‘New York Justice Juan Merchan told a trump org. executive he got off easy in another criminal case. Will the former president be so lucky?…’

— via POLITICO

‘Blue-ringed octopuses are a group comprising four species: the greater blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena lunulata), the southern blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena maculosa), the blue-lined octopus (Hapalochlaena fasciata) and the common blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena nierstraszi). These octopuses are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and are covered in tiny rings that flash with an iridescent blue when the animals are threatened. Blue-ringed octopuses also contain tetrodotoxin, a powerful neurotoxin that can paralyze and kill humans even in small doses.

On March 16, the woman was bitten twice on her abdomen by an unknown species of blue-ringed octopus at a beach near Sydney in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. She had collected a small shell while swimming, and when she picked it up to look at it, the tiny cephalopod fell out and landed on her stomach, the NSW Ambulance service wrote on Facebook.

The woman experienced some abdominal pain and was treated with cold compresses before being taken to the hospital to be monitored for more symptoms, according to NSW Ambulance. It is unclear why the woman escaped relatively unharmed….’

— via Live Science

‘Researchers have captured on film and caught the world’s deepest fish—species of snailfish. A research ship from the Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep Sea Research Centre found the animals swimming at depths of eight kilometers (approx 5 miles) down in the undersea trenches around Japan. The film, below, shows an unknown species of snailfish….’

— via Boing Boing

‘Cognitive scientists have been exploring ways to test what sorts of mental capacities large language models like ChatGPT do and don’t possess….Some researchers claim that chatbots have developed theory of mind. But is that just our own theory of mind gone wild?…’

— via The New York Times