Dozens of people in Taiwan have changed their names to “salmon” to take advantage of a restaurant’s sushi promotion deal. Officials have issued a plea asking people to stop visiting government offices to request the name change.

Angry Customer Demands Refund After Ordering A Dozen Masks, Receiving “Only 12″

Scientists grew tiny tear glands in a dish — then made them cry

About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.

Erin Brockovich: Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity

Lingering symptoms from the coronavirus may turn out to be one of the largest mass disabling events in modern history.

Microbes Unknown to Science Discovered on The International Space Station

Facebook is making a bracelet that lets you control computers with your brain — The device would let you interact with Facebook’s upcoming augmented-reality glasses just by thinking.

Invisibility of Social Privilege to Those Who Have It

Unpacking a Decade of Appellate Decisions on Qualified Immunity — a judicial doctrine that shields government officials, including those in law enforcement, from being held personally responsible for constitutional violations

“Narco Submarine” Discovered in Spain

The Spanish Electrician Who Sabotaged the Nazis

Using newly digitised logbooks detailing the hunting of sperm whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons fell by 58%. This simple fact leads to an astonishing conclusion: that information about what was happening to them was being collectively shared among the whales

It Takes Two Neurons To Ride a Bicycle [PDF]

{ Willem de Kooning Untitled XVI, 1976 | Sue Williams, Hemmit’s Vibrissae, 2000 }

researchers in Switzerland can get electricity from wood

Uber is reclassifying its UK-based drivers as “workers”

It may look like an art show but these ‘dancing lights’ reduce pesticide use by 50%

Discovery identifies non-DNA molecules in the sperm involved in transmitting paternal experience to offspring

50 new genes for eye colour

The psychological risks of meditation

The term nervous breakdown first appeared in a 1901 medical treatise for physicians. “It is a disease of the whole civilized world,” its author wrote.

The fast-growing social network SafeChat has a “Star Wars” barlike atmosphere in which white nationalists mingle with Chinese dissidents. And there’s plenty of conspiracy theories, too.

how the New York Times tests multiple headlines for a single article

To make up for lack of interaction under Covid-19 restrictions, apes at Czech zoos 150km apart can now watch each others’ daily lives on big screens

Two Historic Brassiere-to-Face-Mask Innovations

Pa. woman created ‘deepfake’ videos to force rivals off daughter’s cheerleading squad

A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16

Hedge Funds Are Training 16-Year-Old Interns in Singapore

Two companies are selling diamonds made in a laboratory from CO2 — Each carat removes 20 tons of greenhouse gas from the sky, entrepreneurs say

Google must face $5B lawsuit over tracking private internet use, judge rules — Judge finds tech giant didn’t notify users their data could still be collected in incognito mode

NFTs have already given rise to new types of copyright infringement, frustrating artists

Cracking of encrypted messaging service dealt major blow to organised crime — Sky ECC promised a 5 million USD (€4.2 million) prize on its website, which is currently down, to anyone who could crack its encryption. It is not yet clear if Belgian authorities plan to claim the reward.

how to operate an airport in Antarctica

Wooden Replica of Mies’ Farnsworth House

Farnworth House VR Tour

Degaussing + Manually deguassing a CRT monitor using neodymium magnet

Russian Lawmakers Approve Initial Reading Of Bill Allowing ‘Accidental’ Corruption

We consider whether Orgasmic Meditation, a structured, partnered, largely non-verbal practice that includes genital touch, also increases relationship closeness.

When it came to definitions of rough sex, the most commonly endorsed items were: choking (77%), hair pulling (75%), spanking (69%), being pinned down (66%), being tied up (65%)…

Research shows that high levels of media multitasking may be associated with a decreased cognitive function

Fourteen horses were used in a 4-phases mirror test (covered mirror, open mirror, invisible mark, visible colored mark).

AI Identifies Pain Levels From Patient Data

Body Mass Index and Risk for COVID-19

How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world

Inside Jeff Bezos’s failed attempt to make Amazon “cool” like Apple and Nike

What Problems Does Organic Cotton Solve?

scientists have developed a tool that automatically identifies deepfake photos by analyzing light reflections in the eyes.

Under U.S. law, as soon as a work of art in any medium is created, the creator owns the copyright in that work. […] When we talk about “copyright”, we’re really talking about multiple rights (sometimes called a “basket of rights”). These include the right to control who makes copies of the original work […]

Typically, when someone buys a work of physical art, they are only purchasing the physical object. They are not purchasing the copyright in the work. […]

So if you own an original oil painting, you can display it in your home or wherever you want, and you can sell or loan the painting to someone, but you can’t make copies of it, sell prints, or make new works based on the original. […]

if you buy an NFT, my presumption is that you are only buying ownership in the NFT itself. You are not buying the copyright, unless there is a written contract […]

if I buy an NFT, and then I post it to Instagram with the message “Check out this cool NFT that I just bought!”, that’s creating many more digital copies. But this is true for all kinds of visual art these days, and the artist is free to go to Instagram and file a copyright takedown notice, requesting that the post be removed.

{ David Lizerbram & Associates | Continue reading }

image + header { The meme economy }

Man sues Hertz over receipt that cleared him of murder

Hundreds of sewage leaks detected thanks to AI

Almost all men want to feel sexually desired, but few actually do

One in four men has faked a climax at least once

In seven studies (n = 1,133), adults tried to create funny ideas and then rated the funniness of their responses, which were also independently rated by judges. People were relatively modest and self-critical about their ideas.

Happiness comes from trying to make others feel good, rather than oneself

One commonly held idea is that greater cognitive ability does not matter or is actually harmful beyond a certain point (sometimes stated as > 100 or 120 IQ points). […] Greater cognitive ability is generally advantageous—and virtually never detrimental.

A COVID-19 patient died after experiencing a 3-hour erection that doctors struggled to treat

there are some meaningful signs that even these quite scary-seeming versions of the disease may not prove all that scary in the end. I’m very worried about the Brazilian variant, since there is some evidence that it has achieved “immune escape” and produced a wave of reinfections. But the course of the others contains some real contradictions which I don’t yet know how to resolve. They appear to be considerably more infectious, and perhaps more lethal, than the “classic” strains. And yet they are growing in prevalence precisely as cases are falling nearly everywhere in the world. How can that be? Seasonality is surely playing a role in that decline, but if a new variant is 50 percent more transmissible than the old, you would expect it would require quite dramatic new restrictions to produce a decline in cases. In other words, it would be really hard, and pretty rare, to engineer a decline in the presence of those variants. Instead, it seems to be happening everywhere. [NY mag]

Globally, hundreds of thousand of organizations running Exchange email servers from Microsoft just got mass-hacked, including at least 30,000 victims in the United States. Each hacked server has been retrofitted with a “web shell” backdoor that gives the bad guys total, remote control, the ability to read all email, and easy access to the victim’s other computers. Security experts are now trying to alert and assist these victims before malicious hackers launch what many refer to with a mix of dread and anticipation as “Stage 2,” when the bad guys revisit all these hacked servers and seed them with ransomware or else additional hacking tools for crawling even deeper into victim networks. [Krebs on Security]

A study out of Harvard in 2020 also found that although cryptocurrency mining isn’t “burning down the planet”, there is “a scenario where each $1 of cryptocurrency coin value created would be responsible for $0.66 in health and climate damages.”

Earth makes a tiny seismic rumble every 26 seconds. No one knows why.

How Instagram Celebrities Promote Dubai’s Underground Animal Trade

I bought 300 emoji domain names from Kazakhstan and built an email service

The more we can google, the less we know

YInMn, the First New Blue Pigment in Two Centuries

Block 800 NY Times reporters for $0 — The app’s creator is unknown

{ Trump and his party used their legislative majorities to redistribute income up the income ladder. Biden and his party are using theirs to distribute it down. | NY mag | full sotry }

Suspected dog and cat meat factory in China raided after owner traces missing pet by GPS

Sidewalk robots get legal rights as “pedestrians”

UBER DRIVER COUGHED ON, ASSAULTED & PEPPER SPRAYED

Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?

Would you take a coronavirus risk? — We are stuck in the middle of a massive multiplayer coordination problem

Tens of millions of people around the globe consider themselves creators, and the creator economy represents the “fastest-growing type of small business” […] But as the market gets more and more competitive creators are devising new, hyper-specific revenue streams. […] For example, a creator can use NewNew to post a poll asking which sweater they should wear today, or who they should hang out with and where they should go. Fans purchase voting power on NewNew’s platform to participate in the polls, and with enough voting power, they get to watch their favorite influencer live out their wishes, like a real life choose-your-own-adventure game. […] “Have you ever wanted to control my life?” Lev Cameron, 15, a TikToker with 3.3 million followers, asked in a recent video posted to NewNew. “Now is your time. You can actually control things I do throughout the day and vote on it and then I will show you if I end up doing the stuff you voted for.” [NY Times]

One of the most active QAnon networks is in Japan, where followers believe the imperial family has been replaced by body doubles and suggest that World War II-era Emperor Hirohito was a CIA or British agent who owned the patent for the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [..] QAnon also has enormous support in Britain. A survey by civic group Hope Not Hate last year found that 26 percent of Britons believed prominent public figures are part of a pedophile child-trafficking network, while an additional 17 percent said that the pandemic is part of a “depopulation plan” — another favorite QAnon belief around the world. [Washington Post]

Bird migration forecasts in real-time — When, where, and how far will birds migrate?

The secret New York apartment behind my bathroom mirror

Floral Motifs Are Digitally Printed onto Blonde Hair

Preliminary Examination, 3B District Court, March 2, 2021

Back in the 1980s, when DNA forensic analysis was still in its infancy, crime labs needed a speck of bodily fluid—usually blood, semen, or spit—to generate a genetic profile.

That changed in 1997, when Australian forensic scientist Roland van Oorschot stunned the criminal justice world with a nine-paragraph paper titled “DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints.” It revealed that DNA could be detected not just from bodily fluids but from traces left by a touch. Investigators across the globe began scouring crime scenes for anything—a doorknob, a countertop, a knife handle—that a perpetrator may have tainted with incriminating “touch” DNA.

But van Oorschot’s paper also contained a vital observation: Some people’s DNA appeared on things that they had never touched. […]

In one of his lab’s experiments, for instance, volunteers sat at a table and shared a jug of juice. After 20 minutes of chatting and sipping, swabs were deployed on their hands, the chairs, the table, the jug, and the juice glasses, then tested for genetic material. Although the volunteers never touched each other, 50 percent wound up with another’s DNA on their hand. A third of the glasses bore the DNA of volunteers who did not touch or drink from them.

Then there was the foreign DNA—profiles that didn’t match any of the juice drinkers. It turned up on about half of the chairs and glasses, and all over the participants’ hands and the table. The only explanation: The participants unwittingly brought with them alien genes, perhaps from the lover they kissed that morning, the stranger with whom they had shared a bus grip, or the barista who handed them an afternoon latte.

{ Wired | Continue reading }

related { The Hunt for the Golden State Killer and A New Way to Solve Murders }

The U.K.’s B.1.1.7 variant has spread to more than eighty countries and has been doubling every ten days in the U.S., where it is expected to soon become the dominant variant. […] new evidence also suggests that people infected with it have higher viral loads and remain infectious longer, which could have implications for quarantine guidelines. […]

“The fact that different variants have independently hit on the same mutations suggests we’re already seeing the limits of where the virus can go,” McLellan told me. “It has a finite number of options.”

Over time, SARS-CoV-2 is likely to become less lethal, not more. When people are exposed to a virus, they often develop “cross-reactive” immunity that protects them against future infection, not just for that virus, but also for related strains; with time, the virus also exhausts the mutational possibilities that might allow it to infect cells while eluding the immune system’s memory. “This is what we think happened to viruses that cause the common cold,” McLellan said. “It probably caused a major illness in the past. Then it evolved to a place where it’s less deadly. But, of course, it’s still with us.” It’s possible that a coronavirus that now causes the common cold, OC43, was responsible for the “Russian flu” of 1889, which killed a million people. But OC43, like other coronaviruses, became less dangerous with time. Today, most of us are exposed to OC43 and other endemic coronaviruses as children, and we experience only mild symptoms. For SARS-CoV-2, such a future could be years or decades away.

{ New Yorker | Continue reading }

Higher airborne pollen concentrations correlated with increased SARS-CoV-2 infection rates, as evidenced from 31 countries across the globe

[…]

We found that pollen, sometimes in synergy with humidity and temperature, explained, on average, 44% of the infection rate variability. Lockdown halved infection rates under similar pollen concentrations. […]

Pollen grains act on the very site of virus entry, the nasal epithelium, by inhibiting antiviral λ-IFN responses.

{ PNAS | Continue reading }

previously { We conclude that pollen is a predictor for the inverse seasonality of flu-like epidemics including COVID-19 }

wax crayon on paper { Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dog Shit in the Head of the Pope, 1981 }

Queen Elizabeth … a public servant, and an annual recipient of the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant — valued at $107.1 million (£82.2 million) in 2019…

{ CNN | Continue reading }

Male nurse arrested after telling patients gynecological exam was necessary part of COVID-19 testing

The words ‘dopamine’ and ‘mindfulness’ have lost all meaning

fashionable outfits are those that are moderately matched, not those that are ultra-matched or zero-matched

While physical attractiveness was less important to blind men, blind women considered physical attractiveness as important as sighted women.

Children’s Use of Nonverbal Behavior to Detect Deception

Intranasal vaccines might stop the spread of the coronavirus more effectively than needles in arms

the vast majority of people who are vaccinated will be protected from Covid-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, vaccinated people may still be able to transmit the virus, even though they do not display any symptoms.

SARS-CoV-2 was present on the ocular surface in 52 of 91 patients with COVID-19

During Lockdown, Meaningful Activity Is More Fulfilling Than Simply Staying Busy

How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you

I think I know what intelligence is; I think I know how brains do it. And AI is not doing what brains do.

Deciphering Bitcoin Blockchain Data by Cohort Analysis

Why Do NFTs Matter for Music?

Kings of Leon Will Be the First Band to Release an Album as an NFT

This frog’s lungs act like noise cancelling headphones

This thesis addresses a neglected area of castles studies – the spiral stair. [full study | PDF]

Most life on Earth will be killed by lack of oxygen in a billion years

photo { Taryn Simon, The Central Intelligence Agency Main Entrance Hall, CIA Original Headquarters Building, Langley, Virginia, 2003/2007 }

Japan asks China to stop performing anal swab tests for COVID on its citizens

Rooster will appear in court after killing owner during illegal cockfight

People Literally Don’t Know When to Shut Up, or Keep Talking, Study

Google to Stop Selling Ads Based on Your Specific Web Browsing — Citing privacy concerns, Google says it won’t use technologies that track individuals across multiple websites

Humans correctly identified six emotions in three breeds of dogs

Female and Male Reflections on Their Initial Experience of Coitus — “If you could go back in time to your first sexual intercourse, would you want to change anything? If so, what would you change and why?” […] a majority of both males (66.95%) and females (54.00%) reporting they would not want to change anything about their first coital experience. Among respondents who reported a desired change the three primary desired change themes were partner (15.72%), age (8.18%), and location (5.03%)

Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex.

There is a famous anecdote about an experiment once conducted on a group of unsuspecting diners who were served a meal of steak, chips, and peas under dim illumination. Partway through the meal, the lighting was returned to normal levels of illumination, revealing to the guests that the steak they were eating was, in fact, blue, the chips green, and the peas red.

Are Americans Defining Themselves More Politically Over Time? [PDF]

‘When will it end?’ — How a changing virus is reshaping scientists’ views on COVID-19

The Dangers of Brain Science Overdetermining Legal Outcomes

The guidance is for members of the office. It is meant to help them in their task of making it as easy as possible for readers to understand the Bills that we produce. [PDF]

How to Issue a Central Bank Digital Currency

{ First-of-its-kind trial finds psychedelic microdosing is equal to placebo | study | left | right }

Newest Las Vegas ’slot machine’ is 11 stories tall and dispenses used cars

as restaurants increasingly receive takeout orders online and through apps, they face a new challenge called “friendly fraud” or “chargebacks.” In the scam, a customer orders food, often through a delivery service, then receives their meal, but disputes the charge with their credit card company to get a refund.

To fight climate change, save the whales, some scientists say — In death, whales carry the tons of carbon stored in their massive bodies down to rest on the seafloor, where it can remain for centuries. Whale excrement fertilizes the ocean, producing large phytoplankton blooms that absorb enormous amounts of carbon dioxide.

Men more than women report regret passing up short-term sexual opportunities (inaction regret), while women regret having had sexual encounters (action regret). will men who regret passing up sex engage in more short-term sex following regret? Will women who regret short-term encounters either choose better quality partners, reduce number of one-night stands or shift their strategy to long-term relationships? There was no clear evidence for the proposed functional shifts in sexual behavior.

Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome

Stanford researchers identify four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their simple fixes (Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is highly intense. Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time is fatiguing. Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility. The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.)

Huge, Global Study of Plastic Toys Finds Over 100 Substances That May Harm Children

How to become a super memorizer – and what it does to your brain

Arnold came across something called the Paranormal Challenge, a contest offering $250,000 to anyone offering indisputable proof of supernatural abilities. Over the years it’s devised experiments to test people who claim they can read minds, dim lights with the power of their brains, and peer, X-ray-like, through people’s skin. So far none have passed the test or claimed the prize.

Researchers virtually open and read sealed historic letters

Scientists begin building highly accurate digital twin of our planet

How Andy Warhol Became the Most Important American Modern Artist

Banks in Germany Tell Customers to Take Deposits Elsewhere — Interest rates have been negative in Europe for years. But it took the flood of savings unleashed in the pandemic for banks finally to charge depositors in earnest.

The first AI-written play, “AI: When a robot writes a play,” tells the journey of a robot who goes out into the world to learn about society, human emotions, and even death. The script was created by a widely available artificial intelligence (AI) system called GPT-2. Created by Elon Musk’s company OpenAI, this “robot” is a computer model designed to generate text by drawing from the enormous repository of information available on the internet.

Goldman Sachs restarts cryptocurrency desk amid bitcoin boom

Bitcoin could in the future become the preferred currency for international trade or face a “speculative implosion”

Recently, a botnet that researchers have been following for about two years began using a new way to prevent command-and-control server takedowns: by camouflaging one of its IP addresses in the bitcoin blockchain.

The NFT frenzy

How a 10-second video clip sold for $6.6 million

Body Ballet by Nude Robot

NASA hid secret messages in the Perseverance parachute

Draw an iceberg and see how it will float.

Fisher-Price® My Home Office — Better grab a latte to go, that report is due this morning

{ if you or someone nearby are being brutalized by a police Spot robot and can get a hand or something underneath, grab this handle and yank it forward. This releases the battery, instantly disabling the robot. | sleep paralysis demon | Continue reading }

Veterinary techs distribute food every morning to more than 5,000 monkeys at the Tulane University National Primate Research Center outside New Orleans. […] Mr. Lewis, the chief executive of Bioqual, was responsible for providing lab monkeys to pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, which needed the animals to develop their Covid-19 vaccines.

Unable to furnish scientists with monkeys, which can cost more than $10,000 each, about a dozen companies were left scrambling for research animals at the height of the pandemic. […] The latest shortage has revived talk about creating a strategic monkey reserve in the United States, an emergency stockpile similar to those maintained by the government for oil and grain. […]

No country can make up for what China previously supplied. Before the pandemic, China provided over 60 percent of the 33,818 primates, mostly cynomolgus macaques, imported into the United States in 2019.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { Drunk monkey sentenced to life behind bars after attacking 250 humans }