A case for optimism?

‘Fascism, Bolton told Vox, is “too far above Trump’s capabilities.”…’

(Sean Rameswaram via Vox)

‘The causes of this divide are complex and have been endlessly discussed. There’s social media and the existence of “manosphere” content creators like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, who promote right-wing parties and ideas. Additionally, widespread isolation, especially for the youth, means that social media now has an outsized impact, leading to a distorted public sphere where preferences are distorted by biased algorithms. There is, of course, a gendered backlash aspect: Women have made notable advances in the public sphere over the last five years, and Trump has capitalized on anxieties about such gains, as well as longer-simmering grievances and tensions, to advance his reactionary agenda.

But while much of the debate has centered on electoral strategy, social issues like transgender rights or Me Too, and chastising activists for their unproductive work, the truth is somewhat more nuanced. Younger men are more conservative on some issues, but men’s and women’s differing votes don’t seem to be based on policy differences: Surveys of American voters point to men and women largely agreeing on which issues they find most important, and they mostly seem to trust the same parties on each of those issues.

The best way to understand the growing gender divide isn’t the culture war. It’s how the economy has shifted over the past half-century.…’

(Maia Mindel via Vox)

He sounds far worse than Biden ever did.

‘Tr*mp seems to know little, and he has grown increasingly incoherent and rambling, often wholly detached from reality.…’

(Rex Hippie via USA Today)

For example, this, in response to a question about border security:

“I built hundreds of miles of wall, and then (Biden) didn’t want to, and we had another, an extra hundred miles that I could have put up because I ordered it as extra. I completed the wall, what I was doing, but we have, I wanted to build additional because it was working so well.”

His administration is great at breaking things — but it’s failing in its bigger goal.

‘There is an established playbook for turning a democracy into an authoritarian state, used in countries ranging from India to Hungary. It requires a leader to:

Remove formal limits on their own powers.
Compromise independent power centers such as the press and courts.
Win compliance with the new regime from social elites and the mass public.

Tr*mp has attempted all of these things. He has taken actions, like unilaterally declaring an end to birthright citizenship, that clearly violate the Constitution. He has targeted alternative power centers, launching an investigation into a Democratic fundraising platform and threatening the press. He has imposed sanctions on prominent law firms and universities in a bid to force compliance, and he has sold it all to the public as evidence he’s getting things done.

Yet in each arena, Tr*mp is facing effective and mounting pushback. He is routinely losing in court. He is failing to silence the media. And he is losing support among the elite as his poll numbers plummet…’

(Zack Beauchamp via Vox)

What to do if you receive a random text

‘If you receive a text from a number you don’t know, don’t respond, as doing so validates your phone number. Even if you don’t engage in this exchange any further, you may be targeted again in the future (and by different unfamiliar numbers).

You also don’t need to try to find out who they are or whether you know them—if someone actually needs to reach you, they are likely to follow up with multiple messages or calls beyond a single “Hey, how are you?” And as with any scam, be wary of communication that provokes an emotional response or a sense of urgency.

You should mark wrong number messages as spam in your messaging app. In Messages on iOS, tap the Report Junk link that appears at the bottom of messages from unknown senders, then hit Delete > Report Junk. If you haven’t opened the message yet, you can also swipe left and tap the Trash icon > Delete and Report Junk. (Note that you can’t report a message if you’ve replied to it, which is another reason not to do so.)

On Android, you can block and report conversations in Google Messages: tap and hold, then tap Block > Report spam > OK. If you’ve already opened the conversation, hit More options > Details > Block & report spam > OK.

You can also forward spam messages to 7726, which helps wireless companies identify and block scams.…’

(Emily Long via Lifehacker)

Tr*mp underwater in most policy areas, including immigration

‘A New York Times poll finds Donald Tr*mp achieving a record low rating for a president 100 days into their administration, with 42% of respondents approving of the job he’s doing and 54% disapproving. Moreover, he’s underwater in every policy area they cared to chart, including the one that’s supposedly his strongest: immigration.…’

(via Boing Boing)

‘…(O)ver the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trmp spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.

This pattern becomes impossible to unsee once you start looking for it. …’

( via Techdirt )

Donald Trump believes he’s invincible. But the cracks are beginning to show.

‘We’ve both covered Trump long enough to know that his first word is rarely his final one. So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don’t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. “Who’s calling?” he asked….’

(via The Atlantic)

‘(As) detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers says that it may be giving off a signal. So they want to build a new type of detector they liken to a “cosmic car radio,” that could listen to what the dark matter is saying and perhaps crack its mysteries.

Such a device would “tune in” to the frequency of axions, hypothetical particles that have emerged as one of the leading candidates for what dark matter is.

“We can now build a dark matter detector that is essentially a cosmic car radio, tuning into the frequencies of the wider galaxy until we find the axion,” said King’s College London researcher and coauthor David Marsh in a statement.

Axions are thought to be extremely light and only weakly interact with normal matter, which makes detecting them extremely difficult.

The proposed detector would use a special material to generate “axion quasiparticles,” (AQ) that according to the team could allow scientists to detect axions within the next 15 years…’

(Victor Tangermann via Futurism )

‘Art can outlast the artist — but what about their artistic impulses?

A new art installation project in Australia, titled “Revivification,” raises this question with a very literal interpretation of “impulse”: using his DNA, the team behind the project have performed a quasi-resurrection of the late experimental American composer Alvin Lucier, creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals.

“Revivification is an attempt to shine light on the sometimes dark possibilities of extending a person’s presence beyond the seemed finality of death,” the team, comprising three artists and a neuroscientist, told the Art Newspaper.

At the center of the piece is an “in-vitro brain,” grown from blood that Lucier, who passed away in 2021, donated in the final years of his life. Housed in a plinth, it’s grown on top of an electrode mesh that connects it to twenty large brass plates placed around the room. Visitors can listen as the brain fires off electrical pulses that trigger a transducer and a mallet behind each plate, striking them to produce sound.…’

(Frank Landymore via Futurism)

Sort of latest equivalent of ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’

‘In 2016, I accidentally became a bit character in UK history.

I had bumbled my way onto a British reality show called Come Dine with Me, where four strangers take turns hosting, attending, and rating each other’s dinner parties, and the person with the highest score at the end of the week wins an extremely modest £1,000. Usually, the show is low-stakes—its version of “drama” is when someone sticks a whole whisk in their mouth. It’s the kind of trashy, easy-viewing TV you might watch while you’re recovering from having your appendix removed.…’

(via Experimental History)

‘An international team of researchers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) launched the ROV SuBastion, which captured the first confirmed live sighting of the elusive colossal squid at 600 meters down in the midnight zone of the Atlantic Ocean near the South Sandwich Islands. This is the first confirmed live observation of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, at depth in its natural habitat. Pilots filmed the young cephalopod at about 600m near the South Sandwich Islands as the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle SuBastian descended…’

(Lori Dorin via Laughing Squid)

Three cases of the rare and fatal brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) have emerged in Hood River County, Oregon—a statistically improbable cluster in a population of just 23,000, given the disease’s global incidence of one to two cases per million and only 350 cases annually in the U.S. Reported over the past eight months, one case is confirmed and two are probable; two individuals have died, and test results are pending for the third. CJD is caused by misfolded prion proteins that create sponge-like holes in the brain, leading to rapid neurological decline with symptoms such as confusion, hallucinations, and loss of coordination. Diagnosis typically involves microscopic examination of brain tissue. Health officials are investigating potential links between the cases while maintaining family privacy. 

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (also known as prion diseases) such as CJD can be transmitted by exposure to contaminated brain tissue, corneal grafts, pituitary growth hormone,   or improperly sterilized electrodes or surgical instruments that have come in contact with infected tissue. It can also appear spontaneously from a mutation to the gene encoding the major prion protein. Humans can contract the disease from eating food from animals infected with their own versions of prion disease, e.g. bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”), scrapie in sheep, or CWD (chronic wasting disease) in deer and elk. Prions cannot be transmitted by air, water, or casual touching.

(Kristine de Leon via Oregon Live)

The Monday press conference with Bukele reveals how Tr*mp would like to rule… and why he may not be able to do so

Donald Trmp’s press conference with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele revealed a shared authoritarian mindset, especially in their dismissive handling of a court order involving a deported migrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Bukele, a strongman who openly defies legal limits, contrasts with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who subtly dismantles democracy under a legal guise. Trmp appears to be blending both approaches—Bukele’s overt force and Orbán’s legal manipulation—but lacks the discipline and context that made them effective in their countries. This unstable mix may provoke public resistance and ultimately help preserve American democracy.

(Zack Beauchamp via Vox)

‘Donald Trump didn’t seem to realize he was on camera when he told the president of El Salvador to make more prisons, this time for Americans. “Home-growns are next,” Trump told Nayib Bukele, who visited him in the Oval Office today. “You gotta build about five more places,” Trump added, before describing the El Salvador prison now housing the Venezuelans he deported (without due process) as “not big enough.”…’

(via Boing Boing)

‘If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Tr*mp as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.

Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them, Janus Rose writes…’

(Janus Rose via 404 media)

‘Researchers have found that the amount of microplastics in our brains is rising at an alarming rate.

As The Guardian reports, scientists examined postmortem brain tissue from dozens of human bodies between 1997 and 2024. They found that the concentration of microplastics increased consistently over that time period, with a particularly dramatic surge over the last eight years.

As detailed in a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, a team led by University of New Mexico toxicologist and professor of pharmaceutical sciences Matthew Campen concluded that the average brain now contains the equivalent of one plastic spoon, or seven grams, worth of plastic. And it’s not just the brain. Scientists also found significant concentrations of microplastics in the liver and kidney.…’

(via Neoscope)

Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading

‘Why do some ideas spread like wildfire, while others resist being seen — despite their importance? A new book by Nadia Asparouhova explores the emerging phenomenon of antimemetics. Published by the Dark Forest Collective. …’

(via Metalabel)

‘In 2017, historian Timothy Snyder wrote the concise book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. A historian of fascism (then at Yale, now at U. Toronto), Snyder wanted to offer Americans a useful guide for resisting the country’s drift towards authoritarianism. It was handy then and even handier now–especially as the feds bear down on different institutions undergirding American civil society. Law firms, universities, corporations, media outlets–they’re all getting squeezed, and many have already violated the first of Snyder’s 20 lessons: “Do not obey in advance.” Above, you can hear actor John Lithgow read a condensed version of Snyder’s lessons. You can order a copy of his book online, or explore here a related video series that Snyder produced a few years back. Find a cheat sheet below.

1. Do not obey in advance

2. Defend institutions

3. Beware the one-party state

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world

5. Remember professional ethics

6. Be wary of paramilitaries

7. Be reflective if you must be armed

8. Stand out

9. Be kind to our language

10. Believe in truth

11. Investigate

12. Make eye contact and small talk

13. Practice corporeal politics

14. Establish a private life

15. Contribute to good causes

16. Learn from peers in other countries

17. Listen for dangerous words

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives

19. Be a patriot

20. Be as courageous as you can…’

(via Open Culture)

‘Guess which special birthday boy is getting his own four-mile-long tank parade that is going to cost many, many millions of your tax dollars?

As reported in Washington City Paper, Generalissimo Tr*mp, fresh off his recent Pentagon purge of anyone who might say no to him, is finally getting the military parade he’s been demanding ever since watching France do it in 2017.…’

(Ellsworth Toohey via (Boing Boing)

‘AI animator Hoog created an old-school style PSA that warns of the dangers of robotic quadruped dogs, their ability to carry weapons and other accoutrements, how they move autonomously as a pack, how to protect yourself from them, and how to disable these robotic dogs from attacking you and those you love. …’ 

(via Laughing Squid)

Bad News for Your Personal Data

‘March 20 executive order aims to eliminate data silos. It could undermine privacy in the process.…’

(via WIRED)

‘Multiple US states have logged record pollen counts this spring, with climate change likely to blame.…’

(via WIRED)

 The nearby T Coronae Borealis system could still explode any day now, but calculations suggest the next best chance for fireworks is later this year.

‘Sky watchers were disappointed last night when a binary star system didn’t erupt in a nova explosion that was predicted to take place on Thursday. But fear not, the famous blaze star is still due for its recurring nova to erupt any day now.…’

(Passant Rabie via Gizmodo)

At least for now……

‘’The Supreme Court flirts with one of the biggest power grabs in history, in FCC vs. Consumers’ Research.

(Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘The president has used a strongman playbook to bring universities, news organizations and law firms to heel. That didn’t work on The Atlantic.…’

(Irie Sentner via POLITICO)

‘Astronomers have been watching a small constellation in the night sky, waiting for a nearby binary star system to explode. The wait may finally be over: A numerical estimate predicts the rare nova eruption could happen on Thursday, March 27.

T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), also known as the Blaze Star, is a binary star system located 3,000 light-years from Earth. It periodically explodes in a recurring nova every 79 years or so, and it’s due for an impending eruption.

The Blaze Star has spent the past decade behaving much like it did in the lead-up to its last visible eruption nearly 80 years ago, according to NASA. The current window for the rare astronomical event opened in February 2024 and remains open. Astronomy enthusiasts have been keeping a close eye on the skies since last year, waiting for that stellar boom. A paper published last year in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society estimated that the star is likely to explode on Thursday, March 27—so get ready to look up…

The nova will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere in the Corona Borealis constellation, which forms an arc shape in the night skies. You can spot the stellar explosion without a telescope for several days after it happens. The star system will then begin to dim and won’t brighten again for roughly another 80 years, so make sure you catch this rare celestial event…’

(Passant Rabie via Gizmodo)

‘MIT and OpenAI teamed up to study how AI chatbots are making people feel. Where users ended up depends on where they started.…’

(Matthew Gault via Gizmodo)

‘Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer took to the air waves. Before his radio broad cast was cut off, he warned his countrymen that their führer could well be a verführer, or misleader. Bonhoeffer ’s anti-Nazism lasted until the end of his life in 1945, when he was executed by the regime for association with the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Even while imprisoned, he kept thinking about the origins of the political mania that had overtaken Germany. The force of central importance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he concluded, but stupidity.

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than mal ice,” Bon ho ef fer wrote in a letter to his co-conspirators on the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship. “One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.” When provoked, “the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”…’

(Colin Marshall via Open Culture)

‘On Wednesday, it was reported a French scientist was denied entry to Houston after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers found messages criticizing President Donald Trump’s cuts to science funding. Photos on another visa holder’s phone allegedly showing support for Hezbollah saw her denied reentry into the U.S.

Immigration attorneys have also reported increased scrutiny of visa holders’ messages and social media accounts at official ports of entry, including airports.

“I’ve told my clients to be very careful about their use of electronic devices and bringing electronic devices like phones and laptops through the border, to make sure they haven’t unintentionally saved photos to their phone that might be controversial, even though they don’t think they are,” Elissa Taub, a partner at immigration law firm Siskind Susser in Tennessee, told Newsweek.…’

(via Newsweek)

‘New research from the CDC is exposing surprising new culprits behind a growing meat allergy.…’

(Ed Cara via Gizmodo)

Trump bashes Dem Gov. Polis over “bad” portrait of himself — even though Republicans commissioned it

‘A rabid Donald Tr*mp unleashed his fury at Colorado Gov. Jared Polis last night for allowing a “bad picture” of himself to hang in the state Capitol — even though the portrait was commissioned by Republicans in 2018, before the governor took office.…’

(Carla Sinclair
via Boing Boing)

‘It’s not a “do not track” request, it’s a set of terms you demand from sites.…’

(Kevin Purdy via Ars Technica)

Pete Hegseth accidentally texts U.S. war plans to Atlantic editor, says new report

‘On March 15, the U.S. bombed Houthi rebels in Yemen — but Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg knew specific details about its “secret” war plans hours beforehand, thanks to an extremely careless text he received by controversial Trump-pick Pete Hegseth.

“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming,” Goldberg explained today.

“The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing,” he said.

And it wasn’t just the incompetence of Hegseth — a former Fox News host before Donald Trump thought him worthy enough to become U.S. Secretary of Defense — that led to the security breach. It was more of a group effort, that started with Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.…’

(Carla Sinclair 
via

Boing Boing)

‘If you want to know if the Supreme Court is completely in the tank for MAGA, keep a close eye on these two cases.…’

(Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘Assuming that the judge — Judge Boasberg or any other judge for that matter — eventually concludes that the government deliberately violated a court order, what are the judge’s options?  

I can tell you that every former judge I know has been asked this question by somebody in the media, including me. I think the only real option is civil contempt.

The reason why it cannot be criminal contempt is generally that would be referred to the Justice Department to prosecute. So you might have a lawyer, a witness that you direct to answer [a question], they refuse, and/or they lie. If you want to charge them with criminal contempt, you have to get the U.S. Attorney’s office or Main Justice to prosecute, and clearly the Tr*mp Justice Department, or the Bondi Justice Department, is not going to prosecute.

Then you get that question, which was raised in the Eric Adams case, could you appoint a special prosecutor? That’s tricky because of separation of powers, so I think criminal contempt is off the table.

I think civil contempt, however, is something that could be done if the facts are fairly straightforward. The remedy in civil contempt, believe it or not, can include incarceration.

Usually it’s fines. If it was a lawyer, you might file a grievance against the lawyer. That could be done if these lawyers either lie to the court or personally violate the order — you might want to bring a grievance before the grievance committee of the local bar where they’re admitted, something like that.

So it could be fines, could be a grievance, but in theory, it could also be jailing somebody. I did that only once in my time on the bench. In a civil contempt case, I actually put somebody in jail because he was so defiant, and then … he did what he was told to do.

You could also sanction the person, and that’s always interesting, because you could have fines that double every day, so it can get serious fast. I don’t know how good at math you are, but a $1,000 fine doubling every day can quickly add up to real money — not for the United States government, but for an individual. If somebody was individually sanctioned, that adds up.

How would incarceration work in civil contempt? Wouldn’t you still need the involvement of the executive branch?

Well, you need the person taken away by the U.S. Marshal. That’s the problem, right?

When I held someone in civil contempt, I had to say, “Marshal, take this person across the street to the jail.”

That is part of the executive branch — just the U.S. Marshal escorting the person over to the federal facility. So it still has that problem, but you don’t need a prosecutor.…’

(Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor, interviewing former federal judge Shira Scheindlin via POLITICO)

New data suggests the unknown, unobservable force responsible for the universe’s expansion may be weakening.

A visualization of a 3D map of the universe, with Earth at the center and every dot representing a galaxy. 

‘Observable matter–everything from the coffee cup on your desk, to distant planets, to the largest and most ancient galaxies—makes up just 5% of the cosmos, meaning that dark energy is responsible for a whopping 68% of everything we think exists in the universe.

The notion of dark energy as a constant—which is to say, it manifested the same way 10 billion years ago as it does today, and as it will 10 billion years from now—is “baked into” the predominant model of the universe, Lambda-CDM, according to Rossana Ruggeri, a physicist at the University of Queensland who was involved in the DESI analysis.

“Results from the first batch of data gave a hint that dark energy might not behave like a simple cosmological constant—but it wasn’t strong enough to draw firm conclusions,” Ruggeri said in The Conversation. “Now, the second batch of data has made this evidence stronger.”

Though the data does not yet meet the statistical threshold physicists require to firmly declare a bona fide new discovery, the data strengthen physicists’ resolve that something is going on that will mean the model needs to be revised. “If dark energy is changing over time, it could have profound implications for the ultimate fate of the universe,” Ruggeri wrote.…’

(Isaac Schultz via Gizmodo)

— they probably won’t magically catalyze a mass movement against Tr*mp but are still wildly important

‘I wrote this for people who, like me, have spent much of the past few weeks hoping that somebody else would do something bolder in this political movement. We are downtrodden because we’re full of rage and heartbreak, but the polls tell us that our neighbors don’t share those feelings. We realize we’re seeing something that so many aren’t, but we’re not sure how to bridge the gap. We have wished (appropriately) for bravery from our media, from elected Democrats, from public officials in general. However fair those wishes are, they come with a risk: that we miss the opportunity to be the lonely voice for justice in our own community, the person who makes it a little easier for a second and third and fourth lonely voice to start perking up by our side.

I don’t pretend that all it takes for a social movement to succeed is a bunch of individuals throwing the activist equivalent of spaghetti at so many isolated walls. Nothing I offer here will be enough. And yet, so many of us are waiting for something we can join, which presents a true opportunity to be the first person in your circle welcoming fellow travelers into halting, shaky, earnest action.…’

(Garrett Bucks via The White Pages)

‘New research this month shows that the experimental antiviral obeldesivir prevented up to 100% of deaths in monkeys infected with the deadliest species of Ebola.…’

(Ed Cara via Gizmodo)

Let Me Know If You Notice Anything Familiar

‘The Nazis would use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.…’

(Kelley Greene via Buzzfede)

‘…[I]t’s worth noting for context that there is another prominent international figure who routinely references an “artificial” line between his country and his neighbor: Vladimir Putin has used the same rhetoric in recent years when describing the border between Russia and Ukraine.…’

(Steve Bonenvia MSNBC)

Write negative coverage about Dictator Tr*mp, and you’re breaking the law.

‘At least that’s what the highly sensitive MAGA man said when speaking to reporters today.

“I believe that CNN and MSDNC [sic], who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party,” Trump said, seeming to forget the name of MSNBC. “And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal.” (See video here, posted by Aaron Rupar.)

“And it has to stop,” he added, via The Hill, after comparing television news outlets to political operatives. “It has to be illegal. It’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other.”…’

(via Boing Boing)

‘Dr. Emily Zarka of the PBS series Monstrum looks at the phenomenon of seeing a shadowy man wearing a wide brim hat appearing during terrifying episodes of sleep paralysis. This so called “Hat Man” is so prevalent that restless sleepers have seen this or other frightening images just before they fall asleep. Zarka also examines the physiology behind these frightening episodes…’

(via Laughing Squid)

‘Amazon is killing a privacy feature to bolster Alexa+, the new subscription assistant.…’

(via Ars Technica)

In even [the] most straightforward kind of math, unknowability lurks

David Hilbert

‘All knowledge has limits. “It reminds us there are things that are just not doable… It doesn’t matter who you are or what you are.”….’ (via WIRED)

‘Firefly’s first mission to the Moon touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday at 3:34 a.m. ET. The Texas-based company released a clip of Blue Ghost’s descent toward the Moon followed by a smooth landing. The footage is a masterclass in lunar landings, capturing striking views of the lander emerging from a cloud of dust, its shadow stretching across the Moon’s surface in a superhero-like stance….’ (via Gizmodo)

‘A review of Steve Benen, “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past” (Harper Collins, 2024) and Jason Stanley, “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future” (Simon & Schuster, 2024)….’ (Abby Smith Rumsey via Lawfare)

‘Read that one time longest sentence in literature, all 1,288 words of it…’ (via Open Culture)

Established Conditions Ruled Out

‘Though the two outbreaks are in the same region (the Équateur Province), it’s not certain yet whether they are truly connected. People in both outbreaks have experienced similar symptoms, which include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain, and headache. Some people have also experienced hemorrhaging (potentially life-threatening blood loss), but tests for Ebola and Marburg virus—well-known causes of hemorrhagic fever—have come up negative in both outbreaks….’ (via Gizmodo)

‘”Humpback whales can’t swallow a human. Here’s why,” says National Geographic’s title. And here’s the article in a nutshell:

Though a humpback could easily fit a human inside its huge mouth—which can reach around 10 feet—it’s scientifically impossible for the whale to swallow a human once inside, according to Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.K. nonprofit.

A humpback’s throat is roughly the size of a human fist, and can only stretch to about 15 inches in diameter to accommodate a bigger meal.

…it’s scientifically impossible for all but one whale species—the sperm whale—to swallow something as large as a person.

Perhaps the humpback clutched the man in its mouth before releasing him, or perhaps it just dragged him under water before the man popped back up. Either way, it was a terrifying experience on its own, and made for some awesome video, even if we didn’t get to see the inside of a whale’s throat….’

— author via Boing Boing