Mary
update: OpenAI abandons plan to become for-profit company
MRI scan can now reveal your heart’s functional age - and how unhealthy lifestyles can dramatically accelerate this figure […] for patients with things like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and atrial fibrillation – their functional heart age was significantly higher. “For example, a 50-year-old with high blood pressure might have a heart that works like it’s 55.
Of the $7.5 trillion in global currency transactions that take place each day, some 90 percent feature the dollar. The majority of central banks see it as the core of their reserves. […] Businesses prefer it for trade invoicing, whether they are based in Milwaukee or Malaysia. The dollar may not lose its globally dominant role anytime soon. […] The White House has repeatedly stated a preference for a weaker dollar, which could boost manufacturing exports by making them relatively less expensive. That worked in the economy’s favor in the 2000s. Unfortunately, what we are seeing today is nothing like that historical precedent. The way the Trump administration is pursuing its goals is unnerving investors and leaving them less certain about their U.S. assets. […] Investment committees around the world, including at pension funds, endowments and central banks, will now decide whether to trim their U.S. investments. Large institutional investors tend to move slowly, so any shift would likely happen gradually. That said, it would still diminish the dollar’s dominance. [NYT Times]
How are cyber criminals rolling in 2025?
A lonely young woman in Texas has streamed every second of her life for three years and counting. […] $5.99 a month from thousands of subscribers each, plus donations and tips — minus Twitch’s 30-to-40 percent cut. […] For three years, she has taken no sick days, gone on no vacations, declined every wedding invitation, had no sex. […] Her goal is to buy a house and get married by the age of 30, but she’s 28 and says she’s too busy to have a boyfriend. Her last date was seven years ago. Creators like Emily, known as marathon streamers, are a relatively recent invention of the internet age, offering viewers a level of intimacy that can feel intoxicating. […] Though some Twitch stars are millionaires, most scramble to get by, buffeted by the vagaries of audience attention. Emily’s paid-subscription count, which peaked last year at 22,000, has since slumped to around 6,000, dropping her base income to about $5,000 a month.
What is a storm? What is a thunderstorm? Which is the colour of lightning? Why are there no thunderstorms in the UK?
Why Are People Worshipping the Virgin Mary as a Goddess? Amid a goddess worship revival, some feminists are revering the mother of Jesus as a deity, defying Christian doctrines and confronting the use of Mary as a handmaiden of patriarchy. […] Growing numbers of people around the world are reclaiming Mary as a goddess. It’s part of a movement reinvigorating goddess worship as a spiritual antidote to a world where patriarchal, heteronormative religions dominate in many countries. […] Mary has often been used as a tool of the patriarchy to uphold a definition of womanhood as meaning submissive, obedient, maternal, and sexually pure.
In the past century, Venice has subsided by around 25 centimeters, or nearly 10 inches. Meanwhile, the average sea level in Venice has risen nearly a foot since 1900. It’s a tortuous pairing that means one thing: Not just regular flooding, but an inexorable slump of this most beloved of cities into the watery depths of its famous lagoon. There’s a radical plan to lift the entire city above rising floodwaters
Almost Every Speck of Light in This Incredible Image Is a Galaxy
