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birth control pills

Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time [study]

birth control pills for men

In the current study, we investigate the familial genetic and environmental transmission of depression by incorporating data from both adolescent twins and their parents. Our results, based on both self- and parent-report, demonstrate significant additive and dominant genetic influences on depression. We also found mild yet significant sibling environmental influences, while familial environmental influences were absent.

Why is the Speed of Light So Fast?

Study of 500,000 Medical Records Links Viruses With Alzheimer’s Again And Again

newly released data finds that the US adult obesity rate fell by around two percentage points between 2020 and 2023. We have known for several years from clinical trials that Ozempic, Wegovy and the new generation of diabetes and weight loss drugs produce large and sustained reductions in body weight. Now with mass public usage taking off — one in eight US adults have used the drugs, with 6 per cent current users — the results may be showing up at the population level.

Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta’s Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers

Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap — and Companies Need to Prepare

transparency and choice

Woman with rare double uterus gives birth to twins

Mystery creator of Bitcoin identified, new HBO documentary claims […] the exposure of Satoshi as its alleged creator threatens to raise some huge questions, not least his potential complicity in crimes that have featured Bitcoin use. It could also establish him as one of the world’s richest people: Satoshi himself is estimated to control about 1.1 million Bitcoin. […] The big reveal is set to air next Wednesday at 2 a.m. CET (Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST).

Andy Kill, a spokesperson for 23andMe, would not comment on what the company might do with its trove of genetic data beyond general pronouncements about its commitment to privacy. “For our customers, our focus continues to be on transparency and choice over how they want their data to be managed,” he said.

research shows that adult brains are also negatively impacted by excessive screen time, defined as more than two hours a day outside of work hours. The study shows that in adults aged 18 – 25, excessive screen time causes thinning of the cerebral cortex, the brain’s outermost layer responsible for processing memory and cognitive functions, such as decision-making and problem-solving. Another study found that adults who watched television for five hours or more per day had an increased risk of developing brain-related disease like dementia, stroke, or Parkinson’s. Additional studies found that adults who engage in excessive screen time or have a diagnosed smartphone addiction had lower gray matter volume. Gray matter is brain tissue essential for daily human functioning and is responsible for everything from movement to memory to emotions.

Shifting away from undesired habits involves weakening the neural pathways that fuel them. Instead of relying solely on penalties for engaging in a bad habit, introduce a positive action right after to replace it. This method gradually diminishes the unwanted habit’s hold over you.

Hundreds of millions of small packages pour into the U.S. each year from China – some with fentanyl ingredients stashed inside. […] a few paragraphs buried in a 2016 U.S. trade law supported by major parcel carriers and e-commerce platforms that made it easier for imported goods, including those fentanyl ingredients, to enter the United States. […] In short, a regulatory tweak fueling America’s online shopping habit is also enabling the country’s crippling addiction to synthetic opioids. […] U.S. lawmakers inadvertently turbocharged this problem as part of the 2016 legislation by loosening a regulation known as de minimis. Individual parcels of clothing, gadgets and other merchandise valued at up to $800 – one of the highest such limits in the world – now enter the country duty-free and with minimal paperwork and inspections. Fully 90% of all shipments now enter the country this way, and most arrive by air. […] a fight is shaping up over whether and how to undo the rule change that helped set off this deadly import boom.

Is the World Really Running Out of Sand?

Meta confirms it may train its AI on any image you ask Ray-Ban Meta AI to analyze

Cybercriminals using stolen cloud credentials to operate and resell sexualized AI-powered chat services [which] often veer into darker role-playing scenarios, including child sexual exploitation and rape

REVEALED: Women will be having more sex with ROBOTS than men by 2025. That’s according to a professional

but Conte Carme makes the melody that mints the money

This is just a cool insider trading case. There’s a guy, Robert Westbrook. He allegedly hacked into the email accounts of several executives at different US public companies. The SEC complaint lays out how he allegedly did that:

He would go to the executive’s Outlook email login page and click to reset the password. “Four of the five Hacked Companies used the same password reset portal software,” says the SEC, and he was apparently familiar with its workings.

He subscribed to “an online directory service provider and an online genealogy company,” which gave him “personal and family

information that could be used to guess the answers to the security questions that employees at the Hacked Companies may have used to reset their passwords.” You can do a lot of damage if you know a public-company executive’s mother’s maiden name and first pet’s name.

He’d reset their passwords and get access to their emails.

Then he’d read them and look for secret earnings information. […]

But even if you get earnings releases in advance, there’s no guarantee that you’ll make money. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague John Authers wrote last week about an Elm Partners study finding that most people can’t trade profitably even knowing tomorrow’s news. […]

Ten trades were winners, four were losers, the winners were bigger than the losers and his net profit was about $3.4 million. […]

This includes buying half a million dollars’ worth of one company’s[2] stock and call options before its March 2019 earnings report, and making a $236,492 profit when the earnings were good, and then buying $786,364 worth of that company’s put options before its March 2020 earnings report, and making a $1.04 million profit when those earnings were mixed.

{ Matt Levine / Bloomberg | Continue reading }

Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

Paraquat is among the most toxic agricultural chemicals ever produced. It’s banned in the European Union, where the consequences of its use are still being felt, but in parts of the world it’s still being sold. This is made possible, in part, by an influence machine that works to suppress opposition to an $78 billion global industry.

A year-long investigation managed to penetrate a PR operation that casts those who raise the alarm, from pesticide critics to environmental scientists or sustainability campaigners, as an anti-science “protest industry,” and used US government money to do so.

The US-based PR firm, v-Fluence, built profiles on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers, whilst coordinating with government officials, to counter global resistance to pesticides. These profiles are published on a private social network, which grants privileged entry to 1,000 people. The network’s membership roster is a who’s-who of the agrochemical industry and its friends, featuring executives from some of the world’s largest pesticide companies alongside government officials from multiple countries.

These members can access profiles on more than 3,000 organisations and 500 people who have been critical of pesticides or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They come from all over the world and include scientists, UN human right experts, environmentalists, and journalists. Many of the profiles divulge personal details about the subjects, such as their home addresses and telephone numbers, and spotlight criticisms that disparage their work. Lawyers have told us this goes against data privacy laws in several countries. […]

Our investigation reveals that the US government funded v-Fluence as part of its program to promote GMOs in Africa and Asia.

{ Lighthouse Reports | Continue reading }

unrelated { Electric cars causing fires after Hurricane Helene flooding }

rival derogation

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Man amputates penis with an axe after consuming psilocybin mushrooms

At Exxon Mobil’s only “advanced recycling” facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is later burned.

Will Plants Grow on the Moon?

anomalous decrease observed in lunar surface temperatures is attributed to the COVID-19 global lockdown effect

Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers

How did birds survive while dinosaurs went extinct?

women were more likely to engage in rival derogation towards women with larger breast sizes

Impulsivity, Disgust

The external anal sphincter is the only part of the digestive process we have conscious control over. So, if we decide the time is not right to pass gas, we constrict the sphincter and the fart is trapped. Without a backdoor to escape from, the gases recede back into the colon. […] farts that are ignored during the day are mostly released during bathroom breaks or as the body relaxes in sleep at night. […] always holding it in can be bad for the bowels over time.

Officers raided the facility on Oct. 18, 2023, and detained the lone female employee while they searched the business, the lawsuit said. However, they didn’t find a single cannabis plant and only saw a typical medical facility with rooms used for conducting x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans and MRIs, the owners said. At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said. The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine.

Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first

Do AI companies work? The billions that OpenAI spent on building prior versions of GPT is not, because better versions of it are already available for free on Github. […] An LLM vendor that doesn’t spend tens of millions of dollars a year—and maybe billions, for the leaders—improving their models is a year or two from being out of business. Though that math might work for huge companies like Google and Microsoft, and for OpenAI, which has become synonymous with artificial intelligence, it’s hard to see how that works for smaller companies that aren’t already bringing in sizable amounts of revenue. […] the winners won’t be who ran the fastest or reached some finish line, but whoever was leading when the market decided the race is over.

Microsoft claims its new tool can correct AI hallucinations, experts advise caution

SocialAI is an online universe where everyone you interact with is a bot. More: SocialAI takes the social media “filter bubble” to an extreme with 100% fake interactions

The illusory truth effect is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure […] Repetition makes statements easier to process relative to new, unrepeated statements, leading people to believe that the repeated conclusion is more truthful

The illusory truth effect is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure […] Repetition makes statements easier to process relative to new, unrepeated statements, leading people to believe that the repeated conclusion is more truthful

NKRYPT is a cryptography related installation outside the Questacon science exploration centre in Canberra, Australia

mushrooms

Google is serving AI-generated images of mushrooms when users search for some species, a risky and potentially fatal error for foragers who are trying to figure out what mushrooms are safe to eat.

Boy abducted from California at age 6 found alive more than 70 years later […] [kidnapped in 1951 by a woman] he ended up with a couple who raised him as if he were their own son

Several people are detained in Switzerland in connection with suspected death in a ‘suicide capsule’ — The “Sarco” capsule, which has never been used before, is designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.

Study sheds new light on severe COVID’s long-term brain impacts — post-COVID deficits in hospitalized patients look similar to 20 years of normal aging. The team also found that people who had been hospitalized with COVID had reduced brain volume in key areas and abnormally high levels of brain injury proteins in their blood.

Why do obesity drugs seem to treat so many other ailments?

Why are the violins the biggest section in the orchestra?

Meet the Internet’s Scrappiest Home for Obscure Cinema

frozen burgers

Man stabbed himself to death separating frozen burgers

Given a pair of candidate photos, monkeys spent more time looking at the loser than the winner, and this gaze bias predicted not only binary election outcomes but also the candidates’ vote share […] Our findings endorse the idea that voters spontaneously respond to evolutionarily conserved visual cues to physical prowess and that voting behavior is shaped, in part, by ancestral adaptations shared with nonhuman primates.

AI chatbots predict elections better than humans

We study alcohol’s impact on trust at the event “La Notte della Taranta” with objective intoxication measures. […] Alcohol consumption correlates positively with instantaneous trust, especially among like-minded attendees.

Scientists Calculated How Much Exercise We Need to ‘Offset’ a Day of Sitting — Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” every day is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting still, the research says – although any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some extent.

The human heart shows signs of ageing after just a month in space After 12 days on the ISS, the tissues’ contraction strength had almost halved, whereas that of their on-ground counterparts had remained relatively stable. This weakening was still apparent even after nine days of recovery back on Earth.

following the start of PhD studies, the use of psychiatric medication among PhD students increases substantially. This upward trend continues throughout the course of PhD studies, with estimates showing a 40 percent increase by the fifth year compared to pre-PhD levels. After the fifth year, which represents the average duration of PhD studies in our sample, we observe a notable decrease in the utilization of psychiatric medication.

Puberty Hasn’t Changed Since the Ice Age — The data collected also suggests the Paleolithic kids underwent growth spurts similar to those experienced by modern humans, but significantly shorter than those of medieval children—in other words, they matured faster

the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the traditional boundaries of life and death. […] practices such as organ donation highlight how organs, tissues and cells can continue to function even after an organism’s demise. […] Researchers have also found that solitary human lung cells can self-assemble into miniature multicellular organisms that can move around.

The earliest method of contraception was probably coitus interruptus. Barrier methods of contraception were later developed. The use of a goat’s bladder as a female sheath was described in Roman literature and ancient Egyptian texts describe the use of vaginal pessaries. In the 17th century Casanova used condoms made of animal intestine. In the 1920s research confirmed the timing of ovulation and the role of the ovarian hormones, oestrogen and progesterone, in reproduction. This led to the development of the rhythm method of contraception, based on the woman’s monthly variation in body temperature, and the development of the contraceptive pill. The first large scale trial of the pill took place in 1956, and it has been refined since then.

Octopuses seen hunting together with fish in rare video — and punching fish that don’t cooperate

Fake AI “podcasters” are reviewing my book and it’s freaking me out

Using YouTube to steal your files

How hackers gain access to phones

Radioactive Consumer Products

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself

cognitive-decline.png

{ Growth and decline of multiple intellectual abilities over the life span | Full study | PDF }

The sadness will last forever

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Turbulent skies of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” align with a scientific theory, study finds

In 2017, Astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan talked about his admiration for Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” revealing how the painter had intuited the colors of the stars long before science. [France Culture | audio in French]

The vision took place at night, yet the painting was created in several sessions during the day [MoMA, NYC]

Air-Conditioning Show

Cops lure pedophiles with AI pics of teen girl

Brit, 15, forced to strip for airport security after they ‘didn’t believe she was a girl’

After 12 yrs of marriage… Wife discovers hubby is a woman via JSTOR

how Celsius became Red Bull for women

The price of oil can rise because of a disruption to supply or an increase in demand. The nature of the price change determines the dynamic effects. As Kilian (2009a) put it: “not all oil price shocks are alike.” [PDF]

In 1959, voracious invasive rats were blamed for killing hundreds of white-faced storm petrels, a small seabird, on New Zealand’s Maria Island. In part to protect the birds, conservationists spread rat poison on the 2-hectare island, also known as Ruapuke. They didn’t intend to eradicate the rats but 5 years later were pleasantly surprised to discover that the rodents had disappeared, and the seabirds were safe. Today, that pioneering effort and others have helped inspire a global push to eradicate rats from many other islands. Over the past half-century, people have made 820 attempts on 666 islands. Some 88% have succeeded. […] Although the world’s 465,000 islands comprise just 5.3% of Earth’s land, island-dwelling species account for an estimated 75% of all known bird, mammal, amphibian, and reptile extinctions.

Water was plentiful in the early universe — the universe’s first reservoirs of water may have formed much earlier than previously thought - less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Previously: Now, just where might this Great Filter be located?

For his 1959 work Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle, Yves Klein sold the ownership of empty space. In its 1967 Air-Conditioning Show, English conceptual collaborative Art & Language presented an empty room containing two air conditioning units; the artwork was “what is felt and said about it.” […] Tom Friedman’s 1992 work Untitled (A Curse) consisted of a region of empty space that had been cursed by a witch. […] Andy Warhol’s 1985 Invisible Sculpture was entirely intangible. […] Ruben Gutierrez’s 2022 work This Sculpture Makes Me Cry (A Spell) was said to represent what the artist could not see but which affected him emotionally. Warhol and Gutierrez both presented their sculptures on white pedestals. Is there any way to prove they’re not the same piece?

The most memorable image of ignorance occurs in what is probably the most famous passage of all philosophy: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in “The Republic.”

The Ring of Gyges

Police have arrested a teen girl they say took an empty New York City subway train on a brief joyride before they crashed it and fled.

For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S.

researchers now run small AIs on their laptops Artificial-intelligence models are typically used online, but a host of openly available tools is changing that. Here’s how to get started with local AIs.

Sanewashing is the act of packaging radical and outrageous statements in a way that makes them seem normal. Here’s how reporters can eschew it.

Scientists Identify New Blood Group After a 50 Year Mystery

2024 was the year the music festival died

Does the status people possess shape their subjective well-being? […] people have a competitive orientation towards status; they not only want to have high status on an absolute level (e.g., to be highly respected and admired), but also to have higher status than others (e.g., to be more respected and admired than others)

Diddy’s Homes Reportedly Fitted With Hidden Cameras In Every Room — cameras supposedly captured alleged disturbing footage of his guests including “celebrities, athletes, politicians, international dignitaries, and music label executives.” Related: United States of America vs. SEAN COMBS a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy”, a/k/a “PD, a/k/a “Love”

The Ring of Gyges is a hypothetical magic ring mentioned by the philosopher Plato in Book 2 of his Republic. It grants its owner the power to become invisible at will. Using the ring as an example, this section of the Republic considers whether a rational, intelligent person who has no need to fear negative consequences for committing an injustice would nevertheless act justly. […] the man who abused the power of the Ring of Gyges has in fact enslaved himself to his appetites, while the man who chose not to use it remains rationally in control of himself and is therefore happy.

In spring, when the moon rose, it meant time was endless

The basic rule is that the chief executive officer of a company works for the board of directors, and the directors work for the shareholders. Sometimes, though, the CEO is also the controlling shareholder, and this becomes circular: She works for the directors, who work for her. If they disagree, things get weird. If they’re unhappy with her, they can fire her, but then she can fire them.

This doesn’t come up all that often in basic job-performance situations […] It does happen, though: We talked last year about World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., whose board of directors pushed out founder-CEO Vince McMahon after sexual misconduct allegations, and then, as controlling shareholder, he pushed them out.

It comes up more often in mergers and acquisitions, and particularly in going-private transactions. […]

The directors work for all the shareholders, and they can’t just do what the controlling shareholder wants if it’s bad for the other shareholders. But the controlling shareholder gets to pick the board, and if they are too independent she can pick a new board. They can get fired for doing their job too well.

Anyway:

All seven independent directors of DNA-testing company 23andMe resigned Tuesday, following a protracted negotiation with founder and Chief Executive Anne Wojcicki over her plan to take the company private.

It is the latest challenge for 23andMe, which has struggled to find a profitable business model. The stock price rose a penny on Tuesday to $0.35 per share. At that price, 23andMe’s valuation is just $7 million more than the cash on its balance sheet. That represents a 99.9% decline from its $6 billion peak valuation just after going public in 2021. […]

Wojcicki controls 49% of 23andMe votes, giving her a level of control that blocked board members from shopping the company to other potential bidders. She is the only remaining board member after the resignations.

{ Matt Levine/Bloomberg | Continue reading }

The move is almost certainly the final nail in the coffin for the embattled company known for its mail-order DNA-testing kit. Since going public via merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2021, 23andMe has never turned a profit. […]

The board includes Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha as well as Neal Mohan, who took the helm as CEO of YouTube last year after Susan Wojcicki, Anne’s late sister, stepped down.

{ Fortune | Continue reading }

Sahara

Thai woman freed after hours of being strangled by a python

Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance of Users, FTC Staff Report

Satellite images of the Sahara show a visible increase in vegetation compared to 2023, caused by the increased precipitation over the region

A new study sheds light on how we can work through regret … study helps people reenvision negative feelings about a bad decision or outcome … illustrates how you can reframe your memories to alter past regrets and make better choices in the future

How to Make Millions as a Professional Whistleblower

Why is it so hard to send humans back to the moon?

A network of fake accounts are posing as young American women and posting pro-Trump content online, hiding behind the images of European fashion influencers. [more]

The Church Lady

Britain’s crime minister has bag stolen at police conference

A detailed study of a woman’s brain before, during and after pregnancy revealed sweeping neural changes, some of which stuck around months after her baby was born.

In 2018, at the height of VC investment, 51,302 start-ups were founded in China, according to data provider IT Juzi. By 2023, that figure had collapsed to 1,202 and is on track to be even lower this year. […] The crisis in the sector partly reflects the slowdown in the Chinese economy, which has been buffeted by the protracted Covid-19 lockdowns, the bursting of its property bubble and the stagnation of its equity markets. As bilateral tensions have risen, US-based investors have also largely pulled out. [FT]

Shein is officially the biggest polluter in fast fashion. the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023. […] the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AI technologies. Shein uses proprietary machine-learning applications — essentially, pattern-identification algorithms — to measure customer preferences in real time and predict demand, which it then services with an ultra-fast supply chain.

The first image of the Titan submersible sitting at the bottom of the ocean following its catastrophic implosion last year [Flashback: Missing Titanic sub crew killed after ‘catastrophic implosion’]

A woman who was in a sexual relationship with a plane for nine years has said she’s finally broken up with it.

Cheryl Meglio, “The Church Lady”, Specializing in the Sale of Church Real Estate. More: Monastery for sale in France

‘Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.’ –Dostoevsky

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Hi, I’m Jimmy (MrBeast) and as the team is growing larger, I no longer get to spend as much time with everyone as I used to. […] Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. […]

What makes a Youtube video viral?

I spent basically 5 years of my life locked in a room studying virality on Youtube. Some days me and some other nerds would spend 20 hours straight studying the most minor thing: like is there a correlation between better lighting at the start of the video and less viewer drop off (there is, have good lighting at the start of the video haha) or other tiny things like that. And the result of those probably 20,000 to 30,000 hours of studying is I’d say I have a good grasp on what makes Youtube videos do well.

The three metrics you guys need to care about is Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP). Make sure you know those abbreviations because that’s how most people will refer to them. Up first we’ll talk about CTR. This is important no matter what department you work in. CTR is basically how many people see our thumbnail in their feeds divided by how many that click it. If 100,000,000 people see our thumbnail and 10,000,000 click on it then that means 10% clicked and we have a 10% ctr. This is what dictates what we do for videos. “I Spent 50 Hours In My Front Yard” is lame and you wouldn’t click it. But you would hypothetically click “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup”. Both are relatively similar in time/effort but the ketchup one is easily 100x more viral. An image of someone sitting in ketchup in a bathtub is exponentially more interesting than someone sitting in their front yard. Titles are equally as important for getting someone to click. A simple way to up that CTR even more would be to title it “I Survived” instead of “I Spent”. That would add more intrigue and make it feel more extreme. In general the more extreme the better. “I Don’t Like Bananas” won’t perform the same as “Bananas Are The Worst Food On Earth”. […]

AVD. This is how long on average people watch a given video. The cool thing about Youtube is they give us super detailed graphs for every video that show the exact second we lose a viewer on every single video. […] The first minute of each video is the most important minute of each video. After the first minute of content you will have what we call minutes 1 thru 3. This is where you have to transition from hype to execution (generally). Stop telling people what they will be watching and start showing them.

{ HOW TO SUCCEED IN MrBEAST PRODUCTION | Continue reading }

Disunity

Aggressive interactions can strongly influence an animal’s performance in subsequent contests. Winners of aggressive contests are more likely to win successive contests and losers are more likely to lose successive contests

Close friends seem to communicate almost telepathically. A single word or phrase can be loaded with meaning that would take pages of text to explain to an outsider. This linguistic compression is undeniably efficient. But is efficiency the only reason friends tend to speak in code? In a series of studies, we show that when people use “insider language” with each other they feel closer. Friends, as expected, use insider language more frequently than strangers, but even strangers are able to incorporate it into their conversations. While the content of insider language varies between friends and strangers, both groups experience heightened connection when it is used. These results suggest that the human ability to say more with less confers a social advantage beyond mere efficiency—one that may be challenging for conversational AI to replicate.

The Disunity of Consciousness in Everyday Experience

Online Dating Caused a Rise in US Income Inequality, Research Paper Shows

if there are macroscopic structures awaiting discovery in humans, imagine how much more true that will be of every other species that we haven’t been studying with extreme diligence and self-interest for millennia. […] Chickens are one of the commonly used model organisms in laboratory studies, and the basis for a multi- billion-dollar food industry. Surely we must know everything there is to know about their anatomy? (Spoiler alert: we do not.) […] A chicken or a cat has about the same number of body parts as a human, they’re just smaller and harder to see. Frogs seem to be a little simpler than shrews or hummingbirds, but it may also be that we know them less well, and dissect them less patiently and completely. […] Where is all this new anatomy hiding?

Former model and Miss Switzerland finalist Kristina Joksimovic allegedly murdered and “pureed” in a blender by her husband

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars

Structural Hallucination

LLMs Will Always Hallucinate, and We Need to Live With This — This work introduces the concept of Structural Hallucination as an intrinsic nature of these systems. By establishing the mathematical certainty of hallucinations, we challenge the prevailing notion that they can be fully mitigated.

people primed with sexual desire for an alternative partner reported increased sexual desire for their romantic partner. People primed with sexual desire for their romantic partner, however, did not report increased sexual desire for alternatives

Analysis of the Psychological Factors of Love Murder Cases

Unlike Wi-Fi, which uses radio waves to create a wireless connection, Li-Fi relies on light to transmit data. Through this process, Li-Fi promises speeds that are 100 times faster than Wi-Fi. Oldecomm is predicting that Li-Fi will be available anytime between 2024 and 2029.

Experiments in which an AI chatbot engaged in conversations with people who believed at least one conspiracy theory showed that the interaction significantly reduced the strength of those beliefs […] the chatbot could precisely tailor its counterarguments to each individual

How come some experts can’t distinguish red and white wines, and others can tell that it’s a 1951 Riesling from the Seine River Valley?

Japan’s cat testicle calendar

Janet Jackson

The modern forecasting community largely emerged from the work of one man: Philip Tetlock. In 1984, Tetlock, then a professor of political science at UC Berkeley, held his first forecasting tournament. His goal was to investigate whether experts — government officials, journalists, and academics — were better at making predictions in their areas of interest than intelligent laypeople. The upshot: Experts make for terrible forecasters.

“It is the teenage women …who are advancing [language] change.” The discovery that young women drive linguistic change is not new. William Labov, the founder of modern sociolinguistics studies, observed that women lead 90 per cent of linguistic change. […] in 2003, linguists surveyed 6,000 letters, written between 1417 to 1681. The study found there was a quicker uptake of new language contained within the letters written by women compared to those written by men.

How farms are using ‘magic dust’ to capture carbon — The dust is crushed basalt – volcanic rock which can be found in abundance in quarries across the country.

Scientists plan to seed part of the Pacific Ocean with iron to trigger a surface bloom of phytoplankton that will hopefully suck carbon dioxide out of the air, reviving field trials of a geoengineering technique that has been taboo for more than a decade.

When Was the Last Time We Built a New City? — California Forever wants to build a new city in Solano county. On paper, it would be an affordable, high-density urbanist wonderland — but can they actually pull it off?

A major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” would crash certain models of laptops. […] One discovery during the investigation is that playing the music video also crashed some of their competitors’ laptops. And then they discovered something extremely weird: Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn’t playing the video. […] It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.

gossipers’ reputations

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Ig Nobel Prize goes to scientists who discovered butt-breathing mammals

Antibiotic use is a risk factor for development of inflammatory bowel diseases

tubal sterilisations among women, colloquially known as ‘having your tubes tied’, increased in all states following the 2022 US Supreme Court decision that overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion

findings suggest that negative gossip delivered with concern effectively harms female targets’ reputations, while also protecting gossipers’ reputations […] women’s denial of their own malicious motivations is a feature—not a bug—of female psychology

Angry Men are Perceived as Less Intelligent by Their Female Romantic Partners

Laughter may be as effective as drops for dry eyes

Breaking Down OnlyFans’ Stunning Economics

How SEC mobile phones can signal an imminent stock price drop […] The research used geolocation data to identify mobile phones that spent significant amounts of time at the SEC’s various offices around the country. They then tracked those phones to corporate headquarters around the world […] When insiders sold shares right around a non-public visit by staff from the Securities and Exchange Commission, they avoided average losses of 4.9 per cent in the three months after the visit

Music industry’s 1990s hard drives are dying […] There are also general computer storage issues, including the separation of samples and finished tracks, or proprietary file formats requiring archival versions of software.

Princeton mathematician John Horton Conway memorized π to more than a thousand decimal places by marrying it to the periodic table of the elements

apologizing

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Ford seeks patent for tech that listens to driver conversations to serve ads

Facebook is scraping the public photos, posts and other data of all Australian adults on the platform, it has acknowledged in an inquiry. The company does not offer Australians an opt out option like it does in the EU, because it has not been required to do so under privacy law.

Mark Zuckerberg says he’s done apologizing

Women who use lots of makeup are more narcissistic, but less psychopathic. Damn, they can’t win. [study]

Researchers in Gabon studied tropical plants eaten by wild gorillas - and used also by local human healers - identifying four with medicinal effects. Laboratory studies revealed the plants were high in antioxidants and antimicrobials. One showed promise in fighting superbugs.

Research has shown that consuming whole foods still “packaged” in their original fibers and polyphenols – the cellular wrappers and colorful compounds in plants that confer many of their health benefits – leads to more calories lost through stool, when compared with processed foods that have been “predigested” by factories into simple carbs, refined fats and additives. Weight Loss Involves More Than Calories In, Calories Out.

Can a life full of suffering be good? This study might make it possible to answer this question in the affirmative. […] people’s expectations of how an event is going to impact them differ from thoughts and feelings during the event itself which differs from retrospective evaluations of the event in terms of associations with various indicators of wellbeing

Bijan’s father was Bijan Pakzad, a larger-than-life Iranian immigrant who founded House of Bijan in 1976 as an appointment-only Rodeo Drive temple of $65,000 croc-skin luggage, $15,000 vicuña coats and $120,000 chinchilla bedspreads. Over nearly four decades, Pakzad built the store into a destination for the ultra-rich. He parked a canary-yellow Rolls-Royce outside and appeared in ads smoking cigars with Michael Jordan and palling around with Bo Derek. House of Bijan developed a reputation for being the “most expensive store in the world,” before Pakzad died in 2011 and left it all to his youngest child, a then 19-year-old Nicolas. Today, the younger Bijan is 33 and trying to slip free from his father’s long shadow with an even more exclusive proposition: a members-only apparel brand. NB44, which he launched in 2021, costs $12,000 a year to join—a fee that doesn’t cover a single item of clothing. […] members get an all-in-one packaging of styling, networking, shipping, bespoke designs and even dry-cleaning. […] The company designs the clothes, styles them as outfits and ships them four times a year directly to members’ homes in personalized, racing-green trunks. […] over 5,000 people have filled out the prospective member questionnaire on NB44’s site. Just under 100 have been admitted [WSJ]

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) uses freeze marking to identify captured wild horses and burros. The left side of the neck is shaved and washed with alcohol, and the mark is applied with an iron that is chilled in liquid nitrogen. The hair at the site of the mark will grow back white and show the identification number.

“So long Google, the verb […] Younger audiences are ’searching’, not ‘Googling’”



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