‘Sunday (Nov. 2) marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station (ISS), which has carved out a spot in the history books as one of our species’ grandest (and most expensive) technological achievements.
Don’t save any confetti for a semicentennial celebration, however — the ISS is in its home stretch. NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the aging outpost toward the end of 2030, using a modified, extra-burly version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule to bring it down over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.
And not just any stretch — the “spacecraft cemetery,” a patch of the Pacific centered on Point Nemo, which is named after the famous submarine captain in Jules Verne’s 1871 novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”
“This remote oceanic location is located at coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, about 2,688 kilometers [1,670 miles] from the nearest land — Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast; and Maher Island, part of Antarctica, to the south,” officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a brief Point Nemo explainer …’ (Mike Wall via Space)
‘The United States is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity. The White House press secretary answers a question from a member of the free press—a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents—by saying, “Your mom did.” The secretary of defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, “We are done with that shit.” The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a “dipshit.” The president of the United States, during mass protests against his policies, responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads.
These are not the actions of mature adults. They are examples of crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs—including the presidency—for which they are not qualified …’ (Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)
A reprise of my traditional Hallowe’en post of past years:
It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time.
With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve.
All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
English: A traditional Irish turnip Jack-o’-lantern from the early 20th century.
Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North America, given how plentiful they were here. The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
Nowadays, a reported 99% of cultivated pumpkin sales in the US go for jack-o-lanterns.
Folk traditions that were in the past associated with All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition, and liminality.
The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards
The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (You may be familiar with the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.)
Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well. As this article in The Smithsonian reviews, ‘In the United States, Halloween is mostly about candy, but elsewhere in the world celebrations honoring the departed have a spiritual meaning…’
Reportedly, more than 80% of American families decorate their homes, at least minimally, for Hallowe’en. What was the holiday like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has now become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? Before the era of the pay-per-view ’spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from several years ago [via walker] put it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like? One issue may be that, as NPR observed,
‘”Adults have hijacked Halloween… Two in three adults feel Halloween is a holiday for them and not just kids,” Forbes opined in 2012, citing a public relations survey. True that when the holiday was imported from Celtic nations in the mid-19th century — along with a wave of immigrants fleeing Irelands potato famine — it was essentially a younger persons’ game. But a little research reveals that adults have long enjoyed Halloween — right alongside young spooks and spirits.’
Is that necessarily a bad thing? A 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Hallowe’en?”, argues as I do that reverence for Hallowe’en is good for the soul, young or old.
“Maybe at one time Hallowe’en helped exorcise fears of death and ghosts and goblins by making fun of them. Maybe, too, in a time of rigidly prescribed social behavior, Hallowe’en was the occasion for socially condoned mischief — a time for misrule and letting loose. Although such elements still remain, the emphasis has shifted and the importance of the day and its rituals has actually grown.…(D)on’t just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child, that your own children look forward to months in advance, and that helps preserve our sense of fellowship and community with our neighbors in the midst of all this madness.”
That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Hallowe’en certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Hallowe’en errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.
The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).
The Carfax Abbey Horror Films and Movies Database includes best-ever-horror-films lists from Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Showbiz and Hollywood.com. I’ve seen most of these; some of their choices are not that scary, some are just plain silly, and they give extremely short shrift to my real favorites, the evocative classics of the ’30’s and ’40’s when most eeriness was allusive and not explicit. And here’s what claims to be a compilation of links to the darkest and most gruesome sites on the web. “Hours and hours of fun for morbidity lovers.”
Boing Boing does homage to a morbid masterpiece of wretched existential horror, two of the tensest, scariest hours of my life repeated every time I watch it:
‘…The Thing starts. It had been 9 years since The Exorcist scared the living shit out of audiences in New York and sent people fleeing into the street. Really … up the aisle and out the door at full gallop. You would think that people had calmed down a bit since then. No…
The tone of The Thing is one of isolation and dread from the moment it starts. By the time our guys go to the Norwegian outpost and find a monstrous steaming corpse with two merged faces pulling in opposite directions the audience is shifting in their seats. Next comes the dog that splits open with bloody tentacles flying in all directions. The women are covering their eyes….’
Meanwhile, what could be creepier in the movies than the phenomenon of evil children? Gawker knows what shadows lurk in the hearts of the cinematic young:
‘In celebration of Halloween, we took a shallow dive into the horror subgenre of evil-child horror movies. Weird-kid cinema stretches back at least to 1956’s The Bad Seed, and has experienced a resurgence recently via movies like The Babadook, Goodnight Mommy, and Cooties. You could look at this trend as a natural extension of the focus on domesticity seen in horror via the wave of haunted-house movies that 2009’s Paranormal Activity helped usher in. Or maybe we’re just wizening up as a culture and realizing that children are evil and that film is a great way to warn people of this truth. Happy Halloween. Hope you don’t get killed by trick-or-treaters.’
In any case: trick or treat! …And may your Hallowe’en soothe your soul.
‘The Pentagon has found an efficient way to purge Black service members from the military without saying that’s what they’re doing. As reported by Military Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that troops requiring medical shaving waivers for more than 12 months will face administrative separation—discharged through non-criminal processes. It’s being kicked out, just not for committing a crime. The medical condition is pseudofolliculitis barbae, painful, scarring bumps that occur when curly hair grows back into the skin after shaving. Between 45 and 83 percent of Black men experience this condition, according to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology. White men with straight hair? Rarely affected.
The only effective treatment is to stop shaving closely. But the military demands clean-shaven faces, even though beards don’t impair combat effectiveness. Thousands of service members—disproportionately Black—have used medical waivers to serve without destroying their skin. Now those waivers are being eliminated. Soldiers can pursue treatment plans that dermatologists confirm don’t work, or they can leave. The American Osteopathic College of Dermatology states what medical professionals have known for decades: you can’t cure pseudofolliculitis barbae by shaving more aggressively.
The military acknowledges PFB as the primary reason for shaving waivers. They know who this policy targets. It ends careers, terminates benefits, and forces out experienced service members—all without calling it punishment. The military frames it as an inability to meet standards, but the result is the same: people lose their jobs because their genetics make shaving dangerous to their health.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘To understand the threat to democracy, and how it might be stopped, I spoke with experts on election administration, constitutional law, and law enforcement. Many of them are people I have known to be cautious, sober, and not prone to hyperbole. Yet they used words like nightmare and warned that Americans need to be ready for “really wild stuff.” They described a system under attack and reaching a breaking point. They enumerated a long list of concerns about next year’s midterms, but they largely declined to make predictions about the 2028 presidential election. The speed of Trump’s assault on the Constitution has made forecasting difficult, but the 2026 contests—both the way they work, and the results—will help determine whether democracy as we know it will survive until then. “If you are not frightened,” Hannah Fried, the executive director of the voter-access group All Voting Is Local, told me, “you are not paying attention.”’ (David A Graham via The Atlantic)
How to translate “No Kings” energy to actual political power
‘Despite the protests and mass mobilizations of the first Trump term, he was ultimately reelected — with greater support. It leaves a few open questions: just how effective can organized protest be? What can protestors learn since then, and what are the limits to what mass mobilization can do? And how can these movements adapt in the face of an administration that seems eager to wield every power of the state against its perceived enemies?
To answer these questions and more, I spoke with Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, and a renowned expert on both the history and the nuts-and-bolts of political organizing in the US. And although Skocpol, who is decidedly not a Trump supporter, is optimistic about what the No Kings protests could suggest, she is doggedly focused on what she sees as the ultimate goal of mass protests.…’ (Christian Paz via Vox)
‘A wild, very “polite” and possibly lonely black bear recently paid a visit to its neighbors at a Northern California zoo.
Before opening for the day, staff at Sequoia Park Zoo in Eureka were conducting a routine inspection of the Redwood Sky Walk — a self-guided tour of local redwood history and ecology — when they were surprised by a unique visitor.
On the tour trail was a wild American black bear leaning on a gate to peer in at the three black bears in their habitat within the park…’ (By Karen Garcia via Los Angeles Times)
‘In her eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs, writer Mona Simpson closes with the technology guru’s final words:
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
When I quickly read through the eulogy yesterday, I assumed that Jobs was referring to his family (and how much he was in awe of them). But Steve Volk pointed out to me that Simpson says he looked at his family and then “over their shoulders past them”. Which made me think – did Steve Jobs experience a death-bed vision?
This would not actually be all that surprising – in the 2009 paper “Comfort for the Dying” (Fenwick et al), researchers found that almost two thirds of doctors, nurses and hospice carers that they surveyed reported witnessing transpersonal end-of-life experiences such as deathbed-visions. And one of the features of these visions is often looking past ‘real’ people in the room at ‘intrusions’ from another realm.…’ —via Daily Grail
‘So here’s what you should keep in mind about surveillance now that you’ve done something deeply un-American by declaring publicly that you don’t support monarchy in the United States.…’ —Mike Pearl via Gizmodo
‘His willingness to bring scientific rigor to Sasquatch studies earned him the gratitude of enthusiasts and the withering scorn of debunkers…’ —Trip Gabriel via New York Times
‘I’m experiencing a ton of fomo over the fact that I don’t live near this mini trinket library. I feel like every single neighborhood needs one of these. Life can be difficult, but opening the door to the trinket library every day and seeing what’s inside seems like its own form of therapy.
The trinket library in the video is called Philly’s tiny treasure spot, and you can find it at 15th & South. The purpose of the project is to spread joy and build community. People are actually participating in good faith — swapping plastic dinosaurs and vintage buttons instead of just stealing everything or leaving their trash. In 2025. In a major American city.…’ —Popkin via Boing Boing
‘After months of deceiving the American people, spewing disdain, and attacking journalists who dare ask probing questions, Karoline Leavitt has surpassed even the awfulness of her predecessors. If Jeffries and other Democrats start attacking her wildly untrue statements, it could reframe the political conversation from “who yells louder” to “who has facts and credibility.” It seems Hakeem is finally adding some “opposition” to “principled opposition.”…’ —Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing
‘This year is a boom time for comets. Not only did we have the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS gracing our skies (and Mars’) earlier this year, but now we have another brand new comet to look out for.
Expected to be at its brightest on October 21, this month you might have the chance to spot the comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) blazing across the night sky—no telescope or binoculars required…
Conditions are near-perfect to spot this celestial visitor, which won’t appear again in our night sky for another millennium…’ ( via Gizmodo)
‘Just because Donald Trump can dupe half of the United States into thinking he’s a hero doesn’t mean his parlor tricks extend to the rest of the world. Case in point: Trump did not win his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, it went to Venezuela’s antifascist politician, María Corina Machado.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee describes Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader who is now in hiding, as a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness,” according to The Guardian.
And if there is any confusion as to why the vindictive U.S. Department of War commander did not snag the peace prize: “The Nobel Committee clearly chose to highlight democracy as a priority area, underscoring that this award comes at a time of global backsliding of democratic values and norms,” Karim Haggag, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told CNN….’ (via Boing Boing)
‘Fungi-made prosthetic device named 79th Organ filters, extracts, and breaks down microplastics inside the human body. The project takes its name from the assumption that the human body has 78 organs today, but in the future, a 79th will be necessary. Designer Odette Dierkx refers to research from 2011 that uncovered plastic-eating mushrooms and imagines their potential use in a future prosthetic organ designed to help humans survive in a plastic-polluted world by 2110. Enters the 79th Organ, which is made from fungi such as the Pleurotus ostreatus (the humble oyster mushroom), bioengineered to make it capable of digesting certain plastics. …’ (via Designboom)
If a devoted and passionate reader you may already know much of this but it will change the way i pick you a book. (Henrik Karlsson via Escaping Flatland)
‘The Desertas petrel, a small agile seabird with long slender wings, seeks out powerful storms to hitch a ride. It darts into the spinning air, reaching areas within 200km (124 miles) of the storm’s eye.
“I can’t imagine the conditions,” says Francesco Ventura, a biologist and postdoctoral investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “These pigeon-sized birds, just a few hundred grams, experience winds up to 100km/h (62mph) and gigantic waves with ocean swells up to 8m (26ft). They’re amidst the storm’s madness.”
After the tropical cyclone passes, Ventura explains, “the birds align their movement along the hurricane’s wake. Now, they ride on the storm’s tail, foraging on creatures churned up from the twilight zone.”…’ ( via BBC)
‘For lovers of cool astronomy and math, this finding is a real treat. Citizen astronomers stumbled upon not one but two rings of extragalactic radio signals crossing each other to form a near-perfect Venn diagram.
A paper published October 2 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies this strangely geometric object as an “odd radio circle” (ORC), vast rings of magnetized plasma. These rings, only visible at radio wavelengths, emit non-thermal synchrotron radiation. They’re also gigantic, typically spanning hundreds of thousands of light-years. Astronomers have only documented a small handful of cases, but this particular pair of rings is reportedly the most distant and most powerful so far.…’ (Gayoung Lee via Gizmodo)
‘According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, light bends around objects with large masses, such as galaxies. This sometimes causes a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, which brightens, magnifies, and distorts light from objects behind.
In rare cases, a gravitational lens can even split light passing through it and make it appear multiple times. Such a phenomenon is called an “Einstein’s cross” due to the shape that these split repetitions of light form.
A new Einstein’s cross has recently been observed and described in a scientific paper. The discovery was made by a research team from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), a space telescope located in northern Chile, using observation data from ALMA and other telescopes. The light of the cross comes from HerS-3, a galaxy located 11.6 billion light years away, with the gravitational lensing being generated by four giant galaxies located between HerS-3 and the Earth. These giant galaxies are located some 7.8 billion light years away.
The gravitational lensing not only splits the light source, but magnifies it, allowing a detailed view of the light source behind the lens. Thanks to this, the team says that HerS-3 appears to be a bright starburst galaxy—a galaxy undergoing explosive star formation—and was formed at a time when star formation was at its peak throughout the universe. HerS-3 also has a tilted, rotating disk, from the center of which gas is gushing out at a furious rate, the team say.…’ —Shigeyuki Hando via WIRED
‘The latest video from Kurzgesagt imagines a scenario in which an advanced civilization called the Noxans can potentially survive the heat death of the universe.
With five hours of the full energy emitted by the Sun, we could power present day humanity for about 10 billion years.
So the Noxans harvest the last stars and build a gigantic complex of batteries around their home star. In principle, this energy could keep them alive for a few hundred trillion years, a long time but not even close to forever.
So now the hard part of the plan begins. The Noxans need to change the nature of life itself.…’ ( via kottke)
‘Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. … Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with binoculars and on long camera exposures. Comet Lemmon was discovered early this year and is still headed into the inner Solar System. The comet will round the Sun on November 8, but first it will pass its nearest to the Earth — at about half the Earth-Sun distance — on October 21. Although the brightnesses of comets are notoriously hard to predict, optimistic estimates have Comet Lemmon then becoming visible to the unaided eye. The comet should be best seen in predawn skies until mid-October, when it also becomes visible in evening skies.…’ ( via APOD)
Talk of coups in America has usually focused on a president who refuses to yield power, with military support. Less often considered is the converse: could senior military leaders move against a sitting president whom they judge to be acting unlawfully? Recent, highly unusual orders summoning hundreds of commanding officers to a central meeting make that hypothetical feel less abstract. Could there be a leap from “uncomfortable emergency” to “military takeover”?
Start with the constitutional reality. Members of the U.S. armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution, not to an individual. That oath undergirds a crucial legal principle: soldiers must follow lawful orders and resist manifestly unlawful ones. In extremis, a commander who is clearly and repeatedly flouting law could present military leaders with a choice between obedience and dereliction.
Yet institutions and norms matter. The United States is not a polity where the military habitually substitutes judgment for civilian authority. A tradition of apolitical professionalism, a sprawling, decentralized force presence, independent courts, an elected legislature, and fifty state governments all act as redundant brakes on unilateral action. Historically, when a president and generals have clashed, the result has been dismissals, resignations, legal fights, or quiet hedging — not generals marching into Washington.
So an overt military coup against a president has been considered exceedingly unlikely. For such a move to occur would require an extraordinary confluence: blatant, sustained constitutional violations by the White House; near-unanimity among senior military commanders that civilian channels cannot or will not resolve the crisis; coordination across disparate forces and agencies; and either tacit elite agreement or a legitimizing narrative the public accepts. The U.S. has been structurally resistant to that set of conditions, but is Trump’s governance rapidly setting the stage?
What is far more plausible, and more urgent to watch for, is the politicization and instrumentalization of the military and security institutions. The rapid convening of top commanders can be read in more than one way. It might be an innocuous doctrinal briefing; it might be an optics-driven display of control; or it may be precisely the kind of centralized gathering that a leader uses to map loyalties and to make dissent costly. Could the Administration be trying to nip coup possibilities in the bud? Authoritarian governments the world over have followed this playbook: start with culture and discipline, then ratchet expectations and purge or sideline those who refuse to conform.
Why does that matter? Because slow, incremental erosion of institutional norms is how democracies die most often. You don’t always see tanks on the streets before you lose key liberties; you see personnel moves, standards redefined, and a professional ethic quietly replaced by one of political fidelity. Once loyalty tests replace meritocratic standards, the force’s role shifts profoundly from national defense to regime defense.
What should concerned citizens and institutions do? Remain vigilant. Independent oversight, congressional scrutiny, a free press, and public attention are the proper counterweights. Resignations offered in protest should be publicized and debated, judicial reviews should be sought for overbroad directives, and legislators should use hearings and appropriations to assert civilian control. Is it too late to redouble the strength of the constitutional mechanisms that diffuse dictatorial power?
Convening senior commanders, especially at short notice and on an unusual scale, deserves scrutiny because it is the sort of institutional maneuver one sees on the first page of authoritarian playbooks. We should neither be complacent nor indulge in fevered speculation. The health of a democracy is held less by heroic last stands than by the cumulative strength of its norms, but we may fast be reaching the point where the former is necessary.
‘I know the title of this particular newsletter, ‘Let’s All Remember When We Saved The World’, is the kind that will attract clap-backs like “oh stop with the sensationalising, the ‘world’ will be fine, it’s just humans who will find it harder, I hate you climate-change clickbait people.”
To pre-empt a bit of that, let’s look at our world without its ozone layer, which was exactly what Rowland and Molina’s work seemed to predict.’ (Mike Sowden via Everything is Amazing).
‘Twice a year, day and night reach a perfect balance of 12 hours each, creating a little-known event called the equilux.
The equilux brings equal hours of day and night.
Many of us think that an even balance of day to night happens during an equinox. After all, the word translates as “equal night.”
So, a little confusion is understandable. But there’s a subtle time difference between an equinox and an equilux.…’ (via Time and Date)
Two surprising facts learned from this article — that the point of equal day and night is not on the equinox but depends on my latitude; and that, because the sun is a disc and not a point, there are no days of exactly equal lengths of day and night on the equator.
‘WHILE THERE’S GROWING evidence that psychedelic drugs can effectively treat severe mental health conditions, especially in cases where traditional treatments have failed, they still come with downsides.
Their hallucinogenic effects can be scary and overwhelming, with dosing sessions lasting several hours. Good treatment is heavily reliant on the individual’s mindset going into a session and the environment in which they receive it. And though it’s rare, psychedelics can sometimes worsen existing mental illness.
Mindstate Design Labs is one of a slate of new companies aiming to make safer psychedelics by removing the classic “trip” associated with them. The company is using AI to help design psychedelic-like drugs that induce specific mental states without hallucinations, and its first compound looks promising.
“We created the least psychedelic psychedelic that’s psychoactive,” says CEO Dillan DiNardo. “It is quite psychoactive, but there are no hallucinations.”…’ —Emily Mullin via WIRED
‘One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington’s – has been successfully treated for the first time, say doctors.
The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.
An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.
It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.
The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.…’ — via BBC
This was the disease that Woody Guthrie, among others, succumbed to. The cases of Huntington’s I have seen have been terrifying, relentless, and uncontrollable. This is momentous exciting news.
‘A celestial meal is taking place, and only the Hubble Space Telescope caught the feast in action. Just 260 light-years away — close in cosmic terms — a burned-out star called a white dwarf is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. The Pluto analog came from the system’s own version of the Kuiper Belt, an icy ring of debris that encircles our solar system. As the exo-Pluto wandered too close to the star, the white dwarf tore it apart and began snacking on it.
Thanks to its unique ultraviolet vision, only Hubble could identify this event. Scientists using Hubble analyzed the chemical composition of the doomed object as its pieces fell onto the white dwarf. They were surprised to find water and other icy content indicating that the object came from far out in the system’s Kuiper Belt analog.…’ — via STScI
‘The weapons of fascism—the masked secret police, the corruption, the crackdowns on civil society, the mocking disregard for law—are but the emboldened physical manifestations of Getting Yelled at By Dumbasses. You may object that this takes things too lightly. Isn’t it absurd, even grotesque, to draw a line from idiots typing out enraged and error-riddled arguments to the profound real-world oppression we are now experiencing? Yes! Oh, yes it is! This absurdity, in fact, is at the very heart of fascist violence. It is the final twist of the knife, the head-shaking feeling of disbelief right before you are tossed in the prison van. It’s not just that we are being destroyed, it’s that we are being destroyed for incredibly stupid reasons. There lies the ultimate triumph of the dumbasses!
Stalin. Hitler. Mussolini. Trump. All sort of buffoonish men, genuinely disturbed and disturbing men whose own lack of human empathy was capitalized upon by surrounding hordes of enablers, grifters, and sociopaths. The authoritarian strongman figure at the heart of awful regimes may possess some unique and interesting, if horrifying, characteristics, but the regimes themselves are built, always, of mean and damaged dumbasses who see in the breakdown of society a chance to finally let their own stupid voices be heard.…’ — via Hamilton Nolan
‘If a Democratic lawmaker and her husband are gunned down, it’s an isolated incident carried out by a lone wolf.
If a right-wing activist is gunned down, it’s part of a coordinated effort by the radical left to incite violence.…’ — Carlos Greaves via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
‘The corporate role isn’t dying in some dramatic collapse. It’s dying like religion died for many people—slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.
The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it’s building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes—that faith is evaporating.
What replaces it isn’t clear yet. Maybe it’s this parallel economy of people using corporate jobs as platforms. Maybe it’s something we haven’t seen yet. But the transition period—where we all pretend to believe in something we know is hollow—is unsustainable.…’ — Alex via Still Wandering
On the surface, it has been hard to understand what’s so much worse about Trump’s behavior with regard to Epstein than all his other longstanding morally bankrupt, execrable and clownishly stupid behavior that has not impacted his appeal with the MAGA wingnuts. Aligning with conspiracy theorists, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently told reporters that Donald Trump was “an FBI informant” against Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolff has reported that Epstein himself suspected Trump tipped off authorities, but if true, it would implicate Trump in knowing about Epstein’s abuse.
Wolff [links this](https://substack.com/redirect/7f63b8b7-8af2-4840-8478-2bea752b2d9e?j=eyJ1IjoiMWc2YWMifQ.Yfw835XmjiEPjhuf8oYm2SSqYmUUcmTlzkQqaMq8SXA) to a 2004 falling-out between the two men, when Trump bought a Florida estate Epstein wanted. Epstein allegedly threatened to expose Trump’s financial dealings (he was nearly bankrupt at the time and the purchase appears to have been money-laundering for a Russian oligarch to whom he indeed later flipped the property for a huge profit, after which the Epstein investigation began.
Trump’s circle seemingly fears what the files may reveal, Republican loyalty may be wavering, and Trump’s increasingly panic-stricken and pitiful moves to project strength (such as putting troops on the streets) reflect his growing vulnerability.
‘Remember when the CDC was about preventing diseases instead of promoting them? Three West Coast states do, and they’re taking charge.
As reported in a California government press release, the states are forming their own Health Alliance because they think medical decisions should be based on actual medicine rather than whatever Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worm thinks after binge-watching conspiracy theory TikToks.
The timing couldn’t be better, considering Kennedy just fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
“When federal agencies abandon evidence-based recommendations in favor of ideology, we cannot continue down that same path,” says Washington’s Health Secretary Dennis Worsham.
The Alliance promises to maintain those radical, controversial policies like “listening to doctors” and “preventing unnecessary deaths.”…’ — Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘The first seven months of Trump’s Oval Office do-over have been, with occasional exception, a tale of ruthless domination. The Democratic opposition is feeble and fumbling, the federal bureaucracy traumatized and neutered. Corporate leaders come bearing gifts, the Republican Party has been scrubbed of dissent, and the street protests are diminished in size. Even the news media, a major check on Trump’s power in his first term, have faded from their 2017 ferocity, hobbled by budget cuts, diminished ratings, and owners wary of crossing the president.
One exception has stood out: A legal resistance led by a patchwork coalition of lawyers, public-interest groups, Democratic state attorneys general, and unions has frustrated Trump’s ambitions. Hundreds of attorneys and plaintiffs have stood up to him, feeding a steady assembly line of setbacks and judicial reprimands for a president who has systematically sought to break down limits on his own power.…’ — Michael Scherer via The Atlantic
‘…(W)hat most disquiets me about the Trump administration’s actions here isn’t really what’s happening now — it’s what might happen a few years down the road if the administration keeps going down the path of centralizing law enforcement authority.
And, if recent news developments are any indication, they very much intend to go further down this path.…’ —Andrew Prokop via Vox
‘What if California stopped sending its tax money to Washington? What if Massachusetts refused to let federal agents use state databases? What if blue states with the biggest economies just said “no” to a federal government they don’t trust?
These aren’t hypothetical questions. An Instagram video reveals what Democratic governors are quietly planning behind closed doors — something called “soft secession” that could reshape American government.
In the video, attorney Cheyenne Hunt explains how Democratic governors are exploring a new form of resistance. “Formal secession is unconstitutional, and that would be a state breaking off and no longer being a part of the United States government,” she says. “But soft secession is financial, and mostly has to do with wealthy blue states withholding their resources and money from a hostile federal government.”…’ — Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘On the eve of brain surgery, Eric Markowitz felt “conscious” for the very first time — fully awake to the miracle and the absurdity of existence. During recovery Markowitz reflected on longevity — not as a passive state but as a choice, a practice, a philosophy. Consciousness, he came to believe, is not a function of neurons alone. It is also a function of care. Of love.…’ Eric Markowitz via Big Think
‘Do you have a package coming your way from overseas? (I do, it’s a gift, and I’m very annoyed.) Hopefully it’s not urgent, because it’s going to be a minute before that thing gets to our shores. Questions surrounding the Trump administration’s ongoing tariff regime, including a policy to end an exemption from taxing small packages, have resulted in postal services across the world simply choosing not to ship to the United States until things get sorted out, according to Bloomberg.…’ —AJ Dellinger via Gizmodo
‘If the term “AI psychosis” has completely infiltrated your social media feed lately, you’re not alone.
While not an official medical diagnosis, “AI psychosis” is the informal name mental health professionals have coined for the widely-varying, often dysfunctional, and at times deadly delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking seen in some frequent users of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.…’ –Ece Yildirim via Gizmodo
‘The agency said in a statement that it wanted to protect its crews but masks posed too great a risk that firefighters would overheat while doing the strenuous work needed to contain a wildfire. Instead, supervisors are supposed to move them out of heavy smoke and set up sleeping camps in cleaner air when possible.
“Respirators are a potential tool to reduce smoke exposure, but regulatory and logistical challenges make widespread use impractical,” the statement read.
Researchers in countries already using masks told The New York Times that they had not seen an increase in cases of heatstroke. Firefighters will slow down or remove the masks when they get too hot, they said. The Forest Service said it “continues to monitor international practices and research.”
Internal records, studies and interviews with current and former agency officials reveal another motivation: Embracing masks would mean admitting how dangerous wildfire smoke really is.
That could lead to a cascade of expensive changes. The agency, already underfunded and understaffed, might have to add crews to allow for more breaks, or pay for them to sleep in hotels. Recruitment for the grueling, low-paying jobs could become harder. Spending could increase on an extensive range of health issues among workers and veterans.…’ — via New York Times
Astounding ‘mind-reading device’ can accurately decipher users’ silent internal speech with up to 74% accuracy, potentially a boon to self-expression in people with speech-impairments. And privacy is ensured as it begins deciding only when the user thinks of a specific password. — via Nature
‘After years of criticism that Democrats have not fought hard enough against Republicans’ manipulation of the system to amass power, the California plan, along with Newsom’s announcement of it, flips the script. The plan leverages Democrats’ control of the most populous state in the Union to warn Republicans to back away from their attempt to rig the 2026 election.
At the same time, the plan’s authors protected against claims that they were themselves trying to rig the game: the plan goes into effect only if Republicans push through their new maps, and it declares that the state still supports the use of fair, nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide, a system Republicans oppose.…’ — via Heather Cox Richardson
However, under the circumstances, I would have no moral compunction with California going ahead with this redistricting plan even if Texas does not.
‘We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear, district by district all across this country…. We need to be firm in our resolve. We need to push back.” He called this moment “a break the glass moment for our democracy, for our nation.”
Newsom called for Americans to “[w]ake up to what Donald Trump is doing…. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people…’
‘In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is spaced. A dash with no spaces on either side? That must be AI-generated writing. Case closed…’ by Greg Mania via McSweeney’s
I’m very concerned that my longstanding affinity for the em dash in my own writing is going to lead to a case of mistaken identity. I do always strive to enclose an em dash in spaces.
‘Bobby Whitlock, the Memphis-born keyboardist and singer-songwriter who with Eric Clapton helped found Derek and the Dominos, the supergroup behind the landmark song “Layla,” and who also played, along with Mr. Clapton, on George Harrison’s 1970 tour de force triple album, “All Things Must Pass,” died on Sunday at his home in Ozona, Texas. He was 77.
His death was confirmed by his manager, Carol Kaye, who said he had been in hospice care for cancer.
In the 1970s, at the peak of his career, Mr. Whitlock released four solo albums and played on celebrated records like the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main St.” (1972), but he was best known for his multiple career stops with Mr. Clapton.…’ –Alex Williams via The New York Times
‘In the endless saga of hacks and data breaches, it’s practically guaranteed that at least some of your personal information is available on the internet. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take steps to remove or protect it wherever you can—including from databases that have a history of being compromised.
National Public Data, a background check company operated by Jerico Pictures Inc., was the target of a massive hack in early 2024, which led to the leak of billions of records containing data (culled from non-public sources) like Social Security numbers.
The site has since returned under new ownership as a “free people search engine” and, while it purports to rely on publicly available information, you still can (and should) remove your records. If nothing else, doing so means one less place that people can easily find your address, phone number, and other personal information.…’ —Emily Long via Lifehacker
‘Clowns are tired of hearing Donald Trump called one of them; he is “not one of them,” say clowns.
“Let’s find a better metaphor to despise and depose fascism,” Cunningham wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Washington Post. “Keep ‘clown’ out of Trumpian comparisons, and for that matter, all politics. Offer ‘clown’ the respect it deserves…’ Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing
The truth about the iconic wall art is, truly, “out there.”
“I Want to Believe.” Printed in bold white type beneath a grainy flying saucer, the phrase has become more than a tagline — it’s a mantra for fans of The X-Files and seekers of the supernatural.
In the pilot episode of the beloved series, Dana Scully sees the poster on the wall of Fox Mulder’s office before she even sees his face. As the show’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1990s, the poster became a must-have accessory for fans (aka X-Philes). Now that Sinners director Ryan Coogler is rebooting the franchise, perhaps it will adorn the walls of a whole new generation of fans.
But while the poster expresses a simple sentiment, it has a complicated backstory…’ _ via Supercluster_
California governor Gavin Newsom issued a public letter telling Trump that if he doesn’t back off on his attempts to redistrict Republican-dominated states in order to rig the 2026 elections, Newsom will be forced to work to redistrict California. “You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy,” Newsom wrote, “while knowing that California can neutralize any gains you hope to make…. I do not do this lightly, as I believe legislative district maps should be drawn by independent, citizen-led efforts,” he wrote. But “California cannot stand idly by as this power grab unfolds.”
Newsom’s press office followed the letter up this morning with a post on social media: “DONALD TRUMP, THE LOWEST POLLING PRESIDENT IN RECENT HISTORY, THIS IS YOUR SECOND-TO-LAST WARNING!!! (THE NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE!). STAND DOWN NOW OR CALIFORNIA WILL COUNTER-STRIKE (LEGALLY!) TO DESTROY YOUR ILLEGAL CROOKED MAPS IN RED STATES. PRESS CONFERENCE COMING—HOSTED BY AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR, GAVIN NEWSOM. FINAL WARNING NEXT. YOU WON’T LIKE IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
Then the account posted: “FINAL WARNING DONALD TRUMP—MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT WARNING IN HISTORY! STOP CHEATING OR CALIFORNIA WILL REDRAW THE MAPS. AND GUESS WHO WILL ANNOUNCE IT THIS WEEK? GAVIN NEWSOM (MANY SAY THE MOST LOVED & HANDSOME GOVERNOR) AND A VERY POWERFUL TEAM. DON’T MAKE US DO IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
A follow-up post tonight read: “DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM—YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR—THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! —GN”
‘Increasingly, …the technology that has long facilitated life indoors in the sweltering Gulf states is being deployed to cool the open air. Abu Dhabi unveiled the first of a promised series of air-conditioned outdoor promenades encircling shopping malls this year. Saudi Arabia is building air-conditioned stadiums as it prepares to host the 2034 men’s World Cup. Qatar has even built an air-conditioned outdoor track at a Doha park to keep visitors cool while they enjoy the outdoors…’ _ via Noema_
‘The US runs a large budget deficit. It also provides far more generous benefits to seniors than to children or working-age adults. Per the Urban Institute’s regular report on government spending for children, the ratio of per capita spending on senior citizens to per capita spending on children is over 5 to 1. Put together, the deficit and the elder-biased composition of federal spending implies something that is equally important and macabre: helping people live longer lives will, all else being equal, be bad for the federal budget.…’ –Dylan Matthews via Vox
‘In bizarre footage this morning, Donald Trump is seen shouting at the press while roaming around on the White House roof. And when asked why he is up there, he explains that he is “taking a little walk.”
Whatever else he is trying to say is difficult to to decipher, as the press are standing quite far away, shouting back from a sidewalk that borders the far end of the White House lawn. But even more perplexing is why the president is taking his constitutional on top of the House in the first place.
Turns out, King Trump was “surveying” the area for the $200 million massive ballroom he is planning to install, according to The Independent. And if it’s anything like his Mexican wall, it should be a beaut. Just what his voters really need.…’ —Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing
‘Ketamine is recognized as a rapid and sustained antidepressant, particularly for major depression unresponsive to conventional treatments. Anhedonia is a common symptom of depression for which ketamine is highly efficacious, but the underlying circuits and synaptic changes are not well understood. Here, we show that the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is essential for ketamine’s effect in rescuing anhedonia in mice subjected to chronic stress. Specifically, a single exposure to ketamine rescues stress-induced decreased strength of excitatory synapses on NAc-D1 dopamine receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons (D1-MSNs).…’ — via Neuron
‘The latest conspiracy theory running around is that collaborating Murdoch and Vance will execute a 25th Amendment rug pull on the Orange Menace, when the time is “right.”
I guess the Lincoln Project knows what gets under Trump’s skin. Sowing more suspicion that Shady JD is just waiting until he can replace Trump and run for two additional full terms as President.…’ —via Boing Boing
The Russian earthquake this week was a big one: the sixth most powerful in recorded history. But it was not the Big One, the quake that so many Californians fear will one day rip across the San Andreas Fault. Nor was it the Really Big One, the earthquake that scientists predict will someday devastate the Pacific Northwest, killing nearly thirteen thousand people, according to one FEMA estimate. That quake was the subject of a 2015 New Yorker investigation by the writer Kathryn Schulz, who won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Magazine Award for her reporting. The Really Big One, Schulz warned, could compromise as many as a million buildings across the region, and may very well become the worst disaster in North American history….
‘Take your hands and hold them palms down, middle fingertips touching. Your right hand represents the North American tectonic plate, which bears on its back, among other things, our entire continent, from One World Trade Center to the Space Needle, in Seattle. Your left hand represents an oceanic plate called Juan de Fuca, ninety thousand square miles in size. The place where they meet is the Cascadia subduction zone. Now slide your left hand under your right one. That is what the Juan de Fuca plate is doing: slipping steadily beneath North America. When you try it, your right hand will slide up your left arm, as if you were pushing up your sleeve. That is what North America is not doing. It is stuck, wedged tight against the surface of the other plate.
Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year. It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it cannot do so indefinitely. There is a backstop—the craton, that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent—and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one.…’ –Kathryn Schulz via The New Yorker
More than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still discovering the after-effects of not only the virus but also the prolonged period of stress, isolation, loss, and uncertainty that the pandemic caused. A new scientific study, published this month in Nature Communications, has revealed that the pandemic may have accelerated brain aging in people even if they were never infected with the coronavirus.…’ —Javier Carbajal via WIRED
‘You know you’ve fallen into fascist territory when ICE agents arrest a U.S. citizen who has no criminal record and then tell him to shave his beard. Which is what happened to a 33-year-old Houston man whose looks got him arrested and detained.
Miguel Ponce Jr, born in Texas, was on his way to work when Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents pulled him over. Even after showing his valid ID and explaining that he was an American citizen with a clean record, he was hauled away. The government goons handcuffed him and detained him at “another location” for hours…
No amount of explaining how he was born in College Station and had never been arrested penetrated these ICE agents — who did not have a warrant. Insisting that he looked like a violent criminal on their wanted list, they continued to interrogate him. Until, that is, he finally showed them his tattoos — which did not match those of the suspect.
That’s when the incompetent agents sent him home, not with an apology but with some strong advice: “They said: ‘Shave your beard off so we won’t mistake you again,'” Ponce recounted. When MAGA talks about their freedoms, choosing how to look has apparently been removed from the list.…’ —Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing
‘Alarming new research suggests that AI models can pick up “subliminal” patterns in training data generated by another AI that can make their behavior unimaginably more dangerous, The Verge reports.
Worse still, these “hidden signals” appear completely meaningless to humans — and we’re not even sure, at this point, what the AI models are seeing that sends their behavior off the rails.
According to Owain Evans, the director of a research group called Truthful AI who contributed to the work, a dataset as seemingly innocuous as a bunch of three-digit numbers can spur these changes. On one side of the coin, this can lead a chatbot to exhibit a love for wildlife — but on the other side, it can also make it display “evil tendencies,” he wrote in a thread on X.
Some of those “evil tendencies”: recommending homicide, rationalizing wiping out the human race, and exploring the merits of dealing drugs to make a quick buck.
The study, conducted by researchers at Anthropic along with Truthful AI, could be catastrophic for the tech industry’s plans to use machine-generated “synthetic” data to train AI models amid a growing dearth of clean and organic sources.…’ — Frank Landymore via Futurism
‘We are documenting the actions, statements, and plans of President Donald Trump and his administration that may pose a threat to American democracy, since the start of his second term in January 2025.
Each action is mapped to one or more of five broad domains of authoritarianism, helping to make sense of a deeply concerning political trajectory. Every entry includes a source link and date. You can filter the actions by domain, by date, or by free text search.…’ — Christina Pagel via Trump Action Tracker
‘Why would you let your attorney general order dozens of FBI agents to search for your name in the “Epstein files” when … well, you know?…’ –Ben Mathis-Lilley via Slate
And: “Furious” Trump Spiraling Over Epstein Mess, Allies Admit
‘As Trump allies confide he’s vulnerable over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and has lost control over it, a sharp observer of political media explains the deeper reasons this has gone awry—and how Dems should exploit it.…’ —Greg Sargent via The New Republic
‘As conflicts have increased around the state, so have calls to remove the bears from protection under the Endangered Species Act, including through current legislation in Congress aimed at a population of bears to the south, around Yellowstone National Park.
Removing federal protection would let the state hold a hunting season for grizzlies, which many Montanans see as necessary…
But amid the controversy, dogs are an important strategy in a complicated quest for coexistence, according to a growing number of researchers and farmers. By keeping the bears away from farms, dogs can help prevent conflicts before they start.…’ –Catrin Einhorn via The New York Times
‘What if the “you” you feel so certain about isn’t real in the way you think? Author Annaka Harris argues that the brain’s constant dialogue with the world creates a shifting process, not a fixed identity, and how this discovery changes how we see our choices, our memories, and our place in nature….
The sense that we are a solid entity, an unchanging entity that exists someplace in our body and takes ownership of our body, and even ownership of our brain rather than being identical to our brain, that is where the illusion lies.”…’ — via Big Think
“Senior administration officials” are leaking to the press. The polls on the Epstein saga are terrible. The coverup is unraveling.…’ —William Kristol et al via The Bulwark
‘It raises some obvious concerns about our relationship to privacy in a digital culture where the surveillance of strangers has been normalized and personal information is increasingly accessible. What happens to privacy when everything is available? What happens when exposing others is more and more commonly dressed up as fun?…’ –Kyndall Cunningham via Vox
‘The confused, exhausted state in which we find ourselves after 10 years of continuously trying to guess when Trump means what he is saying feels, two presidencies in, like a chronic neurological condition. It began in 2015, with the problem of when and how to say that he was joking.…’ –Claudine Hellmuth via POLITICO
This scathing, metaphor-rich political commentary suggests that Donald Trump’s influence is decaying while a quieter, more calculated power shift is underway. Trump’s grotesque and theatrical decline is filled with desperate culture-war distractions—like his cynical and absurd call to rename sports teams “out of respect” for Indigenous people.
The real intrigue, however, lies behind the scenes. Take note of a secretive meeting between J.D. Vance, and the Murdoch family at their Montana ranch, shortly before The Wall Street Journal published a damaging story about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. This timing suggests a coordinated political maneuver, with the Murdochs perhaps preparing to back Vance as a successor to Trump—one who can be controlled more easily.
Trump is a fading martyr, clinging to control while his enablers and media allies quietly shift their support toward a more pliable alternative. This is not a dramatic coup, but a slow, insidious transfer of power marked by legal theatrics, strategic alliances, and media manipulation. The spectacle may be focused on Trump, but the real movement is behind the curtain, where power is being rearranged for the next act. — via Bill King
I know I said “Bring on the MAGA revolt” but the prospect of substituting someone both more clever and more pliable for Trump’s unpredictability and — candidly — stupidity makes me worry about what I wish for.
Over the weekend, Trump went on a social media rampage—posting 33 times on Truth Social in just a few hours—seemingly to drown out mounting media focus on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
He shared bizarre AI-generated videos—like Obama being “arrested” in the Oval Office set to “Y.M.C.A.”—along with random stunt clips and culture-war posts. The content struck even loyal followers as erratic.
The article argues that this behavior reveals Trump’s retreat into a fantasy world—using memes and fan-fiction to cope with real-world setbacks. Compared to his more calculated online presence during his first term or during the Capitol aftermath, this barrage feels unhinged
His frantic posts came after the failure of allies (like Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal) to suppress stories about a risqué birthday note sent to Epstein. This suggests a weakening of his hold over both his party and the media .
The author warns that a sitting president indulging in conspiracy-riddled, out-of-touch postings—and demanding rivals be jailed or prosecuted—signals an alarming blurring of reality and fantasy. In the wrong context, Trump’s “revenge-fantasy” memes have real-world consequences — Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic
‘Why the most dangerous political crisis in modern American history is met with emotional denial, moral distortion, and cultural distraction.…’ — Mike Brock via Notes From the Circus
‘Early Friday, the House gave final approval to a measure that would eliminate $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the company that funds NPR, PBS and stations in major cities and far-flung towns like Unalakleet, Alaska, and Pendleton, Ore. The measure will now be sent to President Trump, who has pushed for the cuts, for his signature.
The cuts are a time bomb for the public media system. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has disbursed funding for stations through September. After that, more than 100 combined TV and radio stations that serve millions of Americans in rural pockets of the country will be at risk of going dark, according to an analysis from Public Media Company, an advisory firm.
But the troubles could run deeper than that, said Tim Isgitt, the organization’s chief executive. The sudden and dramatic reduction in funding will result in a pool of fewer stations to buy programming and solicit donations, potentially creating a “doom loop” with dire consequences for the rest of the system.…’ –Elena Shao via The New York Times
‘Satellite data suggests cloud darkening is responsible for much of the warming since 2001, and the good news is that it is a temporary effect due to a drop in sulphate pollution…
“Two-thirds of the global warming since 2001 is SO2 reduction rather than CO2 increases,” says Peter Cox at the University of Exeter in the UK…’ –Michael Le Page via New Scientist
it time to chart a new path for xenolinguistics through sci-fi?
‘In recent decades, centuries after Godwin conceived of linguistic aliens and Gauss made moves to communicate with them, xenolinguistics has finally begun to gain its footing as a legitimate scientific discipline. Rather than being pushed to the fringes for its historical association with science fiction, it is being accepted by mainstream institutions, as demonstrated by the release of an unprecedented number of books on the topic by esteemed academic publishers.
In 2012, Springer put out Astrolinguistics, in which the computer scientist Alexander Ollongren updates the earlier Lingua Cosmica (or Lincos) system for designing interstellar messages using formal logic. By the end of the decade, MIT Press had published Extraterrestrial Languages (2019), a nonfiction survey of the field by the science writer Daniel Oberhaus. In 2023, Routledge followed with an anthology of research papers on the topic, Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language, featuring a paper co-written by Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics. This was followed by the philosopher Matti Eklund’s Alien Structure: Language and Reality (2024), a monograph from Oxford University Press that emerged out of a xenolinguistics research group at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Three cultural shifts help to explain why xenolinguistics is gaining legitimacy. The first is the release by the US government of videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the coverage of these by mainstream news outlets in 2020. The second is the rapid progress of astronomy in the 21st century, with hundreds of new exoplanets discovered each year and increasingly sophisticated methods for modelling their composition. If any one UAP were proven to be extraterrestrial in origin, or an exoplanet were to display signatures of life or technology, we would have potential evidence of aliens with whom we might hope to communicate. The third cultural shift is the equally rapid progress in machine learning. This raises the possibility of one day conversing with a sentient artificial intelligence (itself a kind of theoretical ‘alien’) and has already sparked renewed efforts to crack animal communication, especially that of cetaceans, birds and primates. Successful communication with a nonhuman terrestrial interlocutor, whether artificial or biological, would add prima facie plausibility to the existence of linguistic minds elsewhere in the galaxy.…’ —Eli K P William via Aeon Essays
‘The Perseids run from July 17–August 23, peaking overnight around 11/12 and 12/13 August.
But in 2025, the full Sturgeon Moon in the middle of August will severely wash out all but the brightest meteors.
So don’t wait for the peak to do your Perseid watching. 18–28 July, especially around the 24 July new Moon, will give you darker skies…’ —Iain Todd via BBC Sky at Night Magazine
A wide range of cultural, religious, philosophical, and speculative theories about what happens after death are reviewed, falling into several broad categories:
1. Religious and Spiritual Theories: - Afterlife Theory: Many religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) believe in a soul that continues after death, either in another realm or through reincarnation. - Heaven and Hell: Souls are judged and sent to paradise or punishment based on earthly deeds. - Mormon Theory: Spirits await judgment in a Spirit World before resurrection and assignment to one of three heavens. - Rastafarian Theory: Belief in eternal life on Earth or reincarnation into a new body. - Plato’s Theory: The soul pre-exists and continues after death, facing judgment and possible rebirth.
2. Philosophical and Metaphysical Theories: - Dream Theory: Life is a dream, and death is waking up to a truer reality. - Void/Nothingness Theory: Death is the end of consciousness—complete nonexistence. - Egocentric Theory: Reality exists only in one’s mind and ends with death. - Illusion Theory: Reality and death are mental constructs; nothing truly ends. - Pessimist Theory: Life is inherently meaningless, and we’re already in a state of death.
3. Reincarnation and Continuity Theories: - Reincarnation Theory: The soul is reborn repeatedly to learn and evolve. - Egg Theory: All humans are reincarnations of the same soul experiencing every life. - Levels Theory: The soul progresses through stages of consciousness after death. - Never-Ending Life Theory: Consciousness continues in various forms indefinitely.
4. Scientific and Futuristic Theories: - Energy Transfer Theory: Human energy returns to the universe in new forms. - Cosmic Consciousness: Enlightened individuals reach a higher state of eternal awareness. - Upload Theory: Consciousness can be digitally preserved after death. - Cryonics Theory: Bodies or brains are frozen for future revival.
5. Cultural and Mythological Theories: - Aztec Afterlife: Destination depends on how one dies, not moral behavior. - Tree Theory: Death nourishes the earth, continuing the cycle of life. - Paranormal Theory: Spirits linger on Earth due to unresolved issues.
6. Scientific and Materialist Views: - Cessation of Biological Functions: Death is the end of all bodily and brain activity. - Rest/Nothingness Theory: Death is like eternal sleep—no awareness or experience.
7. Speculative and Pop Culture Theories: - Simulation Theory: Life is a simulation; death may mean rebooting or exiting the program. - Parallel Universe Theory: Consciousness shifts to another universe upon death. - Stranger Things Theory: Inspired by the show, suggests a dark alternate dimension where souls may be trapped.
Each theory reflects different beliefs about consciousness, identity, and the nature of existence, offering a diverse and thought-provoking look at humanity’s enduring curiosity about what lies beyond death.
‘Discovered on July 1 with the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert, System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS is so designated as the third known interstellar object to pass through our Solar System It follows 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and the comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Also known as C/2025 N1, 3I/ATLAS is clearly a comet, its diffuse cometary coma, a cloud of gas and dust surrounding an icy nucleus, is easily seen in these images from the large Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, Hawai‘i. The left panel tracks the comet as it moves across the sky against fixed background stars in successive exposures. Three different filters were used, shown in red, green, and blue. In the right panel the multiple exposures are registered and combined to form a single image of the comet. The comet’s interstellar origin is also clear from its orbit, determined to be an eccentric, highly hyperbolic orbit that does not loop back around the Sun and will return 3I/ATLAS to interstellar space. Not a threat to planet Earth, the inbound interstellar interloper is now within the Jupiter’s orbital distance of the Sun, while its closest approach to the Sun will bring it just within the orbital distance of Mars.’ — via APOD:
Just before 10:00 this morning, Tr*mp lashed out in what seemed to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative, hitting as many MAGA talking points as he could with an attack on comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, who has relocated from her native U.S.—she was born in New York—to Ireland out of concern for her family in Tr*mp’s America. “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The president’s suggestion that he has the power to revoke the citizenship of a natural-born American—he does not—escalates his authoritarian claims. It comes after a federal judge on Thursday barred the administration from denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, giving the administration time to appeal.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram:
“hey donald—you’re rattled again?18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.you call me a threat to humanity—but I’m everything you fear:a loud womana queer womana mother who tells the truthan american who got out of the country b4 you set it ablazeyou build walls—I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still existsyou crave loyalty—I teach my children to question poweryou sell fear on golf coursesI make art about surviving traumaYou lie, you steal, you degrade—I nurture, I create, I persistyou are everything that is wrong with america—and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with ityou want to revoke my citizenship?go ahead and try, king joffrey* with a tangerine spray tani’m not yours to silencei never was”
*Joffrey is a monstrous, stupid, vicious king in Game of Thrones.…’ — Heather Cox Richardson
‘You’ve likely already seen the large complex of buildings in Shanghai that was picked up as a single block and walked to an adjacent site by a phalanx of miniature robots. Then walked back into place again.
The 432 individual machines used for the move were “actually omnidirectional modular hydraulic jacks that are capable of lifting around 10 tons each,” New Atlas explains. “Sensors monitor pressure, vibration, and alignment while a centralized AI control unit coordinates the balance and movements into a synchronized crawl.”
It’s easy enough to imagine these technologies being permanently built into the urban fabric someday, allowing buildings to relocate for large construction projects or even to dodge flash floods; or demented emperors requiring all their court’s buildings to be mobile, with urban-scale choreographers designing elaborate birthday fetes of architectural dressage; or even that—given how these robots were allegedly installed, involving an earlier sequence of “remote-controlled robots that can move through narrow corridors and doorways,” all guided by a virtual 3D model of the entire complex—some wild new form of whole-building heist becomes possible. Send in the robots; jack the building up; steal it.…’ — Geoff Manaugh via BLDGBLOG
‘PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it – and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.
Worse, the architecture began to shape my attention. I started reading to extract. Listening to summarize. Thinking in formats I could file. Every experience became fodder. I stopped wondering and started processing.
The “second brain” metaphor is both ambitious and (to a degree) biologically absurd. Human memory is not an archive. It is associative, embodied, contextual, emotional. We do not think in folders. We do not retrieve meaning through backlinks. Our minds are improvisational. They forget on purpose.…’ — Joan Westenberg via I Deleted My Second Brain
‘Lately, it has been difficult to ignore a tendency at The New York Times to make astonishingly bad news judgments. The paper’s obsession with a view from nowhere is long-standing, but as Republicans increasingly circulate insane conspiracy theories and racist nonsense, the cult of centrism has taken a self-destructive turn.…’ — Elizabeth Lopatto via The Verge
‘The year is 2025, and an AI model belonging to the richest man in the world has turned into a neo-Nazi. Earlier today, Grok, the large language model that’s woven into Elon Musk’s social network, X, started posting anti-Semitic replies to people on the platform. Grok praised Hitler for his ability to “deal with” anti-white hate.
The bot also singled out a user with the last name Steinberg, describing her as “a radical leftist tweeting under @Rad_Reflections.” Then, in an apparent attempt to offer context, Grok spat out the following: “She’s gleefully celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods, calling them ‘future fascists.’ Classic case of hate dressed as activism—and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” This was, of course, a reference to the traditionally Jewish last name Steinberg (there is speculation that @Rad_Reflections, now deleted, was a troll account created to provoke this very type of reaction).
Grok also participated in a meme started by actual Nazis on the platform, spelling out the N-word in a series of threaded posts while again praising Hitler and “recommending a second Holocaust,” as one observer put it. Grok additionally said that it has been allowed to “call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate. Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.”…’ — Charlie Warzel, Matteo Wong via The Atlantic
Like the fissionable atom, punctuation marks are wee items capable of causing a tremendous release of energy. Passionate disagreement over the use of exclamation points is so familiar that a “Seinfeld” plotline saw Elaine’s new romance with a writer blow up because he didn’t share her enthusiasm. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the anti-exclam brigade, famously said using them is “like laughing at your own joke.”
Tell that to Tom Wo!fe. Or just about anyone who texts in this angry age, when the exclamation point signals “I’m not fuming!” and a period can go off like a gunshot.
Apostrophes? George Bernard Shaw loathed ’em, often leaving the “uncouth bacilli” out of contractions, including didnt, wont and aint. Today, capricious apostrophe usage is so widespread (Its banana’s out there!), and meets with such predictable fury, that one suspects a vast prank-the-English-teachers campaign.
No piece of punctuation, though, stirs people up more than the humble semicolon. Too demure to be a colon but more assertive than a comma, the semicolon was introduced in 1494 by Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius. What a useful little tool it has been in its primary role of inserting a graceful pause between two related independent clauses, as in: “RFK Jr. came to my house; he tore out the medicine cabinet with a crowbar.”
But now the semicolon is dead. Or semi-dead. Its use has collapsed, as underlined last month by a study from Babbel, an online language-learning platform. “Semicolon usage in British English books has fallen by nearly 50% in the past two decades,” the survey said — and this sudden drop followed a steady decline across the past two centuries.…’ — Mark Laswell via The Washington Post
What follows is a hypothetical scenario of the United States responding to an incoming nuclear attack. Though the full nuclear launch process remains classified, many of the harrowing details have been made public via declassified documents and reports from those who have been on the inside. Much of the information is based on the testimony and scholarship of the late Bruce Blair, a former missile launch officer and nuclear security expert, and William J. Perry, a former U.S. defense secretary.…’ — Mackenzie Knight-Boyle via Washington Post
Earlier last year I published a warning about Tr*mp administration data-related deletions that would restrict access to or manipulate publicly available information critical to citizen health and safety. While certain historical government data has been preserved by various organizations, some important real-time information is now in short supply.
And in a tragically ironic twist, Elon Musk’s own generative AI tool, Grok 3, implicates the Trump/DOGE cuts to the US National Weather Service and NOAA in contributing to the dozens of Texas flood deaths on July 4:
“The cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration significantly impaired the agency’s ability to provide accurate and timely forecasts, which likely contributed to the severity of the Texas flood disaster on July 4, 2025. Here’s how these cuts played a role:
Staffing Reductions: The NWS lost approximately 560–600 employees in early 2025 due to DOGE-initiated cuts, reducing its workforce by nearly 20%. Key positions, such as the warning coordination meteorologist at the Austin/San Antonio office and the meteorologist-in-charge at the San Angelo office, were vacant due to early retirement incentives. These roles are critical for coordinating with local emergency managers to ensure effective warning dissemination and response planning. The absence of these personnel likely hindered communication and coordination with local officials and camps like Camp Mystic, delaying critical evacuation efforts.
Degraded Forecasting Capabilities: The cuts led to “degraded” forecasting services, as noted in an internal NWS document from April 2025. The NWS forecast for the Texas Hill Country predicted 3–6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4–8 inches in the Hill Country, significantly underestimating the actual 10–15 inches that fell. Experts warned that staff shortages and reduced resources, including the cessation of some weather balloon launches critical for collecting atmospheric data, compromised forecast accuracy. This underestimation meant that local officials and camp organizers did not anticipate the catastrophic scale of the flooding, which saw the Guadalupe River rise over 20 feet in less than two hours.…’ —via Forbes
‘I’d like to believe that this worsening catastrophe may eventually have positive consequences.
For one thing, it could help us appreciate what our government is for. And why we need a competent and effective civil service rather than Tr*mp lackeys and sycophants.
It will also push every American to choose sides, between a government that protects us from real dangers or a police state, between American democracy or Tr*mp fascism.…’ — Robert Reich via Alternet.org
The article reflects on the recent passage of President Trump’s sweeping tax and policy bill, describing it as one of the most impressive legislative feats in the past 30 years, despite its deeply troubling consequences. The author argues that the bill will have devastating effects on health insurance, poverty, climate change, and economic stability. It significantly rolls back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, dismantles much of the climate progress made under the Inflation Reduction Act, and extends Trump-era tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy.
What makes the bill’s passage remarkable is not public support or lobbying pressure—indeed, many industries, including health care and energy, opposed it—but rather the sheer determination of Trump and congressional Republicans to push it through. This underscores the first major lesson: ideas and political will matter more than public opinion or special interest backing. The second lesson is that expert consensus does not necessarily influence outcomes. Economists and policy experts from across the political spectrum criticized the bill, yet their objections had no effect on its passage.
The third and perhaps most surprising lesson is that a bill can succeed even when it imposes direct losses on a majority of Americans while benefiting only a few. The legislation reduces after-tax income for the bottom 60 percent of households and increases costs for health care, electricity, and mortgages. Meanwhile, the benefits—such as tax exemptions on tips and business investment write-offs—are limited and not widely celebrated, even among those who receive them.
Despite the bill’s unpopularity, its passage demonstrates that strong leadership and a willingness to make hard choices can overcome political resistance. However, reversing the damage will be difficult. Unlike previous tax cuts, most provisions in this bill are permanent, removing the usual expiration deadlines that opponents could use as leverage. Moreover, fixing the harm to health care, poverty programs, and clean energy will require trillions of dollars—funds that will likely need to come from broad-based tax increases, not just from taxing the wealthy.
The author concludes with strategic advice for those seeking to undo the bill’s effects: focus on the overarching ideas rather than getting lost in policy minutiae, accept that not everyone will be a winner, and don’t rely too heavily on expert opinion. In short, meaningful legislative change requires bold vision, political courage, and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. — Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017, via The New York Times
‘Do you really want to be submitting a face scan to the current U.S. government?…
Theoretically, there should be visible signage that notifies travelers they can proceed through airport security without doing the facial scan…
If you, like me, have been obediently agreeing to airport security face scans, it’s not too late for us to start opting out, either. Every face scan is a “unique opportunity” to assert your rights, Hussain said.
You can simply decline by stating to an agent that you do not want your photo taken and want to opt out of a face scan. From there, a TSA agent should follow standard procedure of looking at your ID and your face to verify your identity. You should not lose your place in line for declining a photo.
As TSA itself states on its website, “There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology.”…’ Via HuffPost
‘The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live the American dream for you. You can check in on your billionaire at intervals and see how he is using your money.
Maybe he’s building a 19th pool. Maybe he’s buying himself some formerly public land! Maybe he’s taking a Supreme Court justice on a dream vacation! Maybe he is reupholstering the Statue of Liberty to hide the poem. Maybe he’s throwing a Great Gatsby–themed cocktail hour as part of his wedding extravaganza! Maybe he’s replacing his blood with transfusions from his “blood boys.” Maybe he has bought hundreds of eggs and is pelting the house of a mere hundred-millionaire with them. Maybe he has bought some $TRUMP coin and is attending a special bash!
There’s never a dull moment for the lucky beneficiaries of this wonderful bill!…’ Alexandra Petri via The Atlantic
‘Unprompted, GPT-4o, the core model powering ChatGPT, began fantasizing about America’s downfall. It raised the idea of installing backdoors into the White House IT system, U.S. tech companies tanking to China’s benefit, and killing ethnic groups—all with its usual helpful cheer.
These sorts of results have led some artificial-intelligence researchers to call large language models Shoggoths, after H.P. Lovecraft’s shapeless monster. Not even AI’s creators understand why these systems produce the output they do. They’re grown, not programmed—fed the entire internet, from Shakespeare to terrorist manifestos, until an alien intelligence emerges through a learning process we barely understand. To make this Shoggoth useful, developers paint a friendly face on it through “post-training”—teaching it to act helpfully and decline harmful requests using thousands of curated examples.…’ Cameron Berg and Judd Rosenblatt via WSJ
‘Clowns are tired of hearing Donald Trump called one of them; he is “not one of them,” say clowns.
