‘We have a rich picture of the beginnings of language, thanks to decades of scientific research with children, infants, and even babies in the womb. But if you wanted to know how language ends in the dying, there’s next to nothing to look up, only firsthand knowledge gained painfully….’ (The Atlantic)

‘[V]iolent extremist groups have begun to mesh over a unifying figure: trump. The former president has become a focal point of domestic extremism, and by not denouncing them — and sometimes courting them — he has been adopted by these groups as a de facto spiritual leader. In some ways, Trump has also co-opted these groups to boost his own support. This, in my assessment, makes the former president a leading driver of domestic extremism, and an unprecedented danger to our security….’ (POLITICO)

‘Why do some people who support trump also wind up believing conspiracy theories? There’s a scientific explanation for that….’ (POLITICO)

‘“It’s just more evidence that these justices on the Supreme Court, these conservative justices, just see themselves as politicians,” Murphy said….’ (POLITICO)

‘Very little can stop the average American from eating beef — and quite a lot of it. On a per-capita basis, Americans eat nearly 60 pounds of red meat a year, equivalent to more than one quarter-pound hamburger every other day. But there’s one obstacle to our meat-loving tendencies that may not be surmountable: the tiny but aggressive lone star tick.

The tick (named for the female’s distinctive white dot on its back) can spread something called sugar alpha-gal via its spit. That sugar can trigger alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS, a condition that causes hives, nausea, heartburn, diarrhea, difficulty breathing, and a drop in blood pressure, among other symptoms, in sufferers around two to six hours after they eat beef, pork, and other mammal products. Essentially, sufferers become severely allergic to red meat….’ (Vox)

‘South Korean researchers say they’ve discovered, an alleged room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor, as reported in IFLScience. As the name implies, superconductors conduct electricity with negligible resistance, unlike metal wires. Traditional superconductors that require extremely low temperatures, but LK-99 is claimed to function under everyday conditions. Its critical temperature, below which it exhibits superconductivity, is 261 °F.

 

If verified, this discovery could have far-reaching implications for technological applications, including magnets, motors, cables, levitation trains, power cables, qubits for quantum computers, and THz antennas. “We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind,” say the researchers, whose paper was uploaded to arXiv….’ (Boing Boing)

‘Extreme heat and other weather events are driving bears closer to humans’ campgrounds and hiking trails—and that’s no good for either species….’ (WIRED)

‘Romney is calling on donors and influencers to get candidates to drop out by late February….’ (Politico.)

California’s cage-free egg and bacon law is under threat from Republicans

‘Decades of progress for animal welfare are potentially at risk….’ (Vox)

‘Bullshit’s no laughing matter. Climate denialism bullshit, for example, is harmful. Misinformation about SARS-CoV-2 clearly cost lives. In fact, the biologist Carl Bergstrom, while watching the pandemic unfold, argued that “detecting bullshit” should be a top scientific priority. In 2020, Bergstrom coauthored a book called Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. In their preface, he and his coauthor paid respect to the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, who died on Sunday at the age of 94. Frankfurt, they noted, “recognized that the ubiquity of bullshit is a defining characteristic of our time.”

Frankfurt, the author of the surprise 2005 bestseller On Bullshit, maintained that bullshit isn’t the same thing as a lie. The bullshitter is unaware of the facts. They’re just “bullshitting,” as we say, often in order to persuade others to go along with something, like a plan. But the liar deceives knowing what’s true and obscures it, with language or charts and figures. The good news is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to observing the spread of bullshit—or lies.

In a new study published in Nature Human Behavior, researchers came away optimistic about efforts to combat bullshit about COVID-19, which continues apace….’ (Nautilus)

‘The deadliest animal in the world is smaller than a pencil eraser and weighs around two-thousandths of a gram — less than the weight of a single raindrop. Every year, it kills an estimated 700,000 people by partaking in what scientists grimly call a “blood meal.” 

It’s the mosquito — and, increasingly, it’s on the move.

These global shifts, which will only accelerate as the planet warms, have sparked concern that the diseases mosquitoes carry will exact an even higher toll in the months and years to come.

In June alone, five cases of locally transmitted malaria were discovered in Texas and Florida: the first cases acquired in the United States in two decades. These cases, experts say, are unlikely to have a connection to warming temperatures — conditions in Florida and Texas are already suitable for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But as urban heat islands expand and temperatures rise, mosquito-borne diseases are expected to travel outside of their typical regions….’ (The Washington Post)

‘Jews, Episcopalians, Unitarians, Satanists and other people of faith say the laws infringe on their religious rights….’ (POLITICO)

‘…Language-generating AI models could make it easier to create dangerous germs….’ (Vox)

‘Throughout its nearly 50-year career, the Kronos Quartet has been known for a dual commitment, both to contemporary music and to helping train young musical ensembles. But for a long time, there was a practical tension between those two goals.

“The quartet does a lot of teaching and coaching when they’re on tour and at home,” said Janet Cowperthwaite, the ensemble’s longtime executive director. “We’d be setting up these sessions, and we’d ask if the young group had something contemporary they could work on together. And they’d go, ‘well … ’ ”

What was needed, clearly, was a body of new music for budding string quartets to train on — scores as readily available as the old standbys by Haydn and Dvorák, but responsive to the needs of a 21st century ensemble.

That’s where “50 for the Future” came in….’ (Datebook)

“Little bitch…”

‘According to Daily Beast, the two power hungry lawmakers are competing to impeach President Biden, and Greene blew up when she discovered that “Boebert leveraged a procedural tool to force a vote on her own impeachment resolution within days—undercutting Greene, who had offered her own resolution, but not with the procedural advantages of forcing a vote.”…’ (Boing Boing)

‘Two years ago, Brendan, an ex-leader of a white nationalist group, experienced a significant shift in his radical views after participating in a University of Chicago study involving MDMA (also known as ecstasy or molly). Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the university, conducted the experiment to explore MDMA’s role in enhancing the enjoyment of social touch. She was unaware that a white supremacist had participated in her study until after it concluded.

Previously, Brendan had been a member of a notorious Midwest white nationalist group. Before the study, he lost his job when his affiliation was exposed by a Chicago-based antifascist group. Even his siblings and friends who weren’t involved in white nationalism distanced themselves from him. However, an intensely personal experience during the study prompted Brendan to rethink his supremacist beliefs, leading him to stress the value of love and connection….’ (Boing Boing)

The New York Times asked 17 columnists to choose a piece of culture that best captures America. One columnist chose the 1956 horror movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as a metaphor for America’s toxic transformation, where many have fallen prey to ideas, slogans, conspiracy theories, lies and emotions, leading to a collapse of individuality that goes against the very trait the country was founded on. The fear of invasion in the movie is a recurring theme in American life, with Covid and social media being cited as modern-day invaders threatening to subsume people’s identities. (Maureen Dowd in The New York Times)

(Far better than the remakes, except for Jerry Garcia having a cameo in the 1978 version.)

‘The second half of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning was added in 1962 to provide greater detail of Logotherapy, in which patients must hear difficult things in contrast to psychoanalysts provoking telling difficult things. It’s less introspective and more focused on our place in the world:

“Logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced . . . the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. . . . Striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term ‘striving for superiority,’ is focused”…’ (3 Quarks Daily)

‘Midsummer is one of the four solar holidays and is considered the turning point at which summer reaches its height and the sun shines longest. Among the Wiccan sabbats, Midsummer is preceded by Beltane, and followed by Lammas or Lughnasadh. Some Wiccan traditions call the festival Litha, a name occurring in Bede’s The Reckoning of Time (De Temporum Ratione, eighth century), which preserves a list of the (then-obsolete) Anglo-Saxon names for the month of the early Germanic calendar. Ærra Liða (first or preceding Liða) roughly corresponds to June in the Gregorian calendar, and Æfterra Liða (following Liða) to July. Bede writes that “Litha means gentle or navigable, because in both these months the calm breezes are gentle and they were wont to sail upon the smooth sea”.[31] Modern Druids celebrate this festival as Alban Hefin. The sun in its greatest strength is greeted and celebrated on this holiday. While it is the time of greatest strength of the solar current, it also marks a turning point, for the sun also begins its time of decline as the wheel of the year turns. Arguably the most important festival of the Druid traditions, due to the great focus on the sun and its light as a symbol of divine inspiration. Druid groups frequently celebrate this event at Stonehenge.[32]…’ (Wheel of the Year – Wikipedia)

A new dialect of English is taking shape in South Florida, shaped by sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish…. (Inverse)

‘Public health and law enforcement agencies around the U.S. are scrambling to blunt the impact of xylazine, a deadly new threat to Americans who use street drugs.

That effort is complicated — some critics say crippled — by the fact that no one’s sure who’s mixing the dangerous chemical into fentanyl, methamphetamines and other street drugs. It’s also unclear why they’re doing it.

“Why has it gone national? I don’t know why. Tough question out of the gate,” said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina who tests street drugs collected around the country.

Xylazine, or “tranq,” is a horse tranquilizer used by the veterinary industry. Dasgupta says the mystery around it points to a wider public health problem: State and federal agencies lack the capacity to identify and track new drug threats in real time….’ (NPR)

‘As hate groups edge toward the political mainstream, experts say they’re employing new tactics and taking on new forms. In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center added 12 conservative “parents’ rights” groups to its list of extremist and anti-government organizations. SPLC’s Susan Corke joins John Yang to discuss why the center added organizations like Moms for Liberty to their list….’ (John Yang and Kalsha Young on PBS News Weekend)

‘The bright, red star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion has shown some unexpected behavior. In late 2019 and 2020, it became fainter than we had ever seen it — at least in records going back more than a century. Briefly, it became fainter (just about) than Bellatrix, the third brightest star of Orion. This event became known as the “great dimming.”

But Betelgeuse has since become bright again. For a few days this year, it was the brightest star in Orion — brighter than we have ever seen it. Both events led to speculation about whether its demise in the form of an explosion was imminent. But is there any evidence to support this idea? And how would such an explosion affect us here on Earth?…’ (Inverse)

Social Media Reacts to Release of trump Jr.’s Derogatory Emails About Black New Yorkers and other minorities

‘Suspicions regarding donald trump Jr., the eldest son of the 45th president of the United States, seem to have been confirmed after a series of racist and derogatory emails were released in a lawsuit involving one of his friends.

The emails are from a lawsuit between trump Jr.’s friend Gentry Beach, a man who served as one of trump’s groomsmen in his wedding, and Beach’s former boss, Paul Touradji, the founder of Touradji Capital Management.

In them there are off-color jokes about hunting Jews, shooting Mexicans, and the influx of African-American families in predominantly white sections of Manhattan….’ (Atlanta Black Star)

‘This is the bizarre mystery of an abandoned Boeing 737, which remains planted in the middle of a field in Bali – and to this day, no one knows how it got there.

Situated in a limestone quarry near the Raya Nusa Dua Selatan Highway, it is only a short journey from the popular Pandawa beach.

As is often the case with the bizarre and unexplained, plenty of theories have circulated as to how the plane got there….’ (Unilad)

‘Psilocybin is on the cusp of becoming legally available in Oregon—but not as a medical treatment….’ (WIRED)

‘US intelligence officer David Charles Grusch recently made headlines as a whistleblower after making public claims that the Pentagon has been hiding known evidence of non-human technology. Grusch expanded on these claims in a recent interview with NewsNation, in which he suggested — among other things — that the Vatican may also be in on this whole conspiracy regarding intelligent technology from non-sources. In fact, the Pope’s involvement even pre-dates the Roswell incident!…’ (Boing Boing)

‘Now, a new study in the journal Science Advances from researchers at the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge — Elizabeth Bowman, David Coghill, Carsten Murawski, and Peter Bossaerts — finds that far from making users smarter, smart drugs seem to actually undermine cognitive performance.

The authors tested the effects of three drugs — methylphenidate (more commonly known through one of its brand names, Ritalin), modafinil, and dextroamphetamine* (brand name Dexedrine, among others) — on a cognitive task designed to more closely mimic the complexities of real-world problems than past stimulant studies.

Far from simply concluding that smart drugs offer little benefit, the researchers found that the drugs actually seemed to leave users worse off. While study subjects worked harder while on the drugs compared to placebo, the “quality of effort,” or productivity, actually declined. The upshot is that smart drugs led users to spend more effort working while being less productive — not exactly a picture of cognitive enhancement….’ (Vox)

* one of the two active components of popular ADHD stimulant Adderall -ed.

‘The earth has about 36 billion acres of dry land. Who owns those acres? Madison Trust Company put together a list of who owns the most land of anyone on earth. You may have your own little acre, or part of one, but that’s nothing compared to what the British royal family owns- 6,600,000,000 acres! That puts them at the top of the biggest landowners on earth. And we thought the British Empire was a thing of the past.

What’s really impressive is that, of the top 19 landowners, only one is an individual person. That is Gina Rinehart of Australia, who personally owns 23,969,000 acres, putting her at #4 on the list. The next individual landowner is at #20. The rest are families, corporations, or communities. An awful lot of them are in Australia, which is a big country with a small population concentrated in the eastern cities.

Did you guess the #2 landowner in the world? It is the Catholic Church. You might feel better about #3, which is the Inuit People of Nunavut, who own 87,500,000 acres in Northern Canada. You can see the list in both infographic and text form, plus more information about what they are using their land for, in this post….’ (Neatorama)

‘Watch video from the legendary singer-songwriter’s historic conert at the scenic Washington state venue….’ (JamBase)

‘Newly announced modifications to the autocorrect feature used on iPhones will better understand a word’s context in a text message, saving users some blushes….’ (The New York Times)

‘Today, for the first time in history, thanks to artificial intelligence, it is possible for anybody to make counterfeit people who can pass for real in many of the new digital environments we have created. These counterfeit people are the most dangerous artifacts in human history, capable of destroying not just economies but human freedom itself. Before it’s too late (it may well be too late already) we must outlaw both the creation of counterfeit people and the ‘passing along’ of counterfeit people. The penalties for either offense should be extremely severe, given that civilization itself is at risk….’ (3 Quarks Daily)

‘Chris Christie attacked rival Donald Trump last night in a 90-minute town hall on CNN, branding the twice-convicted former game show host as a loser. And a loser. And a loser. And it might be the only time the former New Jersey governor has ever told the honest-to-goodness truth.

“He hasn’t won a damn thing since 2016. Three-time loser,” the former 2016 loser said in front of a live audience.

“2018 we lost the House. 2020 we lost the White House. We lost the United State Senate a couple of weeks later in 2021,” he reminded his voters. “And in 2022 we lost two more governorships, another Senate seat, and barely took the House of Representatives when Joe Biden had the most incompetent first two years I’ve ever seen in my life.”…’ (Boing Boing)

The video is here.

‘Malaria kills half a million people a year in Africa. We can prevent that — if we act fast enough….’ (Vox)

‘A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works…’ (Morgan Housel via Collab Fund)

‘I’ve been compiling lists of “unpopular ideas,” things that seem weird or bad to most people (at least, to most educated urbanites in the United States, which is the demographic I know best).

Even though I disagree with many of these ideas, I nevertheless think it’s valuable to practice engaging with ideas that seem weird or bad, for two reasons: First, because such ideas might occasionally be true, and it’s worth sifting through some duds to find a gem.

And second, because I think our imaginations tend to be too constrained by conventional “common sense,” and that many ideas we accept as true today were counterintuitive to past generations. Considering weird ideas helps de-anchor us from the status quo, and that’s valuable independently of whether those particular ideas are true or not.

… [Some people have missed this disclaimer in the past, so I’m going to say again that I’m not endorsing these ideas, merely collecting them, and I disagree with many of them.]…’ ( Julia Galef)

‘The war began in the early morning hours with a massive bombardment — China’s version of “shock and awe.” Chinese planes and rockets swiftly destroyed most of Taiwan’s navy and air force as the People’s Liberation army and navy mounted a massive amphibious assault across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait. Having taken seriously President Joe Biden’s pledge to defend the island, Beijing also struck pre-emptively at U.S. and allied air bases and ships in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. managed to even the odds for a time by deploying more sophisticated submarines as well as B-21 and B-2 stealth bombers to get inside China’s air defense zones, but Washington ran out of key munitions in a matter of days and saw its network access severed. The United States and its main ally, Japan, lost thousands of servicemembers, dozens of ships, and hundreds of aircraft. Taiwan’s economy was devastated. And as a protracted siege ensued, the U.S. was much slower to rebuild, taking years to replace ships as it reckoned with how shriveled its industrial base had become compared to China’s….’ (POLITICO)

Wildfire smoke reminded people about climate change. How soon will they forget?

‘Extreme weather and climate-linked disasters don’t always lead to changes in public opinion…’ (Vox)

The future of Canada’s wildfires, explained by a Canadian fire scientist

‘The smoke is clearing from New York and other East Coast cities, but Canada’s wildfires are set to get worse…’ (Vox)

If you can’t breathe well, neither can your pet

‘…While pet parents and animals in the US are a safe distance from the flames themselves, the threat of air pollution cannot be underestimated. In humans, air pollution can cause dizziness, coughing, headaches, and in more severe cases and vulnerable groups, heart and lung problems. Air pollution is also a silent killer: It’s responsible for nearly 250,000 premature deaths in the US and 6.7 million premature deaths globally each year….’ (Vox)

Dirty air can be deadly. Here’s how to protect yourself.

’The Air Quality Index can warn you about wildfire smoke and pollution in your area. Here’s a step-by-step guide…’ (Vox)

‘DID THE WEST ANTARCTIC ICE Sheet completely collapse during the latest interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago? It’s an important question for climate scientists, but geology was giving them no answers. So they turned to genetics instead.

Enter Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti), a cephalopod with a four-million-year pedigree that makes its home in the icy waters around Antarctica. Recent DNA analysis shows that two distinct populations of this species, one in the Weddell Sea and the other in the Ross Sea, mated about 125,000 years ago.

This could only have happened if the massive ice sheet that now separates those populations wasn’t there at the time. So yes, it did collapse. And that’s bad news, because it increases the likelihood that it will happen again….’ (Atlas Obscura)

‘Loath as I am to give the vile Tucker Carlson even scintilla of extra attention, it’s pretty important that the Right’s darling pundit opened up his new show on Twitter with rank anti-Semitism.

In a lengthy defense of his hero Vladimir Putin, he called the Jewish president of Ukraine “sweaty and rat-like, … a persecutor of Christians, a friend of Blackrock.”…’ (Boing Boing)

A miscellaneous cluster of AI links from today’s Morning News:

• “One way of thinking about a program like ChatGPT is that it’s much better at assessing vibes than it is at reproducing facts.” / Read Max
• See also: A writer asks ChatGPT to control his life, which it then destroys in short order. / Motherboard
• Ted Chiang: Instead of “artificial intelligence,” we should call it “applied statistics,” because it isn’t intelligent at all. / Financial Times
• Watch: ELIZA, a chatbot written in 1966, has a conversation with ChatGPT, triggering a flurry of “as an AI language model” responses. / YouTube
• Adobe’s new AI generative fill tool is fun for memes but bad at art. / Inside My Head, Hyperallergic

‘…you might be a sulker. You’ve probably had to deal with someone else’s sulk, too. But what is sulking, exactly? Why do we do it? And why does it have such a bad reputation?…’ (Aeon Essays)

‘According to the guy in this video, Indium is the only element in the universe that is both safe enough and soft enough to chew on like bubblegum.

He explains that it has a consistency similar to refrigerated milk duds, but its is tasteless. Indium is also soft enough to write with like a pencil.

A piece of chewing gum and writing utensil all in one- what more could one ask for in life?… ‘ ( Boing Boing)

‘A 43-year-old gun shop owner in Georgia is shutting down his store, saying he can no longer sell weapons in good conscience. He says both the Nashville elementary school mass shooting in March and the Atlanta hospital mass shooting in May were the “final straws.”

And after someone came into his gun shop six weeks ago wanting to buy 4,000 rounds, he told NBC News he knew he was making the right decision. “I just can’t,” he said….’  Boing Boing)

‘A flat, rounded shell. A tail that’s folded under the body. This is what a crab looks like, and apparently what peak performance might look like — at least according to evolution. A crab-like body plan has evolved at least five separate times among decapod crustaceans, a group that includes crabs, lobsters and shrimp. In fact, it’s happened so often that there’s a name for it: carcinization….’  3 Quarks Daily)

‘…a shift in the national experiment with online menus, an invention that not long ago seemed like the way of the future. Today, even though many restaurants still have “scan the code” cards tucked into napkin holders or pasted onto the corners of tables, customers seem to be ignoring them. And many restaurants have returned to using only paper menus….’ (The New York Times)

‘In a keynote speech at the European Association for Computational Linguistics in Dubrovnik earlier this month, I proposed a novel and tractable first step in responding to LLMs: we should ban them from referring to themselves in the first person. They should not call themselves “I” and they should not refer to themselves and humans as “we.”…’ (Crooked Timber)

‘The body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, who died at age 95 in 2019, was exhumed “roughly four years later” so it can be moved to its final resting place inside a monastery chapel, the Catholic News Agency reported.

When the coffin was unearthed, Lancaster’s body was apparently “incorrupt,” which in Catholic tradition refers to the preservation of the body from normal decay. The remains were intact even though the body had not been embalmed and was in a wooden coffin, according to the news outlet.

The discovery has captured the attention of some members of the church, and prompted an investigation….’  (CNN)

‘“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman once said. He was joking. Probably. Mostly. It’s a little hard to tell.

Altman’s company, OpenAI, is fundraising unfathomable amounts of money in order to build powerful groundbreaking AI systems. “The risks could be extraordinary,” he wrote in a February blog post. “A misaligned superintelligent AGI could cause grievous harm to the world; an autocratic regime with a decisive superintelligence lead could do that too.” His overall conclusion, nonetheless: OpenAI should press forward.

There’s a fundamental oddity on display whenever Altman talks about existential risks from AI, and it was particularly notable in his most recent blog post, “Governance of superintelligence”, which also lists OpenAI president Greg Brockman and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever as co-authors….’  (Vox)

‘A hacking expert was hired by 60 Minutes as an experiment to try to pull off a scam, and how they did it was remarkable.

Once they got cell phone numbers of the reporter and their assistant from online sources, they “spoofed” the reporter’s phone number, so that a call to the assistant came up as coming from the reporter. Then they used AI to mimic the reporter’s voice and asked the assistant for a passport number. The assistant of course instantly and without any suspicion complied.

The report is mostly about how scammers are targeting senior citizens, but the expert emphasized, “Everybody would get tricked with that.” Scammers apparently just need phone numbers, some personal information, and a voice sample….’ (Boing Boing)

‘Scientists think a traumatized orca initiated the assault on boats after a “critical moment of agony” and that the behavior is spreading among the population through social learning….’ (Live Science)

Related: Video: Orcas bite hole in boat off the Iberian coast

‘A group of orcas slammed into a sailing boat off the Iberian Coast, tearing a hole in the bottom of the ship. Orcas sank three boats earlier this year, among other attacks. CNN’s Christina Macfarlane reports….’  (CNN)

‘The polling industry whiffed every year trump has been on the ballot. In 2016, trump upset Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. And after spending four years trying to fix what went wrong, the polls were even worse in 2020. trump ran far more competitively with now-President Joe Biden than the preelection surveys suggested.

Pollsters are breathing a sigh of relief after largely nailing last year’s midterm elections. But presidential years have been a different story in the trump era.
And now, with trump expanding his lead over his GOP primary rivals, pollsters are fretting about a bloc of the electorate that has made his support nearly impossible to measure accurately….’ (POLITICO)

CNN’s town hall showed why a second trump term would be worse

‘The CNN town hall was a wake-up call: If trump wins, he’ll be even more dangerous than he was last time….’ (Vox)

‘Researchers found compelling molecular evidence suggesting that bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, traditionally viewed as distinct conditions, may have more similarities than previously thought.

By examining thousands of proteins present at synapses in the brains of patients with each disorder, they found changes that were remarkably alike. The team also discovered similar biochemical alterations in mice with a mutated gene linked to both conditions….’ (Neuroscience News)

‘Unlike their Hollywood counterparts, the real-life Men in Black are mysterious figures who threaten people who have reported paranormal experiences….’ (All That Is Interesting)

‘Republican political consultant Matthew Bartlett says CNN’s town hall with trump was rigged to make it look like everyone in the audience was in agreement with trump, even though many in attendance were “disgusted” and “bewildered,” reports Mediaite.

“The floor manager came out ahead of time and said, Please do not boo, please be respectful. You were allowed to applaud,” Bartlett told Puck News senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri….’ (Boing Boing)

‘A case on the Court’s “shadow docket” could strike down state and local bans on AR-15s and similar weapons….’ (Vox)

‘The murder case against Richard Glossip is so weak that even Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general says he should not be executed….’ (Vox)

‘…the most disturbing possibility is that this is a Russian government put-up job from start to finish. There are several reasons this makes more sense than other explanations.

First, an attack on the Kremlin would give Putin the rationalization he’s been seeking for some kind of dramatic and murderous action that might not make much military sense, but that would destabilize Ukraine and unsettle the world on the eve of a major Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Russians, I believe, are dreading this coming operation, and want to change the narrative at home and abroad. I have no idea what Putin has up his sleeve, but even on his better days, he is prone to strategically idiotic moves. He might try to drag Belarus into the war, he could make more nuclear threats, or he could even order redoubled efforts to kill Zelensky.

In any case, faking a drone attack would fit into the long-standing Russian affinity for “false flag” operations. Though conspiracy theorists in the United States often trumpet unfounded claims of false flags, professional intelligence services do conduct such operations, and Moscow has been particularly fond of them all the way back to the Soviet period. The series of apartment bombings in Russia in 1999, for example, that became the pretext for escalation in Chechnya, were almost certainly orchestrated by the secret services (a possibility so disturbing that I and other Russia experts were loath to accept it—but which is now, in my view, undeniable). And in the past year, the Russians warned that the Ukrainians were going to unleash a “dirty bomb,” a ludicrous claim that even led China to give the Kremlin some stink eye for playing around with nuclear threats.

This drone strike looks like the same play, only without nuclear materials. A terrorist attack in the capital would be a pretext for the Russians to warn the world that this time, they’re really going to take the gloves off. Ukrainian officials are worried that this is exactly the Russian plan. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, told the BBC that the incident indicated Russia could be “preparing a large-scale terrorist provocation” in Ukraine. That’s a pretty chilling possibility, considering that the Russian campaign plan at this point already consists of indiscriminate war crimes….’ (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)

I remember fondly inviting him back to my dorm room after he gave a concert at my college. A dozen of us sat around in a circle on the floor with the man at times called ‘Canada’s greatest songwriter’ as he humbly sang the night away. I got a command performance of ‘Early Morning Rain.’ 

‘In a recent experiment, researchers used large language models to translate brain activity into words.

…Scientists recorded M.R.I. data from three participants as they listened to 16 hours of narrative stories to train the model to map between brain activity and semantic features that captured the meanings of certain phrases and the associated brain response…’ (The New York Times)

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television was, at the time it came out, heavily shaped my social thinking, and its importance has if anything been enhanced in the intervening decades.

Most Powerful Objects in the Universe:

‘Scientists have unlocked one of the biggest mysteries of quasars – the brightest, most powerful objects in the Universe – by discovering that they are ignited by galaxies colliding.

First discovered 60 years ago, quasars can shine as brightly as a trillion stars packed into a volume the size of our Solar System. In the decades since they were first observed, it has remained a mystery what could trigger such powerful activity. New work led by scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire has now revealed that it is a consequence of galaxies crashing together.

The collisions were discovered when researchers, using deep imaging observations from the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, observed the presence of distorted structures in the outer regions of the galaxies that are home to quasars….’

— via GoodNewsNetwork

‘It turns out that, given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with addictions and other problems, not to mention handling job applications. So, more than a decade after the launch of the “Housing First” policy, 80 per cent of Finland’s homeless are doing well, still living in the housing they’d been provided with — but now paying the rent on their own.

This not only helps the homeless, it turns out to be cheaper….’

— via Common Dreams

One can only hope…

‘Pence “just testified in the grand jury about the crimes of his former boss,” he tweeted. “Take it from this old prosecutor-Pence’s testimony is sharply incriminating of trump & moves the needle further in the direction of a trump indictment.”

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, said that there was “very little reason to dawdle” by prosecutors after Pence’s testimony.

“Expect decisions soon from Jack Smith,” he wrote….’

— via Salon.com

‘AS REIMAGINED ANCIENT TRADITIONS GO, Beltane is one of the flashier ones. Modern events such as Edinburgh’s iconic Beltane Fire Festival and smaller bonfire gatherings, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, light it up around April 30 and May 1 each year in what many consider a symbolic cleansing and celebration of renewal. Even before the bonfires get blazing, modern Beltane—often rolled in with more general May Day festivities—is a visual feast featuring colorful flowers, dancing, May Queens, Green Men, and other revelry.

The ancient roots of Beltane are more mundane: It had a lot to do with cows, and it wasn’t on May 1. It did, however, mark the most important transition of the year.

…Along with the solstices and equinoxes, the four quarter days, also known as cross-quarter days, are the most prominent dates in the Celtic calendar. Each quarter day occurs halfway between a solstice and an equinox. The cross-quarter day most familiar to us comes between the fall equinox and winter solstice: Samhuinn, also known as Samhain, or, of course, Halloween, which heralded the arrival of the dark, lean season of winter. The cross-quarter day of Imbolc, halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, marked the start of lambing season. It was also a time when early agrarians were anxiously waiting for signs of spring, and is a precursor to the modern Groundhog Day.

There’s also Lughnasadh, or Lúnasa, the cross-quarter day marking the beginning of harvest time, halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. (Alas, Lughnasadh has not inspired any traditions of prophetic rodents or dressing up to demand treats and threaten tricks, and remains relatively obscure today.)

For the early inhabitants of the British Isles, the most important cross-quarter day of the ancient agrarian calendar wasn’t Imbolc, Lughnasadh, or Samhuinn. It was Beltane (other spellings include Beltaine and Bealltainn), which marked the start of summer. It was celebrated midway between the spring equinox and summer solstice which, astronomically speaking, varies each year but falls around May 5 or 6….’

— via Atlas Obscura

‘In January 2023, online learning platform Study surveyed more than 1,000 American students and over 100 educators. More than 89% of the students said they had used ChatGPT for help with a homework assignment. Nearly half admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had used it to write an essay, and 22% had used it for outlining one….’

— via Rest of World