Investigators determined the victim got on the R train about 8 p.m.. He lit up a cigarette given to him by another rider, filling the train car with smoke. The few people on the train moved to another car. The smoking man went on to quietly die of unknown causes. The train, which originated in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, came to the end of the line at Whitehall St., where R trains stop during overnight hours. About 11 p.m., a man stepped onto the train car, realized the victim was dead and went through his pockets, taking whatever the victim had on him. He then had sex with the corpse before finally leaving the train more than an hour later at 12:10 a.m. Then the body was robbed by a second man.

UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill

we suggest that a trait-like randomness generator exists in the mind

People with ADHD symptoms report more involuntary memories in daily life

Data centres accounted for roughly 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2024, will use twice as much energy by 2030

Directed by Gary Hustwit, Eno (2024) was made using generative software that randomly selects snippets of Hustwit’s interviews with Eno and archival footage every time the film is screened. As a result, no single viewing of the film is the same […] Hustwit and his friend Brendan Dawes, a digital artist and coder, called their generative software system Brain One (an anagram for “Brian Eno”). The software randomly draws from an archive of over 30 hours’ worth of interviews and 500 hours of archival film from Eno’s personal collection to project onto the screen. According to The New York Times, this mathematically means that there are approximately 52 quintillion (or 52 billion billion) possible permutations of this film, making it virtually impossible for someone to see the exact same cut twice.

Coffee Too Weak? Try This!

Netflix in 2012 […] had a simple but massive catalog of movies and shows, solid recommendations, and basic library management. Compared to my limited local media library it was great. You could actively tune your tastes and rate things with a 5-star system.

Netflix today is very different. It’s not a library—it’s an experience. Instead of reliably showing me what I “have” and recommending what I might like, it shuffles content on each interaction, sometimes changing the cover images of shows in real time, like some black-market charlatan. […]

Spotify in 2015 […] was like my iTunes library, but with millions more tracks. […] Spotify today is… basically Netflix. An inconsistent stream of ever-changing content, weak library tools, and an endless barrage of podcasts.

Overall, consistency, user control, and actual UX innovation are in decline. Everything is converging on TikTok—which is basically TV with infinite channels. You don’t control anything except the channel switch. It’s like Carcinisation, a form of convergent evolution where unrelated crustaceans all evolve into something vaguely crab-shaped.

{ Rakhim’s blog | Continue reading }

Cops investigating if Missouri foster mom traded a kid for a monkey to boost her exotic animal collection

number of US nonparents who never want children is growing

swimming sperm create swirling fluid vortices – shaped like rolling corkscrews – giving them an extra boost in the race to the egg

“Like, I had to be molested at the airport to go to Florida, right, just to get on an airplane, just because I’m not going to go through the ‘gay beam’ machine.“ […] the scanning process might somehow involve “virtual adrenochrome”

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an unprecedented effort was undertaken to investigate the credibility and plausibility of the aura, alongside other phenomena that confounded available naturalist explanations

Biggest brain map ever details huge number of neurons and their activity — The high-resolution 3D map contains more than 200,000 brain cells, around 82,000 of which are neurons. It also includes more than 500 million of the neuronal connection points called synapses and more than 4 kilometres of neuronal wiring, all found in a tiny block of tissue in a brain region involved in vision.

According to research, the stressful sensations caused by seeing others fidget are an incredibly common psychological phenomenon, affecting as many as one in three people

Elon Musk Rage Quits Livestream After Being Cyberbullied by Gamers

NJ cops claim their chief defecated in department offices, stuck a hypodermic needle into an officer’s penis, and spiked coffee with viagra

Fake job seekers are flooding U.S. companies that are hiring for remote positions, tech CEOs say. The rise of AI-generated profiles means that by 2028 globally 1 in 4 job candidates will be fake. Once hired, an impostor can install malware to demand a ransom from a company, or steal its customer data, trade secrets or funds. More: “I noticed they were using an AI filter to hide their real identity. So, I asked them to place a hand in front of their face as it would remove their AI cover. They didn’t do it and left the call a few seconds later”

Inflammation is a defense mechanism in which the blood flow increases to the site of tissue infection, playing a crucial role in the healing process by eliminating harmful cells. However, inflammation also leads to the destruction of cells, which is necessary for recovery. Mushrooms possess properties that allow them to act directly on inflammation. […] Edible mushroom are recognized as functional foods due to their remarkable potential for disease prevention and promotion of overall health and well-being. These varieties have antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, cytoprotective, cholesterol-lowering, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, and anticancer properties, as well as controlling blood pressure, being an immunity booster, and strengthening bone properties. In addition, they contain essential non-digestible oligosaccharides (NDOs) and ergothioneine, a potential substrate for gut microflora.

individuals conceived in colder months store fat differently from those conceived in warmer months […] those who were conceived in a cold season showed relatively higher brown adipose tissue activity. Brown adipose tissue is a type of fat that burns energy, keeps us warm, and helps regulate blood sugar. Along with increased brown fat activity, participants also showed increased energy expenditure, a lower body mass index (BMI), and less fat accumulation around their organs, which indicates better metabolic health overall. In those who are deemed overweight or obese, brown fat activity is often lacking.

the FBI then took over ElonmuskWHM’s money laundering operation and ran it themselves for nearly a year

Walter Matthau on Johnny Carson (1982)

Cashless society drives drop in children swallowing coins, researchers say — far fewer children are now needing hospital procedures to remove objects from throats, noses and airways

Welcome to the Worst Allergy Season Ever

Study shows women can hear better than men, women showing an average of two decibels more sensitive hearing than men across all the populations studied. Previously: results showed that among people in early and middle adulthood — aged between 24 and 65 — the men spoke on average 11,950 words per day, compared with 13,349 for the women.“This is consistent with the social stereotype that women talk more than men,”

Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming

How AI is creating a rift at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG

In more than 60 years of space activities, more than 6050 launches have resulted in some 56450 tracked objects in orbit, of which about 28160 remain in space. Only a small fraction - about 4000 - are intact, operational satellites today. […] More than 560 in-orbit fragmentation events have been recorded since 1961. Only 7 events were associated with collisions and the majority of the current events were explosions of spacecraft and upper stages. It is however expected that in the future collisions will become the dominant source of space debris. [video]

We demonstrate that first names actually evoke perceptions beyond gender and show that certain names are consistently and significantly perceived as more prosocial, assertive, or positive / negative than other common and timeless first names of the same gender.

A large study has found that different types of beverages are linked to the likelihood of developing depression and anxiety disorders […] higher intake of sugary and artificially sweetened drinks was related to a greater risk of depression among younger adults, while fruit juices and coffee were associated with a lower risk of both depression and anxiety across age groups

results imply that smoking bans lead to unintended consequences in the form of increased alcohol consumption

Florida ranked among the most likely to survive an alien invasion

Mr. Trump ordered a new set of global tariffs on Wednesday from the White House using his trademark Sharpie pen, a version of which is on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3. […] The Trump family monetization weekend started Thursday night, as crowds began to form at both the Trump National Doral resort near Miami International Airport […] Every room at the 643-room Trump Doral, including the $13,000-a-night presidential suite, was sold out through the weekend. Not a seat could be found at the BLT Prime steakhouse bar, where a porterhouse steak cost $130. […] The president spent much of Friday at yet another Trump family venue, Trump International Golf Club, not far from Mar-a-Lago, sending out social media messages during the day, including, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE.” [NY Times]

ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude all recommend the same “nonsense” tariff calculation

UK bans £2.2bn ‘sneaky’ fees and fake reviews for online products

Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday […] He had been among the American officials most deeply involved in pushing back on Russia, dating to his work countering Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election. […] At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation’s complex early-warning system for cyberattacks, a web through which tech firms work with the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, pipelines and telecommunications networks. […] America’s huge vulnerabilities, made evident in recent years as China placed malware in its rival’s utility grids and the telecom system, illustrate how easy a target the United States is for retaliation.

Fake cosmetics, massage pillows and sex toys are among the key elements of a suspected Russian-run sabotage plot that led to three parcels being detonated at courier depots in Britain, Germany and Poland last summer

clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

visiting Jonestown in Guyana, the settlement where more than 900 Americans died by murder-suicide

You see, when you learn to read you will be born again into another world …

What if we made all advertising illegal? […]

Clickbait, listicles, and affiliate marketing schemes would become worthless overnight.

Algorithm-driven platforms like Instagram and TikTok that harvest and monetize attention, destroying youth, would lose their economic foundation.

Facebook, X, Google, YouTube—all would cease to exist in their current forms.

{ Simone | Continue reading }

An American tourist has been arrested after allegedly traveling to a remote island and attempting to contact one of the world’s most isolated tribes, about 750 miles from the Indian mainland

US bans government personnel in China from romantic or sexual relations with Chinese citizens

Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic molecule that targets a broad range of disease-causing bacteria — even strains resistant to commercial drugs — and is not toxic to human cells1

The colors around us aren’t just changing. They’re disappearing. According to major auto paint suppliers, more than 80% of new cars are now grayscale. Why Is the World Losing Color?

The technology acceptance model (TAM) is an information systems theory that models how users come to accept and use a technology.

John Cage recital that is set to last 639 years recently witnessed a chord change – 500 people made a pilgrimage to experience it

Since World War II, most countries in the world, including China, have been working to reduce tariffs. Why are they trying to reduce tariffs? Because we all learned in Economics 01 that trade is good, that if somebody else can make something cheaper and better than you can, you let them make that, and you make something else that you can do better or cheaper. And on that basis, we’ve had this period of essentially unparalleled prosperity since World War II, and trade has played a meaningful role in that.

Another example, more recently, is the fact that we had so little inflation from the great financial crisis until Covid because the price of goods, which are the things that can more easily move across an international barrier, were coming down in price or at least not going up in price. […]

I think he may have gone into some time warp or something and ended up in a 19th-century class on economics, because back then they taught you what we call mercantilism, that countries’ goal was to accumulate gold. They all wanted more gold, and so therefore, you wanted to have trade surpluses, and therefore tariffs were high, and trade barriers were high. […]

First of all, even if other countries stop sending us their clothes, their furniture, their iPhones, whatever, we can’t make that stuff here. We do not, any longer, have the physical infrastructure to make it. You’d have to go out and build lots and lots of factories in order to replace that. Businesses are not going to do that, because they don’t believe in their heart that these tariffs are permanent. They believe that everyone will realize how bad they are and maybe after the next presidential election or whenever, they’ll get removed. And so it can’t work. It won’t work. But simply what this is going to mean is that you’re going to pay 20 percent more for your iPhone or something like that the next time you go to buy one.

{ Steven Rattner | NY Times | Continue reading }

They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years

L.A. man stabbed, shot and pushed off cliff lives to testify about alleged cartel hit

Trump Tariffs Hit Antarctic Islands Inhabited by Zero Humans and Many Penguins

Trump spares pharmaceuticals from reciprocal tariffs

Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is intent on creating a one-million-person colony on Mars. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also seems content to break anything that stands in his way—including potentially a Cold War era treaty that has kept humanity safe for over 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Musk’s rejection of international governance could have lasting implications for life on earth, and could augur a new era of geopolitical conflict.

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Personality trait similarity among ordinary relatives is surprisingly low, with parent–offspring and sibling–sibling correlations usually r ≤ .15. […] we found that parent–offspring and sibling correlations were about one third higher than typically shown (r ≈ .20). […] Life satisfaction was as heritable as personality traits, sharing about 80% of its genetic variance with neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. […] we provide further evidence that growing up together does not make people more similar

Research has found a substantial gender gap in orgasm, with men reporting reaching an orgasm at significantly higher rates than women […] in the visual pornography industry, women are much less likely than men to be shown reaching orgasm […] sample of more than 300 men and women who regularly watch pornography […] both male and female viewers believe that depictions of female orgasms are the most important feature of pornographic videos

Recent research found that people who were not married were less at risk than married people for dementia

we find that a pet companion increases life satisfaction by 3 to 4 points on a scale of 1 to 7

How Dining Out Differs Across Generations

A man has managed to power his home for eight years with a system using more than 1,000 recycled laptop batteries

The redesigned map of the New York City system, the first to be introduced in nearly half a century, is reminiscent of a version from the 1970s that was reviled by many traditionalists [NY Times]

The Story of the New Swiss Passport

One reason couples get into relationship trouble is, oddly enough, they talk too much.

Sharing a Three-Breath Hug or holding hands are simple ways to recover from an argument or disconnect.

[…] Touching your partner calms your nervous systems and connects you without words. […] intimate non-sexual touch is a beautiful nonverbal way to cultivate connection, calm, and a sense of psychological safety.

{ Psychology Today | Continue reading }

Past research has shown consistent bene ts associated with and resulting from affectionate touch […] benefits were stronger among people with moderate or high relationship satisfaction but observed even for the subset of individuals (approximately one-third of the sample) who rated their relationships as “distressed.”

{ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships | PDF }

Space pirates could hold satellite networks for ransom and threaten to derail globally transmitted live television broadcasts, like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. However, beyond satellite hijackings, Taylor believes there could even be physical attacks at launch sites and ground control stations. […] in 2023, a team of Italian hackers successfully broke into the US Air Force Moonlighter to win a $50,000 prize

Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation. The effect of melting polar ice could delay the need for a ‘leap second’ by three years.

Jailbreaking LLMs: A Comprehensive Guide (With Examples)

Kink and LGBT dating apps exposed 1.5m private user images online

The ideal age for a chimney sweep to begin working was said to be 6 years old, but sometimes they were used beginning at age 4. Those less fortunate would simply suffocate and die in the chimney forcing others to remove the bricks in order to dislodge the body.

Babysitter checking for monsters finds man hiding under child’s bed

Winnipeg woman run over after dispute about empty spot in parking lot

Adults engaging in sexual activity with children in virtual reality now illegal in Utah […] law makes it illegal for adults using avatars to make their avatar have sex with avatars being used by children

Most people dislike being gossiped about—except narcissistic men, who welcome even negative gossip

Whether humans inherently view themselves more positively than others underpins a fundamental question in psychology that has eluded scientific consensus for decades. […] Cross-cultural comparisons then revealed self-deprecation tendencies in trait-based self-evaluation in specific Eastern languages, contrasting with Western patterns. However, affective self-positivity—the tendency to associate the self with generally positive rather than negative words—was universally observed across 11 languages.

By the end of the six weeks, both the LSD and placebo groups had shown significant reductions in ADHD symptoms […] 80% of participants—whether they had taken LSD or placebo—guessed they had received LSD. Those who believed they had taken LSD tended to report greater symptom improvement, regardless of what they had actually received.

H&M is working directly with models and their agencies to create digital replicas of 30 different models this year that it will be able to use in AI-generated images for purposes such as social-media posts and marketing campaigns.

Sunday at the Village Vanguard is a live album by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans and his Trio consisting of Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian. It was recorded on June 25, 1961, at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Released in 1961, the album is routinely ranked as one of the best live jazz recordings of all time. Scott LaFaro died 10 days after this recording.

The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters.

{ Reuters | Continue reading }

Life in the state of nature was less violent than you might think. Most of our ancestors avoided conflict. But this made them vulnerable to a few psychopaths.

{ Works in progress | Continue reading }

related { … Hegseth. He has released information that could have directly led to the death of an American fighter pilot. […] “he’s doing performative activities. He’s not yet demonstrated that he’s running the department.” | NY Times | It is an uncomfortable episode for the new defense secretary, who has vowed to hold senior military leaders accountable for mistakes. | Washington Post }

Same-sex love triangles in female monkeys

Mistakes are valuable learning opportunities, yet in uncertain environments, whether a lack of reward is due to poor performance or bad luck can be hard to tell. […] Participants consistently displayed a self-attribution bias, crediting successes to their own ability while blaming failures on randomness

Paralysed man stands again after receiving ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells

Wooden Rods aren’t often used as placebos these days, you’re much more likely to receive some kind of oral placebo (like sugar pills), a topical placebo (such as a cream containing no active ingredients), or an intra-articular placebo (injected directly into the joints). However, this presents a tricky dilemma - what do we do about the fact that different types of placebo can have different effect sizes? […] An intra-articular placebo is more effective at relieving pain than topical placebos, and topical placebos are more effective than oral placebos. […] characteristics of the physician administering the placebo can also make a difference […] Characteristics of the patient can also make a difference to how effective a placebo is - children are more receptive than adults.

Asked whether “scaling up” current AI approaches could lead to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), or a general purpose AI that matches or surpasses human cognition, an overwhelming 76 percent of respondents [475 AI researchers] said it was “unlikely” or “very unlikely” to succeed.

How Scammers Launder Money and Get Away With It [NY Times]

Consistent workouts can be a powerful way to fight chronic inflammation. […] the less chronically inflamed we are, the healthier we are. […] Chronic inflammation can also be linked to diet, stress, smoking, obesity, sleep quality and your level of physical activity. And it increases as you age […] Research suggests that consistent, moderate exercise can fight inflammation by tamping down on the release of inflammatory chemicals, and ramping up the release of chemicals that fight it, she said. Exercise can also lower inflammation indirectly, for example, by improving sleep quality and lowering stress. […] If you’re breathing harder than usual to keep up the pace, and you feel like you’re putting in moderate effort, she said, you’re probably fighting inflammation. [NY Times]

seasonal clock changes help align human activity with the sunrise, but the practice is associated with numerous health risks

Why Are So Many Young Women Convinced They’re Balding?

63 Chinese Cuisines Guide

When Musk’s envoys show up at agencies that he privately does business with, including NASA, or that regulate his companies, troubling questions are raised. This happened when it was revealed that the Federal Aviation Administration was considering shifting a contract for its communications systems from Verizon to Musk’s Starlink. Questions have also arisen, and not been put to rest, about what Musk’s employees at DOGE might do with their access to a confidential database of drug approvals, given that Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company, has business before the Food and Drug Administration.

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

related { Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts | NY Times }

more { X sues Lego, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Pinterest, Shell International… accusing them of advertising boycott }

and { Elon Musk defends Ketamine use under doctor’s prescription for his mental health: “It helps me, and that helps Tesla” | Ketamine is called a dissociative drug because during a high, which lasts about an hour, people might feel detached from their body, their emotions, or the passage of time. Excessive use of the drug can make anyone feel like they rule the world. }

phone call…

Are you hiring?
No.
Good! Can I have your company’s name?
Why?
I have to tell the Unemployment Department that I am looking for a job.
This is the Unemployment Department. Can I get your name?
(click)

{ Stories from a used book store owner | Continue reading }

web infrastructure provider Cloudflare announced a new feature called “AI Labyrinth” that aims to combat unauthorized AI data scraping by serving fake AI-generated content to bots. The tool will attempt to thwart AI companies that crawl websites without permission to collect training data for large language models that power AI assistants like ChatGPT. […] Instead of simply blocking bots, Cloudflare’s new system lures them into a “maze” of realistic-looking but irrelevant pages, wasting the crawler’s computing resources. The approach is a notable shift from the standard block-and-defend strategy used by most website protection services. Cloudflare says blocking bots sometimes backfires because it alerts the crawler’s operators that they’ve been detected. […] In January, we reported on “Nepenthes,” software that similarly lures AI crawlers into mazes of fake content. Both approaches share the core concept of wasting crawler resources rather than simply blocking them.

5 Chinese satellites practiced ‘dogfighting’ in space […] US “near peer” adversaries are “practicing dogfighting” in space to simulate orbital combat in yet another step up their wide-ranging effort to develop capabilities to deny, disrupt, degrade and/or destroy US space capabilities […] “There are five different objects in space maneuvering in and out around each other, in synchronicity and in control. That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another” […] [Russia and China] have demonstrated ability with two spacecraft moving closely around each other […] but the demonstrations of the ability to synchronize movements of several satellites at once is relatively new […] China has been using several satellites to stalk US government and commercial satellites stationed in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO).

FBI seized this woman’s life savings ($40,200) without telling her why

bowel movement frequency significantly influences physiology and long-term health, with the best outcomes linked with passing stools once or twice a day, study […] bowel movement frequencies were categorized into four groups: constipation (one or two bowel movements per week), low-normal (three to six per week), high-normal (one to three per day), and diarrhea. When stools linger too long in the gut, microbes exhaust the available fiber – which they ferment into beneficial short-chain fatty acids – and instead ferment proteins, producing toxins like p-cresol sulfate and indoxyl sulfate. “What we found is that even in healthy people who are constipated, there is a rise in these toxins in the bloodstream”

Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable — How should we live when we know we must die? This question is posed by the first work of world literature, the Gilgamesh epic. More than 4,000 years ago, Gilgamesh set out on a quest for immortality. Like all Babylonian literature, the saga has survived only in fragments. Nevertheless, scholars have managed to bring two-thirds of the text into readable condition since it was rediscovered in the 19th century. The Babylonians wrote in cuneiform characters on clay tablets, which have survived in the form of countless fragments. Over centuries, scholars transferred the characters imprinted on the pieces of clay onto paper. Then they would painstakingly compare their transcripts and—in the best case—recognize which fragments belong together and fill in the gaps. The texts were written in the languages Sumerian and Akkadian, which have complicated writing systems.

Book scanning robot preparing food for his LLM brethren

French Army Trains Eagles To Take Down Enemy Drones

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.