The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild. […] They included young people with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.

why we won’t know for weeks how dangerous Omicron is

“What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?”, a Trump admin official reportedly asked. — Sculpture of Donald Trump’s face carved into Mount Rushmore has been pictured at his office in Mar-a-Lago

New plastic made from DNA is biodegradable and easy to recycle

“It is currently possible to drive a mid-size electric car 1.8 million kilometres using the same energy it takes to mine one single Bitcoin” Europe must ban Bitcoin mining to hit the 1.5C Paris climate goal, say Swedish regulators

In the early 2010s, the leading music-intelligence company was the Echo Nest, which Spotify acquired in 2014. Founded in the MIT Media Lab in 2005, the Echo Nest developed algorithms that could measure recorded music using a set of parameters similar to Serrà’s, including ones with clunky names like acousticness, danceability, instrumentalness, and speechiness. To round out their models, the algorithms could also scour the internet for and semantically analyze anything written about a given piece of music. The goal was to design a complete fingerprint of a song: to reduce music to data to better guide consumers to songs they would enjoy. By the time Spotify bought the Echo Nest, it claimed to have analyzed more than 35 million songs, using a trillion data points. […] The result is that users keep encountering similar content because the algorithms keep recommending it to us.

“Ghost particles” detected in the Large Hadron Collider for first time

The Pigeon Puzzle: How Do They Figure Out Their Impossibly Long Routes Home?

Back when it was normal to advertise cocaine gadgets in magazines, 1970-1980

Changes in Penile-Vaginal Intercourse Frequency and Sexual Repertoire from 2009 to 2018 Compared to adult participants in the 2009 NSSHB, adults in the 2018 NSSHB were significantly more likely to report no PVI in the prior year (28% in 2018 vs. 24% in 2009). A similar difference in proportions reporting no PVI in the prior year was observed among 14–17-year-old adolescents (89% in 2018 vs. 79% in 2009). Additionally, for both adolescents and adults, we observed decreases in all modes of partnered sex queried and, for adolescents, decreases in solo masturbation.

Big data study suggests the human brain navigates by taking the “pointiest path” rather than the shortest path

Sometimes we want vicious friends: Friend preferences are target-specific

People mistake the internet’s knowledge for their own

Narcissism was surprisingly the strongest predictor, and intelligence showed a negative relationship with belief in astrology

Belief in astrology is on the rise, although the reasons behind this are unclear. We tested whether individual personality traits could predict such epistemically unfounded beliefs. Tracking the Air Exhaled by an Opera Singer

“The NFT Bay” — it appears that the 10GB of “data” is nothing of value and the Torrent really is effectively empty

Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia. — Keyboards weren’t designed for Khmer. So Cambodians have just decided to ignore them

Your Fingerprint Can Be Hacked For $5

Singapore’s tech-utopia dream is turning into a surveillance state nightmare

In “the trial of the century,” a Houston socialite was accused of plotting her husband’s murder—and of having an affair with her nephew. But Candace Mossler was only getting started.

In August 2014, a padded FedEx envelope arrived at the Calgary International Airport. It had been shipped from an address in Levittown, Pennsylvania, and on the customs form it had been labelled “Book.” As it was being sorted, a customs agent saw the package move. Inside the envelope was a slim cardboard box with holes along its sides. Inside that box were two small fabric pouches with duct-taped edges. An agent carefully opened the pouches into a plastic mail-carrying bin. Golf ball–size baby turtles emerged.

Adele gets Spotify to take shuffle button off all album pages

A man high on drugs swallowed a thermometer. Doctors didn’t remove it, because they thought he was talking nonsense. It remained lodged in him for 5 years. Luckily he had the sense to pour the mercury out before swallowing it

“The NFT Bay” Shares Multi-Terabyte Archive of ‘Pirated’ NFTs

NFTs are only valuable as tools for money laundering, tax evasion, and greater fool investment fraud.

We argue that rather than being a wholly random event, birthdays are sometimes selected by parents.

Drawing a hopscotch board on a sidewalk or street in Anoka, Minneapolis is now against the law

The central symptom in the case history is the delusion that the patient has already lived through this life once.

Where people around the world find meaning in life

Pure 100% fruit juices –- A review of the evidence of their effect on risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity

The FDA has asked a federal judge to make the public wait until the year 2076 to disclose all of the data and information it relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

In recent years, Amazon.com Inc has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers

Tiny hidden spy cameras concealed in sensitive locations including hotels and bathrooms are becoming a significant threat worldwide. These hidden cameras are easily purchasable and are extremely difficult to find with the naked eye due to their small form factor. The state-of-the-art solutions that aim to detect these cameras are limited as they require specialized equipment and yield low detection rates. To overcome these limitations, we present LAPD, a novel hidden camera detection and localization system that leverages the time-of-flight (ToF) sensor on commodity smartphones.

Ghost guns — untraceable firearms without serial numbers, assembled from components bought online — are increasingly becoming the lethal weapon of easy access for those legally barred from buying or owning guns around the country. […] Over the past 18 months, the officials said, ghost guns accounted for 25 to 50 percent of firearms recovered at crime scenes. […] Ghost guns, and the niche industry that produces them, have flourished because of a loophole in federal regulation: The parts used to build “privately made firearms” are classified as components, not actual guns, which means that online buyers are not required to undergo background checks or register the weapons. [NY Times]

A. Dneprov: “The Game” (originally published in 1961)

Lawsuit over Subway tuna now says chicken, pork, cattle DNA were detected

The great organic food fraud

The US Treasury Is Buying Private App Data to Target and Investigate People

“cruising” activity and its environmental impacts on a protected coastal dunefield

Response Behaviors of Svalbard Reindeer Towards Humans and Humans Disguised as Polar Bears

Silk modified to reflect sunlight keeps skin 12.5°C cooler than cotton. It is the first fabric to be developed that stays colder than the surrounding air when in sunlight.

Are scented candles harmful to your health? […] while scented candles do produce various vapors and particles that can be unsafe to inhale at high doses, research suggests that with typical use, the dose you get is far below what is considered harmful to your health. […] “under normal conditions of use, scented candles do not pose known health risks to the consumer.” (It’s important to note that while this study’s conclusion is consistent with others, few studies have looked into the health effects from burning scented candles in general. And most, including this one, were conducted by researchers affiliated with the candle industry. But independent researchers have said that the findings are solid.) [NY Times]

Like many men of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Beethoven suffered from a plethora of other illnesses and ailments. […] chronic abdominal pain and diarrhea that might have been due to an inflammatory bowel disorder, depression, alcohol abuse, respiratory problems, joint pain, eye inflammation, and cirrhosis of the liver. This last problem, given his prodigious drinking, may have been the final domino that toppled him into the grave. Bedridden for months, he died in 1827, most likely from liver and kidney failure, peritonitis, abdominal ascites, and encephalopathy. An autopsy revealed severe cirrhosis and dilatation of the auditory and other related nerves in the ear. […] A young musician named Ferdinand Hiller snipped off a lock of hair from the great composer’s head as a keepsake — a common custom at the time. The lock stayed within the Hiller family for nearly a century before somehow making its way to the tiny fishing village of Gilleleje, in Nazi-controlled Denmark and into the hands of the local physician there, Kay Fremming. The doctor helped save the lives of hundreds of Jews escaping Denmark and the Nazis for Sweden, which was about 10 miles across the Øresund Strait, the narrow channel separating the two nations. The theory is that one of these Jewish refugees, perhaps a relative of Ferdinand Hiller, either gave Dr. Fremming the lock of Beethoven’s hair or used it as a payment of some kind. At any rate, the doctor bequeathed the lock, consisting of 582 strands, to his daughter, who subsequently put it up for auction in 1994. It was purchased by an Arizona urologist named Alfredo Guevera for about $7,000. Guevera kept 160 strands. The remaining 422 strands were donated to the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California. […] They put the brown, gray and white strands through a number of imaging, DNA, chemical, forensic and toxicology tests. There was no trace of morphine, mercury or arsenic but there was an abnormally elevated lead level, potentially indicating chronic lead poisoning, which could have caused Beethoven’s deafness, even though it does not explain his multiple other disorders. Further studies suggest he probably drank from a goblet containing lead. It should also be noted that wine of that era often contained lead as a sweetener. [PBS]

The moon’s top layer alone has enough oxygen to sustain 8 billion people for 100,000 years

hackers are collecting sensitive, encrypted data now in the hope that they’ll be able to unlock it at some point in the future. The threat comes from quantum computers. The complexity of quantum computers could make them much faster at certain tasks, allowing them to solve problems that remain practically impossible for modern machines—including breaking many of the encryption algorithms currently used to protect sensitive data such as personal, trade, and state secrets.

A man has been rescued after being trapped inside the walls of a theatre in Syracuse, New York state.

Man donated his body to science; company sold $500 tickets to his dissection

The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones” where residents breathe carcinogens. ProPublica reveals where these places are in a first-of-its-kind map and data analysis.

Cardi B may have been onto something when she famously proclaimed that “a hoe never gets cold” — A new study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology has confirmed why scantily clad women are less likely to catch a chill than their covered-up counterparts.

California condors almost went extinct. Now, scientists say, they can reproduce without males.

How Pinterest utterly ruined photo search on the internet

The Lenna image may be relatively unknown in pop culture today, but in the engineering world, it remains an icon.

Timeline of the human condition

ant-mimicking spiders

sex offender opened door nude, invited trick-or-treaters inside

Sexual Practices and Satisfaction of Lesbian and Heterosexual Women In their last sexual encounter, lesbian women were more likely to say “I love you,” have sex longer than 30 min, and engage in gentle kissing

“Drinking To Cope” Doesn’t Work, Even When We Believe That It Does

Religion and spirituality are not important psychosocial factors influencing body weight

In a somewhat bizarre set of survey data from 2015, 33 percent of Millennials identified as Gen X, and 8 percent said that they were Boomers. […] Worse, consultants and marketing experts take advantage of the appetite for these sorts of narratives by framing generations monolithically and presenting themselves to clients as authorities on entire segments of the population. […] The dividing lines between generations are a figment of our collective imagination.

A fake gravesite in a real cemetery has made appearances in several films and TV shows over the past 30 years

The Real-Life Whale That Gave Moby Dick His Name

A Literary History of Witches

The COSO male birth control device uses an ultrasound “testicle bath” to temporary stop sperm mobility. The device only needs to be used every few months to keep the sperm inert and prevent eggs from being fertilized during sex.

new study demonstrates how the colors of the giant panda’s fur help it to blend into the background very effectively

Given how inopportune a bout of diarrhea would be in the midst of world-saving action, it is striking that Bond is seen washing his hands on only two occasions, despite numerous exposures to foodborne pathogens

Scientists discover new phase of water, known as “superionic ice,” inside planets

The Only Instrumental Record Ever Banned by US Radio

An NFT Just Sold for $532 Million, making it the biggest sale on record. The sale, however, was illegitimate as the owner bought it for themselves.

Like π and other transcendental numbers, e has an infinite decimal representation — its digits go on forever without any discernible pattern.

Inside, Mr. Pierrat found a literary treasure trove: long-lost manuscripts by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the acclaimed but equally reviled French author who wrote classics like “Journey to the End of the Night,” published in 1932, as well as virulently antisemitic tracts. […] Céline always maintained that the manuscripts had been stolen from his Paris apartment after he escaped to Germany in 1944, fearing that he would be punished as a collaborator when the Allies liberated the city. […] David Alliot, a literary researcher, said the issue for many French was that while Céline was a “literary genius,” he was a deeply flawed human being. […]

Mr. Thibaudat said he was given the manuscripts by an undisclosed benefactor, or benefactors — he declined to elaborate — about 15 years ago. But he had kept the stash secret, waiting for Céline’s widow to die, at the request of the benefactor, whose wish was that an “antisemitic family” would not profit from the trove, he said in an interview. […]

the manuscripts includes the complete version of the novel “Casse-pipe,” partly published in 1949, and a previously unknown novel titled “Londres” […]

With his lawyer by his side, Mr. Thibaudat met Céline’s heirs in June 2020. It did not go well. Mr. Thibaudat suggested that the manuscripts be given to a public institution to make them accessible to researchers. François Gibault, 89, and Véronique Chovin, 69, the heirs to Céline’s work through their connections as friends to the family, were outraged, and sued Mr. Thibaudat, demanding compensation for years of lost revenues.

“Fifteen years of non-exploitation of such books is worth millions of euros,” said Jérémie Assous, the lawyer and longtime friend of Céline’s heirs. “He’s not protecting his source, he’s protecting a thief.”

In July, Mr. Thibaudat finally handed over the manuscripts on the orders of prosecutors. During a four-hour interview with the police, Mr. Thibaudat refused to name his source. The investigation is continuing.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Two in five Americans say ghosts exist — and one in five say they’ve encountered one

After targeting verticals like hotels and apartment complexes, Amazon is now rolling out new solutions for healthcare providers and senior living centers

The way finance works now is that things are valuable not based on their cash flows but on their proximity to Elon Musk […] Hertz Global Holdings Inc., barely four months out of bankruptcy, placed an order for 100,000 Teslas in the first step of an ambitious plan to electrify its rental-car fleet.

“A Moron in a Hurry” is a formalized legal term used in the UK and Canada and the US. The phrase is typically used in cases of copyright infringement – examining the question of whether a moron in a hurry would spot the difference (or similarity) of two products or services.

Studies suggest that it takes at least a decade to achieve real expertise. MasterClass promises transformation in a few hours.

87% of excess lung cancer risk eliminated if smokers quit before age 45 […] 78% if they quit between ages 45 and 54 […] excess risk of cancer death was erased if they quit by age 35 […] Smoking raises the risk of numerous cancers, Thomson noted — including colon, kidney, bladder, stomach and pancreatic cancer. But lung cancer is the top cancer killer among smokers.

Inside the room it’s so silent that the background noise measured is actually negative decibels

We describe a population of individuals who chose to undergo medical and/or surgical transition and then detransitioned by discontinuing medications, having surgery to reverse the effects of transition, or both [PDF]

Egyptian security forces detains Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist, in fear she is part of spying plot

Officials Use Contraceptives to Control Pablo Escobar’s Hippos

Pablo Escobar’s 80 hippos are the first non-human creatures to be legally considered people by a U.S. court

Steak knife made from hardened wood is 3 times sharper than steel

How much sex do porn stars want to have off-set?

Rock Paper Scissors Deluxe Edition costs $29, includes actual rock, paper and scissors

Fraudsters Deepfaked Company Director’s Voice In $35 Million Bank Heist

Startup is creating personalized deepfakes for corporations — Major companies in India are using Rephrase.ai to create avatars of celebrities and executives, and commercial use is coming soon.

Japanese police arrested a 43-year-old man for using artificial intelligence to effectively unblur pixelated porn videos. Penises and vaginas are pixelated in Japanese porn because an obscenity law forbids the explicit depictions of genitalia.

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week [“When people can not change things, they change the words” –Jean Jaurès]

Donald Trump Does a SPAC Deal — I think that a more realistic valuation method here is not to worry about cash flows at all — as Trump SPAC clearly does not — and treat the stock simply as a token of public interest in Donald Trump.

A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing company. Also known as “blank check companies,” SPACs have been around for decades, but their popularity has soared in recent years.

Poaching drove the evolution of tusk-free elephants — Researchers have identified genetic factors that stop tusk development

There are some scattered laboratory studies that suggest being cold might weaken the immune system, making us more vulnerable to those viruses. A 2017 study found that immune cells that are chilled are less effective at fighting off viruses, at least in a lab dish […] In a 2005 study by other researchers, college students whose feet were soaked in cold water for 20 minutes a day were more likely to get sick than those not exposed to the cold. [NY Times] More: Contrary to popular belief, cold weather cannot make you sick, at least not directly.

Merkins are wigs for the pubic area

Facial recognition cameras installed in UK school canteens

Hooters under fire over new ‘crotch string’ uniform shorts

According to economist George Taylor’s hemline index theory, the length of women’s skirts and dresses can be indicative of the direction of financial markets. Meaning, hemlines rise in times of economic prosperity and elongate when the economy slows.

Is the Hemline Index Actually Real?

Emotion in relation to ham varied. FaceReader was used to determine the facial expression.

Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers.

Piece by piece, the mythology around ridesharing is falling apart. Uber and Lyft promised ubiquitous self-driving cars by as soon as this year. They promised an end to private car ownership. They promised to reduce congestion in the largest cities. They promised consistently affordable rides. They promised to boost public transit use. They promised profitable business models. They promised a surfeit of well-paying jobs. Heck, they even promised flying cars. Well, none of that has gone as promised. […] Uber and Lyft envisioned a future where software algorithms would push each car to host three or more passengers, easing traffic and providing a complement to public transit options. Instead, […] The duration of traffic jams increased by nearly 5 percent in urban areas since Uber and Lyft moved in. […] The efficiencies of ride hailing were supposed to all but end car ownership — instead vehicle sales are on the rise again this year, after a down year in 2020. [NY Times]

When companies start secret projects it’s common that everyone involved has to sign an NDA [Non-disclosure agreement]. The development of the original iPhone was so secret that people had to sign an NDA in order to sign the iPhone’s NDA

People Are Taking Out Loans Against Their NFTs—And Defaulting

Disguises and the Origins of Clothing

Sexual vocalization was most frequent during penetration itself compared with other forms of sexual activities, which supports its signaling function. The most frequently reported sexual vocalizations were moaning/groaning, followed by screams and instructional commands, squeals, and words. About 38% of females reported that they pretended vocalization.

Congenitally blind participants facially imitate smiles heard in speech, despite having never seen a facial expression

Research finds that creative ideas are generated by two cognitive pathways: insight and persistence […] people’s beliefs about creativity undervalue persistence and overvalue insight

The proliferation of homemade “ghost guns” has skyrocketed in Los Angeles. […] The weapons typically are made of polymer parts created with 3D printing technology and can be assembled using kits at home. They often are relatively inexpensive. Because they are not made by licensed manufacturers, they lack serial numbers, making them impossible to track.

Most wildfires are started by humans – downed powerlines, an unattended campfire, a flat tire that sends sparks into dry brush. But arson – the criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property – isn’t all that common. In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, arson was found to be the cause of about 9% of the 3,086 fires Cal Fire responded to, and responsible for 2% of all acres burned that year.

How to Fire Frank Lloyd Wright — “1½ feet is not enough space between the tub and the wall. I wonder how many bathrooms Mr. Wright has cleaned.”

Andrew Clemens (1857 – 1894) was a sand artist […] He would collect naturally colored grains of sand […] Clemens separated the sand grains into piles, by color, and used them to form the basis for his art. [more]

It’s not the first time drones rained down from the skies [Thanks Tim]

Police find accused prosthetic leg thief with leg strapped to head

Demi Lovato thinks the term ‘aliens’ is ‘derogatory’ to extraterrestrials

Psychedelic use associated with lower odds of heart disease and diabetes, study finds [full study]

studies have demonstrated a decrease in brain pH (meaning the conditions are more acidic) in neuropsychiatric disorders

Do the easy boring job regularly, instead of the hard scary job in a panic

Already own a trained arabian hunting falcon? Collateralize it. Secure a loan financing another falcon. That falcon? Collateralize it too. They can be trained to disarm an active shooter.

It’s our cashier, Sheila’s, birthday today!

Artist who squirts paint with his eyes destroys canvases to create NFTs

We trained two monkeys to play the Pac-Man

They fed forty ducks a diet of commercial duck mash salted with powdered depleted uranium. None of the ducks died of it, or got sick, or even lost weight. Moreover, the researchers reported, the ducks “were in fair to excellent flesh” when slaughtered.

Forty-one percent of children claimed that bacon came from a plant

Norway to hit 100 per cent electric vehicle sales early next year

Johns Hopkins researchers find thousands of unknown chemicals in electronic cigarettes

Italian sailors knew of America 150 years before Christopher Columbus, new analysis of ancient documents suggests

Compared to vegans, meat consumers experienced both lower depression and anxiety

How to Grow Your Bangs Out So Much You Escape the Surveillance State [Thanks Tim]

Porn star Belle Delphine makes $1.2 million in a month with OnlyFans. Delphine is perhaps best known for her “gamer girl bathwater” stunt where she sold $30 jars of her own used bathwater

Old NY mobsters fear handing over the reins to the new generation of mafiosi because they’re softer and dumber —and are too obsessed with their cellphones

US man sues ‘Psychic Love Specialist’ for fraud, seeks US$25,000 in damages. He paid her US$5,100 to remove spell by witch hired by ex-girlfriend.

Stare at a blank wall in any room, and you are unlikely to learn much more than the paint color. But a new technology can inconspicuously scan the same surface for shadows and reflections imperceptible to the human eye, then analyze them to determine details, including how many people are in the room—and what they are doing.

Because single-use plastics are largely derived from petroleum, by 2050 plastics might account for 20% of the world’s annual oil consumption. Reducing our dependence on plastics, and finding ways to reuse the plastic that’s already out in the world, could greatly reduce emissions. Right now, only about 15% of all plastics worldwide are collected for recycling each year.

We’ve long assumed that one of the fundamental functions of the brain is its ability to store memories, thus allowing animals, including humans, to alter behaviour in light of past experience. If the seat of all memory was truly the brain, then to ensure long-term stability of stored information, the brain cells and their circuits would need to remain stable, like the books on your bookshelf. If someone started to tear pages out from these books, not only would the books be seriously damaged but you would have lost forever these books’ contents. Yet, animals such as the planaria that exhibit a remarkable capacity to quickly regrow new body parts, including their brains, confront us with a fascinating question: how can fixed memories persist when bodies and even brains do not? […] Some biologists have succeeded in chopping up one planarian into 279 pieces. Each tiny piece eventually formed a miniature complete worm, which grew in time to its normal size of up to ¾ inches, depending on the species and the availability of food.

Birds Have a Mysterious ‘Quantum Sense’. Scientists Have Now Seen It in Action

Hundreds of three-eyed ‘dinosaur shrimp’ emerge after Arizona monsoon — Their eggs can stay dormant for decades, waiting for water

Disney cancels Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp reboot

A week in Lagos — The Nigerian megacity is a massive experiment – unregulated and wild, with endless traffic jams, waterfront slums and an impressively resilient population.

Offshore havens and hidden riches of world leaders and billionaires exposed in unprecedented leak [More]

The documents reveal a company [Facebook] worried that it is losing power and influence, not gaining it, with its own research showing that many of its products aren’t thriving organically. Instead, it is going to increasingly extreme lengths to improve its toxic image, and to stop users from abandoning its apps in favor of more compelling alternatives. […] What I’m talking about is a kind of slow, steady decline that anyone who has ever seen a dying company up close can recognize. [NY Times]

i have stolen over 4 terabytes of NFTs via the little known hacker technique known as “right click -> save as”. my collection has a net estimated value of over 8 trillion dollars

A Danish Museum Lent an Artist $84,000 to Reproduce an Old Work About Labor. Instead, He Pocketed It and Called It Conceptual Art [Thanks Tim!]

Woman charged for crying during surgery […] an $11 charge for “Brief Emotion” and a billing code of CPT Code 96127. […] “CPT Code 96127: How to Increase Revenue with This NEW Behavioral or Emotional Assessment” CPT Code 96127 “is a code that may be used to report brief behavioral or emotional assessments for reimbursement” and “may be billed four times for each patient per visit, utilizing four different instruments or assessments. So not only will clinicians have more efficient practices by utilizing these screenings, but they can also use them to build revenue.”

A Brooklyn NYPD stationhouse became flooded after a sergeant tossed a set of patrol car keys to a colleague and accidentally struck a ceiling sprinkler

A missing man in Turkey accidentally joined a search party for hours before realising he was the person they were looking for

There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data — A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’smovements

The new dot com bubble is called online advertising [2019]

Apple Pay with Visa Hacked to Make Payments via Locked iPhones — Researchers have demonstrated that someone could use a stolen, locked iPhone to pay for thousands of dollars of goods or services, no authentication needed

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a computer model of wealth creation confirms.

The U.S. was ranked first among nations in pandemic preparedness but has among the highest death rates in the industrialized world. […] More Americans have been killed by the new coronavirus than the influenza pandemic of 1918, despite a century of intervening medical advancement. […] the U.S. had “failed to sustain progress in any coherent manner” in its capacity to handle infectious diseases.

Lead contamination found in blood of half of young kids in U.S.

Why do people eat the same breakfast every day?

At first blush, condemnation of other individuals’ drug use can seem puzzling because one individual’s use of drugs has little to no impact on an observer’s outcomes. Recent work aimed at solving this puzzle suggests that much of the variability in drug condemnation overlaps with orientations toward a more versus less committed sexual strategy, presumably because of associations between drug use and casual sex. For example, adolescent recreational drug use covaries with earlier sexual debut, more sexual partners, and engaging in unprotected sex, and recreational drugs are often used at events where people seek out uncommitted sex. People who invest heavily in long-term, committed relationships have more to lose in social ecologies that afford opportunities for mate switching or so-called extrapair copulations, and people who pursue short-term mates benefit from such ecologies. Hence, individuals who are more commitment oriented should support rules that shift the social ecology toward high commitment in relationships. Individuals who are less commitment oriented should resist such rules because they would be the targets of condemnation and punishment simply for engaging in their preferred sexual behaviors. Accordingly, findings indicate that sexual strategy (i.e., being more vs. less open to sex outside of a committed relationship) relates to moral views toward contraception and abortion, pornography, and same-sex marriage. […] Results are consistent with the proposal that some moral sentiments are calibrated to promote strategic sexual interests, which arise partially via genetic factors.

New study uncovers consistent patterns in the metaphors that people use to describe God

How an eccentric engineer at the Beatles’ record company invented the CT scan

Beethoven began to lose his hearing at age 28. By age 44, his hearing loss was complete, most likely caused by compression of the eighth cranial nerve associated with Paget’s disease of bone. Beethoven’s head became large, and he had a prominent forehead, a large jaw, and a protruding chin (see picture)—features that are consistent with Paget’s disease. Eventually, his hat and shoes did not fit because of bone enlargement.

Beethoven never finished his 10th Symphony. AI just did

The Church of Ambrosia is a nondenominational, interfaith religious organization that supports the use and safe access of all Entheogenic Plants, with a focus on Cannabis and Magic Mushrooms. More: Zide Door is a Church in Oakland supporting the safe access and use of Entheogenic Plants. We follow a nondenominational, interfaith religion, The Church of Ambrosia

The world’s first gold-plated hotel tower in Hanoi has a golden shower on its rooftop terrace

This past winter, Goldman Sachs was closing in on a $40 million investment in Ozy, a digital media company founded in 2013, and there seemed to be a lot of reasons to do the deal. Ozy boasted of a large audience for its general interest website, its newsletters and its videos, and the company had a charismatic chief executive, Carlos Watson, a onetime cable news anchor who had worked at Goldman Sachs early in his career. And, crucially, Ozy said it had a great relationship with YouTube, where many of its videos attracted more than a million views.

That’s what the Zoom videoconference on Feb. 2 that Ozy arranged between the Goldman Sachs asset management division and YouTube was supposed to be about. The scheduled participants included Alex Piper, the head of unscripted programming for YouTube Originals. He was running late and apologized to the Goldman Sachs team, saying he’d had trouble logging onto Zoom, and he suggested that the meeting be moved to a conference call […] Once everyone had made the switch to an old-fashioned conference call, the guest told the bankers what they had been wanting to hear: that Ozy was a great success on YouTube, racking up significant views and ad dollars, and that Mr. Watson was as good a leader as he seemed to be. As he spoke, however, the man’s voice began to sound strange to the Goldman Sachs team, as though it might have been digitally altered, the four people said.

After the meeting, someone on the Goldman Sachs side reached out to Mr. Piper, not through the Gmail address that Mr. Watson had provided before the meeting, but through Mr. Piper’s assistant at YouTube. […] A confused Mr. Piper told the Goldman Sachs investor that he had never spoken with her before. Someone else, it seemed, had been playing the part of Mr. Piper on the call with Ozy. […]

Within days, Mr. Watson had apologized profusely to Goldman Sachs, saying the voice on the call belonged to Samir Rao, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Ozy, according to the four people.

In his apology to Goldman Sachs and in an email to me on Friday, Mr. Watson attributed the incident to a mental health crisis and shared what he said were details of Mr. Rao’s diagnosis.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Home delivery drones in Australia had to be suspended after they were repeatedly attacked by birds

Crypto-Trading Hamster Performs Better Than Warren Buffett And The S&P 500

Illegal massage parlors outnumber Starbucks 2 to 1 in NYC

This ballistics study examines whether saline breast implants can decrease tissue penetration in firearm injuries

I argue that much of the unconsciousness of high-level cognition is plausibly due to internal inattentional blindness […] In other words, rather than being structurally unconscious, many higher mental processes might instead be “preconscious”, and would become conscious if a person attended to them.

Extinction of Indigenous languages leads to loss of exclusive knowledge about medicinal plants

San Francisco’s bizarre, costly quest for the perfect trash can — Rather than use off-the-shelf models, San Francisco has engaged in a years-long process to design cans that’ll cost thousands of dollars apiece. And it’s not nearly done.

Engineer Devises “UFO Patents” for the U.S. Navy — The patents include designs for a futuristic hybrid vehicle with a radical propulsion system that would work equally well in the air, underwater, and in space, as well as a compact fusion reactor, a gravitational wave generator, and even a “spacetime modification weapon” […] it’s evident that the tech necessary to actually create the devices described is beyond our current capabilities.

a succession of women appeared in public performance as Circassian beauties, with a carefully crafted foreign allure and a particular visual script: voluminous Afro-like hair, exoticized peasant costumes, a bit of skin (more as time went on: dresses eventually gave way to ruffly shorts and tights), and a name that usually began with the letter “Z” — Zula Zeleah, Zoe Zobedia, Zuruby Hannum, and Zobeide Luti, to name a few.