Convicted conman sues his victims — and wins $12M

Man’s handwriting was so bad Eastbourne bank staff didn’t know he was trying to rob them

a dozen Starbucks baristas said they were sick of getting complex orders. Many would taste “disgusting.” Some are based on TikTok trends.

Short, daytime naps don’t relieve sleep deprivation, study finds

A security researcher has discovered a web attack framework developed by a suspected Chinese government hacking group and used to exploit vulnerabilities in 58 popular websites to collect data on possible Chinese dissidents. Fifty-seven of the sites are popular Chinese portals, while the last is the site for US newspaper, the New York Times.

We identified 5 factors of unusual sexual interests that were largely comparable for women and men: submission/masochism, forbidden sexual activities, dominance/sadism, mysophilia (attraction to dirtiness or soiled things), and fetishism. For women, unusual sexual interests related to more psychiatric symptoms and higher sexual outlet, whereas this relation was less explicit for men.

Women perceive more intense acute and chronic pain and experience more unpleasantness than men.Women suffer more than men as evidenced by higher anxiety and depression prevalence.

Anxiety is understood ethologically. That is, as a preparatory state to evade predators or other dangers in the environment. Animal models of prey avoiding predation are taken as analogous to human anxiety. But if that is the case, then the neurological and affective state of the predator should also have a human analog, since humans are predators too.

PTSD and whether it is an evolved response shared among mammals, birds, and other creatures, or is unique to humans.

Elephants have evolved extra copies of a gene that fights tumour cells — offering an explanation for why the animals so rarely develop cancer.

As they grow, young sunflowers exhibit a particular behavior: The flower head moves to track the Sun across the sky. As the sunflower matures, however, the flower head settles into facing east.

How to do philosophy

I didn’t know how to write about my sister’s death—so I had AI do it for me.

The study, of 6,400 people, from eight days old up to age 95, in 29 countries, suggests the metabolism remains “rock solid” throughout mid-life. It peaks at the age of one, is stable from 20 to 60 and then inexorably declines. […] it “cannot be a coincidence” diseases of old age kicked in as the metabolism fell

Little kids burn so much energy, they’re like a different species, study finds — Infants between the ages of 9 and 15 months expend a stunning 50% more energy in 1 day than adults do, adjusted for body size.

Delta has changed the game […] the “zero COVID” dream of fully stamping out the virus is a fantasy. Instead, the pandemic ends when almost everyone has immunity, preferably because they were vaccinated or alternatively because they were infected and survived. When that happens, the cycle of surges will stop and the pandemic will peter out. The new coronavirus will become endemic—a recurring part of our lives like its four cousins that cause common colds. It will be less of a problem, not because it has changed but because it is no longer novel and people are no longer immunologically vulnerable. […] If SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay, then most people will encounter it at some point in their life.

Don’t let “delta plus” confuse you. The strain hasn’t learned any new tricks.

Chinese hackers disguised themselves as Iran to target Israel. But they left a few clues that gave them away.

Beginning with iOS 15, Apple will be deploying a CSAM scanner that will run on your device. While I understand the reason for Apple’s proposed CSAM solution, there are some serious problems with their implementation.

According to Pr. Shi Bo, in “Trente-six Stratagèmes Chinois”, monkeys were used in the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, in a battle between rebels of the Yanzhou (Yasuo) province and the Chinese Imperial Army, led by Zhao Yu. The monkeys were used as live incendiary devices.

Miquela Sousa, 19-year-old Robot living in LA

Zillow and other tech firms are in an ‘arms race’ to buy up American homes. […]

increasingly competitive high-tech house-flipping market, otherwise known as the fast-growing “iBuyer” industry. […]

“It’s less about making money off that inventory, at least initially, and more about who can get the most inventory the fastest.” […]

After going public last year, Opendoor has now expanded into more than 40 markets and purchased 8,500 homes in the second quarter, more than any other quarter by almost 50%. The company, which is reportedly searching out a new $2 billion revolving credit facility, also announced this week that it is now willing to purchase the majority of homes in every one of its current markets. 

Zillow announced similarly ambitious plans during its recent earnings call. While it bought only 3,800 homes in the second quarter, Zillow is gearing up to scale massively through the rest of 2021, saying that it expects its Homes division to bring in around $1.4-1.5 billion in revenue next quarter, roughly double what the division made this quarter. […]

“this business model can generate immense profits even if the profit per home isn’t eye-popping to the casual investor or analyst. […] Buying and selling 5,000 homes a month? It gets interesting.”

The spokesperson added that the company has an additional “dream” that people will one day sell one home on Zillow and then buy another on the website too. 

{ Vice | Continue reading }

New study says humans killed Neanderthals by having sex with them

Startup is creating ‘real’ dairy, without cows California-based Perfect Day uses fungi to make dairy protein that is “molecularly identical” to the protein in cow’s milk.

In a series of experiments, people were perceived as more real when they were presented as pictures than when they were presented as pictures of pictures.

After months of euphoria, the data out of Israel is troubling. The Israeli ministry of health has twice revised downwards the long-term efficacy of the jabs — from the advertised 94 per cent protection from asymptomatic infections against the then-dominant Alpha variant, to as low as 64 per cent against the now-dominant Delta variant. Even though the unvaccinated were five to six times as likely to end up seriously ill, the vaccine’s protection was waning fastest for the oldest — the most vulnerable — who got their first jabs as early as December. […] Now, they are the first to experience the limits of the vaccine and the first to accept a long-whispered inevitability — regular booster shots to stay protected.

New study says wildfire smoke linked to increased covid cases, deaths

Elon Musk’s wealth doesn’t come from him hoarding Tesla’s extractive profits, like a robber baron of old. For most of its existence, Tesla had no profits at all. It became profitable only last year. But even in 2020, Tesla’s profits of $721 million on $31.5 billion in revenue were small—only slightly more than 2% of sales, a bit less than those of the average grocery chain, the least profitable major industry segment in America. Musk won the lottery, or more precisely, the stock market beauty contest

Websites and apps featuring pirated movies and TV shows make about $1.3 billion from advertising each year, including from major companies like Amazon.com Inc., according to a study. The piracy operations are also a key source of malware, and some ads placed on the sites contain links that hackers use to steal personal information or conduct ransomware attacks.

ATM piece — Wearing only Timberland boots and a skirt made of dollar bills, Pope.L chained himself with a string of sausages to the entrance of a bank in 1997.

It’s estimated we ingest enough microplastics each week to equal the weight of a credit card

Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero

Some Amazon sellers reach out to unhappy buyers to revise or delete negative reviews and boost ratings

The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done

17 years ago Dave Matthews Band dumped 800 pounds of poo onto a tour boat on the Chicago River [thread]

Elon Musk is going to launch a satellite that displays ads in space, reports @BusinessInsider.

He is one of several billionaires investing vast sums on the space race.

SpaceX will launch the satellite with a display screen in 2022.

Ad space will be bought using cryptocurrency.

{ AJPlus | More: Daily Mail }

How the Brazilian butt lift, one of the world’s most dangerous plastic surgery procedures, went mainstream.

Philly cops have been towing cars from legal spaces to illegal spaces, impounded the cars from the illegal spaces, and then trying to sell the cars at auction.

Multiple Walt Disney Employees Among 17 Suspects Arrested in Undercover Child Predator Operation

How one restaurant’s experiment may help diners breathe safely The Big Sur restaurant now featured some new pandemic touches: 18 tabletop mini-purifiers, 10 precisely distributed HEPA air purifiers, an upgraded heating and air conditioning system, and four sensors measuring the air quality in real time.

Joseph Allen runs a major public health research project at Harvard University, probing how indoor air quality affects human health and cognition. […] Many sources of indoor air pollution can affect human health and cognition. These include particles and gases emitted by furniture and building materials, as well as carbon dioxide (CO2) exhaled by a building’s occupants. Choosing better materials and improving ventilation, filtration, and air processing can help make buildings healthier.

How the Fed’s digital currency could displace crypto

Homeless man with no arms charged in stabbing

{ Donald Trump Authentic 24kt Gold Plated Commemorative Bank Note, $4.58 }

unrelated { Japanese whiskey worth $5,800 gifted to Pompeo is missing, State filings say }

Pro-Trump social network GETTR is inundated with terrorist propaganda spread by supporters of Islamic State

Spanish engineers extract drinking water from thin air

Police arrested a man thinking he was someone else. For 2 years, he was held against his will at the Hawaii State Hospital, deemed insane and forcibly injected with drugs. The courts still have no record of this mishap in an apparent attempt to cover it up. [More]

The human ear detects half a millisecond delay in sound

Psychopaths make up 4.5% of the general population

A humanized version of Foxp2 affects ultrasonic vocalization in adult female and male mice

Miami Launches MiamiCoin to “eliminate homelessness” and “increase the police force.”

(a) asking her to help him find a girlfriend and describing his criteria for a girlfriend as someone who “[c]an handle pain,”

Five parrots separated at UK zoo after encouraging each other to swear at guests

Dollar Stores Make Up Nearly Half of All New Store Openings This Year

Facebook is researching ways to analyze encrypted data, such as WhatsApp messages, without actually decrypting the information

Amazon will pay you $10 in credit for your palm print biometrics

Post-viral effects of COVID-19 in the olfactory system and their implications

28 ancient viruses unknown to science found in a Tibetan glacier

We study the mental maps of spectators during a large naturally occurring extreme ritual

It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription

Scientific GOD Journal

The original black-and-white photo has been “colorized” with a criss-cross pattern of colored lines

it’d be funny if someone paid the government a lot of money for this one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album and then Wu-Tang just put it on Spotify. You’d still have the certificate of authenticity, though; no one else has that. Obviously the thing that Martin Shkreli bought from the Wu-Tang Clan was a non-fungible token?

Trial begins for B.C. man accused of breaking quarantine to go to Flat Earth conference

The “Faithful and trustworthy” and the “Does well with my friends and family” factors, were associated with more years in a relationship.

How Google quietly funds Europe’s leading tech policy institutes

Hundreds of AI predictive tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped. — and some were potentially harmful.

In about a dozen years, ransomware has emerged as a major cyberproblem of our time. […] the problem will not be solved with patches, antivirus software or two-factor authentication […] Russia, according to the experts, is where the majority of attacks originate. Three other countries — China, Iran and North Korea — are also serious players, and the obvious commonality is that all are autocracies whose security apparatuses doubtlessly know full well who the hackers are and could shut them down in a minute. So the presumption is that the criminals are protected, either through bribes — which, given their apparent profits, they can distribute lavishly — or by doing pro bono work for the government or both. […] By no coincidence, there were few ransomware attacks before Bitcoin came into being a dozen years ago. [NY Times]

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010) Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business […] a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used these studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy.

English spelling is ridiculous. Sew and new don’t rhyme. Kernel and colonel do. When you see an ough, you might need to read it out as ‘aw’ (thought), ‘ow’ (drought), ‘uff’ (tough), ‘off’ (cough), ‘oo’ (through), or ‘oh’ (though). The ea vowel is usually pronounced ‘ee’ (weak, please, seal, beam) but can also be ‘eh’ (bread, head, wealth, feather). Those two options cover most of it – except for a handful of cases, where it’s ‘ay’ (break, steak, great). Oh wait, one more… there’s earth.

This paper in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis is a goldmine of wacky ideas. Just for starters, the author says his wife can cure autism.

“No six-foot social distancing rule unless you have a 6-foot dick.”

38% of American remote workers work from bed, 45% from a couch

Virtual contact worse than no contact for over-60s in lockdown, study

People eat more when eating with friends and family, relative to when eating alone

Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person, study finds

Germany Found a Way to Reduce Polarization. The country’s robust investment in public media has helped it reduce political divisions.

The weird world of Australian sea snakes

Where has all the productivity gone? 1. All the productivity we gained has been frittered away on equal-and-opposite distractions like social media, games, etc […] 3. The productivity is here, it’s just only harnessed by the indistractable few.

Why does “Turn! Turn! Turn!” equal 241217.524881 on Google?

“I specialize in toilet play” — essentially, “shitting on dudes” — “and I can’t do it with people who are unvaccinated,” says Daddy An Li.

In order to assess the infection risk, 13 samples of holy water were cultured for bacteria and yeasts

Google to Help Insurers Measure Slip-and-Fall Risks in Buildings — Google is using sensors to listen for mobile phones as part of a partnership to help insurers more accurately measure occupancy of buildings where they are on the hook for accidents and other risks

DNA is everywhere, even in the air. That’s no surprise to anyone who suffers allergies from pollen or cat dander. But two research groups have now independently shown the atmosphere can contain detectable amounts of DNA from many kinds of animals. Sampling air may enable a faster, cheaper way to survey creatures in ecosystems.

Wildfires in Canada are creating their own weather systems

Recent literature suggests the existence of a G-spot but specifies that, since it is not a spot, neither anatomically nor functionally, it cannot be called G, nor spot, anymore. It is indeed a functional, dynamic, and hormone-dependent area (called clitorourethrovaginal, CUV, complex), extremely individual in its development and action due to the combined influence of biological and psychological aspects, which may trigger vaginally induced orgasm, and in some particular cases also female ejaculation.

The analysis shows negative returns on investment for more than 80% of brands, implying over-investment in advertising by most firms. Further, the overall ROI of the observed advertising schedule is only positive for one third of all brands.

The Columbo character was based squarely on Porfiry Petrovich, the astute but meandering lead investigator in Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment

my brain refuses to believe there are four ppl in this picture

As a newborn mammal opens its eyes for the first time, it can already make visual sense of the world around it. But how does this happen before they have experienced sight?

A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born. […]

waves of activity emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open […]

This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored. 

{ YaleNews | Continue reading }

In the late 1940s, the British magician David Berglas started refining a trick that came to be known as “the holy grail of card magic.” […] The trick is a version of a classic plot of magic, called Any Card at Any Number. These tricks are called ACAAN in the business.

ACAAN has been around since the 1700s, and every iteration unfolds in roughly the same way: A spectator is asked to name any card in a deck — let’s say the nine of clubs. Another is asked to name any number between one and 52 — let’s say 31.

The cards are dealt face up, one by one. The 31st card revealed is, of course, the nine of clubs. Cue the gasps.

There are hundreds of ACAAN variations, and you’d be hard pressed to find a professional card magician without at least one in his or her repertoire. (A Buddha-like maestro in Spain, Dani DaOrtiz, knows about 60.) There are ACAANs in which the card-choosing spectator writes down the named card in secrecy; ACAANs in which the spectator shuffles the deck; ACAANs in which every other card turns out to be blank.

For all their differences, every ACAAN has one feature in common: At some point, the magician touches the cards. The touch might be imperceptible, it might appear entirely innocent. But the cards are always touched.

With one exception: David Berglas’s ACAAN. He would place the cards on a table and he didn’t handle them again until after the revelation and during the applause.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas { Andy Warhol, Are You “Different?” (Positive), 1985 }

It arrived at the height of the pandemic, in a brown envelope with no return address and too many stamps, none of which had been marked by the post office. It was addressed to me at my parents’ New York City apartment, where I haven’t lived in more than a decade. Inside the envelope was a small, stapled book—a pamphlet, really—titled “Foodie or The Capitalist Monsoon that is Mississippi,” by a writer named Stokes Prickett. On the cover, there was a photograph of a burrito truck and a notice that read “Advance Promotional Copy: Do Not Read.”

Horrifying robot plays basketball at Olympics

Covid-19 Immunity Wanes, but Third Shot Still Rarely Needed, BioNTech CEO Says

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal. A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it. It asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists. [Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming]

a single object alone can feel heavier than a group of objects that includes the single object

There is a harrowing story in The New Yorker that everyone should grit their teeth and read. Written by Rachel Aviv, it tells the story of how a respected German psychologist named Helmut Kentler decided to foster neglected children with pedophiles, how he ran this experiment with government support for decades after the 1960s, and how it created exactly the kind of hells you would expect. [NY Times]

3 Rules for Middle-Age Happiness — Gather friends and feed them, laugh in the face of calamity, and cut out all the things––people, jobs, body parts––that no longer serve you.

why our eyes are unable to focus on the color blue

Our everyday experience informs us that a human observer is capable of observing one set of physical circumstances at a time. Evidence from psychology, though, indicates that people may have the capacity to make observations of mutually exclusive physical phenomena

All cancers fall into just two categories, according to new research

Viral load is roughly 1,000 times higher in people infected with the Delta variant than those infected with the original coronavirus strain … the researchers report that virus was first detectable in people with the Delta variant four days after exposure,compared with an average of six days among people with the original strain

A longer gap between first and second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine makes the body’s immune system produce more infection-fighting antibodies, UK researchers have found. An eight-week gap seems to be the sweet spot for tackling the Delta variant.

BBC investigation based on the experiences of dozens of women reveals concerns about how OnlyFans is structured, managed and moderated

orgasm consistency through sexual intercourse had a stronger influence on orgasm satisfaction and sexual satisfaction than orgasm consistency through oral sex, stimulation by the partner’s hand, or self-stimulation

How many parents regret having children and how it is linked to their personality and health

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that TikTok only needs one important piece of information to figure out what you want

How a baby-faced CEO turned a Farmville clone into a massive Ponzi scheme

First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

Vasya has 2 sisters more than he has brothers. How many daughters more than sons do Vasya’s parents have? — 77 problems

How many robots does it take to run a grocery store?

HAD TOO USE PARACHUTE LIKE BABY

How children are spoofing Covid-19 tests with soft drinks

20% of Americans believe the conspiracy theory that microchips are inside the COVID-19 vaccines

18% had Hallux valgus (deformed big-toes) caused, very probably, by wearing overly pointy shoes

6-7% of the general population hear voices that don’t exist

In the six studies we conducted, we consistently reported that clone images elicited higher eeriness than individuals with different faces; we named this new phenomenon the clone devaluation effect.

These kinds of “zero-click” attacks, as they are called within the surveillance industry, can work on even the newest generations of iPhones.

In 1995, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema, the Vatican compiled a list of 45 “great films”

Dead Startup Toys

This beach does not exist

Inside the PAC operation that raised millions by impersonating Donald Trump — billions of robocalls […] almost all of which feature recorded soundbites of public statements from Trump

Outdoor Wedding: 6 Fully Vaccinated Infected With Covid-19 Delta Variant and 8 fully vaccinated healthcare workers caught COVID-19 at a Vegas pool party

Facebook is ditching plans to make an interface that reads the brain — Some scientists said it was never possible anyway.

Facebook fired 52 people from 2014 to August 2015 over abusing access to user data, a new book says. One person used data to find a woman he was traveling with who had left him after a fight, the book says.

Gabriela Buendia tries to take every precaution when it comes to information about her patients. The therapist uses encrypted video apps for virtual sessions, stores charts in HIPAA-compliant applications and doesn’t reach out to her clients on social media. She said she never saves her patients’ phone numbers on her smartphone either. So it came as a shock when Buendia found out recently that Venmo, a digital payment app that patients increasingly use to pay their therapists, was displaying her entire contact list publicly.

Dogecoin creator likens cryptocurrencies to a scam run by “powerful cartel” to benefit the rich

“Acrobat” - the initial M, which opens the word “martyr”, in a liturgical manuscript (11th century) from the Limoges monastery of St. Marcial.

Amazon.com Inc. has won U.S. permission to use radar to monitor consumers’ sleep habits.

Elon Musk’s testimony in Tesla lawsuit paused as lawyer vomits in jury box

Tel Aviv dog owners must now register their dog’s DNA with municipality. This will then allow municipal inspectors to collect samples from dog feces left uncollected in the streets, and a fine will be sent by mail to the owner who did not clean up.

Mother kills husband with boiling water after learning he allegedly sexually abused children for years — Smith killed her husband Michael in such a painful and cruel way. To throw boiling water over someone when they are asleep is absolutely horrific,” said Detective Chief Inspector Paul Hughes. “The sugar placed into the water makes it vicious. It becomes thicker and stickier and sinks into the skin better. It left Michael in agony.

Training Ferrets to Recognize Virus Odor in Duck Droppings

A wet-bulb temperature of 35 °C, or around 95 °F, is pretty much the absolute limit of human tolerance, says Zach Schlader, a physiologist at Indiana University Bloomington. Above that, your body won’t be able to lose heat to the environment efficiently enough to maintain its core temperature. That doesn’t mean the heat will kill you right away, but if you can’t cool down quickly, brain and organ damage will start.

The profile of the alleged abuser, by itself, was unusual: not a priest, but rather a teenage altar boy, who was said to have coerced a peer to engage in various sex acts night after night over six years, inside the Vatican’s own walls. Then powerful church figures helped him become a priest.

The People’s Bank of China aims to become the first major central bank to issue a central bank digital currency. The benefits of an e-currency are immense. As more and more transactions are made using a digital currency controlled centrally, the government gains more and more ability to monitor the economy and its people. […] The rollout is also seen as part of Beijing’s push to weaken the power of the US dollar […] But another crucial motivation is the increasing alarm in Beijing at the size of the crypto industry in China, where a huge amount of cryptocurrency was being “mined” until the recent crackdown. The threat of an unregulated alternative monetary system emerging from blockchain technology is a clear and present danger to the Communist party, according to observers.

‘ethically sourced’ cocaine

Agatha Christie is probably one of the first British ‘stand-up surfers’

The story goes that Tazartès went into the woods, dug a hole, and then sang so loudly that the ducks on the lake began to shake. […] His second album, Tazartès Transports (1980), took this sound further. He collaborated with Jean-Pierre Lentin, editor of the counter-cultural magazine Actuel, who wrote a series of fake ethnographic texts describing the music of invented regions.

Northern Hawk-Cuckoo, Mount Fuji, Japan