of the addressee […] African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls Audio: >Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to call them

The US dollar continues to cede ground to nontraditional currencies in global foreign exchange reserves, but it remains the preeminent reserve currency. Recent data from the IMF […] point to an ongoing gradual decline in the dollar’s share of allocated foreign reserves of central banks and governments. Strikingly, the reduced role of the US dollar over the last two decades has not been matched by increases in the shares of the other “big four” currencies—the euro, yen, and pound. Rather, it has been accompanied by a rise in the share of what we have called non-traditional reserve currencies, including the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Chinese renminbi, South Korean won, Singaporean dollar, and the Nordic currencies. […] One non-traditional reserve currency gaining market share is the Chinese renminbi, whose gains match a quarter of the decline in the dollar’s share.

Ask most venture-backed founders why they get 10x more equity than employee #1, 100x more equity than employee #5, and 1000x more equity than employee #15, and you’ll get the same answer: “I’M TAKING SO MUCH RISK, IT’S SO HARD TO START A COMPANY, I MADE A BIG MOVE!!!” And then you’ll ask, “but why are you yelling?” […] Founder liquidity refers to the practice where founders sell a portion of their shares during a new funding round. This allows them to “take chips off the table,” securing personal financial stability while continuing to build the company with a fresh influx of venture capital. Why is it a secret that founders get liquidity in many venture rounds? Because it undermines the narrative of the founder who is “all-in.”

Waistlines are expanding in most countries, except for a skinny list of nations bucking the trend. How is France dodging the global obesity trend?

how we produce fresh water and how we dispose of wastewater at the South Pole

George Spelvin, Georgette Spelvin, and Georgina Spelvin are traditional stagename used to hide a performer’s identity. “Georgina Spelvin” has fallen out of general use since it was adopted as a screen name by pornographic actress Shelley Graham, who was credited by that name in The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and her subsequent films.

Level Devil

Smoking Devil in Stereohell

United Airlines starts serving passengers personalized ads on seat-back screens

Google’s and Microsoft’s AI Chatbots Refuse to Say Who Won the 2020 US Election

First, we show that older people tend to underestimate their cognitive decline. We then show that those experiencing a severe decline but unaware of it are more likely to suffer wealth losses.

Sexuality plays a significant role in most romantic relationships and is a factor that differentiates romantic relationships from other types of close relationships. Research shows that different aspects of sexuality, such as sexual desire and satisfaction, have been consistently linked with relationship satisfaction, quality, and stability. Moreover, sexually active couples report higher individual and relational well-being. […] However, several factors may hinder couples from engaging in sexual activity, including stress.

Free Will Beliefs are Positively Associated With Health Behavior

Deciding Who Is Worthy of Help: Effect of the Probability of Reciprocity on Individuals’ Willingness to Help Others

Living in the afterlife: clues from direct experiencers Although most of the information obtained by our different sources converge on the general description of the afterlife, and how life proceeds in these realms, they cannot be considered definite proof of the afterlife and its characteristics.

Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness

artificial intelligence system that can identify people who are likely to suffer heart attacks up to 10 years in the future, could soon be in operation across Britain

excessive vigorous exercise could muffle your immune system

Dreaming Under Anesthesia

How Do We Know When to Pee?

Winston Churchill Received the First Ever Letter Containing “O.M.G.”

According to an editor at a venerable publishing imprint, debut novelists need three key publicity achievements to “break out”: one, a major book club; two, a boost from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indie Next, and/or Book of the Month; and three, a major profile. Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch?

Advance market commitments allow us to buy products that don’t yet exist, giving innovators an incentive to invent and scale new products. This is a practical guide on how to start an AMC.

In 1910, Mare Samuella Cromer, a rural schoolteacher in South Carolina, organized a girl’s tomato club so females aged 9 to 20 could “not learn simply how to grow better and more perfect tomatoes, but how to grow better and more perfect women.

The Secret History of Holywell Street, Home to Victorian London’s Dirty Book Trade

The music of “Detachable Penis” consists largely of a distorted electric guitar riff fed through a noise gate and a delay, backed by organ and drum grooves with brief lead guitar improvisation.

ASCII Silhouettify is an app that converts images into ASCII silhouettes

One of the best known non-bank banks is Starbucks – “a bank dressed up as a coffee shop”. […] “McDonald’s is a real estate company dressed up as a hamburger chain” and “Harvard is a hedge fund dressed up as an institution of higher learning”. […] The company had offered a gift card since 2001 but Schultz [Starbuck’s CEO] revitalized it, pairing it with a new loyalty program […] In 2010, Schultz put the card on an app […] more than 60% of the company’s peak morning business in the US comes from Starbucks Rewards members who overwhelmingly order via the app. The program has 33 million users, equivalent to around one in ten American adults. these users load or reload around $10 billion of value onto their cards each year […] not all of it gets spent at once. As at the end of March, $1.9 billion of stored card value sat on the company’s balance sheet waiting to be spent – kind of like customer deposits. To give that some context, 85% of US banks have less than $1 billion in assets. Unmasking the Banks Inside Starbucks, Carnival, Naked Wines, Delta, Travel + Leisure

US has the highest rate of maternal deaths among high-income nations. Norway has zero

Costco is building out an ad network built on its trove of loyalty membership data, using its 74.5 million household members’ shopping habits and past purchases

In the last few months, Meta started to sneakily train its generative AI tool on Instagram posts. Now, some artists are jumping ship to a lesser-known portfolio app, Cara, to protect their work from AI data scrapers.

If you are a professional, if you are under NDA with your clients, if you are a creative, a lawyer, a doctor or anyone who works with proprietary files - it is time to cancel Adobe

Microsoft is about to launch a new AI-powered Recall feature that screenshots everything you do on your PC. Recall doesn’t perform content moderation, so it won’t hide information like passwords or financial account numbers in its screenshots.

Due to national security concerns, the U.S. government prohibits Nvidia from selling AI chips like the A100 and H100 directly to Chinese companies. The restrictions don’t prevent Chinese firms from renting chips for use within the U.S. — ByteDance is allegedly leasing servers with chips from Oracle. ByteDance reportedly had access to over 1,500 H100 chips and several thousand A100s last month through the Oracle deal. China Telecom, a large state-owned wireless carrier, has sought a similar deal with other cloud providers. How ByteDance Got the Best AI Chips Despite U.S. Restrictions

Known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and “DeepF***ingValue” on Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets, Gill was a key figure in the so-called “Reddit rally” in which shares of GameStop surged 1600% at one point in Jan. 2021, crushing hedge funds that had bet against the videogame retailer. But after drawing congressional and regulatory scrutiny for his role in the extraordinary saga, Gill quickly disappeared, albeit much richer thanks to his GameStop investment which at one point reached $48 million in value. […] Then out of the blue Gill appeared in recent weeks to resurface online, sending GameStop’s shares soaring once again. On Monday, they rose 21% after Gill’s Reddit account posted a screenshot showing a $116 million bet on the stock. On Thursday, they surged almost 50% after Gill’s YouTube account scheduled a livestream for 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT) on Friday.

World’s first wooden satellite wooden Moon shelters are also planned

chocolate manufacturers combine a paste made from cacao seeds with sugar. Lots and lots of sugar […] the few health benefits provided by the chocolate bean are swamped by ingredients that increase the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. […] To address this stark imbalance, a team of researchers reinvented the chocolate recipe from the ground up

During the Renaissance period, hands were as important a focus of attention as the face was, because they were the only other visible area of the body. […] Given its high visibility, hand gestures in portraits and paintings have been one of the most effective ways of conveying secrets, codes and messages. […] There is a peculiar hand gesture that is widely used by painters of several nationalities belonging to the Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque and later artistic movements: It is an unnatural position of one or both hands in which the third and fourth digits are held tight together, as if almost fused, resembling syndactyly, and the second and fifth fingers are separated from the central ones. This paper will examine the eventual hidden meanings behind this peculiar hand gesture.

The Talk: Bernie Sanders & Slavoj Žižek and The Talk: Kanye West & Elon Musk

Remote Amazon tribe gained access to the Internet via Starlink last September — only to wind up hooked on porn, social media

About half of adults would prefer electric shocks over spending fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts. They’re the ones who want to hang out with you during a plague. They didn’t just consent to electric shocks. They did it to themselves. They were given a little button to push. […] Nearly 70 percent of the men preferred the shocks, compared to 25 percent of the women.

Women make fewer mistakes and have better mental agility while on their period despite feeling worse than at any other time during their menstrual cycle, research suggests.

brain scan could detect dementia several years before people develop noticeable symptoms, with an estimated 80% accuracy

when using cashless methods of payment, individuals tend to spend more when purchasing […] the effect was not observed when donating or tipping.

A group backed by more than two dozen investors—including Citadel Securities and BlackRock—is planning to start its own stock exchange in Texas

Stromatolites are the earliest geological record of life on Earth. These curious biotic structures are made of algae carpets growing toward the light and precipitating carbonates. After their first appearance 3.48 billion years ago, stromatolites dominated the planet as the sole living carbonate factory for almost three billion years.

Diamond industry ‘in trouble’ as lab-grown gemstones tank prices further

Online shop selling used tampons to strangers. “It is a lucrative business”

Italian village with 46 residents has 30 local election candidates

The FDA is poised to approve the notorious party drug as a therapy. Here’s what it means, and where similar drugs stand in the US.

Who Took the Cocaine Out of Coca-Cola?

Giving the drug before surgery instead of chemotherapy led to a huge increase in patients being declared cancer-free […] Drug that ‘melts away’ tumours hailed as ‘gamechanger’ for some bowel cancer patients

“I’ve made bunya nut ice cream, a bunya nut miso caramel, and a dish that we made from grated down bunya nuts.” Indigenous chef Jack Brown, trained in traditional French cuisine, is on a mission to change Australian cuisine

If English was written like Chinese

Catastrophic weather events influence the movement of wild animals. In particular, airborne animals such as birds and insects are expected to occasionally face challenging flights because of unfavorable atmospheric currents such as hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. […] Here, I report on a rare case of […] a GPS-equipped streaked shearwater (Calonectris leucomelas) was apparently caught in a huge typhoon, showing swirling flight high over the mainland of Japan.

James Joyce would pick drunken fights, then duck behind his burly friend Ernest Hemingway and say, “Deal with him, Hemingway. Deal with him.”

Penis Dissatisfaction and Gun Ownership in America — We find that men who are more dissatisfied with the size of their penises are less likely to personally own guns

we find that both men and women tend to work more hours when partnered with a female partner compared to a male partner

Late bedtimes are linked to higher rates of mental health disorders. The study recommends sleeping before 1 a.m. for optimal mental health.

Google has accidentally collected childrens’ voice data, leaked the trips and home addresses of car pool users

Federal regulators have given Amazon key permission that will allow it to expand its drone delivery program […] and to operate drones “beyond visual line of sight,” removing a barrier that has prevented its drones from traveling longer distances. […] the approval applies to College Station, Texas, where the company launched drone deliveries in late 2022.

Every day, the first thing that I encounter when the hospital doors open is the omnipresent smell of antiseptic. To most people, this scent likely triggers involuntary memories of negative events — the illness of a loved one, for example. For me, the first wave of antiseptic reminds me of my previous hospital rotations and prompts me to be ready to work for my patients and for my team.

The design of Chinese computers also changed dramatically. None of the competing designs that emerged in this era employed a QWERTY-style keyboard. Instead, one of the most successful and celebrated systems—the IPX, designed by Yeh—featured an interface with 120 levels of “shift,” packing nearly 20,000 Chinese characters and other symbols into a space only slightly larger than a QWERTY interface. Other systems featured keyboards with anywhere from 256 to 2,000 keys.

Repairing my mug with kintsugi

After artist Frida Kahlo’s death in 1954, her husband, painter Diego Rivera, blocked off two bathrooms in their home, La Casa Azul, on the condition that they not be opened until at least 15 years after his death. What Frida Kahlo Kept in Her Bathroom

Brainrot Romcom

Man who transformed into a dog says he wants to become another animal The man known only as Toco spent around $14,000 on his hyperrealistic dog costume, which was completed last spring.

Visitors and protesters expected to gather this summer in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention will be allowed to carry assault rifles -— but not metal water bottles -— inside the RNC’s “security footprint.” […] proposed ordinance aims to prohibit air rifles, umbrellas, tennis balls, nonplastic containers, light bulbs and locks. […] “Fake guns are prohibited, but real guns are allowed”

Washington has a law against felons running for office […] It seems possible that under Washington state law, there would be no name listed on ballots as a Republican candidate for president in November.

“He is the worst actor I’ve ever worked with,” a former colleague told me. Sharing a scene with Zach [Horwitz], he said, was like interacting with a banana. […] it was like “dealing with a dead horse.” […] As the end of 2019 approached, Horwitz had raised three hundred and fifty-eight million dollars in the past year. He was running what scholars of confidence games call an “affinity fraud,” built around trust and personal connections. He found wealthy investors —- in Napa Valley, Orange County, Las Vegas, and Chicago —- who then spread the word on the tennis court and the charity circuit. But every network has limits, and the arithmetic of a Ponzi scheme is unforgiving. When you run out of new investors, the mechanism begins to collapse. After Thanksgiving, Horwitz fell behind on his payments for the first time. The Biggest Ponzi Scheme in Hollywood History

A renewable energy company will soon begin clearing thousands of protected Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, including many thought to be a century old. […] Joshua trees grow just 1 to 3 inches a year, which means a 16-foot tree could be more than 100 years old. More than 500 of trees found on the site are at least 16 feet tall.

How far away can you see light from a candle? 1.6 miles (~2.6 km)

An emerging area of future technology is motor augmentation – using motorised wearable devices such as exoskeletons or extra robotic body parts to advance our motor capabilities beyond current biological limitations. […] The Third Thumb is worn on the opposite side of the palm to the biological thumb and controlled by a pressure sensor placed under each big toe or foot.

Supernumerary body part — one or more additional breasts, having two penises, an extra head, additional fingers or toes

robot sets new Rubik’s cube Guinness World Record (0.305 seconds)

a massive leak of 14,000 ranking features exposes the blueprint for how Google secretly curates the Internet. More: Perhaps the most notable revelation from the 2,500 documents is that they suggest Google representatives have misled the public in the past

A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe Time spent outdoors is the best defence against rising rates of short-sightedness, but scientists are searching for other ways to reverse the troubling trend.

Drawing on the work of earlier scholars, Muraresku suggests there was some sort of psychedelic beer used in sacred ceremonies at the Temple of Eleusis that unleashed heavenly visions. What’s more, he believes this experience not only shaped generations of Greeks, it also laid the foundation for the Eucharist in early Christianity.

the logic of animal patterns

ultrasonic coffee — Australian scientists have developed a method of brewing coffee by blasting ground beans with sound waves – and it produces a powerful cup

no matter what tune you’re humming – a timeless melody from back in the day, a chart-topper from last week, or even one of your own songs – they all share the same 24 melodic figures. It’s like uncovering the secret code of melody that’s been right under our noses!

$6 on pump two, please

North Korea flies 260 feces-filled balloons across border to the South […] Authorities said timers and explosives were attached to a string connecting balloons and the trashed-filled packages in order to make the balloon burst after a certain amount of time passed

Romantic love is a psychobehavioral motivational state that facilitates pair-bonding in humans. Evolutionarily, it is thought to help establish and maintain long-term pair-bonds that enhance a heterosexual couple’s reproductive fitness. Romantic love can also occur in same-sex partnerships, yet not much is known, either psychologically or behaviorally, about the similarities or differences in how romantic love manifests in homosexual or bisexual couples compared with heterosexual couples. This study investigated romantic love in a cross-cultural sample of heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual young adults (N = 783) experiencing romantic love. […] Homosexual females reported a significantly lower frequency of sex per week than heterosexual and bisexual females. Bisexual males reported a greater number of times ever in love than heterosexual males.

A new study of over 70,000 American women born between 1950 and 2005 has shown that girls are getting their periods earlier and they’re taking longer to become regular.

Actors face the demanding task of learning their lines with great precision, but they rarely do so by rote repetition. They did not, they said, sit down with a script and recite their lines until they knew them by heart. Repeating items over and over, called maintenance rehearsal, is not the most effective strategy for remembering. Instead, actors engage in elaborative rehearsal, focusing their attention on the meaning of the material and associating it with information they already know. […] actors are telling us an important truth about memory — deep understanding promotes long-lasting memories.

How Researchers Cracked an 11-Year-Old Password to a $3 Million Crypto Wallet

Continuing a string of successful botnet takedowns, on Thursday, May 30th 2024, a coalition of international law enforcement agencies announced “Operation Endgame”. This effort targeted multiple botnets such as IcedID, Smokeloader, SystemBC, Pikabot and Bumblebee, as well as some of the operators of these botnets. These botnets played a key part in enabling ransomware More: operation-endgame.com

Meet Ethiopia’s stilt walking tribe

The middle finger from the right hand of Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is a secular relic in the collection of the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy. The finger was removed from his body posthumously and is encased in a gilded glass egg.

When faced with the need to transform an object, idea, or situation, people have a tendency to favor adding new components rather than removing existing ones. This is called the additive bias.

SignLLM, the first AI model capable of generating avatar videos of sign language gestures from prompts across eight languages.

the LLM outperforms financial analysts in its ability to predict earnings changes. […] LLM prediction does not stem from its training memory.

The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption […] For example, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “You can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness,” which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user

Previously: Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant’s AI models in a contract worth about $60 million per year

Controlling the Taylor Swift Eras Tour wristbands with Flipper Zero

My patient was dead before I even saw her. She had been in a car accident. Now she was scheduled for organ donation. Last hours of an organ donor

Let your favorite blog penetrate your kitchen and bless your morning beverages

AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd, by looking at them just once

Urban gardening may improve human health — a one-month indoor gardening period increased the bacterial diversity of the skin and was associated with higher levels of anti-inflammatory molecules in the blood.

sidewalks and green space […] multilane highway and power lines [..] those neighborhood characteristics correlate with different health outcomes. […] The researchers collected nearly 1.4 million Google Street View images from all the main streets across Utah, then used computer vision models to extract neighborhood characteristics like greenery, sidewalks and non-single-family homes—indicators of walkability and mixed land use—from those images. They merged that data with health stats, including diabetes diagnoses and obesity incidence, from the state’s population database. […] After examining records from nearly 2 million people, including 1 million siblings and 14,000 identical and fraternal twins, the team found that positive built environment characteristics were associated with 15-20% reductions in obesity and diabetes rates.

For decades, the best drug therapies for treating depression, like SSRIs, have been based on the idea that depressed brains don’t have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Yet for almost as long, it’s been clear that simplistic theory is wrong. Recent research into the true causes of depression is finding clues in other neurotransmitters and the realization that the brain is much more adaptable than scientists once imagined. Treatments for depression are being reinvented by drugs like ketamine that can help regrow synapses, which can in turn restore the right brain chemistry and improve whole body health.

study reveals a significant link between high consumption of ultra-processed foods and an increased risk of developing depression

When the Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos Monteiro coined the term “ultra-processed foods” 15 years ago, he established what he calls a “new paradigm” for assessing the impact of diet on health. […] Studies of UPFs show that these processes create food—from snack bars to breakfast cereals to ready meals—that encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished. […] In 2019, American metabolic scientist Kevin Hall carried out a randomized study comparing people who ate an unprocessed diet with those who followed a UPF diet over two weeks. Hall found that the subjects who ate the ultra-processed diet consumed around 500 more calories per day, more fat and carbohydrates, less protein—and gained weight. [..] food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined. Last year’s spend was 21 percent higher than in 2020, with the increase driven largely by lobbying relating to food processing as well as sugar. […] The food industry, dominated by global conglomerates such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, Mars, and Kraft Heinz, likes to project itself as committed to public health. “Our strategy is all about nutrition, health, and wellness,” Paul Bulcke, the chair of Nestlé, told investors at the company’s annual meeting in April. […] In Mexico, companies including Kellogg’s and Nestlé have sued the government over the introduction of front-of-package warning labels and other restrictions including the use of children’s characters in marketing. […] In Brazil, the industry has argued that regulation could limit consumer options and make food more expensive.

Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search

Google’s AI really is that stupid, feeds people answers from The Onion

Apple signs deal with OpenAI for iOS

What goes on in artificial neural networks work is largely a mystery, even to their creators. But researchers from Anthropic have caught a glimpse.

NASA estimates that a crewed mission to Mars would take 2–3 years and be full of dangers for the astronauts. The biggest threats are the weak gravity, space radiation, as well as procuring enough food, water, and air. NASA is currently developing the technologies to meet these challenges.

Why you spend more when prices end in .99

Japan’s Clothes-Drying Bathrooms

All participants were over 18 and have had sex in and out of relationships, as well as having engaged in masturbation. Results showed that post-coital dysphoria was prevalent in each of the three sexual contexts, for both males and females.

Ms. Shanahan has a fortune of more than $1 billion that stems largely from her divorce settlement last year with Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, whose net worth exceeds $145 billion […] Ms. Shanahan, who has said she is a vaccine skeptic like Mr. Kennedy, funded a Super Bowl ad for Mr. Kennedy this year through a $4 million donation to a super PAC, American Values 2024. In March, she infused Mr. Kennedy’s campaign with an additional $2 million. Last week, she said she had given an additional $8 million. […] In 2021, she paid more than $200,000 for a lifestyle photographer to take her photos for a San Francisco Magazine article called “Nicole Shanahan Is Fighting the Good Fight,” according to documents viewed by The Times. Ms. Shanahan was photographed in the country with horses, talking about her goals of creating a healthy and livable planet.

Warming temperatures are likely to mean that more of your plane ride will have rocky conditions, creating potentially dangerous situations.

Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was an enormous opaque gas of hydrogen atoms […] During the few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars formed, before stars and gas began to coalesce into galaxies. […] The birth of galaxies took place at a time in the history of the universe known as the Epoch of Reionization, when the energy and light of some of the first galaxies broke through the mists of hydrogen gas. It is precisely these large amounts of hydrogen gas that the researchers captured using the James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared vision.

Officials believe hundreds of people, including some who traveled from out of town, posed as customers in dozens of businesses across Chicago and elsewhere, all hoping to win favorable immigration status by becoming “victims” of pre-arranged “armed robberies.” During a staged hold-up in Bucktown last year, one of the “robbers” accidentally fired their gun, severely injuring a liquor store clerk, according to one source. During that caper alone, five “customers” were “robbed.”

Why Are Sloths So Slow?

World’s oldest sloth turns 54 at German zoo

Inside the Death-Themed “Cabaret of Nothingness” in Paris

While Friedrich Nietzsche popularised the notion of an “eternal return” — in which one’s life would occur again, forever, exactly as it did before — the concept was itself a repetition. Claire Hall explores various shades of this idea in ancient philosophy, from Pythagorean metempsychosis to Stoic predictions about a cosmological reset.

If you hear the non-words ‘Kiki’ and ‘Bouba’, you may be more likely to associate them with a spiky and a round object, respectively, rather than the opposite. This is a case of sound-symbolism, known as the Bouba-Kiki effect. Studies on four-months infants suggest that this effect might constitute a predisposed perceptual mechanism. we tested the Bouba-Kiki effect in domestic baby chicks

38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later

Computer Scientists Invent an Efficient New Way to Count

Feds say he masterminded an epic California water heist. Some farmers say he’s their Robin Hood

‘Empathetic’ AI has more to do with psychopathy than emotional intelligence

it is theoretically possible that AI research can develop partial or potentially alternative forms of consciousness that is qualitatively different from the human, and that may be either more or less sophisticated depending on the perspectives

Leaked Deck Reveals How OpenAI Is Pitching Publisher Partnerships

The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies. — Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.

Mystery of Mona Lisa’s background may have been solved

shark eggs

Scientists have figured out way to make algae-based plastic that completely decomposes

Researchers have developed a protein-​based gel that breaks down alcohol in the gastrointestinal tract without harming the body. In the future, people who take the gel could reduce the harmful and intoxicating effects of alcohol.

It has been suggested that the function of sleep is to actively clear metabolites and toxins from the brain. Enhanced clearance is also said to occur during anesthesia. Here, we measure clearance and movement of fluorescent molecules in the brains of male mice and show that movement is, in fact, independent of sleep and wake or anesthesia. Moreover, we show that brain clearance is markedly reduced, not increased, during sleep and anesthesia.

Our results indicated that engagement in cunnilingus is very common among men who have sex with women, with 89.09% of our sample having performed oral sex at least once and the overwhelming majority of engagers (94.47%) indicating enjoyment. However, we also identified that men who do not engage in cunnilingus demonstrated greater levels of homophobia, had more negative attitudes toward women’s genitals, and were less likely to be sexually narcissistic than men who did engage in cunnilingus.

exercise slows our perception of time […] sensations of pain are known to slow the passage of time […] physical arousal and awareness make us extra conscious of our body and its discomfort […] The study of the human perception of time is called chronoception, and scientists have found that age, emotions, drugs, exercise, and body temperature can all alter that internal timekeeper in different ways.

Two MIT students stole $25M within approximately 12 seconds by tampering with the ethereum blockchain in a never-before-seen cryptocurrency scheme, face decades in prison

OpenAI’s Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Is Leaving the Company. In November, Ilya Sutskever joined three other OpenAI board members to force out Sam Altman, the chief executive, before saying he regretted the move. [NY Times]

The Long Island iced tea is typically made with vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, and a splash of cola. Despite its name, the cocktail does not typically contain iced tea, but is named for having the same amber hue as iced tea. Adios Motherfucker is a variation of the Long Island iced tea with blue curaçao substituting for the triple sec, and with lemon-lime soda substituting for the cola

‘Weegee, Autopsy of the Spectacle’ at the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris — This exhibition attempts to reconcile the two sides of the work of American photographer Weegee (Arthur Felig, 1899-1968) –- “First are his stories for the New York press from 1935-1945. Then, photo-caricatures of public personalities developed during his Hollywood period, between 1948-1951.

UK toddler has hearing restored in world first gene therapy trial, groundbreaking surgery that took just 16 minutes

Psychedelic toxins from toads could treat depression and anxiety

Physiological state matching in a pair bonded poison frog

It’s the story of how a team of researchers traced a covid variant in Wisconsin from a wastewater plant to six toilets at a single company. But it’s also a story about privacy concerns that arise when you use sewers to track rare viruses back to their source. That virus likely came from a single employee who happened to be shedding an enormous quantity of a very weird variant. The researchers would desperately like to find that person. […] Wastewater surveillance might seem like a relatively new phenomenon, born of the pandemic, but it goes back decades. A team of Canadian researchers outlines several historical examples in this story. In one example, a public health official traced a 1946 typhoid outbreak to the wife of a man who sold ice cream at the beach.

Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously

Robot dogs armed with AI-aimed rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation

you’ve “dated” 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them. Instead, a busy little bot has completed the mindless ‘getting-to-know-you’ chatter on your behalf, and has told you which people you should actually get off the couch to meet. That’s the future of dating, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble.

Older adults are having sex, and they’re getting STIs, too

Equinox launches $40,000 membership to help you live longer

How Resellers Are Transferring Billie Eilish’s ‘Untransferable’ Tickets

The mammoth structure was massive, made up of over 600 hi-fidelity speakers that sat behind the band as they played. It used six separate sound systems

Most people are quite good at distinguishing between the sound of a hot liquid and the sound of a cold one being poured, even if they don’t realize it. [NY Times]

Pseudo-Boccaccio, Yiddish Pulp Fiction, and the Man Who Ripped Off James Joyce

Doublecheck your old books for poisons

An Indian woman accused her husband of forcing her to have “unnatural sex.” A judge said that’s not a crime in marriage […] “unnatural sex” includes non-consensual “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal,” and was historically used to prosecute same sex couples who engaged in consensual sex, before the Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality in 2018 […] “When rape includes insertion of penis in the mouth, urethra or anus of a woman and if that act is committed with his wife, not below the age of fifteen years, then consent of the wife becomes immaterial … Marital rape has not been recognized so far,” the judge said.

Fifty years of research has not significantly improved lie detection practices […] Polygraph screening of government employees and sex offenders has increased

Scientists Discover a Missing Link Between Diet And Cancer Risk […] previously unknown mechanism helps explain why cancer risk is associated with an unhealthy diet or unmanaged metabolic conditions like diabetes.

Through collaborations with organizations like NASA, her lab has sent tumors and stem cells aboard private spaceflights to be studied in the ISS.

Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria Found on ISS Mutating to Become Functionally Distinct

Microsoft is training a new, in-house AI language model large enough to compete with those from Google and OpenAI

85 per cent of all loans made by UK banks are for the purchase of houses or business properties, or are at the very least secured on the value of houses and properties. So why are banks going to go bust because of climate change? Well, because as a very senior risk officer of a very large UK bank explained to me not so very long ago, the vast majority of the properties that they are using for the purposes of security could be underwater in the next 30 years. They know, for example, that the Thames barrier is not going to protect London from flooding.

To combat the growing risk of catastrophic wildfires and to bring more water back onto the landscape, a tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management policy in the West.

Newly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have shed light on the final hours of Plato […] detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl […] Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm, the account suggests.

The AI priest also told one user that it was okay to baptize a baby in Gatorade.

The target result in this work is reproduced, at least by its author. For the first time, one’s own immortality was manifested (revealed). Despite the unscientific nature, this work is a way of mastering reality.

In 2003, Red Lobster ran an “Endless Crab” promotion. The all-you-can-eat deal backfired spectacularly. Red Lobster misjudged just how many seafood lovers would pour into restaurants around the United States […] Red Lobster lost $3.3 million in seven weeks. […] Fast forward 20 years, and Red Lobster made a nearly identical mistake, but with shrimp

the presence of a personality disorder may represent an elevated risk for psychedelic use

On average, participants reported 2.5 belly laughs per day and on every fourth day a fit of laughter.

individuals who perceive their partner may have cheated on them are statistically significantly more likely to engage in revenge sex

The characteristics of sexual behavior in blind men in Ganzhou, China — The participants obtained sexual knowledge mainly through sounds from mobile phones, peer-to-peer communication, sounds of television and radio. Voice was the most frequent perception of the sexual partners’ beauty, followed by figure, skin, and body fragrance.

The physics of karate and the science of sprint

For the first time, scientists observed a primate in the wild treating a wound with a plant that has medicinal properties. […] The plant the orangutan used, known as akar kuning or yellow root, is also used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat malaria, diabetes and other conditions. Research shows it has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. Orangutans rarely eat the plant. But in this case, Rakus ingested a small amount and also coated the wound several times. Five days after the wound was noticed, it had closed, and less than a month later “healed without any signs of infection,” Dr. Laumer said. […] Primates have been observed appearing to treat wounds in the past, but not with plants. A group of more than two dozen chimpanzees in Gabon in Central Africa have been seen chewing up and applying flying insects to their wounds. […] Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and white-handed gibbons are all known to occasionally eat rough, whole leaves, presumably to help them expel parasites. [NY Times | Nature]

Nearly 46% of Americans opened a new credit card last year, according to Forbes, which means millions of Americans also canceled old ones. When you switch cards, Netflix doesn’t just stop your service — they just start charging your new card. […] In 2003, Visa U.S.A. started offering a new software product to merchants called Visa Account Updater (VAU) […] Whenever someone renews, or switches a credit card within their bank, the institution automatically update the VAU. This system lets Netflix and countless other corporations charge whatever card you have on file.you

Traditional economics makes ludicrous assumptions and poor predictions. An alternative approach using big data and psychological insights is proving far more accurate

Economics terminology that differs from common usage

In 1988, the Chicago Tribune called Olympic medalist Florence Griffith Joyner’s famous manicures “dragon-lady fingernails”

The children who remember their past lives — What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers?

Shakespeare toys with numerous European languages throughout his work, including Italian, French, Spanish, and Dutch. Often, these are spoken in thick accents, with comedic pronunciation. The same holds true for his use of the various British dialects—Scots, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish—heard in scruffy taverns or high courts. […] the mystery of Shakespeare’s “gibberish” has gone unsolved in part because it doesn’t look like Euskara

The Secret Life of Arsenic — During the 1850s, reports of Austrian peasants eating arsenic to give them a healthy porcelain-like complexion swept through Europe and America. The New York Times opined that the “natural arsenic in the cucumber makes it valuable as a skin whitener.”

The Affair of the Poisons — The case began in 1675 after the trial of Madame de Brinvilliers, who was accused of having conspired with her lover, army captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, to poison her father and two of her brothers in order to inherit their estates. There were also rumours that she had poisoned poor people during her visits to hospitals. Madame de Brinvilliers was tortured and confessed, was sentenced to death, and on 17 July was tortured with the water cure (forced to drink sixteen pints of water) and then beheaded, and her body burned at the stake. Her alleged accomplice Sainte-Croix did not face charges because he had died of natural causes in 1672. The sensational trial drew attention to other mysterious deaths […] Authorities rounded up a number of fortune tellers and alchemists who were suspected of selling not only divinations, séances and aphrodisiacs, but also “inheritance powders” (a euphemism for poison). Some of them confessed under torture and gave authorities lists of their clients, who had allegedly bought poison to get rid of their spouses or rivals in the royal court.

New Atlas robot by Boston Dynamics