the human brain processes information at just 10 bits […] This is no accident […] the brain is built this way for survival. Instead of getting overwhelmed by a flood of details, the brain has a system to focus on what matters most. It ensures we act quickly and effectively without being bogged down by unnecessary information. Technological advancements like Elon Musk’s Neuralink promise to bridge the gap between the brain and machines by creating direct neural interfaces. However, the study shows that even with this technology, the brain’s natural processing cap remains at 10 bits per second. The limitation is biological, not technological. This bottleneck is especially relevant to fields like neuroprosthetics. Vision restoration devices, for example, often attempt to stream raw video data to the brain, which overwhelms its processing capacity. A more practical approach would summarize visual information into actionable cues, such as identifying objects or hazards in the environment.

Increased gaze at the mouth in females and eyes and hair in males is associated with significantly higher ratings of attractiveness by observers of the opposite sex. Practitioners may want to pay special attention to these areas when designing an evidence-based aesthetic treatment plan.

Taxi and ambulance drivers, the two professions associated with the lowest levels of death due to Alzheimer’s disease. […] The jobs require frequent spatial and navigational processing: the ability to sense and incorporate information about the location of objects around them. Although, the trend was not seen in other related jobs, like driving a bus or piloting an aircraft. It was also not seen in other forms of dementia […] The hippocampus, located deep within the brain, has been shown to be enhanced in London taxi drivers compared to the general population. The region is also one of the parts of the brain involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. […] Across the general population, the proportion of deaths from Alzheimer’s was 1.69 percent, while the proportion for taxi and ambulance drivers was 1.03 percent and 0.91 percent, respectively. […] The authors acknowledged that there were limitations, including that individuals who are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may be less likely to enter driving occupations.

Pfizer Stopped Us From Getting Ozempic Decades Ago

from January 1, smoking will be banned outdoors in Milan

Jetliners being accidentally blasted out of the sky has become the leading cause of commercial-aviation deaths over recent years

World’s oldest living crocodile celebrates 124th birthday He resides in South Africa at a wildlife conservation center on private land, sharing his habitat with six female crocodiles. It appears the aging process hasn’t impacted him as it does other animals of his age.

Startups begin geoengineering the sea. Some groups are growing kelp forests or microalgae in the sea. Others propose pumping seawater between shallow and deep layers to move carbon around.

Meta reportedly expects to see artificial intelligence (AI) characters generating content on its social media platforms Instagram and Facebook. Hundreds of thousands of AI characters have already been created using a tool that Meta launched in the U.S.

Violette Morris (1893-1944) was a French athlete and Nazi collaborator who won two gold and one silver medal at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. […] Morris played football […] She won gold medals at the 1921 and 1922 Women’s Olympiads […] In addition to her football career, she was an active participant in many other sports. She was selected for the French national water polo team even though there was no women’s team at the time. She was an avid boxer, often fighting against, and defeating, men. […] At the 1924 Women’s Olympiad she won gold medals in discus and shot put. […] Morris had her breasts removed by a mastectomy, which she claimed was in order to fit into racing cars more easily. She mainly competed in cyclecar endurance races […] She won the 1927 Bol d’Or 24-hour car race at the wheel of a B.N.C. […] She was homosexual, dressed in men’s attire, was a heavy smoker and swore often. […] she was barred from participating in the 1928 Summer Olympics. The agency cited her lack of morals […] She punched a football referee and had been accused of giving amphetamines to other players. […] She had longstanding friendships with American-born entertainer Josephine Baker, actor Jean Marais, and poet, author, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. In 1939, Morris and her partner, actress Yvonne de Bray, invited Cocteau to stay with them at their houseboat docked at Pont de Neuilly. There he wrote the three-act play Les Monstres sacrés. […] During World War II and the German occupation of France, Morris served as a collaborator for the Nazis and Vichy France. […] no evidence exists to support Ruffin’s claim that she was involved either in spying or torturing [but] she became known as the “Hyena of the Gestapo” and was killed by the French Resistance

This is a starter collection of syllabi compiled by experts, aimed at helping you get quickly oriented to their area of expertise, Great English literature

When Japanese authorities sought to honor Tokyo’s oldest man in 2010, they were rebuffed repeatedly by his family.

OpenAI/Microsoft deal leaked — the two companies came to agree in 2023 that AGI will be achieved once OpenAI has developed an AI system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits

Google is using Anthropic’s Claude to improve its Gemini AI

How the FDA allows companies to add secret ingredients to our food

A new type of addict is showing up at Gamblers Anonymous meetings across the country: investors hooked on the market’s riskiest trades. […] one man called options “the crack cocaine” of the stock market.

Early cocaine use in Europe Analysis of the brains of individuals from 17th-century Milan indicates that they were utilising the coca plant (Erythroxylum spp.) several centuries before the drug was previously believed to have reached Europe. […] In the early 17th century, the Duchy of Milan was under Spanish control, and subsequently had direct access to maritime networks transporting goods from the Americas, including other exotic plants. It is, therefore, entirely possible that some coca leaves may have made their way to Milan via the same routes.

“They had laid her in it bottomside up. Cash made it clock-shape, like this” — Faulkner drew coffins in both the manuscript and the carbon copy of the typescript that he kept for himself when he sent the typed version off

being a vegetarian makes a person less attractive as a potential partner among omnivores

polymer-based commercial tea bags release millions of nanoplastics and microplastics when infused

Your blood can reveal your biological age — and risk of health problems. Researchers say having a biological age higher than your chronological age could raise your risk of death from any cause by 51 percent.

Surprise Hair Loss Breakthrough: A Sugar Gel Triggers Robust Regrowth

[2023] Four Nigerian stowaways survive 14 days on ship’s rudder before rescue […] On their 10th day at sea, they ran out of food and drink […] They survived another four days by drinking the sea water crashing just meters below them […] The four men said they had hoped to reach Europe in their voyage and were shocked to learn they had in fact landed on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil. Two of the men have since been returned to Nigeria upon their request.

Even if someone time travels, they may not remember or capture it: Study t “Any memory that is collected along the closed timelike curve will be erased before the end of the loop”

The world’s first nuclear-powered battery, which uses a radioactive isotope embedded in a diamond, could power small devices for thousands of years, scientists say

Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’

Aging brings two opposing trends in cancer risk: first, the risk climbs in our 60s and 70s, as decades of genetic mutations build up in our bodies. But then, past the age of around 80, the risk drops again. […]

What emerged was higher levels of a protein called NUPR1 in the older mice. This caused cells to act as if they were deficient in iron, which in turn limited their regeneration rates – putting restrictions on both healthy growth and cancerous tumors. […]

The same processes were found to be happening in human cells too […]

“Aging cells lose their capacity for renewal and therefore for the runaway growth that happens in cancer.”

{ Science ALert | Continue reading }

Women are found to mate with a younger partner in only one specific case: above their 60s, when they provide at least 75% of the household income or rank higher than their partner in the distribution of income in their respective age group.

Scientists Developed a Questionnaire to Identify if Your Cat Is a Psychopath [The Cat Triarchic + questionnaire]

Recent reports highlight the emergence and growth of a “shadow industry” in which companies and governments hire firms to create misleading information about competitors and political opponents. This trend is compounded by the growing concern that online labor markets may facilitate the production of disinformation due to the ease with which virtually anyone can hire freelance workers from across the globe. […] We created an employer account and recruited 1,197 workers […] 61% accepted a disinformation job requiring them to manipulate COVID-19 data. […] 13% of workers declined the disinformation job specifically due to ethical concerns

Assad visited Moscow on Nov. 28, a day after Syrian rebel forces attacked the northern province of Aleppo and lightning drive across the country, but his pleas for military intervention fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin which was unwilling to intervene […] Assad didn’t convey the reality of the situation to aides back home […] “He told his commanders and associates after his Moscow trip that military support was coming” […] After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his downfall and resolved to leave the country […] Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did “whatever he could” to secure Assad’s safe departure. Qatar and Turkey made arrangements with HTS to facilitate Assad’s exit […] Moscow also coordinated with neighbouring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad on board would not be intercepted or targeted […] Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work he was going home but instead headed to the airport […] He also called his media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home to write him a speech, the aide said. She arrived to find no one was there. […] Assad didn’t even inform his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army’s elite 4th Armoured Division, about his exit plan […] Assad’s maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind as Damascus fell to the rebels. The pair tried to flee by car to Lebanon but were ambushed on the way by rebels who shot Ehab dead and wounded Eyad […] Assad himself fled Damascus by plane on Sunday, Dec. 8, flying under the radar with the aircraft’s transponder switched off. He flew to Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, and from there on to Moscow. [Reuters]

Adam Griffin is still in disbelief over how quickly he was robbed of nearly $500,000 in cryptocurrencies. A scammer called using a real Google phone number to warn his Gmail account was being hacked, sent email security alerts directly from google.com, and ultimately seized control over the account by convincing him to click “yes” to a Google prompt on his mobile device.

the number of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders who collectively abstained from the use of alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine hit a new high Use of illicit drugs also fell on the whole […] For alcohol, use in the past 12 months among eighth graders was at 12.9 percent in 2024, similar to 2023 levels, which are all-time lows. […] “This trend in the reduction of substance use among teenagers is unprecedented”

Learning to Live with the Voices in Your Head

Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index

Solving 3 Rubik’s Cubes whilst juggling

Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya is a hill in South Australia. Its name means “where the devil urinates.”

‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’ Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies, especially those involved in the pioneering “gene therapy” treatment: cures could be bad for business in the long run.

Doctors remove live cockroach from the intestine of man complaining of abdominal issues

Models who look like Jesus are in high demand in Utah. […] growing number of people in the state […] are hiring Jesus look-alikes for family portraits and wedding announcements. […] Finding a model can be difficult. Areas of Utah with high concentrations of Mormons—who also call themselves Latter-day Saints or LDS—tend to lack potential Jesus doppelgängers. Some men who work or volunteer for the church, one of the state’s largest employers, are required to shave every day and keep their hair short. [WSJ]

images on Google Street View of a person appearing to load a body bag into the back of a car have provided Spanish police with a “decisive” clue over the disappearance of a man.

California squirrels are now apparently hunting and eating other rodents

Earth’s clouds are shrinking — Narrowing storm bands may be a surprising and dangerous new feedback of climate change

Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index

In 2024, the Penguin Classics little black book edition of Dostoevsky’s White Nights was the fourth most sold work of literature in translation in the UK. […] Since about December of last year, White Nights has been all over BookTok and its Instagram parallel, Bookstagram. Searching for the 1848 tale on these platforms will result in page after page of reviews, quotes, and moody shots of the book next to cups of coffee. There are White Nights Spotify playlists full of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Social media users from all over the world have rhapsodised about the beautiful love story it tells, and bewailed getting their hearts smashed into pieces by it.

you have been gifted 100 expensive wine bottles by 100 different people. … you discover that one of the bottles has been poisoned, and you have no idea which one. you have a test that can detect poison very accurately … you have only 7 of these tests available. What should you do?

Broccoli contains the enzyme myrosinase […] Through what’s known as ‘myrosinase activity’, the glucosinolates get transformed into sulforaphane, which is what we want. […] Unfortunately, studies have shown that common broccoli cooking methods, like boiling and microwaving, seriously reduce the amount of glucosinolates in the vegetable – even if you just zap it for a couple minutes. And myrosinase is super-sensitive to heat, too. Hence, by far the largest amount of sulforaphane you can get from broccoli is by munching on raw florets.

Microgravity is known to alter the muscles, bones, the immune system and cognition, but little is known about its specific impact on the brain. […] scientists sent tiny clumps of stem-cell derived brain cells called “organoids” to the International Space Station (ISS) the organoids were still healthy when they returned from orbit a month later, but the cells had matured faster compared to identical organoids grown on Earth

Ancient DNA suggests syphilis originated in Americas before ravaging Europe […] The sexually transmitted disease remains a public health menace today, despite the fact that it is easily cured with antibiotics.

Nebraska sues Change Healthcare over security failings that led to medical data breach of over 100 million Americans

Starbucks is the new Venmo for Gen Alpha

“if bitcoin is going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way.” […] Either Mr. Trump has conducted some novel — and faulty — policy analysis, or he is seeking personal gain.

Deutsche Bank is reportedly creating a layer-2 (L2) blockchain solution on Ethereum using ZKsync technology Previously: Banks Tried to Kill Crypto and Failed. Now They’re Embracing It (Slowly) [NYT, 2021]

Someone Is Sticking Googly Eyes on Public Sculptures in Oregon

An Anti-Tag Cloud shows you the most common English words that never appear in a text

‘I intend to take nothing but my night-bag.’

This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. One is forced to deal with the recognition that human perception, action, and cognition proceed at a glacially slow pace. Our peripheral nervous system is capable of absorbing information from the environment at much higher rates, on the order of gigabits/s. This defines a paradox: the vast gulf between the tiny information throughput of human behavior and the huge information inputs on which the behavior is based. This enormous ratio—about 100,000,000—remains largely unexplained.

Uncertainty is part of being human, so how can we learn to live with it? […] There is no safe level of driving, but we don’t recommend everyone stay at home. […] My main inspiration is my spaniel. She lives in the moment, starts each day with bounding enthusiasm, yelps when she gets trodden on and then immediately forgives you, and leaps at the hint of a sausage. She accepts the lack of control in her life, but relishes the uncertainty of walking and sniffing in new places. And when it’s time for her to die, she will curl up and go quietly.

People who walk a higher number of steps each day are less likely to have depressive symptoms

Researchers analyzed US death certificates for almost 9 million people who died during 2020–2022, linking occupational data across 443 professions with Alzheimer’s as a cause of death [and found that] driving an ambulance or taxi as your job may provide some protection against Alzheimer’s.

Drugmakers including Purdue Pharma paid pharmacy benefit managers not to restrict painkiller prescriptions, a New York Times investigation found. [NYT]

Amazon is reportedly hitting pause on its return-to-office (RTO) plans due to a shortage of office space […] Employees in cities like Atlanta, Houston, Nashville, and New York have received notifications that they can continue with their hybrid work arrangements until their offices are ready.

US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from app stores Jan. 19

US earnings growth would not look so exceptional if not for the supernormal profits of its big tech firms, and massive government spending. Over time, supernormal profits get competed away. Growth and profits are also getting an artificial lift from the heaviest deficit spending ever recorded at this stage of an economic cycle, by far. […] My calculations suggest it now takes nearly $2 of new government debt to generate an additional $1 of US GDP growth — a 50 per cent increase on just five years ago. If any other country were spending this way, investors would be fleeing, but for now, they think America can get away with anything, as the world’s leading economy and issuer of the reserve currency. More likely, by some point next year, investors will balk and demand higher interest rates or a demonstration of fiscal discipline, triggered perhaps by an even larger deficit or ever bigger auctions of Treasuries. Those demands will wean the US off its dependence on government spending, at least temporarily, and in turn undermine economic growth and corporate profits. To be clear, this is a bubble in America’s performance relative to the rest of the world, not a 1990s-style mania in the US market. So, it can deflate in a benign way if the alternatives begin to look more attractive. [Financial Times]

MIT study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style — The convoluted “legalese” used in legal documents conveys a special sense of authority, and even non-lawyers have learned to wield it.

Cyborg cockroach armies can now be mass-produced at a rate of one every 68 seconds

Popeye and Tintin enter the public domain in 2025 along with novels from Faulkner and Hemingway

Rockefeller Center application to NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to replace its neon signs with LEDs [PDF]

The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon (1987)

Google video generation model

Scrabble star wins Spanish world title – despite not speaking Spanish Nigel Richards has also been champion in English and – after memorising dictionary in nine weeks – French

Being overweight overtakes tobacco smoking as the leading disease risk factor in 2024

Fasting can reduce weight — but also hair growth

Is the five-second rule true? In 2003 […] she inoculated two types of tiles—smooth and rough—with Escherichia coli and dropped gummy bears and cookies on the tiles for five seconds […] bacteria transferred to food very quickly, even in just five seconds. […] A few years later, […] When they dropped bologna sausage onto a piece of tile contaminated with Salmonella typhimurium, over 99% of the bacteria transferred from the tile to the bologna after just five seconds. […] [In 2016,] they looked at bacterial transfer to four different foods (watermelon, bread, bread with butter, and gummies) when dropped on four different surfaces (stainless steel, ceramic tile, wood, and carpet) contaminated with Enterobacter aerogenes. By analyzing bacterial transfer at <1, 5, 30, and 300 seconds, they found that longer contact times resulted in more transfer but some transfer took place “instantaneously,” after less than 1 second, thus debunking the five-second rule once and for all.

Life Could Exist in Space Even Without Planets, Scientists Say

Mouseless. Lightning-fast mouse control with the keyboard

Welcome to the Elm Wealth Crystal Ball Trading Game […] you’re going to see how well you can do trading stocks and bonds if you know the news from the front page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) one day in advance. […] Your starting wealth is $1,000,000. Have fun!

When a Crystal Ball Isn’t Enough to Make You Rich

House Hopping with Elon Musk

four appears to be the magic number when it comes to conversation […]

“You very rarely get more than four people in a conversation. In the normal run of things, when a fifth person joins a group, it’ll become two conversations within about 20 seconds” […]

groups that work in challenging situations — such as SAS patrols and surgical teams — tend to do best when there are four members. […]

“[Shakespeare] instinctively understood the mentalising capacities of his audience. He was anxious to ensure his audience wasn’t cognitively overloaded by the number of minds in the action on stage. [It is] a masterclass in the study of human psychology.”

{ The Times | Continue reading }

photo { William Klein, Mten hidden their faces / 69 Sauna & Massage , 1980 }

A grandmother died after she was pinned against a wall for two days by her Sleep Number bed

McKinsey to pay $650 million for role in opioid crisis More: How the Opioid Crisis Started [The Daily, NYT | audio]

Meta asks the government to block OpenAI’s switch to a for-profit Meta argues OpenAI “should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains.”

Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit […] demanded majority equity, absolute control, and to be CEO of the for-profit […] said OpenAI was on a path for certain failure unless we [OpenAI] merged into Tesla […] resigned as co-chair of OpenAI

The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla. […] Removing the crash-disclosure provision would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported most of the crashes – more than 1,500 – to federal safety regulators under the program. […] the NHTSA crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported.

This study employs a Bayesian Probit model to empirically analyze peer effects and herd behavior among consumers during the “Double 11″ shopping festival, using data collected through a questionnaire survey. The results demonstrate that peer effects significantly influence consumer decision-making, with the probability of participation in the shopping event increasing notably when roommates are involved. Additionally, factors such as gender, online shopping experience, and fashion consciousness significantly impact consumers’ herd behavior.

almost one in four (24%) young people (16-24) [in UK] say they’ve never been readers [..] People who are good at reading have different brains […] Will people’s preference for video over text affect our brains or our evolution as a species?

On September 13, 1961, a tall, balding man with “spiteful eyes” (according to a CIA report), collected a large package from a Damascus post office addressed to “Abu Hussein”. He took the parcel home to his luxury apartment on the Rue Georges Haddad in the diplomatic quarter of the Syrian capital and opened it, whereupon the packet exploded, removing his eye and parts of his arm.

The bomb was a gift from Yitzhak Shamir, later prime minister of Israel but then head of Mifratz, the special operations unit of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.

Hussein’s real name was SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner, one of the world’s most wanted Nazis, a mass-murdering monster nicknamed “the bloodhound” who was personally responsible for deporting 128,500 people to death camps.

In 1980, he lost the fingers on his left hand when a second letter bomb blew up in his hands.

{ The Times | Wikipedia }

Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, once the right-hand man of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution during World War II […] was in charge of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from 1943 to 1944.

By the early 1950s, Brunner is thought to have fled to Egypt and then to Syria, where he was known as Georg Fischer and worked as an arms dealer in Damascus.

Syria had already provided refuge to Franz Stangl, former commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps.

When Hafez al-Assad seized power in a 1970 coup, Brunner helped the new regime set up an effective system of repression, inspired by the practices of the Third Reich.

Brunner shared his expertise in surveillance, interrogation and torture techniques, drawing on his experience with the Gestapo.

The brutal methods he taught the Syrian secret services were to have a lasting influence on the way the regime repressed political dissent.

One of the means of torture used by the Syrians, drawing on Brunner’s expertise, was the “German Chair,” a medieval-style rack used to stretch the victim’s spine.

In the 1990s, he gradually lost influence with the authorities. Things went badly awry when Bashar al-Assad took over from his father in July 2000. Brunner is then locked in a cell. Former security guards in charge of the protection of Brunner said that Brunner “suffered and cried a lot in his final years,” “couldn’t even wash” and ate only “an egg or a potato” a day. He ultimately died in deplorable conditions in December 2001, aged 89.

{ France 24 }

related { French Guiana’s Devil’s Island has witnessed some of humanity’s hardest moments […] Thousands of alleged criminals — some innocent, many not — were sent to Devil’s Island […] It was a sentence that carried with it a high probability of death, whether by the guillotine, tropical maladies, or from barbaric treatment by the prison’s notoriously sadistic guards. The dehumanizing treatment prisoners received on Devil’s Island was, in effect, a continuation of the barbarity long inflicted on French Guiana’s enslaved population. | JSTOR }

“You know the saying, ‘You are what you eat?’ Well, we uncovered a way in which this actually operates in cells. […] our findings show that a cell’s function can be directly linked to its nutrition; on a more specific level, this sheds new light on how T cells become dysfunctional or exhausted and what we could do to prevent that.”

A new study has found that nearly three-quarters of American adults are now obese or overweight, and there’s growing concern — among politicians, scientists and consumers — about one potential culprit: ultraprocessed foods. [Audio | The Daily | NYT]

The skin’s ‘surprise’ power: it has its very own immune system

Bryan Johnson: There’s now an active betting market on @Polymarket for my nighttime erections. […] My baseline NTE measurement was two hours and 12 minutes (~ave for a 47 yr old). My best NTE was 2 hours and 59 minutes (ave 18 yr old), which was post two therapies: 1) focused shockwave therapy and 2) botox. The positive effects of those therapies lessen over time. In mid November, I started a second round of shockwave therapy on the penis, completing three sessions however improvements can take up to 12 weeks after the therapy. NTE is a significant biological age marker representing sexual, cardiovascular, and psychological health.“

Nearly half of US teens are online ‘constantly,’ Pew report finds

Surviving to at least 100 years old is rare, yet centenarians are currently the fastest growing segment of the world’s population. Do people reach 100 by surviving, delaying, or avoiding diseases?

A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant. Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future. The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining Maps of The Overlook More: The Shining Shot-by-Shot Analysis

Prince Rupert’s Drop vs Hydraulic Press

For years now, aspiring parents have been designing their children. Screening embryos for disease-causing genes during IVF, selecting their future baby’s sex, picking egg and sperm donors to influence their child’s traits. Today, a lot of those “designer babies” are full-on kids or teenagers. And some families are discovering that, as hard as you try, things don’t always work out as planned: The kids feel like walking science experiments; the parents are disappointed in how their progeny turned out. Now controversial new technologies promise parents even more control over their embryos. One US startup, called Orchid, claims its genetic screening can calculate a baby’s risk of autism, bipolar disorder, and hundreds of other health conditions. Another startup wants to help parents pick embryos with the highest predicted IQ. So WIRED spoke to a psychologist based in California who is already dealing with the fallout.

the results of the current investigation suggest that the direct effect of religion on well-being does not seem to have practical relevance

The AI revolution is running out of data. What can researchers do?

the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play.

Emmanuel Todd: the most astonishing thing is that the rise in mortality has gone hand in hand with the highest health care costs in the world. […] Large pharmaceutical companies, supported by well-paid and unscrupulous doctors, have made available to patients in mental and emotional pain, for economic and social reasons, dangerous, addictive painkillers, very frequently leading to direct death, alcoholism or suicide. […] America is no longer functionally a democracy but rather a “liberal oligarchy.”

Fenethylline was first synthesized by the German pharmaceutical firm Degussa AG in 1961 and used for around 25 years as a milder alternative to amphetamine and related compounds. […] The drug was marketed for use as a psychostimulant under the brand names Captagon, Biocapton, and Fitton. It is now illegal in most countries and is produced primarily for illicit use, which takes place mainly in the Middle East. Syria under the Assad regime was considered to be the world’s largest producer of the drug, accounting for about 80% of the global supply. The global market for the drug is worth approximately $57 billion (USD)

Captagon factory in Syria [video]

A Digital Archive of the Sanborn Fire Maps

20-year-old Floridian called Sophie Rain […] had made $43,477,695.01 in the last year on a platform called OnlyFan. […] you have to understand the structure of an OnlyFans page […] Netflix or Spotify […] Those sites are like Chinatown buffets, where a fixed fee gets you access to all the dim sum and noodles you can eat, whereas OnlyFans operates like a private members club. $10 to get through the door, $10 to show your status. And then you start spending the real money.

Horses bled for antivenom, crabs drained for endotoxin tests, and silkworms boiled for silk. Science can now replace these practices with synthetic alternatives.

Taking cues from ecological and evolutionary theories to expand the landscape of disgust

When to Blame Victims for Negligence: Noncooperators Are Deemed Responsible for Their Own Hardship

Staging a Shakespeare play in Grand Theft Auto

Breloom’s Pokedex number is 286. Proverbs 28:6 reads, ‘Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways!’ He also only has 286 posts on his X. Denial code 286 is when the appeal time limits for a healthcare claim are not met. The fact he was caught at a McDonald’s 286 miles away is icing on the cake.

The best way to avoid being picked up by facial recognition is to avoid cameras. But that task may soon become near impossible.

Researchers Use AI To Turn Sound Recordings Into Accurate Street Images

Facial expressions of pain can be predicted from brain activity

Bird Flu Virus Is One Mutation Away from Binding More Efficiently to Human Cells

Applicants for all kinds of government posts say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election. [NY Times]

OnlyFans is now accessible in China

2016: In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA (Are CIA-backed Syrian Rebels Really Fighting Pentagon-backed Syrian Rebels?)

The first nonhuman artist to be given her own art exhibition was a female pig rescued from a South African slaughterhouse in 2016

Wikiracing

Film studios now add CGI effects to behind the scenes footage to hide how much CGI has been used to make the film. Ozempic is a modified, synthetic version of a protein discovered in the venomous saliva of the Gila monster, a large, sluggish lizard native to the United States. More: 52 things I learned in 2024

Oldies bu goldies: This story describes a relationship between a teenage girl and an adult man. It is very explicit. [audio, 2021]

A liar who always lies says “All my hats are green.” Can we conclude that he has some hats?

Othello syndrome is a psychosis with delusions of infidelity, where the patient harbors a persistent, unfounded belief – a “delusion” – that their partner is being unfaithful. We report a rare case of a 50-year-old woman, with no previous psychiatric history, who developed a delusion of infidelity, leading to verbal and physical aggressions with bladed weapons, days after experiencing a bi-thalamic infarct due to the occlusion of the Percheron artery. […]

H.S. is a 50-year-old right-handed woman who had been in a joyful, jealousy-free marriage for three decades and was completely independent in all areas of daily living activities. Seventeen days from the onset of her symptoms and two days post-discharge, she exhibited symptoms of delusional jealousy, accusing her younger sister of having an affair with her husband and wanting to kick her out of the house, even though her sister had just come to visit her upon her hospital discharge.

She started repeating to everyone coming to visit her that the cause of her illness was her husband’s infidelity. She kept accusing her sister for a week and then shifted her accusations to her friend’s daughter. She became suspicious and hyper-vigilant, seizing every chance to check her husband’s phone, spying on him, and frequently waking him up at night to confront him, with accusations like “Why are you here sharing my bed when you’re cheating on me?”

A year later, she verbally and physically assaulted her husband, using a bladed weapon on two separate occasions. Despite denial of these attacks, she persisted in her accusations of betrayal.

{ Neurocase | Continue reading }

A 68-year-old, right-handed, married male was admitted to the psychiatric facility for evaluation of agressive behavior toward his wife, whom he believed was having an affair with their 25-year-old neighbor.

The patient developed the belief of his wife’s infidelity shortly after a right cerebrovascular infarction 1 year earlier. He became impotent after the infarction, and a urologic consult discovered no other identifiable medical etiology. The patient became suspicious of the alleged affair when he began “putting together” evidence from various sources. For example, he noticed that his wife began leaving the first floor bedroom window open at night, presumably to allow her “lover” to enter the room while the patient was asleep. He found tracks in the snow beneath the window, and he noticed that the dust was disturbed on the window sill, which he took as evidence that the neighbor had entered through the window.

On another occasion, the patient discovered that his neighbor had generously offered to perform routine chores around the couple’s home, including fertilizing their lawn. The patient’s physical disabilities prevented him fromperforming such chores, and he interpreted this gesture as a threat to his marriage.

In response to the patient’s accusations, his wife began severely restricting her activities. She became fearful of getting up at night to go to the bathroom because the patient often awoke to reassert his belief that she was getting up to meet with her lover.

Furthermore, despite his impotence, he became sexually aggressive with his wife, repeatedly approaching her whenever she came to bed and demanding verbally and physically that she engage in intercourse with him. His advances would keep his wife awake all night, so that she eventually moved to a second bedroom, a decision that was interpreted by the patient as further proof that his wife was having an affair. Psychiatric hospitalization was finally precipitated by the patient’s increased threats to assault his wife if she did not discontinue her alleged affair. At one point, the patient became angered at her denials of infidelity, and he tried to strike her with his cane, finally throwing it at her. […]

The fact that the neighbor was a newlywed did not seem to sway the patient’s belief in the affair, as he merely contended that the neighbor’s new bride was also having an affair with another neighbor. […]

Misrepresentation or misinterpretation of events is common in brain disease […] Numerous cases of these monosymptomatic or content-specific delusions have been reported in association with identifiable insults or degenerative processes, Such delusions as reduplicative paramnesia (the belief that familiar surroundings have been duplicated), Capgras syndrome (the belief that one’s family members have been replaced by imposters), and de Clérambault’s syndrome (the belief that one is involved in an amorous relationship with a famous person) have been recognized with increasing frequency in association with insults to right hemisphere and bilateral frontal systems.

Traditionally, the Othello syndrome, and obsessive jealousy in general, has been treated purely as a symptom of a primary psychiatric disorder. In fact, delusional jealousy is not uncommonly found in association with chronic alcohol abuse, schizophrenia, primary delusional (paranoid) disorder, or as a secondary symptom in affective disorder. […]

one can argue that the patient’s inability to “fertilize his lawn” was a metaphor for his sexual dysfunction [“Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners.” (Othello, I, 3)][…]

Delusional jealousy is rarely reported as a mono-symptomatic phenomenon of underlying neurologic disease. This is the first reported case of the Othello syndrome that clearly developed in association with a structural lesion and in the absence of general paranoia.

{ Othello Syndrome Secondary to Right Cerebrovascular Infarction (1991) | PDF }

A gunman dressed in dark clothing and wearing a mask over his lower face ambushed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday morning in midtown Manhattan […]

The first thing that’s unusual is that the shooter appeared to have a silencer. They’re not impossible to get, but they’re not readily available. The second thing is that he appeared to have inside information on the victim’s location. He knew where to wait and when to wait.

The fact that he used the silencer didn’t make sense to me at first, until I saw that the shooting took place at about 6:30 in the morning. Generally, if it was a midmorning sort of thing, you’d want a gun that made a lot of noise to scare observers off. But obviously at that time, no one was around. It also suggested that the urgency of the shooting was important. CEOs of health care companies are just not that hard to find in isolated settings. So the fact that he chose to do it in midtown Manhattan was a little bit unique. […]

A professional hit man would probably prefer to do something less public with limited exposure. Doing it in the middle of midtown—there’s just too many things that can go wrong […] However, if it was time sensitive, then that would make a difference. […]

This obviously was not the target’s usual routine. A professional would generally try to catch him in his regular routine in a place where the exposure of the shooter is minimized so that the risk of being caught or observed is pretty low. Manhattan, particularly in midtown, you’ve got cameras everywhere. […]

I would guess this person, if they’re hired, they would be relatively on the low end. The fact that it appeared in the video that the guy’s gun might have jammed is also a little bit of a concern for a professional. You make sure your equipment works. […]

Generally, you get that information by observing the individual. You find their schedule and their routine, and then you intercept them somewhere along the line on their routine. This was obviously not a routine setting. […] It suggests some sort of inside information. […]

I would think more likely it was somebody with a particular grudge that had access to inside information to know where to be and when to be there.

{ Interview with Dennis Kenney, professor of Criminal Justice | Slate | Continue reading }

A woman who stowed away on a flight from New York to France last week managed to do so without a passport, much less a boarding pass […] First, she infiltrated a flight crew and passed through a checkpoint with them. Then, she slipped past Delta Air Lines employees, who failed to ask for a boarding pass, and onto a fully booked plane, they said. While on the plane Ms. Dali attempted to avoid detection during the seven-hour flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris by ducking into the aircraft’s bathrooms. Ms. Dali, who is believed to have migrated to the United States from Russia, was arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday on a charge of “secreting aboard a vessel.” She was arrested at Kennedy Airport by F.B.I. agents upon her return Wednesday evening after spending about a week in the custody of French authorities. [NY Times]

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