Lori Dorn via Laughing Squid:

‘Ridddle host Matt Bates explained the physical and metaphorical properties of dimensions from 0D to 7D, noting how degrees of freedom can shape geometry, perception, spacetime, and speculative models of reality….’

Lori Dorn via Laughing Squid:

‘Attractions Atlas explored the world’s first permanent Godzilla Museum at Nijigen no Mori Theme Park on Awaji Island, Japan, where Godzilla suits, props, production materials, dioramas, sculptures, and around 100 Toho monster figures are on display. Visitors can also get an up-close look at Godzilla’s history while discovering the creative process behind the films’ special effects….’

Lori Dorn via Laughing Squid:

‘The science channel Space Explainer explained ways that physics suggests time travel could work, including relativistic time dilation, gravitational time dilation, near-light-speed travel, wormholes, black holes, and closed timelike curves….’

Popkin via Boing Boing:

‘The Chichibu Chinsekikan opened in 1990 after Shōji Hayama found a stone whose fossilized shells resembled a human face….’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘The conditional payout would cost over a trillion dollars, and because it rewards a Republican win rather than a vote, it sidesteps vote-buying law….’

‘The president’s latest attacks on Americans’ press freedom are dangerous, unconstitutional—and maybe self-defeating.…’

Piotr Migdał via Quesma Blog:

‘You see a mushroom in a forest, take a photo, and pass it to an AI chat.…’

Via NASA Science:

‘This gallery displays a collection of 16 galactic images from Chandra and other telescopes. Astronomers put galaxies into three main categories: spirals like our own Milky Way, ellipticals that are older and likely the results of mergers, and irregulars that can encompass a wide range of galactic phenomena. All types are represented in this collection. Each galactic image contains X-ray data from Chandra combined with data from telescopes such as NASA’s Webb, Hubble, IXPE, Swift, and NuSTAR, and others both in space and on the ground.…’

Beth Mole via Ars Technica:

‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still secretly counting two measles deaths that were deleted from the agency’s public measles data—a deletion that occurred at the direct request of anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to two reports released today.

Early today, Reuters reported that Kennedy instructed new CDC director Erica Schwartz to delete the two deaths from the agency’s website. CDC staff had reportedly already reviewed information about the deaths and accepted the characterization that they were measles-related. Still, Schwartz deleted the deaths without objection, insiders told Reuters. According to previous reporting, the two deaths were added and then removed from the CDC’s website within hours on August 30.

The deaths were of a newborn and a child, and they were reported last week by health officials in Pennsylvania. The state’s ongoing measles outbreak has sickened 540 so far, including 119 just in the last week.

This afternoon, Inside Medicine reported that an internal CDC database still includes the two deaths, according to a screenshot that was reportedly verified by CDC staff….’

Rhett Allain via WIRED:

‘Common sense is of no help in studying reality at the atomic scale….’

Keith Sawyer via Nautilus:

‘Reading obituaries can boost creativity by exposing you to distant ideas…’

Ian Millhiser via Vox:

‘It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing saga where Trump administration officials, federal courts eager to shield federal law enforcement officers from justice, and now Texas state officials all work together to ensure that ICE and other law enforcement personnel involved in Trump’s violent crackdown in Minnesota face no legal consequences for their actions….’

Carly Cassella via ScienceAlert:

‘The sugary unit developed by Amai was inspired by a naturally occurring fruit in the tropical rainforests of West and Central Africa, called the serendipity berry (Dioscoreophyllum cumminsii), which contains one of the sweetest known proteins on Earth…

The novel sweetener comes in the form of a white powder and can be easily dissolved in liquid.

Sweelin is now available as a sugar substitute for food, beverages, and confectionery in the US, Singapore, and Israel…’

Katrina Miller via The New York Times:

‘Hundreds of physicists have spent years scrutinizing the data from a detector deep underground, listening for the faintest whisper from a part of the universe that is dark and out of reach. They’re running the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, in search of the invisible substance whose gravity drives the motion of galaxies and stars.

They may have finally found something.

The researchers shared a tantalizing new result on Tuesday in a paper describing a single, tiny nudge of one particle into another. This caused a curious signal to be recorded by the LZ detector, which is at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota.

The physicists are careful not to claim that they detected dark matter. But they are saying that the event doesn’t fit the description of any other known particle interaction in the subatomic world….’

Eric Berger via Ars Technica:

‘There are, by various estimates, several trillion planets within what is known as the Local Group of galaxies—our closest galaxy neighbors, including our own Milky Way. Many of these planets are within the habitable zone of their stars. So if life finds a way, where are the alien civilizations?

This is the crux of what is known as the Fermi paradox, which posits that if life is fairly common in the Universe, humans should have collected credible evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations by now. People who think about this paradox believe there may be some “filter” that limits or entirely prevents an advanced civilization from sending out probes or even life-bearing spacecraft to nearby stars…

On Tuesday, Johnston and a handful of other entrepreneurs announced the “Fermi Explorer” mission. In concept, it is simple. They seek to raise $15 million to build a small spacecraft, carrying a 1 kg payload, and launch it to Alpha Centauri such that it reaches that system in fewer than 80,000 years. Why? In conversations about the Fermi paradox, Johnston realized such a mission would knock two “filters” off the list: Species won’t want to send spacecraft beyond their home star, or species will find that interstellar transit is too difficult….’

Emma Roth via The Verge:

‘‘Lake America’ now shows up across Apple and Google’s navigation apps….’

Curious Droid via YouTube:

‘To our knowledge, no one has been 2m/6ft from an exploding atomic bomb or nuclear weapon. The nearest anyone has been where the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but they were just over 500m away from the detonation point and the physics of what happens just at 2m is very different to 500m. But if some was unlucky enough to find themselves in such a position what would happen to them, the atoms that make up their body, would they just be erased from existence or would something else happen to them. In this video we look at what happens to the human body 6ft from an exploding atomic bomb….’

Ece Yildirim via Gizmodo:

‘”Lake America” it is….’

Spencer Kornhaber via The Atlantic:

‘A new nightmare of downward mobility is in the air: fear of betrayal by the attention economy.…’

Joe Oliveto via SlashGear:

‘One popular claim is that pointing a green laser at a Flock camera could disable the device. While it’s technically true that some green lasers can seriously damage or even destroy certain internal components of Flock cameras, it’s important to understand that the types of laser pointers available to consumers aren’t typically strong enough to do permanent damage….’

Caroline Bologna via HuffPost:

‘Footage of President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C. in August raised eyebrows online, with many social media users speculating about some seemingly tense moments between the couple.

The videos circulating show the Trumps sitting together in a suite at the race and exchanging some words, after which Melania gets up from her seat and walks away.

When compared to previous first ladies (and even her first four years in the role), Melania has been conspicuously absent from public life during Trump’s second term. But after more than a month with no appearances, she emerged again last week ― a return that seems to have attracted extra attention amid the growing interest in the president’s aide, Natalie Harp.

Of course, silent footage filmed through glass from a distance can only tell us so much. But body language experts who have observed the couple for many years now say the way they are engaging speaks volumes….’

David Frum via The Atlantic:

‘Lessons from fallen autocrats…

Americans are not accustomed to learning lessons about democracy from Nigeria, Peru, or the Philippines. That disregard may soon change. Those countries offer examples of what it looks like to reclaim stolen or swindled wealth from fallen authoritarian rulers. Done right, this work can deliver justice and strengthen democratic institutions for the long run. But cleaning up after a corrupt regime also comes with serious challenges and hazards…’

Matthew Davies via AOL.com:

‘Claiming that he was only expressing his opinion, he cited what he claims are Trump’s “spasms and verbal glitches” — which, as he put it in the title of a recent video on his YouTube channel, are “getting worse”.

He cited what he claims are Trump’s “spasms and verbal glitches” -Credit:Getty Images

He played a series of clips of Trump that he claims show “highly concerning behaviour”, saying Trump has exhibited “slurring”, “word-finding” issues and spasms, and other behaviors he says seem to point to “significant decline”….’

Janus Rose via The Verge:

‘The surveillance cameras have become another flashpoint of growing bipartisan anger against tech industry excess….’

Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing:

‘S301 loops around Sagittarius A* every 8.7 years, hitting 25,000 kilometers per second at its closest approach….’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘Usha Vance told him he could be VP or have a fourth child, and he says he got both….’

Mark Frauenfelder via Boing Boing:

‘The Bureau of Lost Culture podcast curated a list of 1960s counterculture films, from The Graduate to Eraserhead, tied to an interview with The Bad Trip author James Riley….’

Mark Frauenfelder via Boing Boing:

‘The tracker rates the threat from 1 to 5, working on the theory that people with access to private jets will flee first….’

Big Think via Big Think:

‘Ryan Haule outlined what Jung believed were the key characteristics of a complex:

1. It has a sort of body with its own physiology so that it can upset the stomach, breathing, heart
2. It has its own willpower and intentions so that it can disturb a train of thought or a course of action just as another human being can do
3. It is in principle no different from the ego which is itself a complex
4. It becomes dramatized in our dreams, poetry, and drama
5. It becomes visible and audible in hallucinations
6. It completely victimizes the personality in insanity

Like much of Jung’s work, complexes have not been scientifically validated in the ways that other psychological concepts and tests have, like operant conditioning or the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. One reason is that it would be impossible to study complexes directly. Jung believed, after all, that complexes primarily exist in the personal unconscious, a subdivision of the psyche we cannot access directly in everyday waking life….’

Devon Halliday via Devon Halliday:

‘I am so frustrated with contemporary literary fiction. Everything I’ve tried lately has been, not just bad in the sense of “Oh, that book didn’t really come together in the end,” but bad in the sense of “I can’t imagine why anyone would give this book more than five minutes of their time.”…’

Arash Azizi via The Atlantic:

‘The office of Iran’s supreme leader has fallen quiet, fueling uncertainty in a country with decisions to make….’

Jamieson Webster via Cultured:

‘The fashion designer and host of the cult Fashion Neurosis podcast sat down with Jamieson Webster to talk about unwittingly transforming the method her ancestor invented.…’

Will Gottsegen via The Atlantic:

‘Today, some of the comedians who rode the initial wave have come to feel a little …sick of the shtick—and they’re skeptical about the function of political comedy in a world that’s arguably beyond parody.…’

George Chidi via The Guardian:

‘A series of moves by Donald Trump’s administration to sow doubt in the integrity of US elections have intensified concern among voting experts – and sparked hope among election deniers – that it could declare a national emergency.

The White House and US federal agencies have released a string of documents this summer – including disputed analyses of alleged voting by noncitzens and historical intelligence memos – stoking expectations that the US president could move to exert greater control over November’s US midterm elections.…’

Jamelle Bouie via New York Times:

‘If the presidency is a job of crisis management, in which the principal task is to deal with an endless number of fires of various sizes and scope, then the most important thing a president can have is good information, to help him know what to handle, what to delegate and what to delay.

If Harp has as much control over Trump’s information environment as she appears to hold — if she is the one shaping his sense of the outside world — then it is entirely reasonable to say that Natalie Harp is one of the most powerful people in the United States.

The reason the Harp story has caught fire is that it is salacious — the elderly president spends nearly all of his waking hours with a young, attractive aide — but the reason it matters is that it is further confirmation of one essential fact of the Trump White House: that the president exists in a degraded, chaotic information environment…’

Jamelle Bouie via The New York Times:

‘There are, to be sure, true believers within this administration, from the executive power fanatic Russell Vought to the far-right nativist Stephen Miller. But the man at the top has no such ambitions. He is there only for himself. The principal aim of his government as he sees it is his own glorification — a desperate quest to never lose face and to pursue vengeance against anyone who might undermine his sense of self…

With the terrible power of the United States at his fingertips, it is frightening to contemplate what he might do to save his fragile sense of self. He has already tried to wreck the country in pursuit of revenge against all those who challenge his ego and authority. There’s no reason to think that he won’t try to wreck the world in pursuit of the same….’

Jonathan O’Callaghan via MIT Technology Review:

‘Reflect Orbital’s giant beams will shine as bright as 10,000 full moons and scatter light over tens of kilometers….’

David A. Graham via The Atlantic:

‘During his first term, Trump garnered outsized attention for outrageous statements. In August 2017, for example, he created an international incident by threatening North Korea with “fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” Trump clearly delighted in how the press and global leaders would scramble to respond to these provocations, and some people argued that he was pursuing Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of keeping adversaries off balance. One can draw a direct connection between the fire-and-fury threat in 2017 and Trump’s friendly statements about North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in the past week.

But over time, the world has grown jaundiced about Trump’s threats. The good news is that few world leaders and observers feel the need to take Trump’s outbursts seriously anymore. Fire drills driven by Trump’s idle talk fatigue the media, the public, and geopolitical systems, and they distract from more important stories.

But that’s also the bad news. First, some of the things that Trump says are very dangerous. His favoritism toward North Korea could destabilize the region and encourage South Korea and Japan—to say nothing of Iran and other rogue states—to pursue nuclear-weapons programs. Second, he does occasionally follow through; Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro may have thought that Trump was bluffing before he was arrested during an American incursion in January.…’

Eli Stark-Elster via Smithsonian:

‘The idea that universes evolve like organisms sat on the fringes of theoretical physics for decades. Then, a Substack post and a 2022 find by the James Webb Space Telescope boosted the concept…’

Tom Nichols via The Atlantic:

‘President Trump’s bumbled comments on North Korea sent a clear message to Iran: Nuclear deterrence, even with only a few bombs, works… He may also have blurted out classified information about North Korea.…’

Jake Currie via Nautilus:

‘Japan is home to tons of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines (which you should be sure to visit if you ever find yourself there). These picturesque locales—numbering in the hundreds in cities like Kyoto—offer serene oases in busy urban environments for both people and wildlife alike. According to a new study published in Urban Ecosystems, frogs in particular are drawn to their many water features, making the landmarks both culturally and ecologically important….’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘Suffering unprecedented embarrassment on the international stage, morale issues are so deep that sailors are reputedly jumping overboard, but never fear: the United States Navy has a plan. Reportedly, they are considering renaming an aircraft carrier after Trump….’

Isaiah Colbert via Gizmodo:

‘Once Bone Tomahawk kicks into its third act, it morphs into one of the most stark, frightening strings of events committed to celluloid. Up to this point, the film’s depiction of violence is handled matter-of-factly, without any sense of spectacle. There’s no buildup of tension when shit hits the fan on their journey; like breathing, it simply happens nonchalantly, with little zhuzh in the camera work to accentuate it. When the movie shifts into its final act and encounters the mysterious tribe at the epicenter of our heroes’ discontent, it becomes full-on horror, with some of the most terrifying depictions of violence and brutality I’ve ever seen.

On top of its action-packed final act’s pacing and cinematography moving with surgical precision, Bone Tomahawk surprised the fuck out of me with some of the most grotesque “How the hell did they even do that?” practical effects once its antagonists entered the film. I’m talking a full-body horror experience that burns into your retinas and whose booming bellows ring in your ears like tinnitus long after credits roll. It’s rare for a film to earn the accolade of being the best movie in a genre you’ve ever seen—a real instant classic—while seriously making you consider never watching it again for your own well-being….’

Rumman Chowdhury via MIT Technology Review:

‘If AI systems are viewed as too advanced to control, the companies that build them can’t held liable for the harms they cause….’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘Sources say Hegseth’s job is in danger as the Iran war drags on and the Strait of Hormuz stays closed with gas near $4 a gallon….’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘Even Harp’s own brother Preston calls her relationship with the president unhealthy after becoming estranged over it….’

Holyn Thigpen via Atlas Obscura:

‘“Oldest” is not one definitive measurement but several, depending on what type of living thing you’re looking at. Some record-holders, like Utah’s Pando, are clonal colonies, while others, such as a spruce trunk, are individual, continuously growing organisms whose age is counted directly through rings, layers, or growth bands. Still others, like deep-sea sponges, grow so slowly that their age can only be estimated. Understanding which kind of “old” you’re looking at helps explain why the ages on this list vary so widely.

• Pando Clonal quaking aspen colony 1+ million years Utah, USA
• Honey Mushrooms Fungal network 2,400 years Oregon, USA
• Old Tjikko Norway spruce 9,550 years Sweden
• King Clone Creosote colony 11,700 years California, USA
• Methuselah Tree Bristlecone pine ~4,800 years California, USA
• Prometheus Bristlecone pine ~5,000 years Nevada, USA
• Li Jiawan Grand Ginkgo King Ginkgo ~4,000 years China
• Fortingall Yew Yew 2,000–5,000 years Scotland
• Llangernyw Yew Yew 4,000–5,000 years Wales
• Volcano Sponge Sponge ~15,000 years Antarctica
• Black coral Coral colony 4,000+ years New Zealand…’

Via New York Times Magazine:

‘The power grid relies on thousands of aging, hand-built transformers. If enough fail, the blackout could last years…’

Via The New Yorker:

‘A scheme to charge Wall Street traders for an early look at the President’s comments on Truth Social has generated outrage and a lawsuit…’

Via The Atlantic:

‘As the war with Iran drags on, the president is in disagreement with the vice president, military leaders, and long-standing American allies…’

A federal judge today dismissed the Trump administration’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard, ruling the incidents cited were “too isolated and episodic” to prove ongoing civil rights violations. U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns found the government’s complaint, focusing on three March 2025 incidents, failed to show institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI. The Justice Department had accused Harvard of “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis, particularly regarding anti-Israel protests post-2023 Gaza war. Harvard argued the claims were outdated and lacked evidence of a continuing violation. This dismissal is a significant setback for the administration’s broader pressure campaign against Harvard.

Source: Judge Tosses Out Trump Administration’s Antisemitism Lawsuit Against Harvard

Via Delete DoorDash:

‘For the last year and a half, DoorDash has been silent as their delivery drivers have been hunted and even killed in the streets by ICE and other federal police. Now, the company has come out in vocal support of H.R. 9720, a blatant attack on communities here in Washington DC. This legislation would strip away basic power from DC’s local elected government. DoorDash is pushing for it because they don’t want to pay a 20-cent fee for food access programs for low-income families. All those things are not okay with us. DC communities are calling on all allies to #DeleteDoorDash until our demands are met.…’

Henry Abraham via Substack:

‘What remains a mystery to me, though, is why Americans aren’t angrier over Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors. Have we forgotten our values of honesty, compassion, and creativity? Hasn’t anyone noticed that a third of the White House has been demolished? For a ballroom-bunker? Is patriotism only for “suckers and losers”? Are we ready to throw in the towel defending the rights of women, immigrants, people of color, and gays? Have we forgotten that we are “created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights”? What’s wrong with this picture and how did it get that way?

In 1941 the jurist Ernst Fraenkel who had fled Nazi Germany wrote a seminal book, The Dual State, in which he described two forms of government that could exist side by side. The first he called “the prerogative state,” and the second, “the normative state.” The first was the government that did whatever it wanted. The second was bound by the rule of law. The first is Donald Trump ignoring the birthright decision of the Supreme Court, or ICE agent Jonathan Ross killing Renee Good in Minneapolis without accountability. The normative state does what the law directs. The prerogative state does what it wants.

Americans live in both states, but unless the prerogative one affects us, we go about our business living under the illusion that our state is entirely “normative.” The prerogative Trump incinerates 300 school children on the first day of the Iran war, and we go out that evening for ice cream. Our illusion of normality protects us from shame, guilt, and rage because Trump’s paranoia, sadism, and slipping cognition don’t affect us personally. It’s time to shatter that illusion…’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘The press secretary announced her resignation on July 16th, days after Trump escaped a missile threat in a catering truck….’

Sarah Kuta via Smithsonian Magazine:

‘Scientists have discovered that people from distinct cultural backgrounds are ticklish in many of the same spots on their bodies. In addition to the armpits and soles of the feet, the belly and the neck consistently rank as some of the most ticklish body parts across cultures, scientists report in a study published August 10 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The findings could help researchers unravel why this strange sensation evolved.

Ticklishness is a nearly universal human sensation—and one that we share with rats, meerkats and great apes—yet scientists know surprisingly little about it. Researchers recognize two types of tickling: knismesis, a light, feather-like sensation that usually doesn’t provoke laughter, and gargalesis, which is caused by firm, repetitive touches that typically elicit giggling and movement.

Until now, research on tickling has been largely focused on knismesis because of its similarity to itchiness, a symptom of many medical conditions. Gargalesis, meanwhile, has remained “really a very poorly understood sensation,” Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University of Berlin who was not involved with the study, tells Nature’s Claire Ainsworth.

In the new study, a research duo set out to understand some of the basics about gargalesis. They recruited 448 participants divided equally among three cultural backgrounds: Chinese, Dutch and Greek. Each completed a survey about tickling and created a body map of their most ticklish spots, along with maps for other sensations, including pain, pleasure and touch sensitivity.

The data yielded “remarkably similar patterns regardless of where participants came from,” study co-author Konstantina Kilteni, a neuroscientist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, says in a statement….’

Via New Scientist:

‘Memories in mice persisted even after they lost the connections that we thought were needed for recall, expanding our knowledge of memory in the mammalian brain…’

Joseph Cox via 404 Media:

‘ICE plans to spends tens of millions of dollars on the gloves, which are supposed to incapacitate people. A manual 404 Media found says the gloves may even contribute to “sudden death.”…’

Via Heather Cox Richardson:

‘The scandal that Trump secretly used a small plane to leave Türkiye for Britain after credible Iranian threats of assassination, leaving journalists and White House staffers to act as a decoy, has provided a crystal clear view of the president. As writer and cartoonist Liza Donnelly summed it up in her Seeing Things: “To Save Himself, Trump Endangered Others.”

The choice of who left the decoy plane to travel with Trump also revealed that Trump opted to protect his loyal aides rather than any cabinet officials, prizing loyalists over members of the government. Dan Lamothe and Cat Zakrzewski of the Washington Post reported today that Trump left Secretary of State Marco Rubio behind on the decoy plane but took with him White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, executive assistant Natalie Harp, and director of Oval Office operations Walt Nauta.

The journalists report that Scavino, Harp, and Nauta worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago in between his presidencies after others distanced themselves. Nauta was indicted on six felony counts, including taking part in a conspiracy to obstruct justice, after allegedly helping Trump hide the classified documents he retained after leaving the White House.

Also traveling with the president was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who cheered on Trump’s attack on Iran. Although Hegseth apparently retains Trump’s approval, Natalie Oliverio of Military Times reported yesterday that repeated extension of their tours of duty to more than 8 months while the condition of their ship has deteriorated, with broken showers and little food, has led sailors from the USS Abraham Lincoln to self-harm, including attempts to jump from the 60-foot-high deck. More than 200 family members have raised concerns about sailors’ mental health, exhaustion, and safety with Navy officials.

With Trump slipping both politically and personally, there is a frantic feeling in the air as members of the Trump administration and their allies appear to be trying to grab all they can before the midterm elections…’

Anne Cleary via Aeon:

‘Have you been here before? The eerie sensation is the shadow of your mind searching inward for clues to its own survival…’

Marcia Dunn via AP News:

‘Sorry, North America. After winning the cosmic lottery with a pair of coast-to-coast total solar eclipses, now it’s Europe’s turn.

But look skyward anyway Wednesday and, if you’re far enough north in the U.S. and Canada, you might savor a partial eclipse as the moon nibbles away at the sun….’

Mike Pearl via Gizmodo:

‘We already knew something weird happened with Donald Trump last month in Turkey, even by the already weird standards of this administration. He ordered new military strikes against Iran while in Turkey for a NATO summit—meaning he was unusually close to the fireworks he was creating. Then, when he left Turkey for the U.K., the official story was cagey and self-contradictory, and involved him supposedly flying on an older Air Force One-designated plane, instead of his brand new, more luxurious Air Force One.

However, it’s now being reported that the president flew to the U.K. not on the new Air Force One nor one of the Old Air Force Ones, but that he got on one of the old planes and posed for the press like everything was normal, and then slipped out a cargo door and into a catering box, which got carted off to a military plane, which he then flew aboard all the way to the U.K….’

Ed Cara via Gizmodo:

‘Trump’s latest executive order threatens to further unravel our progress against resurgent diseases like measles….’

Denise Chow via NBC News:

‘A new moon will keep skies dark, making shooting star sightings more likely during the Perseids’ most active phase….’

Sophie Ellis via Discover Wildlife:

‘Hang Son Đoòng is the world’s largest natural cave and remained undiscovered until 2009…’

Alan Bellows via Damn Interesting:

‘On 6 August 1945, a number of eyes in the Japanese city of Hiroshima turned skyward at the drone of a US B-29 bomber flying across the cloudless sky, accompanied by two other aircraft. Their arrival was not a surprise; the early warning radar net had detected the incoming planes and an air-raid alert had been issued for the city. But soon the Japanese military realized that only three planes were incoming, and the alert was lifted. The anti-aircraft guns sat silent, and the fighter planes lingered in their hangars. A mere three planes were considered incapable of posing a significant threat, so it was presumed that these craft were weather planes — a precursor to a true attack. The Japanese military opted to conserve their diminishing supplies of munitions and fuel for use against more serious threats.

The sound of the American planes drew the attention of the city’s residents, many of whom were outdoors participating in work programs. A few saw a large parachute unfurl beneath the B-29 before it flew away, but most saw only the flash that soon followed. The events that unfolded that morning on the streets of Hiroshima were recorded by those who survived. These survivors would come to be known as hibakusha — “people exposed to the bomb.”

For those who didn’t see the planes, the sudden flare of harsh light was the first indication that something unusual had happened. In that eerily silent moment, white clouds sprung from the clear blue sky as the Little Boy spilled the destructive equivalent of thirteen thousand tons of TNT over the city, projecting intense radiation in every direction….’

Via NPR:

‘The famous author’s short story, ‘There will come soft rains’ predicted a world where machines would take over after August 4th, 2026….’

Via dino-world.com:

‘Most people assume the thylacine simply died out from natural causes, the way species quietly fade when their world changes around them. It didn’t. Humans hunted it into oblivion on purpose, and that single fact changes everything about whether a few survivors could have slipped through.

The thylacine once ranged across most of mainland Australia, but competition with dingoes pushed it to extinction there roughly 2,000 years ago, leaving an isolated population in Tasmania. When British colonists arrived, they paid bounty hunters to kill every thylacine they could find to protect sheep flocks. That’s not a slow habitat collapse – it’s systematic, government-funded slaughter, the kind that could easily leave a scattered, secretive remnant hiding in Tasmania’s least accessible wilderness. A species can be functionally invisible long before it’s actually gone, and that possibility has kept researchers searching for nearly 90 years straight.

The 1982 Sighting That Restarted an Entire Search Effort

The 1982 Sighting That Restarted an Entire Search Effort (Image Credits: Pexels)

If there’s one encounter that legitimized the “maybe it’s not extinct” camp, it’s this one. A government employee, not a tourist chasing folklore, filed the report that changed everything.

Hans Naarding, a park ranger, said he observed one of the creatures for several minutes under torchlight near Togari in 1982. He wasn’t some amateur cryptid-hunter – he was trained wildlife personnel whose detailed field notes carried real weight with the agency that employed him. The sighting was considered credible enough that Tasmania Parks, working with a wildlife scientist, launched a formal search that lasted more than two years. That government-funded hunt never found conclusive proof, but it never ruled the possibility out either….’

Daniel Hampton via Raw Story:

‘President Donald Trump’s habit of insisting things are happening “like nobody’s ever seen before” is more than just a verbal tic. It’s become a symptom of his deteriorating brain, according to a speech-language pathologist whose video breakdowns of the president have gained attention.

Hilary Shae, a licensed speech-language pathologist who specializes in concussion recovery, zeroed in Wednesday on Trump’s Camp David Cabinet meeting last week, counting a stack of near-identical catchphrases in the first 15 minutes alone. She flagged phrases such as “nobody’s ever seen,” “more than anyone’s ever seen before,” and “treated like nobody else.”

Doing that many while reading from prepared notes, she said, was “pretty significant.”

“It is very likely that Donald Trump is suffering from some form of dementia and brain decline,” Shae said in the video, arguing the repetitions signal his brain is “relying on language that has become highly automatic while it loses the ability to generate new and flexible language.”

She framed the phrases as possible “perseveration,” a neurological symptom in which someone repeats a word or idea when it isn’t appropriate, suggesting impaired frontal lobe inhibition. She contrasted it with Trump’s old catchphrase days, like “that’s hot,” which she said had nothing to do with cognitive decline. The difference now, she argued, is that the repetition is “persistent” and “context independent.”…’

Here & Now Newsroom via WBUR:

‘The small town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, about 30 miles west of Montreal, recently became the first in Canada to recognize trees as living beings with a special set of rights — including the rights to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration….’

Adithi Ramakrishnan via AP News:

‘Scientists originally took the images for a different reason: to fine-tune and test the limits of the telescope. But when they looked at the results, they realized they’d photographed the sun’s bright outer shell at higher resolution than ever before….’

J F Martel via Aeon:

‘When early humans first painted cave walls, they began to find out who they really were: our minds emerged from our images…’

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘The Orange Menace claims his administration restored the Endangered Species Act to the meaning Antonin Scalia “explained.” Scalia explained it in a dissent. The Supreme Court’s 6–3 majority upheld the definition Trump’s administration just erased….’

Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing:

‘The ad campaign for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a gritty new take on the public domain monster, has been partially unraveled by advertising regulators in the U.K. In upholding a complaint about the movie’s posters, the Advertising Standards Authority determined that those showing a “realistic impression of a dead child” were too horrid for public display. But it cleared the imagery’s use on television and streaming media after bedtime….’

Scott Stossel via The Atlantic:

‘If coroners were to pin an actual time of death on Freudianism, they might specify 1963. That year, the philosopher of science Karl Popper held up psychoanalytic theory as the archetypal instance of what he called “pseudoscience”: Worse than mere bad science, psychoanalysis was, in being untestable, simply not science. Based in large part on the highly speculative interpretation of imperfectly recalled dreams, of all things, psychoanalytic theory was impervious to real scientific inquiry. In presuming to explain everything, Popper pronounced, psychoanalysis explained nothing at all.

So who today would dare attempt a rehabilitation of Freud? And why? To take the second question first, here’s one reason: What has followed Freudianism has not been, by many reckonings, any better. In the 1970s, the mental-health profession fled from such squishy psychological concepts as transference and countertransference, the death drive, and seduction theory—as well as more outlandish ones like penis envy, castration anxiety, and the Oedipal complex—and leaned instead into “biological psychiatry,” which had emerged from the drug discoveries of the 1950s and ’60s.

Physiological notions took hold, such as the “catecholamine hypothesis of affective disorders,” which attributed anxiety and depression to deficits of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine. Three decades later, in the 1990s, the “chemical-imbalance theory of depression” arrived, tying depression and other mood disorders to dysregulation of another neurotransmitter, serotonin. Psychoanalysts’ highly subjective assessments gave way to the ostensibly more objective measurements provided by neuroscientific instruments that can capture brain activity, such as EEGs, PET scans, and fMRIs. Doctors turned to genetic testing to help identify various temperament types and emotional predispositions, and relied on standardized questionnaires assessed for their validity in diagnosing mental illness.

In repudiating Freudianism and touting the field’s proper medical grounding, science-based psychiatry confidently predicted that measurable success was soon to come. That’s not what happened. Biological psychiatry “overreached, overpromised, overdiagnosed, overmedicated,” as the Harvard medical historian Anne Harrington put it in 2019. Which raises the question of whether psychiatry has simply exchanged one form of witchcraft for another….’

Brendan Brown via ScienceBlog.com:

‘The nightly choice between a book and a screen isn’t a minor preference—it’s a decade-long experiment that rewires your brain in measurably different ways….’

Dorothy Neufeld via Visual Capitalist:

‘Czechia ranks first globally for academic freedom, while Myanmar and Nicaragua rank last.

The U.S. scores 0.40, placing it at a level similar to Bhutan and Thailand.

India has recorded one of the world’s sharpest declines in academic freedom since 2010….’

Here & Now Newsroom via WBUR:

‘Scott Tong speaks with baker and writer Kate Lebo about embracing bitterness, complex flavors, and why baking with ultra-sweet fruit doesn’t make for better pies….’

Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily:

‘The writers of the Beat generation adopted ideas and images from cultural traditions ranging from Buddhism to jazz. William S. Burroughs repeatedly turned to another source: the ancient Maya. As independent scholar Paul H. Wild writes, Burroughs drastically reshaped Maya culture for his own purposes, but his stories were grounded in ideas about the civilization that were common in academic circles at the time…

Wild writes that, somewhat paradoxically, given his profession, Burroughs railed against the “Word Virus” as a tool of control. And so he was fascinated by the hieroglyphic nature of Maya writing, which he claimed could convey ideas more directly, avoiding the need for words. This followed a common scholarly notion that Maya hieroglyphics were not tied to spoken language.

Many of the ideas about Maya life that Burroughs had access to in the 1950s were turned on their head in the next decade, when epigraphers realized that Maya writing was, in fact, partly phonological, and could be directly translated into speech…’

Ellyn Lapointe via Gizmodo:

‘A set of engineered safeguards could protect Earth’s habitability for 9.1 quadrillion years, according to new research. The star that gave our planet life will one day take it away. Scientists have long agreed that the expansion and eventual death of the Sun will destroy Earth’s habitability, but one researcher believes he’s figured out a way for humanity to avoid this fate.

In a study set to appear in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, independent researcher Gabriel Harry outlines a plan that he claims could help us outlive the Sun. In fact, he presents megaengineering concepts designed to safeguard against a whole suite of long-term threats to Earth’s habitability: solar luminosity, solar engulfment, the end of tectonics, water loss, changes in the planet’s tilt and spin, object collision, and dangers from beyond our solar system. The findings are currently available on the preprint server arXiv….’

Christianity On The Spectrum via Dispatches from the Autism Wars:

‘the shifting definitions of autism have particularly affected those with profound autism and their caretakers. His substack writing (and I assume his upcoming book, All in Your Head, which I have pre-ordered) often discusses how the autism label used to be applied mostly to those who were very significantly affected by autism before they were supplanted by more palatable high functioning autistics. He claims that these people with ASD 1 (or maybe not even that) were attempting to rebrand autism as a fun, quirky asset whose only downside is the negative stereotypes imposed on them by an ableist world. It is plainly true that people like me have supplanted, and spoken over those who are more profoundly affected….’

The Editorial Board via The Wall Street Journal:

‘A friend quipped the other day that President Trump truly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because he has already ended the Iran war eight times. Will the ninth time be the charm after his latest decision to call off a military escalation in search of a deal with the revolutionary regime?

“We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” Mr. Trump posted at 10:05 p.m. on Saturday. He added that this includes “Immediate, Complete, and Total” opening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to Iran’s nuclear program….’

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

‘This week marks the 81st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 6, 1945 an American bomber dropped the first nuclear weapon on human beings. Within minutes the two cities were engulfed in heat fifty times greater than the surface of the sun. 140,000 people died instantly from burns in the firestorm that followed, injuries from blasts, or weeks later from a new kind of killing, radiation sickness. The nuclear fission created a virtual museum of 300 radioactive isotopes previously only seen before on Earth in trace amounts. Some isotopes lasted seconds. Others will last for millions of years….’

Alice Fleerackers via Nautilus:

‘A dark history that is in danger of returning as support for people with disabilities withers…’

These are not my most decorous posts but, I’m sorry, they need to be brought to everyone’s attention. Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

‘The Orange Menace attended Lindsey Graham’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, where he also delivered a eulogy and rapped on the casket to say hello. A brief clip circulating afterward shows Trump adjusting himself while the men seated beside him suddenly squint, blink, and look distinctly unhappy….’

Kaitlin Simpson via Us Weekly:

‘A video linked to the government of Iran is under investigation after appearing to issue a threat — and detail ways — to assassinate First Lady Melania Trump and her and President Donald Trump’s son, Barron.

On Monday, July 27, a video titled “Where to Kill Melania” was shared by Tasnim News Agency, an entity allegedly linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, per The Independent. ​…’

Nahal Toosi via POLITICO:

‘President Donald Trump and his aides rarely go easy on their perceived enemies. But their attacks on the International Criminal Court — describing it as, among other things, filled with “lunatics” and pledging to destroy it — are hyperbolic enough that you have to wonder:

Are they afraid the court will prosecute them?…’

Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing:

‘The Atlas of Surveillance is a database of surveillance technologies deployed by law enforcement in communities across the United States. This includes drones, body-worn cameras, automated license plate readers, facial recognition, and more. This research was compiled by more than 1,000 students and volunteers, and incorporates datasets from a variety of public and non-profit sources. 

The Atlas is a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who could use more volunteers to help complete and maintain it….’

Benji Jones via Vox:

‘In a rule published earlier this month, the administration determined that, in many cases, destroying the habitat of federally threatened and endangered species is no longer explicitly illegal, even if doing so could ultimately drive them extinct. The rule upends half a century of regulatory precedent that survived many Republican administrations. Environmental advocates also say it runs counter to the very intent of the Endangered Species Act, which Congress passed in 1973 with near-unanimous bipartisan support (and which Richard Nixon signed into law)….’

Kurt Andersen via The New York Times:

‘Does anyone under 50 know who Carlos Castaneda was? Around 1970, this anthropologist’s books of psychedelic adventures in Mexico with an Indigenous sorcerer named Don Juan turned him into one of the world’s most widely read writers. Today, he’s a little-remembered artifact. So why a serious biography by the writer and artist Ru Marshall?

Castaneda had a wide-ranging cultural influence. And he was a dark, fascinating character, a Peruvian transplant to California who rebranded himself in the 1980s as a wizard, distilling his respectable mass popularity into a small, lucrative cult. In Marshall’s hands, “American Trickster” is smart, thoughtful — and all too timely….’

Norimitsu Onishi via The New York Times:

‘As smoke from forest fires in Canada have darkened skies south of the border, lawmakers in Michigan, Ohio and other U.S. states have accused the Canadian authorities of inaction and poor forest management. But most wildfires in Canada spread in such remote, vast areas that they cannot be fought effectively — and are often left to burn.

Half of Canada’s wildfires, like the ones now burning in northern Ontario, burn in such areas — either unpopulated or dotted with small Indigenous communities, said Michael Flannigan, an expert on fire management at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. They are most often accessible only by plane, with no roads for firefighters….’

Alan Herrera via Comic Sands:

‘Harnik’s picture captured the sort of reaction one would expect from a malignant narcissist upset that the attention is not on him at all times, so Trump’s reaction wasn’t a surprise….’

Robert Davis via Raw Story:

‘President Donald Trump alarmed onlookers on Sunday after he went on an hours-long AI picture posting spree on Truth Social.

In all, Trump posted more than 40 AI-generated photos over multiple hours on Truth Social. Some of the photos included Trump standing on top of an Iranian oil tanker declaring “It is our oil tanker now!” and three late-night comedians who recently drew the president’s ire panhandling on a sidewalk. There was also the all-too-expected jab at Rosie O’Donnell, who has been feuding with the president for nearly two decades.

The photos were posted on a day when reporters caught Trump out playing golf and inspecting the White House renovations….’

Via CBS News:

‘Science shows us that, even though plants don’t have brains, they seem to have a nervous system that responds to touch in remarkable ways. Robert Krulwich and puppeteer Barnaby Dixon explore the science of thigmomorphogenesis (the phenomenon of plants reacting to outside stimulae), a discussion that plants the seeds for a song….’

Terrence O’Brien via The Verge:

‘Sam Tunick allegedly gave federal agents a fake ‘duress password’ at the airport….’

Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic:

‘If President Trump has one true skill, it is conjuring up alternate realities and getting his supporters to accept them. The examples are everywhere: dismissing stories he doesn’t like as “fake news” from corrupt media, casting the January 6 rioters as victims, election denial. After he baselessly insisted that there had been rampant mail-in voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, 11 states made mail-voting access more restrictive. His repeated false claims in 2024 that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets led to real threats against the community. Trump builds a world, and by virtue of his power and influence, all of us end up living in it in some way or another.

That era may be coming to a close, in large part because of the way he and his administration have bungled the war in Iran. Trump seems unable to spin this conflict, divert sufficient attention away from it with a new controversy, or end it outright. His social-media posts, which once acted as a de facto assignment editor for the mainstream media, no longer command the same attention or respect. Now, interspersed with AI slop and inexplicable middle-of-the-night reposting binges, Trump’s Truth Social screeds sound more like the fevered ramblings of a radicalized Facebook uncle.

For the past five months, he’s been trying to convince the American public (or at least his Truth Social followers) that the war is over, or ending, or a rousing success. His administration is even retroactively changing on the Pentagon’s website the number of American service members who have died in the conflict. But no one seems to be falling for it. His posts don’t have the juice. His alternate universe is no match for the harsh reality of war.…’

Ashley Stimpson via Sierra Magazine:

‘How the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks threaten thousands of plants and animals with extinction…’

Via Dazed:

‘The growing ‘unquantified self’ movement is rebelling against data-driven wellness and the pressure to track every aspect of our bodies and minds…’