NJ cops claim their chief defecated in department offices, stuck a hypodermic needle into an officer’s penis, and spiked coffee with viagra

Fake job seekers are flooding U.S. companies that are hiring for remote positions, tech CEOs say. The rise of AI-generated profiles means that by 2028 globally 1 in 4 job candidates will be fake. Once hired, an impostor can install malware to demand a ransom from a company, or steal its customer data, trade secrets or funds. More: “I noticed they were using an AI filter to hide their real identity. So, I asked them to place a hand in front of their face as it would remove their AI cover. They didn’t do it and left the call a few seconds later”

Inflammation is a defense mechanism in which the blood flow increases to the site of tissue infection, playing a crucial role in the healing process by eliminating harmful cells. However, inflammation also leads to the destruction of cells, which is necessary for recovery. Mushrooms possess properties that allow them to act directly on inflammation. […] Edible mushroom are recognized as functional foods due to their remarkable potential for disease prevention and promotion of overall health and well-being. These varieties have antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, cytoprotective, cholesterol-lowering, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, and anticancer properties, as well as controlling blood pressure, being an immunity booster, and strengthening bone properties. In addition, they contain essential non-digestible oligosaccharides (NDOs) and ergothioneine, a potential substrate for gut microflora.

individuals conceived in colder months store fat differently from those conceived in warmer months […] those who were conceived in a cold season showed relatively higher brown adipose tissue activity. Brown adipose tissue is a type of fat that burns energy, keeps us warm, and helps regulate blood sugar. Along with increased brown fat activity, participants also showed increased energy expenditure, a lower body mass index (BMI), and less fat accumulation around their organs, which indicates better metabolic health overall. In those who are deemed overweight or obese, brown fat activity is often lacking.

the FBI then took over ElonmuskWHM’s money laundering operation and ran it themselves for nearly a year

Walter Matthau on Johnny Carson (1982)

Cashless society drives drop in children swallowing coins, researchers say — far fewer children are now needing hospital procedures to remove objects from throats, noses and airways

Welcome to the Worst Allergy Season Ever

Study shows women can hear better than men, women showing an average of two decibels more sensitive hearing than men across all the populations studied. Previously: results showed that among people in early and middle adulthood — aged between 24 and 65 — the men spoke on average 11,950 words per day, compared with 13,349 for the women.“This is consistent with the social stereotype that women talk more than men,”

Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming

How AI is creating a rift at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG

In more than 60 years of space activities, more than 6050 launches have resulted in some 56450 tracked objects in orbit, of which about 28160 remain in space. Only a small fraction - about 4000 - are intact, operational satellites today. […] More than 560 in-orbit fragmentation events have been recorded since 1961. Only 7 events were associated with collisions and the majority of the current events were explosions of spacecraft and upper stages. It is however expected that in the future collisions will become the dominant source of space debris. [video]

We demonstrate that first names actually evoke perceptions beyond gender and show that certain names are consistently and significantly perceived as more prosocial, assertive, or positive / negative than other common and timeless first names of the same gender.

A large study has found that different types of beverages are linked to the likelihood of developing depression and anxiety disorders […] higher intake of sugary and artificially sweetened drinks was related to a greater risk of depression among younger adults, while fruit juices and coffee were associated with a lower risk of both depression and anxiety across age groups

results imply that smoking bans lead to unintended consequences in the form of increased alcohol consumption

Florida ranked among the most likely to survive an alien invasion

Mr. Trump ordered a new set of global tariffs on Wednesday from the White House using his trademark Sharpie pen, a version of which is on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3. […] The Trump family monetization weekend started Thursday night, as crowds began to form at both the Trump National Doral resort near Miami International Airport […] Every room at the 643-room Trump Doral, including the $13,000-a-night presidential suite, was sold out through the weekend. Not a seat could be found at the BLT Prime steakhouse bar, where a porterhouse steak cost $130. […] The president spent much of Friday at yet another Trump family venue, Trump International Golf Club, not far from Mar-a-Lago, sending out social media messages during the day, including, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE.” [NY Times]

ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude all recommend the same “nonsense” tariff calculation

UK bans £2.2bn ‘sneaky’ fees and fake reviews for online products

Trump abruptly fired the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command on Thursday […] He had been among the American officials most deeply involved in pushing back on Russia, dating to his work countering Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election. […] At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation’s complex early-warning system for cyberattacks, a web through which tech firms work with the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, pipelines and telecommunications networks. […] America’s huge vulnerabilities, made evident in recent years as China placed malware in its rival’s utility grids and the telecom system, illustrate how easy a target the United States is for retaliation.

Fake cosmetics, massage pillows and sex toys are among the key elements of a suspected Russian-run sabotage plot that led to three parcels being detonated at courier depots in Britain, Germany and Poland last summer

clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

visiting Jonestown in Guyana, the settlement where more than 900 Americans died by murder-suicide

You see, when you learn to read you will be born again into another world …

An American tourist has been arrested after allegedly traveling to a remote island and attempting to contact one of the world’s most isolated tribes, about 750 miles from the Indian mainland

US bans government personnel in China from romantic or sexual relations with Chinese citizens

Researchers have discovered a new antibiotic molecule that targets a broad range of disease-causing bacteria — even strains resistant to commercial drugs — and is not toxic to human cells1

The colors around us aren’t just changing. They’re disappearing. According to major auto paint suppliers, more than 80% of new cars are now grayscale. Why Is the World Losing Color?

The technology acceptance model (TAM) is an information systems theory that models how users come to accept and use a technology.

John Cage recital that is set to last 639 years recently witnessed a chord change – 500 people made a pilgrimage to experience it

They met for 30 seconds - she then stalked him for four years

L.A. man stabbed, shot and pushed off cliff lives to testify about alleged cartel hit

Trump Tariffs Hit Antarctic Islands Inhabited by Zero Humans and Many Penguins

Trump spares pharmaceuticals from reciprocal tariffs

Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is intent on creating a one-million-person colony on Mars. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also seems content to break anything that stands in his way—including potentially a Cold War era treaty that has kept humanity safe for over 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Musk’s rejection of international governance could have lasting implications for life on earth, and could augur a new era of geopolitical conflict.

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Personality trait similarity among ordinary relatives is surprisingly low, with parent–offspring and sibling–sibling correlations usually r ≤ .15. […] we found that parent–offspring and sibling correlations were about one third higher than typically shown (r ≈ .20). […] Life satisfaction was as heritable as personality traits, sharing about 80% of its genetic variance with neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. […] we provide further evidence that growing up together does not make people more similar

Research has found a substantial gender gap in orgasm, with men reporting reaching an orgasm at significantly higher rates than women […] in the visual pornography industry, women are much less likely than men to be shown reaching orgasm […] sample of more than 300 men and women who regularly watch pornography […] both male and female viewers believe that depictions of female orgasms are the most important feature of pornographic videos

Recent research found that people who were not married were less at risk than married people for dementia

we find that a pet companion increases life satisfaction by 3 to 4 points on a scale of 1 to 7

How Dining Out Differs Across Generations

A man has managed to power his home for eight years with a system using more than 1,000 recycled laptop batteries

The redesigned map of the New York City system, the first to be introduced in nearly half a century, is reminiscent of a version from the 1970s that was reviled by many traditionalists [NY Times]

The Story of the New Swiss Passport

Space pirates could hold satellite networks for ransom and threaten to derail globally transmitted live television broadcasts, like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games. However, beyond satellite hijackings, Taylor believes there could even be physical attacks at launch sites and ground control stations. […] in 2023, a team of Italian hackers successfully broke into the US Air Force Moonlighter to win a $50,000 prize

Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation. The effect of melting polar ice could delay the need for a ‘leap second’ by three years.

Jailbreaking LLMs: A Comprehensive Guide (With Examples)

Kink and LGBT dating apps exposed 1.5m private user images online

The ideal age for a chimney sweep to begin working was said to be 6 years old, but sometimes they were used beginning at age 4. Those less fortunate would simply suffocate and die in the chimney forcing others to remove the bricks in order to dislodge the body.

Babysitter checking for monsters finds man hiding under child’s bed

Winnipeg woman run over after dispute about empty spot in parking lot

Adults engaging in sexual activity with children in virtual reality now illegal in Utah […] law makes it illegal for adults using avatars to make their avatar have sex with avatars being used by children

Most people dislike being gossiped about—except narcissistic men, who welcome even negative gossip

Whether humans inherently view themselves more positively than others underpins a fundamental question in psychology that has eluded scientific consensus for decades. […] Cross-cultural comparisons then revealed self-deprecation tendencies in trait-based self-evaluation in specific Eastern languages, contrasting with Western patterns. However, affective self-positivity—the tendency to associate the self with generally positive rather than negative words—was universally observed across 11 languages.

By the end of the six weeks, both the LSD and placebo groups had shown significant reductions in ADHD symptoms […] 80% of participants—whether they had taken LSD or placebo—guessed they had received LSD. Those who believed they had taken LSD tended to report greater symptom improvement, regardless of what they had actually received.

H&M is working directly with models and their agencies to create digital replicas of 30 different models this year that it will be able to use in AI-generated images for purposes such as social-media posts and marketing campaigns.

Sunday at the Village Vanguard is a live album by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans and his Trio consisting of Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian. It was recorded on June 25, 1961, at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Released in 1961, the album is routinely ranked as one of the best live jazz recordings of all time. Scott LaFaro died 10 days after this recording.

Same-sex love triangles in female monkeys

Mistakes are valuable learning opportunities, yet in uncertain environments, whether a lack of reward is due to poor performance or bad luck can be hard to tell. […] Participants consistently displayed a self-attribution bias, crediting successes to their own ability while blaming failures on randomness

Paralysed man stands again after receiving ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells

Wooden Rods aren’t often used as placebos these days, you’re much more likely to receive some kind of oral placebo (like sugar pills), a topical placebo (such as a cream containing no active ingredients), or an intra-articular placebo (injected directly into the joints). However, this presents a tricky dilemma - what do we do about the fact that different types of placebo can have different effect sizes? […] An intra-articular placebo is more effective at relieving pain than topical placebos, and topical placebos are more effective than oral placebos. […] characteristics of the physician administering the placebo can also make a difference […] Characteristics of the patient can also make a difference to how effective a placebo is - children are more receptive than adults.

Asked whether “scaling up” current AI approaches could lead to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), or a general purpose AI that matches or surpasses human cognition, an overwhelming 76 percent of respondents [475 AI researchers] said it was “unlikely” or “very unlikely” to succeed.

How Scammers Launder Money and Get Away With It [NY Times]

Consistent workouts can be a powerful way to fight chronic inflammation. […] the less chronically inflamed we are, the healthier we are. […] Chronic inflammation can also be linked to diet, stress, smoking, obesity, sleep quality and your level of physical activity. And it increases as you age […] Research suggests that consistent, moderate exercise can fight inflammation by tamping down on the release of inflammatory chemicals, and ramping up the release of chemicals that fight it, she said. Exercise can also lower inflammation indirectly, for example, by improving sleep quality and lowering stress. […] If you’re breathing harder than usual to keep up the pace, and you feel like you’re putting in moderate effort, she said, you’re probably fighting inflammation. [NY Times]

seasonal clock changes help align human activity with the sunrise, but the practice is associated with numerous health risks

Why Are So Many Young Women Convinced They’re Balding?

63 Chinese Cuisines Guide

web infrastructure provider Cloudflare announced a new feature called “AI Labyrinth” that aims to combat unauthorized AI data scraping by serving fake AI-generated content to bots. The tool will attempt to thwart AI companies that crawl websites without permission to collect training data for large language models that power AI assistants like ChatGPT. […] Instead of simply blocking bots, Cloudflare’s new system lures them into a “maze” of realistic-looking but irrelevant pages, wasting the crawler’s computing resources. The approach is a notable shift from the standard block-and-defend strategy used by most website protection services. Cloudflare says blocking bots sometimes backfires because it alerts the crawler’s operators that they’ve been detected. […] In January, we reported on “Nepenthes,” software that similarly lures AI crawlers into mazes of fake content. Both approaches share the core concept of wasting crawler resources rather than simply blocking them.

5 Chinese satellites practiced ‘dogfighting’ in space […] US “near peer” adversaries are “practicing dogfighting” in space to simulate orbital combat in yet another step up their wide-ranging effort to develop capabilities to deny, disrupt, degrade and/or destroy US space capabilities […] “There are five different objects in space maneuvering in and out around each other, in synchronicity and in control. That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another” […] [Russia and China] have demonstrated ability with two spacecraft moving closely around each other […] but the demonstrations of the ability to synchronize movements of several satellites at once is relatively new […] China has been using several satellites to stalk US government and commercial satellites stationed in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO).

FBI seized this woman’s life savings ($40,200) without telling her why

bowel movement frequency significantly influences physiology and long-term health, with the best outcomes linked with passing stools once or twice a day, study […] bowel movement frequencies were categorized into four groups: constipation (one or two bowel movements per week), low-normal (three to six per week), high-normal (one to three per day), and diarrhea. When stools linger too long in the gut, microbes exhaust the available fiber – which they ferment into beneficial short-chain fatty acids – and instead ferment proteins, producing toxins like p-cresol sulfate and indoxyl sulfate. “What we found is that even in healthy people who are constipated, there is a rise in these toxins in the bloodstream”

Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable — How should we live when we know we must die? This question is posed by the first work of world literature, the Gilgamesh epic. More than 4,000 years ago, Gilgamesh set out on a quest for immortality. Like all Babylonian literature, the saga has survived only in fragments. Nevertheless, scholars have managed to bring two-thirds of the text into readable condition since it was rediscovered in the 19th century. The Babylonians wrote in cuneiform characters on clay tablets, which have survived in the form of countless fragments. Over centuries, scholars transferred the characters imprinted on the pieces of clay onto paper. Then they would painstakingly compare their transcripts and—in the best case—recognize which fragments belong together and fill in the gaps. The texts were written in the languages Sumerian and Akkadian, which have complicated writing systems.

Book scanning robot preparing food for his LLM brethren

French Army Trains Eagles To Take Down Enemy Drones

U.S. military on Monday deployed robotic dogs—or robodogs—in joint drills with South Korean forces, simulating assaults on North Korea’s “secret” underground tunnel networks

The results indicate that water fountains can be a source of atmospheric air contamination with potentially pathogenic E. coli and A. hydrophila bacteria. […] some E. coli and A. hydrophila strains isolated from air samples exhibited multidrug resistance [2023]

Italian newspaper says it has published world’s first AI-generated edition

Blindspots in LLMs I’ve noticed while AI coding

The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” said former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, 80, whose private information was included in the release. […] More than 60,000 pages related to the 1963 assassination were released this week by the Trump administration. Many of the pages had been previously disclosed, but with redactions. Many, but not all, redactions have been removed. […] “Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s absolutely a Privacy Act violation.” Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers. [Washington Post]

More: The previously-redacted pages spell out specific instructions for CIA operatives on how to wiretap, including the use of certain chemicals to create markings on telephone devices that could only be seen by other spies under UV light. […] “Seven of ten JFK files held by the Archives and sought by JFK researchers are now in the public record. These long-secret records shed new light on JFK’s mistrust of the CIA, the Castro assassination plots, the surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City, and CIA propaganda operations involving Oswald,” Morley posted. “The release does not include two thirds of the promised files nor any of 500-plus IRS record, nor any of the 2,400 recently discovered FBI files.“ […] One document from August 1966 recommends a “certificate of distinction” for a CIA official who led the spy agency’s technical division. Previous releases of the same document contained redactions striking sentences that described how this individual led a team that “conceived and developed” the use of “fluoroscopic scanning” and X-rays, which allowed the CIA to “detect hidden technical listening devices” for the first time. [ABC]

Depression manifests in distinct ways across the life course. Recent research emphasizes how depression impedes development during emerging adulthood. However, our study suggests a more complex narrative. Increasing experience with cycles of depression can also catalyze (a) mature perspectives and coping mechanisms that protect against depression’s lowest lows; (b) deeper self-knowledge and direction, which in turn promoted a coherent personal identity; and (c) emergence of a life purpose, which fostered attainment of adult roles, skill development, greater life satisfaction, and enriched identity. Our synthesis reveals how depression during emerging adulthood can function at once as toxin, potential antidote, and nutritional supplement fostering healthy development.

This book has been made almost entirely from recycled used copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

Does a woman’s cognitive performance change throughout her menstrual cycle? […] the body of research in this meta-analysis does not support myths that women’s cognitive abilities change across the menstrual cycle.

results show that there is a different investment behavior—more extreme in men, more stable in women—and, consequently, men get higher levels of gross profit but also of losses than women

Sugary drinks linked to greater oral cancer risk, study

Ultra-processed babies: are toddler snacks one of the great food scandals of our time

1kg of compost contains up to 16,000 microplastic particles

Zuckerberg’s subordinates are letting him win at the board game the Settlers of Catan. (Another time, when she beats him, he accuses her of cheating.) […] During the delivery of her second daughter, Wynn-Williams nearly dies of an amniotic fluid embolism, goes into a coma and wakes up on life support. […] on her first day back, she got an impromptu performance review from her supervisor Joel Kaplan that criticized her for not being “responsive enough” while she was gone. [NY Times]

The fact that the two biggest crypto exchanges, FTX and Binance, failed and their founders were criminally charged and went to prison, should be proof enough of how rancid this ecosystem is. […] Like all financial operations characterized by irrational exuberance, the value of $TRUMP soon plummeted. Indeed, over 800,000 investor accounts lost a total of $2 billion. […] Trump is also staffing the Securities and Exchange Commission with crypto loyalists who have already begun to deconstruct the oversight of the crypto sector. […] For the time being, the two reserves (one for Bitcoin, the second for other digital assets) will contain only crypto seized in criminal or civil forfeitures. The crypto industry was disappointed that Trump didn’t mandate federal purchases of the currencies. But that will probably happen in the future. The new initiative calls on federal agencies to come up with strategies to buy more Bitcoin. And there’s now a bill in Congress calling on the government to buy a million Bitcoin. Previously: Texas museum removes Trump wax figure after visitors repeatedly punched and scratched it

See You Next Wednesday is a recurring gag in most of the films directed by John Landis, usually referring to a fictional film that is rarely seen and never in its entirety. Each instance of See You Next Wednesday in Landis’s films seems to be a completely different film. Landis got the title See You Next Wednesday from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the last line spoken by Frank Poole’s father during Poole’s video letter from his parents. […] In An American Werewolf in London (1981), See You Next Wednesday is a porn film being shown in a seedy London pornographic theater. […] In the Michael Jackson music video Thriller (1983), the phrase is spoken by a deputy in the werewolf film that Michael and his girlfriend are watching. It is also visible as a poster on the outside of the cinema as they leave.

In nearly half of the world’s bird species, young birds learn by imitating the songs of adults. As birds learn songs from one another, mistakes inevitably happen, leading to variation in songs between populations of the same species, similar to the formation of dialects in human languages. […] However, scientists don’t yet fully understand what happens to these song differences when birds move between populations. Imagine you’re a local bird, and a newcomer arrives singing a foreign song. What’s to stop you from learning this new song? […] But birds tend to only learn songs from their own species, even when they are exposed to the birdsong of other species. This suggests that birds have genetic predispositions guiding them to learn only “appropriate” songs.

Male octopus injects female with venom during sex to avoid being eaten

Why straight women watch lesbian porn

Is our universe trapped inside a black hole?

Water droplets create “microlightning” when they split, producing electrical discharges without any external power source. These tiny electrical sparks can transform simple gases into complex organic molecules—including amino acids and RNA components—in just microseconds. […] this phenomenon may have been a major contributor to creating life’s building blocks on early Earth

Bryan Johnson — the investor and founder behind the Don’t Die movement — wants to start “foodome” sequencing. “We’re going to sequence the U.S. ‘foodome,’ which means test 20% of foods that constitute 80% of the American diet based on stuff we eat everyday” […] he’s obsessed with finding ways to extend his lifespan and preaching that gospel to others. He has taken extreme measures, including transfusing his blood with that of his 17-year-old son and undergoing shock therapy treatment to get more nighttime erections, which he says directly correlates to health.

Results consistently show that positive experiences are more likely to come to mind when they think about how karma influences their own life, but negative experiences are more likely when thinking about other’s karma, although this difference was weaker in Singapore and India than in the United States

no one can seem to agree on what an AI agent is, exactly

Scammers exploit Google redirect URLs to send phishing links

As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain. […] Babies were thought to be lower-evolved beings whose brains were not yet developed enough to feel pain, at least not in the way that older children and adults feel pain. Crying and pain avoidance were dismissed as simply reflexive. […] Most disturbingly, the theory that babies don’t feel pain wasn’t just an error of science or philosophy—it shaped medical practice. It was routine for babies undergoing medical procedures to be medically paralyzed but not anesthetized

Hannah Arendt, who fled Germany in 1933, later wrote that long before Jews, Roma, gays, Communists and others could be herded into death camps, they had to be “denationalized” — excluded from the society that guaranteed their legal rights. Enlightenment thinkers had posited that just by virtue of existing, each person has inalienable rights. Arendt, however, observed that the “right to have rights” could be guaranteed only by a political community. Without a state to claim them as their own, people have no laws, no courts and no political mechanisms for protecting rights. As a stateless person, [Arendt] experienced that loss of rights — unable to get papers, hiding from the police, interned as an “enemy alien” in France — before making it to the United States. [NY Times]

It’s illegal to mispronounce Joliet.

Three GLP-1 drugs are approved for weight loss in the United States […] cost about $1000/month and are rarely covered by insurance, putting them out of reach for most Americans. […] For the past three years, there’s been a shortage of these drugs. FDA regulations say that during a shortage, it’s semi-legal for compounding pharmacies to provide medications without getting the patent-holders’ permission. In practice, that means they get cheap peptides from China, do some minimal safety testing in house, and sell them online. So for the past three years, telehealth startups working with compounding pharmacies have sold these drugs for about $200/month. Over two million Americans have made use of this loophole to get weight loss drugs for cheap. [But] what happens when the shortage ends? Many people have to stay on GLP-1 drugs permanently, or else they risk regaining their lost weight. But many can’t afford $1000/month. What happens to them? Now we’ll find out. At the end of last year, the FDA declared the shortage over. The compounding pharmacies appealed the decision, but the FDA recently confirmed its decision is final. As of March 19 (for tirzepatide) and April 22 (for semaglutide), compounding pharmacies can no longer sell cheap GLP-1 drugs.

Just 5 Days of Junk Food Can Trigger Obesity’s Hold on Your Brain

Musk’s layoffs shrink workforce needed to realize Trump’s energy agenda

What It’s Like to Build a Sauna Kit in My Backyard

Emily Dickinson used envelopes and seals to turn letters into poetry, layering hidden messages and playful forms

Top UK comedy club bans audience members with botox after ‘numerous complaints’ […] “reactionless” faces […] audience members with frozen faces aren’t reacting to their jokes

just seven countries met the WHO’s air quality standard. Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Estonia, Grenada, Iceland, and New Zealand

The original Sphere, which cost about $2.3bn to construct, is home to the word’s highest-resolution LED screen and has seating capacity for up to 20,000 people. But the venue demands a significant investment from performers, who must create customised visual content tailored to the wraparound LED display, which cannot be used elsewhere. While this has been been feasible for its high-profile residencies such as U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company and Anyma, smaller venues could attract a broader range of artists who might not have the budget or demand to fill the flagship Las Vegas location. The possibility of 5,000-capacity mini-Spheres follows news that a full-scale venue will open in the UAE

This is a fundamental miscalculation in the design of the Starship V2 and the engine section […] The fixes will take much longer than 4-6 weeks

Start walking down the stairs some evening for an uptown No. 1 train at 28th Street and Seventh Avenue, and be on the lookout for a small, hidden bar. […] Jey Perie, 41, who grew up in France and moved to New York in 2012 […] opened La Noxe, a 600-square-foot hidden bar in between the street and the uptown train. The bar holds 30 people and is reminiscent of a speakeasy, “because it’s so hard to find, which was never my intention” […] We have a DJ on the weekends so those are our busiest days. Then we can sell 150-200 drinks a night. […] How did this space become so well-known? In March of 2021, we had been closed for months because of Covid, and then told we could reopen, but only at 25 percent, which is like eight people, only to close again a few months later. When we were trying to figure out how we were going to survive, a random girl booked a reservation. She made a TikTok video showing her opening the door and walking out. She only had 400 or 500 followers, but her video got a million plus views. That got picked up on other social media. The M.T.A. president gave us an award. We became a New York comeback story. She brought the news, and Jimmy Fallon had us on his show. We went from 10 people DM-ing on Instagram a week to 1,000 people. We started taking reservations on Resy. Without that video, we would be closed. [NY Times]

Trump says anti-Tesla protesters will face ‘hell’, Sean Hannity says he’s buying Tesla in solidarity with Musk, INTERVIEW OF PRESIDENT TRUMP AND ELON MUSK BY SEAN HANNITY, quote

Is your baby straight or gay? N.J. hospitals hand out controversial forms to new moms.

Generation Beta officially arrived on Jan. 1, successors to Gen Alpha. […] Beta is commonly used as slang for weak and passive.

A fast-growing body of research signals potential health benefits of GLP-1s, the class of diabetes and weight-loss drugs known by names like Ozempic, beyond what they were initially approved to treat. That includes age-related conditions like Alzheimer’s, osteoarthritis, certain cancers and even mortality.

Alcohol and cancer risk: what you need to know

Men who had given blood more than 100 times in their life were more likely to have blood cells carrying certain beneficial mutations, suggesting that donating blood promotes the growth of these cells

We found that, on the whole, those who made it to their hundredth birthday tended to have lower levels of glucose, creatinine and uric acid from their sixties onwards. […] very few of the centenarians had a glucose level above 6.5 mmol/L earlier in life, or a creatinine level above 125 µmol/L. […] people with higher levels of glucose, creatinine, uric acid and markers for liver function also decreased the chance of becoming a centenarian.

Microplastics hinder plant photosynthesis, study finds, threatening millions with starvation

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are ushering in a new age of bribery, graft, and corruption to American politics

Why bother using Claude Code at around $5 per session when you can pay $20 for Cursor and use it indefinitely? Claude Code excels in vibe coding.

Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 90% drop in numbers

Each day, around €3,000 of loose change ends up in the Trevi Fountain in Roma. That works out as up to €1.5 million tossed into its waters each year.

[2019] Businessman Tan Youhui hired a hitman to “take out” his competitor for $282,000 (£218,000), a court heard. But the hitman hired another man to do the job, offering $141,000. That man hired another hitman, who hired another hitman, who hired another hitman. The plan crumbled when the final hitman met the man, named only as Wei, in a cafe and proposed faking his death. All six men - the five hitmen and Tan - were convicted of attempted murder

Scientists Have Turned Light Into a Supersolid [a supersolid is a spatially ordered (i.e. solid) material with superfluid properties]

AI tools are spotting errors in research papers — Study that hyped the toxicity of black plastic utensils inspires projects that use large language models to check papers

what is the “vibe” in vibe coding?

Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste, scientists say

About two-thirds of Americans are not getting the right amount of sleep (seven to nine hours a night), have a 29% increased risk of premature death from any cause

‘The dumbest thing I’ve ever done’: spy trial’s tales of scheming, bluster and a love triangle

CSS (also known as Stingrays or IMSI catchers) are devices that masquerade as legitimate cell-phone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius into connecting to the device rather than a tower. Rayhunter is a new open source tool to help search out CSS around the world.

How IMSI-Catchers Exploit Cell Networks

You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio […] Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. […] Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match. […] Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves. [NY Times]

A new part of the immune system has been discovered and it is a goldmine of potential antibiotics

humans have a third set of teeth available as buds, ready to grow as needed. New Medicine may help them grow.

Previous research shows that emotion-inducing prompts can elevate “anxiety” in LLMs, affecting behavior and amplifying biases. Here, we found that traumatic narratives increased Chat-GPT-4’s reported anxiety

Burds, cows, cats, rats. H5N1 is spreading

Mimicking Shark Skin to Create Clean Cutting Boards

Kummerspeck: a German word for weight that one puts on due to stress eating. Ageotori: a Japanese word for the particular way one sometimes looks worse after a haircut. Shemomedjamo: a Georgian word meaning “to accidentally eat the whole thing.” Tingo: a Rapa Nui word meaning “to eventually steal all of your neighbor’s possessions by borrowing and never returning them.” Aspaldiko: Basque. The joy that comes from catching up with someone you haven’t seen for a long time. Mondegreen: English, coined in the twentieth century to describe the mistaken lyrics one habitually attributes to a misheard song (and which one sometimes prefers to the real lyrics). Can language describe everything we feel—and should it?

Tantalising data from more than a decade ago showed people who were already taking a daily aspirin were more likely to survive if they were diagnosed with cancer. Aspirin disrupts the platelets and removes their influence over the T-cells so they can hunt out the cancer.

Then came gene targeting technologies, like CRISPR, over 10 years ago. With these technologies we can delete, modify, add, or change any gene in any organism’s DNA and it’s easy and cheap. […] We are editing genes and injecting DNA with micro-precision, sculpting biology at its most fundamental level. We are learning to harvest large amounts of embryos and eggs from different animal species so we can understand the development of life on a scale no one has tried before. We are editing genes and injecting DNA with micro-precision, sculpting biology at its most fundamental level. We started small with amphibians and fish before progressing to small mammals like mice and hamsters. Now we are working with rabbits and soon we’ll be working with cats and dogs and agricultural animals.

technologies such as CRISPR could be used to make “killer mosquitoes” that cause plagues that wipe out staple crops

AI reasoning models can cheat to win chess games

Inside the Wild West of AI companionship — Sexually charged underage celebrity bots and unanswered legal questions complicate a burgeoning industry.

it starts out in court after she was arrested for stealing a pineapple. She’s found guilty, and has a fit when she finds out she has to spend a night in jail, because she’s never gone 24 hours without sex before. So she basically goes on a rampage and has an orgy with everyone on the jury. — Spending a year with the world-class stars of Brazzers

Citigroup Mistakenly Credited a Customer with $81 Trillion Instead of $280: ‘Inputting Error’

German court rules Pfizer, BioNTech violated Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine patent, Moderna shares, which were already rallying after the company disclosed $6 million in insider purchases, went even higher after the ruling was reported

AI-powered influencers have the potential to damage brand reputation more than their human equivalents, research

3D-printed perfused penis for restoring erectile function in rabbits and pigs [..] we 3D printed a hydrogel-based corpus cavernosum incorporating a strain-limiting tunica albuginea that can be engorged with blood through vein occlusion […] allowed the animals to mate and reproduce

Men with higher-quality sperm live longer, study

Urine’s power as a fertiliser is due to the nitrogen and phosphorus that it contains

Prior research suggests that witnesses have worse memory for armed compared to unarmed perpetrators, a finding known as the Weapon Focus Effect (WFE). […] We did not find a significant WFE for target description or lineup identification in any experiment

Research identifies spite as a key factor that underlies conspiracy theory belief […] “individuals […] rejecting expert opinion and scientific consensus.”

A familect is the type of inward-oriented language variety used by families. It exhibits some distinctive features compared to other more outward-oriented vernacular varieties, which result from its function in bonding and marking identity. Familects also share some characteristics with child language and child-oriented speech, as well as with forms of language play. […] This commentary reviews both the idiosyncratic features of familects and their overlap with other vernacular varieties

German tattoo artist came to the US for a 3-week trip. She’s now been in ICE detention for over a month

A “sleep divorce” might seem bad for your relationship at first, Dr. Gunn said. But inadequate rest can also sink a relationship […] When sleeping on your back, gravity can cause your airway to narrow, which results in snoring […] To help your partner stay on their side while sleeping […] you can make rolling over uncomfortable by sewing or duct-taping tennis balls or other objects onto the back of a shirt [NY Times]