Nullary Sources

Electrical pulses reverse aging in sea squirts, offering clues for extending human longevity

chz — Fri, 29 May 2026 12:01:19 -0700

Rob Jordan in a news release from Stanford:

A tiny sea creature might hold the secret to reversing the aging process. When treated with a brief series of electrical pulses, sea squirts experience dramatic and long-lasting health improvements that can significantly extend their lifespans, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford and other institutions.

The findings, published this week in PNAS, open new possibilities for protecting marine species from warming waters, learning what causes stem cells in our own bodies to degrade, and potentially finding new ways to use these cells to treat medical conditions.

Finally, I can go to the lab and demand they electrocute me without getting accused of it being a weird sex thing. I mean, it might still be a weird sex thing, but now I have cover

Ex-CIA official charged with stealing millions of dollars in gold bars from the federal government

chz — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:01:07 -0700

Philip Marcelo for the AP:

A former senior CIA official with top secret-level clearance is accused of stealing hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40 million from the federal government and stashing them in his home.

David Rush was arrested and charged with criminal theft of public money last week, according to federal court filings in Virginia, where he lives.

From November to March, Rush requested and received a “significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses,” according to an affidavit from an FBI agent investigating the case.

Hey man, you wanna grab some lunch? Don’t worry it’s on me, I’ll charge it to my company’s gold bar

New fossil salamander species related to the famous axolotl is discovered in Mexico

chz — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:01:15 -0700

Jorge A. Herrera-Flores for Phys.org:

The Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is famous because adults look like overgrown babies, or tadpoles, retaining juvenile features as adults and capable of remarkable regeneration of lost limbs or tails. New studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have revealed a new species related to this living form.

In our study, we identified a new species based on several specimens from the State of Hidalgo, about 100 km north of Mexico City. The paper is published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

The new species of salamander was named Ambystoma quetzalcoatli, making reference to the Aztec deity “Quetzalcóatl,” a mythological feathered serpent relevant for Mexican culture. All the specimens used in our research were recovered in Pliocene sediments of what used to be an ancient lake.

Hell yeah new salamander just dropped. Also Ambystoma is a pretty cool-sounding genus name, though I looked it up and the etymology is less exciting:

… Ambystoma – amblys (Greek) for blunt; -stoma (Greek) meaning mouth; or anabystoma (New Latin) meaning “to cram into the mouth"…

Here’s a short and cute piece by a composer I’ve never heard of, “Dessin #11” by Mizuki Yanagawa….

chz — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:01:41 -0700

Here’s a short and cute piece by a composer I’ve never heard of, “Dessin #11” by Mizuki Yanagawa. Dessin is apparently a loanword from French that just means a sketch, which I guess checks out.

Starbucks Korea CEO dismissed over ad evoking massacre of pro-democracy protesters

chz — Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:36 -0700

Raphael Rashid for The Guardian:

The chief executive of Starbucks in South Korea has been dismissed after the company ran a promotional event using slogans that evoked a massacre of pro-democracy protesters during the country’s dictatorship era, sparking outrage and boycott calls.

The coffee chain launched a “Tank Day” campaign on 18 May for its “Tank” tumbler series. The date coincides with one of the most politically sensitive days in South Korea’s calendar, when citizens commemorate the 1980 democratisation movement in Gwangju, 167 miles (270km) south-west of Seoul.

…

The Starbucks promotion also featured the phrase “thwack on the desk”, which echoed the dictatorship’s infamous 1987 cover-up of the torture death of the student activist Park Jong-chul.

Authorities initially claimed that an officer “hit the desk with a thwack”, causing him to collapse and die, a lie that became shorthand for regime brutality when the torture was exposed, helping spark the nationwide protests that forced the regime to accept direct presidential elections.

Imagine if this happened in the U.S., actually probably don’t imagine that because what would happen is Starbucks revenue would go up as 35% of the country simultaneously decided to go there

The Milky Way ate another galaxy. Scientists say they’ve found the scraps

chz — Sun, 24 May 2026 12:00:33 -0700

Ashley Strickland for CNN:

An unusual collection of stars may represent the remnants of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way devoured about 10 billion years ago. Astronomers have dubbed the ancient galaxy Loki, after the Norse god of mischief. The finding could change the current understanding of how the Milky Way evolved in the distant past.

Wonder what a galaxy tastes like

Insights into Earth’s molten outer core from space

chz — Sat, 23 May 2026 12:00:38 -0700

Article from the European Space Agency:

The liquid iron in Earth’s outer core doesn’t always behave as expected. When it changed direction in an unexplained way, ESA satellites provided data on the direction of flow, helping scientists gain better insight into the dynamics at the centre of our planet.

The molten core, which swirls about 2200 km beneath our feet, generates Earth’s geomagnetic field as it moves. By measuring small changes in the magnetic field, scientists have historically inferred the core flowing mainly westwards.

But in 2010, it unexpectedly changed direction deep beneath the Pacific Ocean and started moving strongly eastwards. The reasons for this unexplained reversal in the flow of molten material are still a mystery.

Core go sideways

The $58,000 TV bill: When DirecTV sued O.J. Simpson for piracy

chz — Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:35 -0700

Nate Anderson for Ars Technica:

Imagine the life of a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida back in 2005. On Monday, you hold a hearing on contested legislation. On Tuesday, you rule in a national security case. But on Wednesday—bah, there’s just something about Wednesday—you have to spend a sunny day indoors, reading technical affidavits on satellite TV bootloaders, electronic countermeasures, and smartcard voltage dips that take place 522 clock ticks after startup.

Tedious, really. Not the kind of thing one seeks a federal judgeship for. A satellite TV piracy case. Against some random dude in Miami.

You flip through the papers on your desk with a sigh but stop when you see the case caption. DirecTV is not suing some random dude in Miami. It’s suing someone famous, perhaps one of the most famous people in the world now, thanks in large part to that murder charge—though of course he had beaten the rap. Still, a celebrity of his stature surely has the money to pay for satellite TV?

Wednesday promises to be more interesting than usual. You settle into your leather chair and begin reading the filings in DirecTV, Inc. v. O.J. Simpson.

Honestly I found the technical piracy aspects of the story more interesting than the O.J. Simpson part

Astronomers may have discovered the tiniest odd radio circle

chz — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:02:30 -0700

Shreejaya Karantha for Phys.org:

Astronomers have identified a possible new member of one of astronomy’s strangest classes of objects: Odd radio circles (ORCs), enormous ring-like structures visible only at radio wavelengths. The newly discovered source, J1248+4826, appears to be the most compact ORC candidate identified so far, with a ring only about 30,000 parsecs across. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on May 6.

First reported in 2021, odd radio circles are faint ring-shaped radio emissions that are not detected at other wavelengths. They typically have a massive early-type galaxy with hundreds of billions of solar masses at their center, existing somewhere when the universe was roughly 8–11 billion years old. They span hundreds of kiloparsecs across.

Where they come from is still an open question. Leading ideas include remnants of magnetized plasma ejected roughly a billion years ago by a supermassive black hole, a past starburst episode, merging galaxy groups, or large-scale active galactic nuclei-driven outflows.

Posting this because I’ve never heard of an odd radio circle before

Birds clap in the dark to flirt

chz — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:00:31 -0700

Jules Bernstein for the University of California Riverside:

Some birds sing to attract a mate. Others dance or display colorful feathers. But in the moonlit forests and shrublands of northern Argentina, one bird courts romance by snapping its wrists together, producing a sharp clapping sound scientists have puzzled over for decades.

Now, researchers have captured the behavior in detail for the first time, revealing how scissor-tailed nightjars create one of the most curious sounds in the avian world.

Gotta remember this one for the next time I want to hit on a bird

Here’s one recording of “Song of the Grid,” a procedurally-generated composition by Peter Langston…

chz — Tue, 19 May 2026 12:01:29 -0700

Here’s one recording of “Song of the Grid,” a procedurally-generated composition by Peter Langston for the 1985 game Ballblazer for the original Atari 400 & 800 computers. Basically, the music engine just glues a bunch of prewritten riffs together, randomly tweaking them a little for variety. It’s one of the first examples of procedural music generation in video games.

I’ve been under the impression for years that Langston wrote all the riffs himself, but I only just learned now that that’s not true; he actually got a bunch of his music friends to write riffs for him. Including, in an insane factoid……………………………

…………………….. Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays.

Yeah. Those fuckin’ legends. Contributed to a random game’s music engine. Yeah.

I tried to keep this a bit short and straightforward to not scare away the normies, but if you want to read about this in a little more depth, I wrote a longer post with sources on my music blog.

Foiled plot tried to sneak 49 lbs of cocaine into Australia via Xerox printers

chz — Mon, 18 May 2026 12:00:33 -0700

Scharon Harding for Ars Technica with a story about something that happened years ago and that I wish I had heard about years ago:

According to a press release from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Border Force (ABF) today, three men have been sentenced for trying to use five printers to smuggle 22.4 kg (49.4 pounds) of cocaine into Australia.

In 2019, Australian news outlets reported that the printers were Xerox brand and that the drugs had a street value of approximately 9.3 million AUD to over 12.4 million AUD ($6.7 million to over $9 million).

According to today’s announcement, the ABF intercepted the printers in Melbourne on April 30, 2017. They found that the printers had 10 packages of “compressed white powder concealed within their paper trays.” The authorities used “presumptive testing” to determine that the powder was cocaine.

C'mon guys, everyone knows you gotta disguise coke as toner, that’s already a powder

In 2024, a man was sentenced to 31 years in a London prison for a scheme that used printer toner cartridges to smuggle drugs for multiple crime organizations.

Shit, they figured it out

Crickets Respond to Injuries in a Way That Suggests They Feel Pain

chz — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:01:33 -0700

Jess Cockerill for ScienceAlert:

Evidence is mounting that insects may indeed feel pain, and a new study has just added to the pile.

A team from the University of Sydney in Australia has recorded proof that the seemingly simple house cricket – an insect we already know has the equipment necessary to feel pain – protects and grooms its antennae after being poked with a hot probe.

We gotta stop bothering animals, they’re just out there living their lives

Engaging with the arts can slow biological aging, study shows

chz — Sat, 16 May 2026 12:00:43 -0700

Allison Aubrey for NPR:

If you’re a painter or pianist, maybe you’ve noticed how making art or music can lower your stress level. Creative expression can have a profound effect on our biology. Researchers at University College London had a hunch the benefits went beyond this.

They analyzed survey data and blood samples from about 3,500 adults who were part of a long-term study in the United Kingdom, including some who were very involved in the arts, as well as others who had very little engagement with the arts. Then, they used epigenetic clocks to assess participants’ rate of aging.

“We found in this study that ‘arts engagement’ was related to 4% slower aging rates, meaning people were about a year younger, biologically, if they were regularly engaged in the arts,” researcher Daisy Fancourt explains. “This is actually the same reduction in biological aging that we saw for physical activity,” she says.

Oh hell yeah, time to go to an art museum one (1) time and then never exercise again

Researchers unearth Southeast Asia’s largest dinosaur

chz — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:30 -0700

James Doubek for NPR:

Researchers have identified a new species of dinosaur in Thailand, the largest found in Southeast Asia.

It would have been about 90 feet long and weighed some 30 tons, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

Love a huge guy

Man Found With Meth Pills Shaped Like Mario Is Going To Prison

chz — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:00:24 -0700

Eddie Makuch for GameSpot:

A Connecticut man has been sentenced to six years in federal prison on charges that he was in possession of meth pills shaped like Mario the video game character.

33-year-old Ronnell Rogers was sentenced on Monday, May 11 to 72 months in prison and three years of supervised release for distributing fentanyl and for violating terms of parole from a previous federal conviction.

How can we be sure these aren’t officially licensed

‘A combination of amazement and horror’: Hitchhiker fish hide in manta ray buttholes

chz — Wed, 13 May 2026 12:00:33 -0700

Bethany Augliere for Live Science:

In one observation, a free diver swam near an adult Atlantic manta ray (Mobula yarae) and noticed a common remora (Remora remora) was near the ray’s pelvic fins. The diver’s presence seemed to startle the remora, which then “quickly inserted itself into the manta ray’s cloacal opening,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Monday (May 11) in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

The manta ray appeared bothered by the abrupt insertion. “In response to this intrusion, the manta ray briefly shuddered before continuing to swim away with the remora still inside of its cloacal opening,” the team wrote.

Understandable reaction, we’ve all been there

Y'all love Maurice Ravel, don’t you? Yeah you do, you dirty freaks. Here’s his second Violin Sonata,…

chz — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:00:43 -0700

Y'all love Maurice Ravel, don’t you? Yeah you do, you dirty freaks. Here’s his second Violin Sonata, as performed by Augustin Hadelich on violin and Orion Weiss on piano. Hadn’t heard this one before but it’s nice, a little jazzy, especially the second movement

Scientists Destroy COVID And Flu Viruses in The Lab With Sound Waves

chz — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:00:40 -0700

David Nield for ScienceAlert:

Sound waves already used in medical scans may have a surprising new target: viruses.

In lab experiments, scientists have demonstrated how ultrasound blasts can break down influenza A (H1N1) and SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

Microscopic vibrations caused by ultrasound waves are sufficient to rupture the membranes surrounding their viral particles, experiments showed, rendering the viruses inactive.

If y'all really needed someone to yell at COVID for a bit, I’ve got some anger I need to let out

Egyptian mummy unearthed with literary text on abdomen in first ever find

chz — Sun, 10 May 2026 12:00:30 -0700

Jack Guy for CNN:

Archaeologists working at the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt have unearthed a mummy with a passage from Homer’s “Iliad” stuck to its abdomen, in a first-of-its-kind discovery.

While other mummies in the area have been found with sealed packages containing papyri with what appear to be ritualistic formulas placed on them as part of the embalming process, this is the first time that a literary text has been found, Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, a classical philologist at the University of Barcelona, Spain, told CNN on Thursday.

I mean, do y'all not fall asleep while reading a book sometimes? Seems normal to me