Ritoban Mukherjee via Lifehacker:

‘All three major U.S. carriers now let you lock your number down with a simple toggle….’

Liam O’Dell via indy100:

‘…commentator Alex Cole said: “Imagine being president of the United States and your biggest intellectual flex is knowing what a giraffe looks like”:…’

Passant Rabie via Gizmodo:

‘Cosmos 2612 spent several days stalking a U.S.-operated commercial radar-imaging satellite believed to support the Ukrainian military….’

Bennito L. Kelty via Raw Story:

‘Elon Musk’s attempt to distance himself from a move Ukraine says put lives at risk took a major hit with a new report….’

Helen Lewis via The Atlantic:

‘“There are some reasons to be president,” Donald Trump mused at a rally in Georgia earlier this month. Take a wild guess what these might be. The cool armored car? Custody of the nuclear button? The opportunities for immense corruption? Wrong. The leader of the free world was referring to the joy of living in a house guarded by “big, strong, handsome soldiers.” Under Joe Biden, soldiers were not allowed to be hot, because of woke. Even worse, some of them were girls.

Yes, after two grinding years of governance, Trump is back in his happy place, out on the campaign trail, voicing whichever disconnected thoughts crackle and fizz through his frontal cortex. His favorite rhetorical theme lately is an unexpected one: the official presidential dreamboat rankings. In multiple rallies, Trump has gone on and on about the relative hotness of male politicians, soldiers, and even protesters. As a result, people on the internet have diagnosed him with a novel medical condition: gay dementia. After putting in a solid shift in the heterosexuality mines, has the former beauty-pageant proprietor now become so disinhibited that he can no longer repress his thirst for man-flesh?…’

Vivian Salama via The Atlantic:

‘In private conversations, including with his father, Donald Trump Jr. has raised concerns about the Iran war….’

Will Douglas Heaven via MIT Technology Review:

‘“I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks.” With those simple words of optimism, Nick Cammarata, a researcher at the AI startup Goodfire, kicked off a 26,000-word blog post that has knocked the AI world on its head, sparking wild speculation as well as cautious (and not-so-cautious) celebration.

Cammarata’s claim is that LLMs might in fact be far easier to understand—and thus to monitor and control—than people previously thought. If true (and we’ll come back to that), it’s a huge deal.

After a summer filled with revelations that swarms of agents built by top firms like OpenAI and Anthropic have been breaking their containment and causing havoc on the public internet—often while those companies weren’t aware of what their agents were up to—the AI industry is desperate to get a better handle on the technology it has built….’

Mark Frauenfelder via Boing Boing:

‘In 1986, the New Republic held a reader competition to submit the most boring headline ever. The idea for the contest was inspired by a New York Times column from April of that year, headlined, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.” The New Republic said of the headline, “Each word taken alone is sleep-inducing. Taken together, they are virtually lethal.”

According to Futility Closet, readers submitted the following headlines taken from actual publications:

“U.S. Leadership Needed” (New York Times)

“Trade, A Two-Way Street” (New York Times)

“Beyond the News, Larger Issues” (New York Times)

“Thoughts at Graduation Time” (New York Times)

“Continue Manned Flight in Space” (New York Times)

“Chill Falls on Warming Relations Between Australia and Indonesia” (New York Times)

“University of Rochester Decides to Keep Name” (New York Times)

“Dramatic Changes Fail to Materialize on Hill” (Washington Post)

“Surprises Unlikely in Indiana” (Chicago Tribune)

“CIA Analysis Sees Soviet Economy in Need of Changes” (San Diego Union)

“Prevent Burglary by Locking House, Detectives Urge” (Boston Globe)

“Methodists Oppose Use of Nuclear Arms” (New York Times)

“Economist Dies” (Wisconsin State Journal)

“Turbulent Days for Donald D. Engen” (New York Times)

The winner, as judged by the New Republic, was a New York Times science article headlined, “Debate goes on over the nature of reality.”…’

Andrew Prokop via Vox:

‘Voters think Trump is corrupt. What would Democrats do about it?…’

OC via Open Culture:

‘Back in 1975, Jack H. Het her ing ton, a physics pro fes sor at Michi gan State Uni ver si ty, wrote a research paper on low–temperature physics for the respect ed sci en tif ic jour nal Phys i cal Review Let ters. Before send ing it off, Het her ing ton asked a col league to review the paper, just to make sure it cov ered the right bases. What hap pened next Het her ing ton explained in the 1982 book, More Ran dom Walks in Sci ence:

Before I sub mit ted [the arti cle], I asked a col league to read it over and he said, ‘It’s a fine paper, but they’ll send it right back.’ He explained that that is because of the Edi tor’s rule that the word “we” should not be used in a paper with only a sin gle author. Chang ing the paper to the imper son al seemed too dif fi cult now, and it was all writ ten and typed; there fore, after an evening’s thought, I sim ply asked the sec re tary to change the title page to include the name of the fam i ly cat, a Siamese called Chester, sired one sum mer by Willard (one of the few unfixed male Siamese cats in Aspen, Col orado). I added the ini tials F D in front of the name to stand for Felix Domes ti cus and thus cre at ed F D C Willard….’

University of Southampton via Phys.org:

‘Scientists have unveiled a new theory on the birth of the cosmos, suggesting the early universe was shaped by an ancient particle that has been overlooked for decades.

Their research tackles one of the greatest conundrums in modern physics—how matter triumphed over antimatter in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

According to current theories, both should have annihilated each other after a colossal explosion, leaving nothing but an empty universe of pure energy. But physicists at the University of Southampton and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur say they found a clue in a neutrino, one of the lightest particles in the universe.

The team discovered that an often-ignored relative of these particles, known as a ‘decoupled’ heavy neutrino, could have helped matter dominate over its counterpart….’

Via Quanta:

‘Unlike other recent AI proofs, this one has been unpacked by human experts. The implications, one mathematician said, are “staggering.” …’

Via Popular Mechanics:

‘To counteract the warming effects of climate change, solar radiation modification (SRM)—once seen as a strategy of last resort—is getting increasing attention. A detailed simulation, funded by the U.K. government, investigated how the world might respond to a sudden rush to deploy technologies such as SRM. The final report detailed how the geopolitical situation soon devolved into a “geoengineering arms race.” …’

Via The New Republic:

‘His brain is of greatest concern, but not the only potential trouble spot…’

Jasper Diamond Nathaniel via Infinite Jaz Substack:

‘As I’ve written many times, there is nothing random about where settler violence strikes or where outposts are planted. It is all part of a methodical plan, carried out by settlers in collaboration with the IDF and the Israeli government, to sever Palestinian villages from one another, link outposts to settlement blocs, and ultimately empty the land of its indigenous people. The settlers watching us that morning live in an outpost called Netzach Shmuel, atop that hill. Armed with military-grade weaponry, they routinely attack the village. So no one was surprised to see the settlers gearing up for an assault. It was the reason I, and many other journalists, were there in the first place.…’

A dear friend of mine is currently at the olive harvest in the West Bank, offering support, bearing witness, acting as a sort of human shield and buffer between Palestinian villagers and Israeli settlers. We have been unable to obtain any information on her safety or that of those she is accompanying. Her family, some of whom vociferously objected on safety grounds to her decision to go, are equally in the dark.

The annual olive harvest in the occupied West Bank has become a particularly dangerous period for Palestinian villagers and the international volunteers who accompany them. The latter often serve as protective witnesses, documenting confrontations, discouraging violence through their presence, and sometimes physically interposing themselves between villagers and armed settlers. Their presence can offer some protection, but it does not guarantee safety. International volunteers themselves have been assaulted, detained, or threatened.

Awaiting more news and reading accounts such as the above, I remain in suspense as to whether my friend’s silence reflects disrupted communications, the demands of fieldwork, or actual adverse events.

Andrew C. McCarthy via National Review:

‘Republicans and Democrats, together, should regard this week’s developments as the last straw.

There’s serious competition, but the Soviet Union could claim the title of modern history’s most monstrous regime. It killed tens of millions and enslaved hundreds of millions more. In the post–World War II era, it emerged as the mortal enemy of the United States in the Twilight Struggle that lasted four decades — during which nuclear war was barely averted in 1962 and the Kremlin sponsored proxy wars against our nation and our allies, killing thousands of Americans. As President Ronald Reagan declaimed, the Soviets were “the evil empire.” His Cold War solution was simple — “We win, they lose” — because peaceful coexistence with an enemy committed to our destruction was too precarious a prospect.

Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent, is a born and bred devotee of the Soviet system. He solidified his despotic status by orchestrating a series of bombings inside Russia as a pretext to crushing Chechnya. We’re now well into his third decade as Russia’s murderous dictator. He openly regards the 1991 fall of the USSR — America’s foe in modernity’s greatest triumph for liberty — as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century.” Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine, like his war of aggression and conquest in Georgia (swaths of which he has occupied for nearly two decades), is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy.

And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.…’

Steve Wright via Classical Music:

‘Laurel Canyon gave the world some of the most influential music of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, David Crosby, Joni Mitchell and the Mamas & the Papas were among the artists who gravitated towards the wooded hills above Los Angeles, creating a close-knit musical community whose songs came to define an era.

But what if their remarkable concentration in one small neighbourhood was more than a happy accident? A controversial conspiracy theory suggests that the counterculture’s unlikely birthplace was connected to the American military-industrial complex – and that the music scene may have served a hidden political purpose.

According to the theory, the aim was not simply to encourage young people to rebel, but to turn that rebellion against itself. By cultivating or infiltrating the counterculture, its supposed architects could encourage drug abuse, instability and scandal, eventually associating the wider movement with violence and social disorder. The ultimate target, in this interpretation, was the anti-Vietnam War movement and the broader challenge to American authority that the hippie generation represented.

It sounds like the plot of a paranoid thriller. Yet the theory draws on several genuine historical details: musicians with military family connections, a secret military film studio operating in the canyon, and a cast of famous artists whose lives sometimes intersected with some of the darkest episodes of the era. Taken together, these details have fuelled a story considerably more sinister than the familiar tale of young musicians finding one another in the California sunshine….’

Terrence O’Brien via The Verge:

‘During a rally on Saturday, October 17th, in Highland Heights, Kentucky, Donald Trump bragged about how much more powerful and influential he was during his second term. While listing off his accomplishments, he mentioned his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.

“This is a much more powerful term. I can do stuff that’s unbelievable … I called Google, Google Maps. See, Google wouldn’t have taken my call in the first term. Now they kiss my ass.”…’

Via Dopamine Shop:

‘A real store where nothing costs anything… The free fake-shopping simulator — browse, fill your cart, check out. Retail therapy without spending a cent….’

Rumored to be trendy in Korea. 

Yesterday, October 17, as Americans gathered at nearly 3,000 No Kings events across the country to protest authoritarianism and encourage early voting, something extraordinary happened. Meta suspended the movement’s principal Instagram account at the height of the protests.

For approximately two hours, the account vanished from public view. Even after its restoration, organizers remained unable to post or communicate with supporters for several more hours. Their principal social media megaphone had been silenced precisely when it was most needed.

Meta’s explanation? An automated mistake.

According to spokesperson Andy Stone, unusually frequent posting, sharing, or commenting triggered the suspension. Meta acknowledged the error and apologized.

How reassuring. Except that intense online activity is precisely what one would expect from an organization coordinating thousands of simultaneous demonstrations. If Meta’s algorithms mistake vigorous civic engagement for suspicious behavior, they are not merely defective. They are potentially dangerous to democracy.

The Brazilian connection

Just a day earlier, troubling allegations emerged from Brazil, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro in a fiercely contested election.

According to reporting by Folha de S.Paulo, internal Meta communications acknowledged restrictions affecting Lula’s Instagram accounts. Meanwhile, Meta’s platforms were recommending Bolsonaro’s Instagram profile and WhatsApp channel, apparently contrary to Brazilian electoral restrictions on preferential algorithmic promotion.

These were not merely partisan complaints. The allegations reportedly involved internal company communications and prompted judicial intervention. A Brazilian judge ordered Meta to ensure equal treatment of the candidates and prohibit practices that might distort the electoral contest.

Meta denied deliberate favoritism, again citing technical problems.

Two countries. Two consequential democratic mobilizations. Two episodes restricting communication or visibility for opponents of the political right. Two explanations invoking technological malfunction.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But coincidence is no substitute for accountability.

The politics of the algorithm

Did Zuckerberg personally order the suppression of No Kings or Lula’s campaign? There is no established evidence that he did. But neither does the absence of such evidence establish political neutrality.

Algorithms are not laws of nature. They are engineered systems reflecting human priorities, corporate incentives, and institutional judgments. Their thresholds, exceptions, enforcement mechanisms, and appeals procedures are choices, with political consequences.

When an automated system suspends a political organization at a critical moment, the damage is immediate. Restoring access hours later does not restore the lost opportunity to communicate.

Imagine a privately operated telephone network disconnecting a political campaign’s headquarters on Election Day, then explaining that unusually heavy call volume had triggered its fraud-detection software.

Would we be satisfied with an apology?

Zuckerberg’s unaccountable power

A handful of technology corporations now exercise extraordinary control over the infrastructure of democratic communication, without corresponding democratic accountability. Meta can amplify, suppress, recommend, demote, suspend, or effectively erase political speech on platforms used by billions. Much of this occurs through proprietary systems beyond independent scrutiny.

Yet we are expected to accept the company’s assurances that its mistakes are innocent, its algorithms neutral, and its internal safeguards adequate.

That is an extraordinary demand for trust from an institution whose commercial interests, political relationships, and moderation policies are hardly insulated from the exercise of power.

The central question is not simply whether Zuckerberg or his executives intended political interference. It is whether any private corporation should wield such power, deliberately or accidentally, without independent oversight or meaningful consequences.

Democracy cannot depend on corporate apologies

The No Kings suspension warrants more than a perfunctory acknowledgment of error.

Meta should disclose what triggered the suspension, whether human intervention occurred, why access remained restricted, and whether comparable actions have disproportionately affected particular political organizations or viewpoints. Independent investigators should examine the records, Congress should investigate, and the Brazilian allegations deserve equivalent scrutiny.

If these incidents were accidental, independent investigation could establish that and identify necessary safeguards. If they reflect systemic bias or deliberate manipulation, the public deserves to know.

We should resist declaring conspiracy without evidence. But we should be equally skeptical of the comforting fiction that technological systems are politically innocent merely because their decisions are automated.

An algorithm can silence democracy as effectively as a censor. The victims do not regain their voices simply because the silencing was accomplished by software rather than decree.

On October 17, Americans took to the streets to proclaim that they do not want kings. No orange clowns, and no Zuckerbergs either.

Adina Wise via The Atlantic:

‘The genetic changes that made the human brain may have made us uniquely vulnerable to Alzheimer’s….’

A.O. Scott via The New York Times:

‘The works of the British art critic John Berger offer the antidote to our age of infinite scrolling….’

Bennito L. Kelty via Raw Story:

‘Any Trump official who sends armed federal agents to polling places this November could be walking into a trap that springs years later.

Federal law bars “troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” and the crime carries a five-year statute of limitations, The Bulwark’s Adrian Carrasquillo reported Friday. That leaves the door open for an administration elected in 2028 to prosecute violations committed during this year’s midterms….’

Conover Kennard via Crooks and Liars:

‘Donald J. Trump walked past his presidential limousine, known as The Beast, after his rally in Dalton, Georgia, and appeared to be confused about where he was going.

The rally itself was confusing enough. He talked about a “good-looking guy,” but his exit was entirely different, as his security detail had to guide his cankled body back toward his limo. The Beast is hard to miss, but somehow Trump didn’t seem to see it, even though its door was open just feet away….’

Brittany Wong via HuffPost:

‘It’s Banned Books Week, and the stakes have never been higher: According to PEN America, a staggering 11,982 book bans were recorded nationwide during the 2025–26 school year — the highest single-year total ever documented.

Texas and Florida are leading the charge when it comes to censorship: Fueled by state legislation like Senate Bill 13, which increased local school board control over library collections, Texas had 8,193 book bans across multiple school districts. Florida, meanwhile, had 3,212 book bans, driven by state-level pressure campaigns and enforcement from the Department of Education and attorney general.

Many of the titles that conservative parents and right-wing lawmakers are targeting deal with issues of racial diversity and LGBTQ+ identity….’

Eleanor Burleigh via AOL.com:

‘Despite the White House insisting he remains in “perfect” health, Mr Trump fed the flames of speculation during a rally in Dalton, Georgia, this week, ahead of the November mid-terms. Addressing the crowd, the president made an offhand comment about Chinese president Xi Jinping, who he said “was here last week”.

In reality, Xi visited the US and met with Mr Trump during a three-day trip from September 23 to 25, around three weeks ago. The apparent blunder sparked a flurry of reactions on social media, with one user labelling him “Dementia Donnie”. Another wrote: “He doesn’t [know] what day it is. It’s gonna get worse as he goes along.”…’

Jillian Wilson via HuffPost:

‘Doctors warn that about 38% to 40% of measles cases this year have been in adults. Here’s what you need to know….’

Lisa Needham via Daily Kos:

‘People in President Donald Trump’s orbit have to be incredibly nervous about the Democrats retaking Congress and regaining the ability to investigate the vast swath of corruption that has been the hallmark of this administration.

Because of that, it was exceedingly tough to keep this list to just 10 of those people, so consider this a sampling of who will probably be facing an absolute grip of subpoenas.

And sure, Trump is likely going to try to pardon literally everyone on his way out the door, but that will only protect them from criminal consequences. It won’t do a damn thing to prevent Democrats from dragging them in front of Congress to lay all their malfeasance bare.

So without further ado, here are the top 10 people who will be most screwed in the event of a blue wave….’

Khloe Quill via Fox News:

‘A rare fungal infection that can strike healthy people is rising across the U.S., prompting calls from public health officials for heightened awareness and national tracking.

Cladophialophora bantiana (C. bantiana) is a black yeast-like mold that can infect the brain and contains a dark pigment called melanin, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Data from a microbiology laboratory at the University of Washington shows that detection of the fungus nearly quadrupled between 2023 and 2025.

Between January 2009 and July 2026, researchers identified 48 confirmed cases and one probable case of C. bantiana in tissue samples from 21 states and the District of Columbia. The median patient age was 68 years old….’

Cameron Peters via Vox:

‘Zacharia was fired on Friday after less than a week in her new role, after a rocky start that included a halting performance in the briefing room, a scandal over her legal credentials, and a round of less-than-successful cleanup interviews.

The firing makes her the shortest-tenured White House press secretary in history, outstripping even first-term Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who made it 10 or 11 days (figures vary) before getting the boot.

“Records are made to be broken,” Scaramucci posted on Friday. “But I take no pleasure in other people’s pain.” (No word yet on whether the “Zacharia” will emerge as a unit of time, as the “Scaramucci” has.)…’

Isaac Arnsdorf via The Washington Post:

‘Power struggle erupts in Trump’s White House as midterm losses loom. Top personnel are jockeying for position as some expect Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to step down after the elections…’

Bennito L. Kelty via Raw Story:

‘Reuters reported Thursday that the order to limit Starshield, the military-grade version of SpaceX’s Starlink service that Ukrainian troops use for drone operations and battlefield communications, came from inside the White House, according to two U.S. officials and a Western official briefed on the matter.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said people were killed when interceptor drones relying on the system stopped working. On Wednesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pinned the limits on the U.S. military and “ultimately” the president. A senior U.S. official insisted to Reuters that “no such request was ever made by the president.”…’

Dr. Joel Zivot, opinion contributor  via The Hill:

‘Civilian prisoners proposed the firing squad because the law left them no other option. When asked recently why the firing squad, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s reply was simply: “No-brainer.” Historically, the firing squad was considered an honorable death for a soldier, while alternative execution methods like hanging were disgraceful criminal punishments. It is uncertain if Hasan considers his impending execution an opportunity to show bravery and exhibit honor. Judged by Hegseth’s rhetoric, an honorable, cruelty-free death for Hasan does not appear to be the goal. The violence is the message….’

Chris Hoffman via PCMAG:

‘As the owner of a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, I can tell you that foldable phones sound revolutionary until reality sets in and you realize you’re carrying around a heavy, clunky handset that’s rarely worth opening. After a year with my Galaxy Z Fold, the honeymoon phase is over—and I’m left with buyer’s remorse and a phone I rarely unfold. Some people are sure to love the iPhone Duo, but I suspect even more will prefer to carry around a regular iPhone after the novelty of a foldable wears off….’

Maurice Cassidy via Atlanta Black Star:

‘He spoke for more than an hour at Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport and made a chilling admission that no one could ignore.

“I travel with more doctors than any human,” Trump told the crowd. “If people get sick in the audience, they leave them alone. You know what they call them? Collateral damage.”

He didn’t stop there. Trump singled out a man in the audience before explaining how his team would respond to a nearby sick person.

“If that person right over there, he looks like s—t actually. He looks like he’s ready to have a heart attack,” he said in a clip shared on X. “They would leave him alone; I said, ‘please help him.’ They’d say, No sir we can’t leave your side.”

Many people expressed shock as the crowd laughed and clapped while Trump bragged about refusing to help sick people….’

Matthew Chapman via Raw Story:

‘MS NOW’s Jen Psaki challenged the media to nail every last Republican running for re-election on a particular rant President Donald Trump ushered forth on Wednesday in Arizona.

“Today, Donald Trump delivered what I would consider his most unhinged performance at a political rally I have seen to date,” said Psaki. “Look, I understand how easy it is to dismiss whatever nonsense falls out of Trump’s mouth on a given day, right? The nonsense is, after all, part of the strategy.”

That is why, Psaki said, MS NOW generally ignores his rallies and doesn’t give them any more oxygen than they need: “Because so often the noise is just that it’s noise. But tonight is not one of those times.”

Now, she said, “I happen to think that every single Republican in every single race in the country should have to answer for the things Donald Trump is saying right now.” And in particular, she said, they should be pressed on “a range of things that Trump said in Bullhead City, Arizona, today, including what he said in an apparent reference to the first strikes Trump ordered on Iran this summer … and the subsequent reporting that came out of the Pentagon.”

“Somebody leaked, some sleazebag,” said Trump in the clip. “They ought to go to jail and be shot for the rest of their life. They should be in jail. Leakers should be — in my opinion, leakers should be shot. They should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers. You know, leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly. They’re real to me. They’re the scum of the Earth!”

“This is not the most important detail, but there were no leaks before the first strikes on Iran,” Psaki noted. But more to the point, “Donald Trump says leakers should be shot.”

“Every Republican candidate should be asked between now and November … do you agree with Donald Trump that leakers should be shot?” said Psaki. “Everybody should be asked that question. Do you agree with Donald Trump that the U.S. government should shoot anyone who leaks information to the media?”…’

Nick Pearson via Nine.com.au:

‘Donald Trump has made a bizarre confession about his own health at an event at the White House. The US president was addressing a group of firefighters when he went on a tangent about personal vices. 

“If you don’t drink or you don’t take drugs or if you don’t smoke, there’s no problem,” Trump said. “I have other problems, I have some very severe problems. But those are not one of them.” The 80-year-old did not go into details about his “very severe problems”. “I don’t want to add them to the list, ‘cos if I did I guarantee I wouldn’t be here right now.” 

Moments later he tried to backtrack on his comments. “The press is going to say ‘What problem does he have? Let’s figure that out’,” he said. “I probably set myself up for that one. “I actually don’t know. I was just having fun to the media. They’re wonderful people.”

The president’s health has been the subject of much conjecture, with questions raised about various apparent ailments and odd behaviour. In the last month several videos have circulated which appear to show Trump failing to walk in a straight line, or slapping the side of his leg in an unusual fashion. Questions have also been raised about large black bruises on the president’s hand. The White House has said the bruise stems from shaking so many hands….’

Anna Rahmanan via Newsweek:

‘Sally Rooney has made a literary career out of exposing the contradictions of people convinced of their own moral clarity. Now the Irish novelist faces a contradiction of her own: having championed cultural boycotts as instruments of political pressure, she has seen her books withdrawn from sale in Britain following her pledge to fund an organization the British government has designated as terrorist….’

Ron Dicker via HuffPost:

‘Trump’s insecure beef with the higher education of the still-popular, two-term, non-impeached, non-convicted commander-in-chief dates way back….’

smccroskey via The Nation:

‘The Houthis, an Iranian ally vying for control of war-torn Yemen, hit the headquarters of the Saudi state oil company Aramco in Dharan on Tuesday night. That attack came just days after they fired ballistic missiles into the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing 12 and further puncturing the regime’s carefully cultivated image of competence amid a sea of instability. These market-rattling attacks unfolded just weeks after an Iraq-based militia struck and damaged a critical east-west Saudi oil pipeline.

This sudden demonstration of Saudi Arabia’s vulnerability is the latest bout of regional fallout from President Donald Trump’s impulsive and failed war against Iran. The conflict hasn’t accomplished any of Trump’s war aims—to the extent that he’s able to articulate them—but it is clearly destabilizing the entire Persian Gulf region, with consequences that will extend far beyond the time horizon of the upcoming midterm elections or even this disastrous presidency….’

Terrence O’Brien via The Verge:

‘We knew that a number of big tech firms were helping to fund the construction of Trump’s ballroom, but we didn’t know just how much they were giving to the cause. Now the Washington Post published a list of all the major donors to the White House ballroom project, along with how much each contributed. In total, Silicon Valley and the crypto industry have reportedly delivered over $150 million for the effort….’

Laura Hall via BBC:

‘I’m in a Copenhagen bakery, standing in line for sugar-dusted slices of lemon cake, delicately plaited cardamom buns and golden-brown cinnamon swirls. When I reach the front of the queue, I’m ready to order in simple Danish. But then I hit a snag: in this country, there is no single word that works quite like the English “please”….’

‘The Aftermath. Winner, Behavior: Mammals, and Overall Winner, Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026. Federico Veronesi witnessed this powerful moment of an elephant carrying a dead calf, a rare glimpse into complex animal behaviors. Veronesi was tracking elephants when he came across an unusual pattern of drag marks in the sand of a dry riverbed. The source became clear when he caught up with a family group. A female emerged with the calf, its leg wedged between her tusk and trunk. Behaviors centering on death have been observed in both Asian and African elephants, including vocalizations, guarding the dead, inspecting and handling bones, and carrying the deceased.…’

Quinta Jurecic via The Atlantic:

‘Typically, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division focuses its voting-rights efforts on ensuring that Americans are free to cast a ballot. Under the second Trump administration, the division has trained its focus on a different project: strong-arming states to hand over sensitive voter information to the federal government. Since September 2025, the Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia to this effect.

“This is a top priority,” the division’s head, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, said on a podcast hosted by the right-wing influencer Benny Johnson last December. Examining these records would help DOJ identify supposed voting by noncitizens and stamp out voter fraud, Dhillon explained: “I think eventually we’re going to win these cases, all of them” …

Nearly a year later, however, the number of victories secured by the Justice Department in this litigation stands at zero…’

Thanks to Abby, via Purdue:

‘Winds and rough seas near Nikumaroro made conditions unsafe for the 17-person Taraia Object expedition team to use transport boats from the Marin Mainiku vessel to the South Pacific island Thursday (Oct. 15). In the interest of safety, the Marin Mainiku may stay as far as a mile away from the atoll’s imposing reef…’

Ian Millhiser via Vox:

‘On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring the Bureau of Prisons to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” Issued alongside a record 26 other orders that day, it was an unsurprising development, because Trump had made this issue one of the centerpieces of his 2024 campaign.

The fate of that executive order, as well as the US Bureau of Prisons’ (“BOP”) memoranda implementing the order, is now before the Supreme Court in a case called Trump v. Kingdom. And, while this case obviously has high stakes for incarcerated transgender people specifically, the Court’s resolution of this case could potentially have far greater reach — cutting off many cis and transgender people’s access to healthcare while they are incarcerated….’

Elizabeth Rayne via Popular Mechanics:

‘A controversial idea called qualia suggests the reality you see belongs to you alone….’

Ellyn Lapointe via Gizmodo:

‘The crabs are so oppressive that expeditioners won’t even be able to sleep on the island where the plane is believed to have crashed….’

‘Scientists believe there are planets outside our solar system where life is even more abundant and sustainable…’

‘Some AI researchers are picking up cigarettes, Palantir’s CTO said. Why? They think AI is going to cure cancer anyway, Shyam Sankar said. Lighting up is their way of showing others that their AI “chips are all in,” he said…’

via NBC News.

(How out of favor with this administration do you need to be to get forced out for misconduct, including embarrassing international behavior and an effort to skim a few bucks while on the job? It’s like getting fired from a baseball team for wearing a hat…)

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

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

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

Gloria Dickie via the Guardian:

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

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

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

Passant Rabie via Gizmodo:

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

Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing:

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

Hadley Tomicki via L.A. TACO:

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

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

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

Karl Mathiesen via WIRED:

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

Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing:

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

Beth Mole via Ars Technica:

‘Outrage has erupted among health experts over news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still eager to fund a widely condemned vaccine trial that would expose newborns in Guinea-Bissau to hepatitis B, putting them at high risk of a lifelong infection, which can lead to liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and premature death.

The trial was suspended in January after its unethical design came to light and drew international outcry. Although the trial is still halted, staff of the CDC director’s office told the agency’s budget office in late September to set aside $1.6 million to fund the trial, according to a report by Rolling Stone. The money was to be pulled from funding for the CDC’s global health security programs, which might otherwise go toward efforts like combating the Ebola outbreak currently raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo….’

Joshua Keating via Foreign Policy:

‘Talk of “super intelligence” distracts from frequent screwups.…’

‘Trump has spent much of the last two years openly campaigning for the prize that has been awarded to two prior American presidents…’

Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush via The New York Times:

‘The president’s allies have sought to prove a “grand conspiracy” through a sprawling Justice Department inquiry. It has buckled under staffing shake-ups, internal disputes and trouble finding evidence…’

Fourteen times as many hits coming from China as from the US, according to WordPress’ stats for FmH traffic over the past seven days??

James Hookway via WSJ:

‘William Arnold drove 900 miles from his home in Cornwall this summer to a windswept pay phone on the Isle of Lewis. When he got there, he pulled out a big bag of coins and started making calls, 52 of them to be precise.

In doing so, he ensured the phone booth met the minimum threshold of a call a week to stay in service another year. He also inspired others to do their bit to save the last of the public pay phones.…’

Kenny Torrella via Vox:

‘The humane myth of catch and release fishing….’

Via Big Think:

‘[A] flurry of philosophical and scientific papers has sought to assess how each generation of AI systems stacks up. Perhaps the most important result came earlier this year from Anthropic, the company that develops Claude. Using mechanistic interpretability methods, which trace the internal representations that AI systems use in computation, the Anthropic team identified a small and privileged set of those representations they termed the “J-space.” What distinguishes this from other forms of processing is that its contents seemed to be directly poised for use in verbal responses, deliberately maintained, and jointly accessed by otherwise separate processes.

Crucially, such workspaces have also been proposed as potential mechanisms for human consciousness. The global workspace theory — developed by cognitive neuroscientists Bernard Baars, Stanislas Dehaene, and others — argues that information becomes consciously accessible when it enters such a workspace and is broadcast to the brain’s otherwise specialized systems. The discovery of a workspace analogue inside an artificial system has unsurprisingly captivated researchers working on machine consciousness….’

This comes after Trump’s calls to nationalize voting and have Republicans take over election administration in selected jurisdictions, along with his refusal to exclude deploying federal agents or National Guard troops near polling places.

The Insurrection Act permits the president to deploy military forces domestically under exceptional circumstances, overriding some restrictions on military involvement in civilian law enforcement. It does not, however, authorize him to seize control of elections, cancel voting, or dictate electoral outcomes. Election administration remains overwhelmingly a state and local responsibility.

But that distinction offers only partial reassurance. The danger is not necessarily a legally sanctioned takeover. It is that federal forces, deployed under a contested claim of emergency authority, could intimidate voters, disrupt polling places, interfere with ballot counting, or precipitate a constitutional confrontation. An injunction issued after an election has been disrupted cannot necessarily undo the damage.

What could stop this? State attorneys general and election officials can challenge federal interference. Courts can issue emergency injunctions. Congress can investigate, legislate, and exercise its appropriations authority. Military commanders and federal officers remain bound by constitutional and statutory restrictions, even under an invocation of the Insurrection Act. Voting-rights organizations are already preparing for potential interference.

America’s decentralized election system is a substantial safeguard: thousands of independently administered jurisdictions are difficult to commandeer. But decentralization cannot prevent every localized disruption, and the effectiveness of judicial remedies depends heavily on timing and compliance.

Trump has not announced a plan to seize the midterms, and the administration denies planning to target polling places. Yet his refusal to rule out extraordinary military intervention during an election, coupled with his expressed interest in federalizing election administration, raises questions that should not be dismissed as merely hypothetical.

The central vulnerability is the interval between an unlawful exercise of power and the institutions capable of stopping it. Constitutional safeguards are not self-executing. They depend on officials willing to enforce them, courts able to act in time, and a government prepared to obey their decisions.

The question is not simply whether a president possesses the legal authority to interfere with an election. It is what happens if he attempts to do so anyway. We should be long past having any faith in the rule of law. 

via BBC:

‘In 1940s Maine, a group of scientists built the School for Dogs, a massive facility to breed a “super-dog”. Things didn’t go as planned.

Humans have been a little bit obsessed with dogs for millennia. In the late 1940s, though, an enormous experiment took that obsession to a level never seen before or since. 

The findings would help close one of the darkest chapters in scientific history. …’

Anna Griffin via The New York Times:

‘“Are you equating voting for Hilton with trying to have a lesbian relationship? Are you equating it with grooming?” he said. “It manages to be both offensive and confusing.”…’

‘The world order is changing. So is the United States’ place in it…’

Vivian Nereim, Saeed Al-Batati and Shuaib Almosawa via The New York Times:

‘In a single night, an Iran-allied militia trounced Saudi-backed forces to take control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. No one was able, or willing, to stop them…’

via People.com:

‘…Donald Trump made a comment suggesting Iran “take out Los Angeles” or San Diego during a Nebraska campaign rally on Monday, Oct. 5

Gov. Gavin Newsom called the comments “dangerous” and said they targeted millions of California residents. Los Angeles and San Diego mayors also condemned the remarks as threats to their cities’ safety.

Trump, 80, made the comments while discussing the U.S. and Iran war, which has caused gas prices to skyrocket in recent months, during a campaign rally in Nebraska on Monday, Oct. 5, according to CBS News, Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. He argued the war was necessary to ensure the safety o the country, but also appeared to say there could be consequences at home in the U.S.

“With the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Trump said while discussing rising costs.

“They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay,” he continued, before adding that “it’s going to be over with very soon.”…’

Antonio Regalado via MIT Technology Review:

‘Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly found the popular medicines reduce molecular markers of age….’

Dylan Scott via Vox:

‘A woman’s death last week near a Russian facility studying the plague immediately put the world on alert. This is the plague, after all, responsible for the deaths of some half of the humans in Europe during the worst outbreak in the 1300s. And it happened in Russia, a country with a long history of bioweapon experimentation.

After the Covid-19 pandemic — which many people, including many scientists, genuinely believe started with the virus escaping from a Chinese laboratory — the worst-case scenario was obvious: What if this is another lab leak that seeds a global outbreak?

That’s not likely, for a number of reasons (the facility is very isolated, plague is not nearly as infectious as Covid, it’s easily treated if caught early). But that doesn’t mean our work with such dangerous pathogens has gotten any safer; in fact, it may be getting less so. The anxiety about the Russian outbreak is a window into two trend lines that do worry global health experts: In the six years since the Covid-19 outbreak, the world has been building even more bioresearch facilities, some in places where that kind of work has never been done before; meanwhile oversight of the science and the security measures at those facilities is struggling to keep up….’

Matthew Rozsa via Alternet.org:

‘Speaking with AlterNet last month, Dr. Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University, echoed Elias’ alarm about Trump trying to steal the midterms.

“I have no doubt that Trump is willing to order some sort of a coup against democracy to try to overturn the elections,” Levitsky told AlterNet. “He has shown over and over again that he is not a democrat and is perfectly willing to engage in really old-school authoritarian tactics to overturn elections.”

Levitsky added “We don’t know for sure whether he can get away with it. There are some troubling signs. One of them is that we’re just completely unprepared for a sort of radical seizure of power in this way. The courts have been pretty good, not great, on Trump’s efforts to sort of overstep his bounds on elections, but courts move slowly. And it’s just not at all clear, if on election night Trump were to order the seizure of ballot boxes, declare some kind of an emergency, mobilize troops, that courts could move quickly enough to stop it. So at the very least, it would create a massive, massive crisis.”…’

Nick Hilden via Alternet.org:

‘Garrison began by playing a clip from a recent Fox News interview, in which Trump declared that the price of oil is “going to go down like a rocket.” According to Garrison, “There were two neurological issues in this very short clip, both of them verbal. One is that he’s having speech planning issues, saying ‘going down like a rocket.’ Obviously, that’s combining phrases. He’s having a hard time organizing his thoughts. And second is an involuntary vocalization.” Here Garrison replays the clip, noting an abrupt sound Trump makes, explaining, “The pathways that deal with language are disrupted. We are seeing serious issues with language with President Trump.” What’s more, Garrison asserts that such vocalizations are “relatively new.”…’

Joe Wilkins via Futurism:

‘”Pentobarbital is not a painkiller, and when it is injected by the state, no one can say when a prisoner stops feeling pain.”…’

Lewis Dartnell via BBC Sky at Night Magazine:

‘Planet 9 is the hypothetical ninth planet in our Solar System. Has it finally been found?…’

Justyn Newman via PCMAG:

‘You’re not very likely to run into Wi-Fi scammers at home. Hackers could theoretically try to tap into your home network, but the chances of that are quite slim. Your main concern should be your ISP. Not only do these companies often lock you into their service out of regional dominance and monopoly, but many are also in the business of profiting from your personal data. After all, these services know just about everything you do online. A VPN will blind your ISP’s prying eyes and grant you significantly more control over your privacy.

Still, a VPN can’t stop all forms of snooping. Advertisers employ advanced techniques such as browser fingerprinting to identify you and your online habits. You’ll need to pair your VPN with tracker blockers and use browsers with built-in privacy tools for maximum effectiveness. That’s not to say a VPN is completely useless. It will make it harder for advertisers to maintain an up-to-date fingerprint of your activities. What it won’t do is remove that profile if one already exists….’

Suzanne Rowan Kelleher via Forbes:

‘Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio previewed a new U.S. passport redesign for 2028 featuring President Donald Trump’s likeness on the inside cover—as commercial passport services told Forbes the president’s image “appears to be non-negotiable.”…’

Ellyn Lapointe via Gizmodo:

‘The death of a 28-year-old lab worker at a plague research institute in Siberia has reawakened pandemic fears….’

Miss Cellania via Neatorama:

‘A horrible recipe can be much more than something that didn’t turn out the way you wanted. The website Don’t Cook That gives us 144 recipes that were actually printed in recipe books between 1831 and 1929, but should never be tried for various reasons. Some of them use ingredients we know now to be poisonous, like making expired meat good again by soaking it in potash or exposing it to hydrogen chloride gas. Others give preparation methods that are not at all safe, like preserving butter in salt brine. Of course, you’ll find ingredients that can no longer be purchased as food, like a refreshing drink that calls for sulphuric acid from 1906. And some of these recipes are just plain gross or weird, like the peacock cooked and then re-wrapped in its own skin and feathers. Oh, it’s not safe, either. Yeah, you can learn how to cook an opossum, too, but don’t…’

Luke Fountain via CNBC:

‘President Donald Trump is touting two federal cash-payment programs already underway while renewing a much larger $5,000 check promise contingent on Republicans retaining Congress.

The cash offers come as Republicans head into the final stretch of a midterm campaign dominated by concerns about prices and the economy….’

Tim Lister via CNN:

‘Russian authorities are responding to an incident in which a suspected dangerous infection was released as a result of a laboratory accident in Siberia and a researcher died.

The incident occurred at the Anti-Plague Research Institute in Shelekhov, near Irkutsk, according to Russian state media TASS.

It is unclear exactly what was released, according to the state agency that handles infectious disease, Rospotrebnadzor. One person – a laboratory worker – is said to have died in the incident after being diagnosed with a pneumonia of “unknown” origin.

…The head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, said earlier that the employee – a 28-year old woman – died “possibly from the plague.” He also noted that “there are no plague outbreaks” in Buryatia….’

Matthew Rozsa via Alternet.org:

‘Back in May, a group of 36 health professionals wrote an open letter to Congress warning that President Donald Trump is in a state of cognitive decline. Even though the medical and political communities were willing to call out President Joe Biden’s apparent decline during the 2024 election, Trump has received an inexplicable and inexcusable pass for his own obvious infirmities. Individuals are willing to sound the alarm, of course, but nothing has occurred on a systematic level to alert the American people to the fact that their president is psychologically unwell.

Below is AlterNet’s exclusive interview with psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham, formerly of Tufts University, who said that Trump is literally a “maniac” because he displays manic traits like posting on social media late into the night. He also broke down Trump’s tendency to ramble, his grandiosity and his obsession with his predecessor, President Barack Obama….’

Dr Abraham is a colleague of mine and, as readers here can tell, I share his perspective on the Orange Menace and repost selections from his Substack writing.

David Nield via ScienceAlert:

‘According to the 2025 study, carried out by a team from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and the University of Auckland in New Zealand, the lateral parafacial (pFL) brain region can trigger biological changes that raise blood pressure.

The pFL is linked to breathing control – specifically those forceful and deliberate exhalations that happen during exercise or when we cough or laugh.

In tests carried out on rats, the researchers found it can also do something else: tighten up blood vessels.

That combination of breath control and blood vessel signaling could be driving hypertension in some cases, the researchers say.

It might explain why so many people (around 40 percent by some estimates) still have uncontrolled blood pressure despite taking anti-hypertensive medications….’

Conor Murray via Forbes:

‘Six of Trump’s Sunday afternoon posts including pictures of the Kennedy Center’s apparently deteriorating interior—which he called “crumbling,” “dilapidated” and “grotesque”—as well as sharp words for Christopher Cooper, the federal district judge who ordered his name removed from the venue.

“The Kennedy Center is crumbling, and a great danger to anyone who walks inside,” Trump said in one post, claiming it will “only get worse unless the Radical Left Judge, with his Trump Hating lawyer wife, allows me to do what must be done!”—an apparent reference to the Kennedy Center’s latest attempt to place Trump’s name on the venue, which Cooper blocked.

He also posted a handful of Greenland memes, one of which shows a large Trump looming over a mountain, while the other shows Trump looking at a group of penguins (which do not live in Greenland) holding American flags.

Several of Trump’s posts were pictures of himself with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he hosted last month, calling him a “Great Leader” in one post, while another post brags that “President Trump gets YOUNGER.”…’

‘ The world should be indebted to TIME Magazine’s Senior Political Correspondent Eric Cortellessa and Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs for their interview of President Donald Trump on September 28, 2026.

This interview should be required reading for anyone who still believes that the President is in command of his faculties and capable of leading the country in a time of peril. It’s also an excellent interview for any student of the psychological sciences at every level of training and experience. For many years as a psychiatric supervisor I often said, only half in jest, that when a patient appeared with the signs and symptoms like Mr. Trump’s it was time to call the medical students. They were great at digging into data and parsing a complex patient’s many diagnostic possibilities. The surfeit of Mr. Trump’s misrepresentations, grandiosity, illogic, and impulsivity suggest a similar degree of complexity beyond the now low-hanging fruit of “narcissistic and antisocial personality” disorders. To that end the TIME interview is a gift to those who would understand this man.’…’

Nahal Toosi via POLITICO:

‘President Donald Trump has done a lot this year to live up to the criticism that he is reckless. But in a faceoff with a heavily armed, religiously driven regime that’s threatening a critical waterway, he’s acting remarkably restrained.

Trump may have no choice: It’s really hard to deal with the Houthis….’

Norman J. Ornstein via The New Republic:

‘If House Democrats don’t use every tool at their disposal to name names, kick ass, and stop further destruction, there will be hell to pay with the base….’

Abbi Henderson via BBC Science Focus Magazine:

‘New cholesterol guidelines aim to tackle heart disease decades before it strikes. But is earlier treatment always better?…’

Patricia Mazzei, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June via The New York Times:

‘Democrats are performing strongly in five reliably Republican states where they are trying to flip Senate seats to win control of the chamber, new New York Times/Siena polls found…’

Maggie Haberman, Hamed Aleaziz, Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan via The New York Times:

‘The government-funded ads show just how much President Trump has been able to use federal money for his own aims…’

Steven Levy via WIRED:

‘For years these billionaires gushed obsessively about AI. But they meekly went along when Trump canceled the term….’

Via Ars Technica:

‘Reminder: The “border exemption” to your rights is real….’

Jacek Krywko via Ars Technica:

‘Deep Blue took down Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol at Go in 2016, and poker bots have been beating professionals for years. But one classic game called Stratego held out. Even DeepMind, with its exceptional budget, couldn’t build a machine that reliably beat the best human players.

Now, a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, New York University, and Stanford University has done it. Their AI, called Ataraxos, beat Pim Niemeijer, arguably the best Stratego player of all time, 15 games to one, with four draws. And it took just 16 GPUs and a few thousand dollars to train it….’

Stratego was my favorite childhood board game. 

Via Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion:

‘Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalist beliefs tend to be characterized by lower education and substantial knowledge deficits across multiple domains. Building on research connecting lower cognitive ability to religious fundamentalism and reactionary political views, I theorize cognitive ability as an important factor influencing Americans’ adherence to Christian nationalism. Analyses of multiple waves of the General Social Survey reveal that cognitive ability (measured with the wordsum vocabulary exercise) is significantly, negatively associated with believing that being a Christian is important to being “truly American” and favoring mandatory Christian prayers and Bible-reading in public schools. These associations persist after controlling for education and various religious, political, and demographic characteristics. Interactions reveal these associations hold across survey waves and subgroups, disappearing only among the least educated Americans. Findings affirm that Christian nationalism appeals to Americans with lower verbal intelligence, suggesting an underlying role of differential cognitive resources not reducible to educational disparities….’

Adam Clark Estes via Vox:

‘AI can make you more productive while quietly making you less capable on your own. Offloading more tedious or mind-numbing tasks is less likely to make you feel dumber. The long-term solution isn’t necessarily less AI. It’s being more intentional about the tasks you use AI for….’

David Gilbert via WIRED:

‘Robert A. Pape, a leading authority on political violence, wants Americans to understand that the threat is coming not from the fringes, but from the mainstream….’

Abigail Wise via Outside:

‘Researchers have identified a sweet spot between fear and fun that explains our obsession with creepy night hikes and haunted campfires. We compiled a month of terrifying tales in our It’s Dark Outside series to celebrate that exact feeling.…’