Luminous Skies Star in the 2024 Northern Lights Photographer of the Year Contest
Colossal
Luminous Skies Star in the 2024 Northern Lights Photographer of the Year Contest
Bringing together the work of dozens of photographers, Northern Lights Photographer of the Year highlights otherworldly visions of the sky.
‘There will be consequences for failing to follow the law’: Texas governor threatens children’s hospital with immigration fearmongering
The Mary Sue
'There will be consequences for failing to follow the law': Texas governor threatens children's hospital with immigration fearmongering
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatens to defund a children's hospital after a doctor challenged his anti-immigration executive order.
People will share misinformation that sparks “moral outrage”
Ars Technica
People will share misinformation that sparks “moral outrage”
People can tell it's not true, but if they're outraged by it, they'll share anyway.
World’s Greatest Masher Gets Retrospective of His Lifetime of Inaccessible Work. The darling of a new class of crypto-billionaires, G’ptein has transformed holiday meals in the homes of the superwealthy around the world as the foremost sculptor in the medium of mashed potatoes, or “liberated tubers,” as he prefers to call them. (When you have money to burn, I guess this is "art").
Hyperallergic
World’s Greatest Masher Gets Retrospective of His Lifetime of Inaccessible Work
Mashed potato artist Chât G’ptein is the darling of a new class of crypto-billionaire art collectors.
Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated. A new analysis estimates that over half of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are AI-generated. AKA, Why I Almost Never User LinkedIn.
WIRED
Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated
A new analysis estimates that over half of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are AI-generated, indicating the platform’s embrace of AI to...
Scientists Scramble to Save Climate Data from Trump—Again
Scientific American
Scientists Scramble to Save Climate Data from Trump—Again
Federal climate databases remained largely intact during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. Scientists say the threats are bigger this time
The Right Has a Bluesky Problem. "Liberals and the left do not need the right to be online in the way that the right needs liberals and the left. The nature of reactionary politics demands constant confrontations—literal reactions—to the left. “Triggering the libs” sounds like a joke, but it is often essential for segments of the right. The more liberals leave X, the less value it offers to the right, both in terms of cultural relevance and in opportunities for trolling."
The Atlantic
The Right Has a Bluesky Problem
The X exodus is weakening a way for conservatives to speak to the masses.
Study confirms Egyptians likely used hallucinogens in rituals
Ars Technica
Study confirms Egyptians likely used hallucinogens in rituals
Special concoction also contained honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, licorice, and grapes to make it look like blood.
To invent the wheel, did people first have to invent the spindle? Twelve-thousand years ago, people in a coastal village in the Levant used stone weights on their spindles to spin thread faster and more evenly—and, some archeologists are arguing, in the process they pioneered the basic mechanics that eventually made cart wheels possible.
Ars Technica
Key wheel ideas may have come from weaving
The tools used to make threads could have seeded concepts that eventually led to the wheel.
What Victorian People Sounded Like: Hear Recordings of Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria
Open Culture
What Victorian People Sounded Like: Hear Recordings of Florence Nightingale & Queen Victoria Herself
More than 120 years after the end of the Victorian era, we might assume that we retain a more or less accurate cultural memory of the Victorians th...