How a doctor’s two-decade quest to grow the penis is leaving some men desperate and disfigured

Are blind individuals immune to bodily illusions? Somatic rubber hand illusion in the blind revisited

Marx is more than just a competitive gun-disarmer and martial artist. He is also a former Marine, a self-proclaimed exorcist, and an author and filmmaker. He also helped launch the Skull Games, a privatized intelligence outfit that purports to hunt pedophiles, sex traffickers, and other “demonic activity” using a blend of sock-puppet social media accounts and commercial surveillance tools — including face recognition software.

Forget subtitles: YouTube now dubs videos with AI-generated voices

10 Cities With Their Own Psychological Disorders — Less well known, Lima Syndrome describes the exact opposite of Stockholm Syndrome—that is, the captors develop positive attachments to their hostages.

— Scientists are finding ways to help people sober up faster and feel fewer bad effects

The reshuffling of neurons during fruit fly metamorphosis suggests that larval memories don’t persist in adults

In The Future, Death Will Be Different

Knife Throwing Machine [Accuracy Testing Trick Shots]

38-year-old Florida manatee dies after ‘high-intensity’ sex with brother

Reverse cowgirl: the world’s most dangerous sexual position

People see themselves differently from how they see others. They are immersed in their own sensations, emotions, and cognitions at the same time that their experience of others is dominated by what can be observed externally. This basic asymmetry has broad consequences. It leads people to judge themselves and their own behavior differently from how they judge others and those others’ behavior. Often, those differences produce disagreement and conflict. Understanding the psychological basis of those differences may help mitigate some of their negative effects. [PDF]

Mind-reading machines are coming — how can we keep them in check?

Meta’s Reality Labs, which develops virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, has lost more than $21 billion since 2022

Every major subscription streaming company has increased its prices in the past year in an effort to address Wall Street’s push for profits. The average consumer is willing to pay roughly $42 monthly for streaming services, according to a recent survey.

The secret economics of the Birkin bag

Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons

Between psychopathy and deviant socialization: A close look at the mafia men

“I met Iggy Pop at Max’s Kansas City in 1970 or 1971,” recalled David Bowie. “Me, Iggy and Lou Reed at one table with absolutely nothing to say to each other, just looking at each other’s eye makeup.” William Burroughs smoking in a corner with Allen Ginsberg. Twiggy and Mick Jagger and Dennis Hopper — dancing to live performances upstairs like the Velvet Underground (performing at Max’s during their last days), Bob Marley or a young Bruce Springsteen on acoustic guitar.

Mind Grenade

Vintage Las Vegas

Doctors reattach boy’s head after car accident thanks to ‘amazing’ surgery

Want fewer car accidents? Remove traffic signals and road signs

An alleged killer joined a Facebook group for passing on kids’ items to find pregnant mothers and possibly kidnap them, according to a search warrant. Some moms in the group say neither the FBI nor Meta informed them that their data was caught up in a murder investigation.

Artificial intelligence is helping American cops look for “suspicious” patterns of movement, digging through license plate databases with billions of records. A drug trafficking case in New York has uncloaked — and challenged — one of the biggest rollouts of the controversial technology to date.

Increased exercise or daily steps were associated with better sleep quality (for example, faster sleep onset and less time awake in bed), especially in countries like the U.S. and Finland.

Fully AI-Generated Influencers Are Getting Thousands of Reactions Per Thirst Trap

Nearly six years after his mysterious disappearance, on September 4th, 2019, xkcdHatGuy emerged from oblivion, looking older but with his unmistakable voice intact

facekinis

The man who won the lottery 14 times — How a rogue Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery and won millions of dollars around the world.

Half of U.S. beaches are contaminated with poop

Something in space has been lighting up every 22 minutes since 1988 We have no idea what kind of physics or what kind of objects can power that.

advanced tips and tricks for effective Internet research of papers/books

Managing Kitchen Fruit Flies with a Little Shop of Horrors

Book of the Civilized Man (13th century) (“Do not attack your enemy while he is squatting to defecate,” “sit up straight”, “do not put your elbows on the table”)

The Greater Fool Theory

German ‘king’ jailed after court refuses him immunity as ‘head of state’

Phone numbers for airlines listed on Google directed to scammers

The United States Air Force is investigating a company that’s purchased $800 million of land near Travis Air Force Base, one of the most critical military bases in the U.S. […] Public records show the company “Flannery Associates LLC” began purchasing land around the military base in 2018. […] Now literally three sides of that base are totally controlled by the Flannery group […] “Where did they get the money where they could pay five to ten times the normal value that others would pay for this farmland?” Even after eight months of investigation, Garamendi says federal authorities are still struggling to get those answers. “To this day we don’t know where these people are coming from”

‘ChatGPT’s evil twin’ WormGPT is devoid of morals and just €60 a month on the darkweb

AI That Teaches Other AI

One million US deaths in 2020 and 1.1 million US deaths in 2021 would have been averted if the United States had the mortality rates of other wealthy nations. About half of these missing Americans died before age 65. The number of excess US deaths relative to peers is unprecedented in modern times, at least since the 1930s. These excess US deaths were a result of a decades-long divergence in mortality from other wealthy nations, beginning in the 1980s, and were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Masters of the Bubbleverse Secretive hedge fund Tiger Global changed the rules on tech investing. Then it all went bad. […] Tiger Global partner Scott Shleifer spent $122.7 million for Donald Trump’s former Palm Beach estate after looking at the house for 15 minutes.

Goldman Sachs has lost over a billion dollars, mostly because of the Apple Card

‘Steve Jobs’ is an Italian company — and Apple can’t do anything about it

Las Vegas’ $2.3 Billion LED Sphere Looked Better in Renderings — the $2.3 billion structure is really only good at displaying spherical objects like planets, gigantic basketballs or jack-o-lanterns

Paper Airplane Tips

Humans are pumping out so much groundwater that it’s changing Earth’s tilt

GPT-4 is getting worse over time, not better. GPT-4 (March 2023) was very good at identifying prime numbers (accuracy 97.6%) but GPT-4 (June 2023) was very poor on these same questions (accuracy 2.4%).

You search Delta Air Lines’ website … the Phoenix-Atlanta flights on the day before the holiday are sold out. Then you see a Delta flight to Orlando, Florida, from Phoenix for $260 per passenger in basic economy with a layover in Atlanta. You decide to book the flight and leave the plane in Atlanta instead of flying to Orlando. This travel hack is called skiplagging. Some passengers use it to save money when the longer route is cheaper than the desired destination.

Teenager detained at Florida airport and accused of ‘skiplagging’ travel hack

VanMoof — the independent e-bike maker that once bragged about being the “most funded e-bike company in the world” — has been declared bankrupt in the Netherlands.

Biotech startup aims to make lab-grown human eggs […] The experimental technology could help women who have lost their eggs to cancer treatment, women who have never been able to produce healthy eggs and women whose eggs are no longer viable because of their age. IVG would enable these women to have their own genetically related babies at any age. That’s because induced pluripotent stem cells can be made from just a single cell from anyone’s skin or blood. So these lab-grown eggs would have that person’s DNA.

loss of smell — known as hyposmia — has emerged as an early indicator of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s

With blackouts imposed across the United Kingdom in a bid to keep German bombers at bay, so came the opportunity for criminals to commit their dark deeds in almost perfect darkness. But did crime levels increase during the Second World War?

Take PinkyDoll, a TikToker with skyrocketing views, who is now known for her NPC streaming performances on the app. Often using the catchphrases, “Ice cream so good” and “Yes, yes, yes!” […] PinkyDoll reportedly makes anything from $2,000 to 3,000 per stream [more]

Actors say Hollywood studios want their AI replicas — for free, forever

Far from being worth trillions of dollars, the Metaverse turned out to be worth absolutely bupkus. It’s not even that the platform lagged behind expectations or was slow to become popular. There wasn’t anyone visiting the Metaverse at all. […] one of the features designed to reward users in Meta’s flagship product Horizon Worlds produced no more than $470 in revenue globally. […] McKinsey claimed that the Metaverse would bring businesses $5 trillion in value. Citi valued it at no less than $13 trillion.

researchers used a series of sonic illusions to show that people perceive silences much as they hear sounds. While the study offers no insight into how our brains might be processing silence, the results suggest that people perceive silence as its own type of “sound,” not just as a gap between noises.

Exposing C-section babies to vaginal fluid boosts their development

aspartame is a ‘possible carcinogen.’ The FDA disagrees

New research puts age of universe at 26.7 billion years, nearly twice as old as previously believed

If 10 percent of the brain is normally used, then damage to other areas should not impair performance. Instead, there is almost no area of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. Even slight damage to small areas of the brain can have profound effects. Brain scans have shown that no matter what one is doing, all brain areas are always active.

Parrots Are Taking Over the World Today at least 60 of the world’s 380 or so parrot species have a breeding population in a country outside their natural geographical range. All are by-products of the pet trade and animal trafficking around the world. Because they’re parrots, they’re smart, adaptable, creative and loud.

Bird nests made from anti-bird spikes

Cat vs snake More: How fast does a snake move during a strike? A 2016 study found that the average strike lasts between 44 and 70 milliseconds … compare it to the the 200 milliseconds it takes you just to blink your eye. A snake can strike faster than we can move ANY part of our bodies. In fact, if you could attain snake super speed, you would simply black out. … The study found that snakes experience forces up to 30G, 30 times the force of gravity when striking their prey. For human comparison, even the most seasoned fighter pilots would lose limb control around 8G, and experience complete black out shortly after reaching 10G.

Welcome to the universe of Hobby Horses

For our first ever production, Claire Hentschker and I attempted to reduce the overly-dimensional film “Avatar 2: Way of the Water” into a single dimension.

NPC streaming

We explored the psychology of those who believe in manifestation: the ability to cosmically attract success in life through positive self-talk, visualization, and symbolic actions […] Those who scored higher on the [Manifestation Scale] perceived themselves as more successful, had stronger aspirations for success, and believed they were more likely to achieve future success. They were also more likely to be drawn to risky investments, have experienced bankruptcy

New Oxford study sheds light on the origin of animals — Animals first occur in the fossil record around 574 million years ago. Their arrival appears as a sudden ‘explosion’ in rocks from the Cambrian period (539 million years ago to 485 million years ago) and seems to counter the typically gradual pace of evolutionary change. Many scientists (including Darwin himself) believe that the first animals actually evolved long before the Cambrian period, but they cannot explain why they are missing from the fossil record.

A recent UK government report suggested that between 11 and 15 percent of consumer electronics reviews on e-commerce platforms are fake — How to Spot Fake Reviews on Amazon

She believes scammers cloned her daughter’s voice in a fake kidnapping

A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA

To acquire a Vision Pro, customers must first schedule a fitting appointment. A special machine and an iPhone app will scan the user’s head so Apple can determine the proper headband and light seal size. Users with glasses must provide the company with prescription data to ensure the headset includes appropriate lenses. Although Apple will sell the Vision Pro at all 270 US Apple Stores, demo stations will initially only be available in major regions like New York or Los Angeles. Furthermore, online purchases will not become available until 2025.

If you’re printing something on actual paper, there’s a good chance it’s important, like a tax form or a job contract. But popular printing products and services won’t promise not to read it. In fact, they won’t even promise not to share it with outside marketing firms.

Twitter rival Threads crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of launch, dethroning ChatGPT as the fastest-growing online platform to hit the milestone.

Death from drinking coconut water — The coconut was preshaved, with visible endosperm (coconut meat) at the top for easy access to the carpels (holes) and the coconut water. A straw was included and used for puncturing the coconut at the time of consumption. Recommended storage was at 4°C–5°C in the refrigerator, but the coconut had been kept on the kitchen table for 1 month after purchase. Approximately 3 hours after drinking the coconut water, the patient developed sweating, nausea, and vomiting.

Farmer owes $82,000 in contract dispute over use of a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji […] instead of “ok”, “yup” or “looks good.”

The number of people visiting ChatGPT’s website was down 10 percent worldwide in June

In 19th-century Philadelphia, an anatomist dissected and mounted a human nervous system. Now researchers are trying to figure out whose remains are stretched out in a glass case.

It may now be easier to get pregnant using the sperm of a deceased loved one. The practice is controversial—but it’s not inherently wrong.

Psychedelics are increasingly recognised for their therapeutic potential and ability to re-orient belief structures. However, the potential they carry for inducing false insights and beliefs has thus far been under-considered.

What Colors Can Deer See? […] red and orange look gray while blue is easy to spot.

According to a University of Chicago study [PDF], men claim to have sex 66.5 times a year, while women claim to have sex 57.2 times a year. That might be because men traditionally overreport their sexual activity while women traditionally underreport theirs. […] Teenage girls are 6.5 percent more sexually active than teenage boys.

Reflecting on my own life, I’ve noticed that most of the things that really went off-track were indeed consequences of incremental neglect and numerous small yet poor choices. I didn’t become addicted to drugs overnight. It happened over hundreds of moments where I prioritized momentary pleasure over health and safety. I didn’t become overweight overnight. It happened over hundreds of moments where I opted for immediate gratification over long-term health. I didn’t ruin relationships overnight. It happened over hundreds of moments where I chose comfort over confronting difficult conversations, admitting my mistakes, or even just acknowledging that someone was better than me at something. From these experiences, I’ve realized that avoiding bad habits is just as important as cultivating good habits.

One night of total sleep deprivation shown to have antidepressant effect for some people

People spend much of their free time engaging with narrative fiction. Research shows that, like real-life friends, fictional characters can sometimes influence individuals’ attitudes, behaviors, and self-beliefs. Moreover, for certain individuals, fictional characters can stand in for real-life friends by providing the experience of belonging. […] results suggest that lonelier individuals may turn to fictional characters to meet belongingness needs

If You’re Looking for Love, Just Let It Go

the hidden labor that goes into artificial intelligence […] in Nairobi […] The office specializes in a task called annotation, essentially using human labor to parse images that confuse the algorithms and hopefully making systems better in the process. […] The move from content moderation to AI annotation isn’t all bad. Annotation work is boring, but it’s not traumatic the way moderation can be; you’re working with traffic photos and product imagery instead of severed heads. Annotation also doesn’t have the policy uncertainty of moderation, where managerial hypocrisy often leaves contractors with an impossible job. If the pay were better, annotation wouldn’t necessarily be a bad job. But the pay isn’t better.

Google updated its privacy policy over the weekend, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they’re nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot.

another ByteDance-owned app has been quietly making inroads in select markets around the world. Launched in 2020, the music streaming app Resso is currently available in three major markets — India, Brazil, and Indonesia — and has grown into a dark-horse challenger to Spotify.

Was FTX A Ponzi Scheme From The Beginning?

Proof That “One of the Parallel Worlds Cannot Be Extremely Different from the Other”

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether.

The global population milestone of 8 billion represents nearly 7% ofthe total number of people who have ever lived on Earth.

experts have identified two main categories of factors that make us more attractive to mosquitoes: biological aspects we can’t change and behaviors we can. […]

Dozens of diverse molecules distributed throughout your body come together to create your unique odor. […] it’s likely this distinctive mix of chemical compounds that draws mosquitoes in. It’s also possible that some people emit more of the odor that mosquitoes like […] mosquitoes are sensitive to different types of smells, even ones humans can’t detect, Dr. McBride said. For instance, “mosquitoes love forearm odor,” she said. “No one ever thinks of their arms as being smelly.” […]

Mosquitoes seem to gravitate toward people with Type O blood, he said, for reasons researchers haven’t confirmed. […]

The individual pattern of how you breathe — what Dr. Bazzoli called the “breathing signature” — also plays a role. Mosquitoes seek out carbon dioxide (which in part is why they’re so good at finding us), and the more we exhale, the more carbon dioxide we send into the air, inviting bugs our way. […]

Then there are the factors that are more dependent on how you act throughout the day. If you were to do a vigorous workout outside, you might breathe more heavily and exhale more carbon dioxide, which might usher in mosquitoes, Dr. Potter said. Sweat sends a powerful signal to mosquitoes too. […] And if you’ve had a few beach-side beers or happy hour margaritas, you might also emit some alcohol in your sweat, Dr. Bazzoli said, which can lure mosquitoes in. Alcohol might change the chemical makeup of your body odor, which could entice mosquitoes. […]

certain perfumes and scented soaps and lotions (including sunscreens) can attract mosquitoes […]

Certain clothing colors like black and dark blue can act like a mosquito magnet

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Police are already using self-driving car footage as video evidence

The first fully A.I.-generated drug enters clinical trials in human patients

The AI era promises a flood of disinformation, deepfakes, and hallucinated “facts.” Psychologists are only beginning to grapple with the implications. And: AI is killing the old web

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to file a major antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of “leverag[ing] its power to reward online merchants that use its logistics services and punish those who don’t”

Smartwatches can detect Parkinson’s years before diagnosis

Shopping Carts Can Tell If You Have a Heart Condition

foods with shorter (vs. longer) brand names are perceived as healthier, and consumers prefer such foods.

James Lewis and James Springer, identical twins adopted by separate families […] Both Jims, it transpired, had worked as deputy sheriffs, and had done stints at McDonald’s and at petrol stations; they’d both taken holidays at Pass-a-Grille beach in Florida, driving there in their light-blue Chevrolets. Each had dogs called Toy and brothers called Larry, and they’d married and divorced women called Linda, then married Bettys. They’d called their first sons James Alan/Allan. Both were good at maths and bad at spelling, loved carpentry, chewed their nails, chain-smoked Salem and drank Miller Lite beer. Both had haemorrhoids, started experiencing migraines at 18, gained 10 lb in their early 30s, and had similar heart problems and sleep patterns. […] much has changed in our understanding of genetics since the human genome was sequenced in 2003. It was discovered that we have far fewer genes than anticipated (around 20,000, rather than the anticipated 100,000), and that there are very few genes ‘for’ anything. A complex property such as intelligence, for example, involves a network of more than 1,000 genes, interacting with the environment.

MIT engineers develop “blackest black” material to date […] The results showed that the material absorbed at least 99.995 percent of incoming light, from every angle. In other words, it reflected 10 times less light than all other superblack materials, including Vantablack.

Erewhon […] The novel is one of the first to explore ideas of artificial intelligence

Microscopic ‘Louis Vuitton’ bag created by art collective MSCHF for Pharrell Williams sells for more than $60,000

Messaging app startup that raised $200M shut down because 95% of its users were fake

U.S. pedestrian deaths reach 40-year high

Slim people have a genetic advantage when it comes to maintaining their weight

How to Steal a Masterpiece: Advice from the World’s Greatest Art Thief

Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations The AI-based abstract images and shapes that result from the machine’s unsupervised learning of modern art are dictated by the Museum’s collection archive

Google has a secret browser hidden inside the settings

1991 - Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum travels to Argentina for a mysterious operation. He returns with a large cranial scar, invents Python, is declared Dictator for Life by legions of followers, and announces to the world that “There Is Only One Way to Do It.” Poland becomes nervous. A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

Map Your Workplace and Its Leaders

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As the founder of Ironic, a meteorology company based in Brooklyn, Mr. Leavitt, 33, knows how temperatures and atmospheric conditions can sometimes affect weddings. […] Mr. Leavitt, who said he has conducted weather advisory for more than 2,400 events, now works as a consultant to wedding planners and venues, with fees starting at around $2,500. […]

While we can’t predict if there will be rain that day, what we can do is look at the historical weather data. We look at a specific mile in a location around the country over the past 30 years, and analyze the information. Say it’s rained three out of seven days, five out of seven days or seven out of seven days — that tells you a lot. If you know it’s going to rain five out of seven days, it’s a good idea to find a venue with an indoor option. If it’s raining once out of seven days, you can plan for an outdoor wedding.

We’re tracking every radar possible, every reporting data possible, and creating a clear picture of what the weather will be on a specific day. […] For a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., we used marine data to look at the wave height to determine when boats should transport guests for the easiest ride with the most peaceful, calm waters. At what time will people become less seasick? We did it in Lake Como, Italy, too.

For a Florida wedding on the beach, a couple wanted to get married outside in the afternoon, but didn’t want guests to be sitting in direct sunlight or holding up parasols and blocking the view. We produced a sun study — looking at the topography of the land, trees on the property, angle of the sun, height of the house and the sun’s path — to choose the precise time to start the ceremony with the most shade.

As meteorologists, we should never ever suggest what people do with their hair. But we can give you all the information on wind, speed, humidity and temperature, so you can take that to a hair stylist. If someone has naturally frizzy hair in a humid climate, or they’re more likely to sweat that leads to oily hair, we can give them the context so they can plan.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

art { Ellen Gallagher, DeLuxe, 2004–5 (detail) }

Apple, the company, wants rights to the image of apples, the fruit, in Switzerland—one of dozens of countries where it’s flexing its legal muscles

California restaurant used an alleged priest to get employees to admit workplace “sins”

Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining. In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion.

Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer, became infamous for his viral online rants preaching male dominance, female submission and the pursuit of wealth. He has openly advocated for violence against women, and was previously banned from every major social media platformuntil Elon Musk reinstated his Twitter account after taking over the company.

AI bots should pass a new Turing test in which it receives a $100,000 seed investment and has to turn it into $1 million. As part of the test, the bot must research an e-commerce business idea, develop a plan for the product, find a manufacturer, and then sell the item. He expects AI to achieve this milestone in the next two years.

Using GPT-4 to measure the passage of time in fiction

The people paid to train AI are outsourcing their work to AI Previously: AI has poisoned its own well and Researchers warn of ‘model collapse’ as AI trains on AI-generated content

new web tool detects artificial intelligence images in less than a second

Neuro-sama, an AI vTuber who streams daily on Twitch.

Why Your Roses Smell Nice

the phrase “rule of thumb” has its roots in domestic violence: a British law stipulated that a man could beat his wife provided he used a switch no wider than his own thumb.

AI has poisoned its own well

Replied to The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget (arXiv.org)

What will happen to GPT-{n} once LLMs contribute much of the language found online? We find that use of model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects in the resulting models, where tails of the original content distribution disappear. […] the value of data collected about genuine human interactions with systems will be increasingly valuable in the presence of content generated by LLMs in data crawled from the Internet.

I suspect tech companies (particularly Microsoft / OpenAI and Google) have miscalculated, and in their fear of being left behind, have released their generative AI models too early and too wide. By doing so, they’ve essentially established a threshold for the maximum improvement of their products due to the threat of model collapse.[…]

They need an astronomical amount of training data to make any model better than what already exists. By releasing their models for public use now, when they’re not very good yet, too many people have pumped the internet full of mediocre generated content with no indication of provenance. […]

Obtaining quality training data is going to be very expensive in five years if AI doesn’t win all its lawsuits over training data being fair use.

{ Tracy Durnell | Continue reading }

Man ‘fakes his death’ before ‘arriving at his own funeral’ in a helicopter to teach family a lesson

Two-thirds of all online shopping scams now start on Facebook and Instagram Someone falls victim on Meta-owned platforms every seven minutes

Humans have pumped enough groundwater to change the tilt of the Earth

Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn’t actually commit. Research provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon

Humans have invisible skin patterns, due to a quirk in how our enveloping layer forms […] these patches and stripes can emerge with different skin conditions, including eczema and vitiligo

One financial lesson they should teach in school is that most of the things we buy have to be paid for twice. There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale. But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.

There is an old joke in Paris that the top of Montparnasse Tower has the prettiest view in the French capital. Not because of its breathtaking views of the Eiffel Tower or the Sacre-Coeur Basilica perched atop Montmartre, but because it is the only place where you do not have to see the skyscraper itself.

Men in Greek art seem to do pretty much everything without their pants on […] Nudity is often used as shorthand for ‘dead’ or ‘defeated’ in art from Eastern Mediterranean societies, where casualties of war or captives destined for execution most commonly appear unclothed. […] In addition to the dead or the doomed, divine figures like gods and heroes appear nude in many ancient artistic traditions […] athletes were – in life as in art – naked throughout both training and competition.

Researchers warn of ‘model collapse’ as AI trains on AI-generated content

Teslas account for fully 91 percent of all self-driving-related crashes in the NHTSA data.

Pizza startup Zume shuts down after raising $445 million Founded in 2015, the firm planned to cook pizzas in the back of a massive truck, with robots, while en route to customers’ homes. […] the company quickly gave up on the cooking-while-driving model — cheese kept sliding around when the truck hit bumps in the road […] Zume CEO Alex Garden was projecting hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and talking about becoming the “Tesla of fresh food, and the Amazon of fresh food”

The idea behind private equity or PE is simple: a private equity firm gathers up a bunch of cash, raises some investor cash, and takes on a lot of debt to buy various companies, often taking them off the public stock market. Then, they usually install new management and embark on aggressive cost cutting and turnaround programs mostly because they have to pay down all that debt pretty fast. The company can then be sold or taken public again for a hefty profit. But don’t worry — if it doesn’t work out, the PE firms are extracting fees at every step of the process, so they get paid no matter what happens. […] Those funds buy companies, whether it’s nursing homes, single-family rentals, veterinary clinics, OB-GYN practices. The really interesting thing about that, and I think what drew me to this as a lawyer but also concerns me as a citizen, is that because of the layered ownership structure of private equity firms, oftentimes private equity firms have control of the companies they buy but very little responsibility when those companies do arguably illegal things.

Mouse studies suggest that drugs from LSD to ecstasy renew the brain’s flexibility — but some scientists are sceptical

The role of eyebrows in face recognition (2003) we find that the absence of eyebrows in familiar faces leads to a very large and significant disruption in recognition performance. In fact, a significantly greater decrement in face recognition is observed in the absence of eyebrows than in the absence of eyes.

After years spent researching and protecting sea turtles, Nichols started studying the impact that water has on the human body and brain. “When you see water, when you hear water, it triggers a response in your brain that you’re in the right place”

The ancient city of Elengubu, known today as Derinkuyu, burrows more than 85 meters [280 feet] below the Earth’s surface, encompassing 18 levels of tunnels. The largest excavated underground city in the world, it was in near-constant use for thousands of years […] abandoned in the 1920s […] “rediscovered” in 1963 by an anonymous local who kept losing his chickens. While he was renovating his home, the poultry would disappear into a small crevasse created during the remodel, never to be seen again. Upon closer investigation and some digging, the Turk unearthed a dark passageway. It was the first of more than 600 entrances found within private homes leading to the subterrestrial city of Derinkuyu.

Hundreds attend church service generated by ChatGPT

Two-thirds of people who use sleep meds said they slept just as well or better after sex

Price was the first person ever to be diagnosed with what is now known as highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, a condition she shares with around 60 other known people. She can remember most of the days of her life as clearly as the rest of us remember the recent past.

Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees.

David Smith, a retired print technician from the north of England, was pursuing his hobby of looking for interesting shapes when he stumbled onto one unlike any other in November. […] The 13-sided polygon, which 64-year-old Smith called “the hat”, is the first single shape ever found that can completely cover an infinitely large flat surface without ever repeating the same pattern […] solving a problem posed 60 years ago that some mathematicians had thought impossible. […] After stunning the mathematics world, Smith then did it again [..] revealed a new shape — “the specter.”

Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud bills

This article is about covert agent communication channel websites used by the CIA in the late 2000s to early 2010s until they were uncovered by target countries

New York City will charge drivers going downtown. Proposals range from charging vehicles $9 to $23 during peak hours, and it’s set to go into effect next spring.

How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in New York City?

Emoji Kitchen

A man in China ended up in a legal battle after walking out on a blind date who expected him to pay for her and 23 of her relatives […] the woman’s family ordered a significant amount of expensive cigarettes and premium alcoholic beverages.

Taurine supplementation improved life span in mice and health span in monkeys, Taurine linked with healthy aging

A joint investigation by academics and The Wall Street Journal shows how Instagram’s algorithms promote networks of accounts sharing child sexual abuse material.

AI Prompt Engineering Isn’t the Future

How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering — New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps

The average color of the New York City sky, updated every 5 minutes

Hanging Testicles Door Knocker