Henry Abraham via Henry David Abraham’s Stuff for Public Consumption:

‘Last week I wrote in my Substack piece “Why the Emperor Has No Clothes” what may be behind Trump’s increasing profanity and lying. I appreciate McWhorter’s description of the three stages of profanity, but Trump’s profanity is more than just “how language works.” He misses how dementia works. One aspect of the disorder is disinhibition, an increasing inability to hold back thoughts, words, and actions which people can do under normal circumstances. Other signs include diminished speech, poor emotional control, reduced judgment (the Iran war, for example), confusion, memory impairment, and disorientation. Speaking during an event at the UN the President asked, “Where’s Marco? Where’s Marco?” Secretary of State Marco Rubio was sitting next to him.

A single mental lapse is not dementia. Multiple lapses, on the other hand, all point in the same worrisome direction. We can apply O’Donnell’s “sir” test to catch the President in a manufactured memory. We can even use McWhorter’s three stages of profanity as a test for increasing disinhibition. Look for Donald Trump to break the taboo against racist and homophobic language. That will be the best, and worst, tell of all. But perhaps no tests or tells will be needed. There were empty seats recently at Trump rallies in deep red Alabama, Ohio, and Tennessee. America may be awakening from its nightmare…’

Gloria Dickie via the Guardian:

‘[O]n a June day in 2015… Mitani and his fellow researchers were observing a cluster of the group when the chimps began to display nervous behaviour and scattered at the sounds of approaching group members. “All of a sudden, the individuals I was following just ran down the hill for no apparent reason,” Mitani says. “Chaos erupted. They started to run around and chase each other.”

That moment, in retrospect, was the first sign of what would become a years-long bloody conflict – chronicled in the 2023 Netflix series Chimp Empire – between a once close-knit group of chimps. In a study published this April in the journal Science, Mitani and his colleagues describe what may be the first “civil war” among wild chimps.

By 2018, two distinct chimp groups had formed in Ngogo. Nine males and 19 infants have been killed during the conflict. Scientists later found that the unexpected result of this lethal aggression was that female fertility doubled and offspring survival increased substantially at Ngogo….’

Passant Rabie via Gizmodo:

‘Somewhere beyond the familiar glow of the Milky Way, matter may be meeting its mirror image in a spectacular act of cosmic annihilation. A recent study suggests that our galaxy could be leaking antimatter into the vast darkness of intergalactic space, where these elusive particles collide with ordinary matter and disappear in flashes of energy….’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘Convicted felon Donald Trump recently learned that Jon Husted was a pretty good football player, and decided to check out the Ohio Senator’s physique. Trump likes the package. I looked at his ass,” Donald said, before moving on to Husted’s hands, which he described as “claws.” Nothing says athlete like a good set of claws….’

Hadley Tomicki via L.A. TACO:

‘What does it take to scare someone in 2026? L.A.’s scare professionals have some of the craziest work deliverables imaginable: scare the hell out of you after you paid a small fortune for thrills during Halloween season. These people literally get paid to make you scream.

We talked to the deranged geniuses behind the mazes at Halloween Horror Nights, Knott’s Scary Farm, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater, The Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor, Delusion, and the L.A. Haunted Hayride, asking them about their deepest fears, seminal October memories, and supernatural experiences. We also hit them up for their best tips on how we can make our pals pee themselves a little bit as Halloween creeps up on us.

These are just a few of the stories we heard when sitting down with L.A.’s most legendary haunt creators…’

Karl Mathiesen via WIRED:

‘Solar geoengineering could buy humanity time against climate change—or trigger a dangerous new arms race. A first-of-its-kind simulation offered a glimpse of what happens when geopolitics takes the wheel….’

Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing:

‘Additives with no proven cancer risk and levels below 0.5 parts per billion could skip safety review, including perchlorate and some PFAS….’