July 10
AI wants more power
"Each facility is likely to consume the same amount of electrical power as tens of thousands of residential homes, potentially driving up costs for residents and straining the area’s power infrastructure beyond its capacity. Parmelee and others in the community are wary of the data centres’ appetite for electricity — particularly because Virginia is already known as the data-centre capital of the world. A state-commissioned review, published in December 2024, noted that although data centres bring economic benefits, their growth could double electricity demand in Virginia within ten years." [more inside]
Stay in school, cause it's the best
EmanRTM asks the British public some general knowledge questions: What is the past tense for 'choose'?, What is the length of a 40 ft container?, What is your older brothers father to you?
"Christmas has always smelled like oranges to me."
50 years and 29 days ago, The Movie 'Nashville' had its 50th. anniversary.
.
"when you pay more for an automobile then it cost Columbus to make his first voyage to america, that's politics."
Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton. (slyt)
"when you pay more for an automobile then it cost Columbus to make his first voyage to america, that's politics."
Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton. (slyt)
…a high-energy ode to what we want young people to feel
Die Spitz - "Throw Yourself to the Sword".
From their upcoming debut, Something to Consume .
"Despite living in a state of mundanity or hopelessness, you can still rise up and fight the unknown, as long as you’re willing to throw yourself to it.”
Stick another turtle on the fire
The Leonard Cohen Files is a website previously mentioned on Metafilter as a response on the green in 2010, at which point it was already fifteen years old. Happily it still exists and is still under active development. [more inside]
There’s no easy way to make this quiet
We’ll debunk the myth created by Hollywood that a firearm can be completely silenced, reduced only to a “pew”. I’ll pull together some examples of silenced firearms and show what silencers/suppressors can and can’t do, and compare the noises you’d get to some other types of sound. Then I’ll go into the components which make up firearm noise: mechanical, sonic boom, and muzzle blast. Then I’ll discuss the advantages that silencers bring, even though they’re not as impressive as they seem in the movies. Finally, I’ll sum up by discussing the limitations of silencers and why they are not universal. from Silencers: not very silent [Military Realism]
Incredibly rare humbug pygmy shrew photographed in Cornwall
Once-in-a-lifetime finding of incredibly rare humbug pygmy shrew photographed in Cornwall. An extremely rare pygmy shrew with an albino mutation was found by Anita McMillan near St Austell, Cornwall, while out for a walk.
On the brighter side...
4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment: In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system. [The New Yorker] (archive) [more inside]
Lobbying in the Trump era
“The passage of Trump’s signature legislation earlier this month proved there are still plenty of Big Beautiful Billable Hours for K Streeters, but the ground game is changing fast. ‘Lobbying used to be Congress-focused, but they’re not driving the show anymore,’ said one Republican lobbyist. ‘They are all now taking orders from the administration.’ … To have juice in this town these days means having access to the president and his allies, and the old bulls of lobbying no longer have as much of it.”
One of the most pernicious forms of corruption in global sports
“Spot-fixing” is the practice of manipulating small, discrete events that have little to no bearing on the outcome of a game—the timing of a yellow card in soccer, a wide ball in cricket, a single double-fault in tennis. Or, in the case of Ortiz, the result of one of the roughly 300 pitches thrown in the average baseball game. What makes spot-fixing so insidious is how inconsequential the occurrences appear in real time. from The Scourge of ‘Spot-Fixing’ Is Coming for American Sports [WSJ; ungated] [more inside]
Post mushroom trial, experts suggest changes to location sharing
Post mushroom trial, experts suggest changes to location sharing on iNaturalist. Experts are weighing up whether to continue posting the locations of poisonous mushrooms on public databases like iNaturalist in the wake of the Erin Patterson trial.
On the one hand, posting the locations of poisonous mushrooms on on public databases like iNaturalist reduces the chance of accidental poisonings of mushroom foragers.
On the other hand, posting the locations of poisonous mushrooms on on public databases like iNaturalist increases the risk of deliberate poisonings that are murder or suicide.
July 9
ball lightning?
The New York Times Coverage of Zohran Mamdani is getting desperate
This beautiful performance takes place at the end of a hospital bed
This beautiful performance takes place at the end of a hospital bed. A South Australian theatre group has devised a new show, The Lensical, that provides young long-term patients with a thrilling bedside spectacle.
From the minute I read it, I was like, “This has to be told.”
This is our way to fight back against the forces of evil—the forces that are pushing back against LGBT equality, all of these horrible anti-trans laws, the banning of trans kids from sports and all of that stuff. For us as artists and writers, this is our only weapon. from “Wow, This Is So Gay”: An Oral History of But I’m a Cheerleader [Vanity Fair; ungated]
Elon Musk's LLM goes full Nazi
"Grok, a chatbot created by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, shared several outlandish antisemitic comments on X on Tuesday, prompting an outcry from some social media users. In its dedicated account on X, which Mr. Musk owns, the chatbot praised Hitler, suggested that people with Jewish surnames were more likely to spread online hate and said a Holocaust-like response to hatred against white people would be 'effective.' X deleted some of the posts on Tuesday evening."(NYT gift link) [more inside]
Two important summer announcements in the past 24 hours
In the past day, both the Iowa State Fair and the Minnesota State Fair have released their new foods lists. Minnesota's has photos of all the new ones in addition to descriptions. The Des Moines Register has coverage of Iowa's, including past winners of the best new food. [more inside]
"If Charlie Brown reads Freud, Mafalda reads Che Guevara."
The New Yorker's Daniel Alarcón on the history of a classic Argentinian comic strip, which ran there from 1964 to 1973, and which is finally getting an English translation. The strip by cartoonist Quino, ran throughout Argentina's junta years, when such leftist protest and satire could easily lead to prison or worse. Asked what the strip's fearless six-year-old protagonist would be doing in adulthood, Quinto replied: "Mafalda never would have reached adulthood. She would be among Argentina's thirty thousand disappeared." [more inside]
Emigration possibilities
If you are thinking about moving abroad, the question isn’t really “where would you like to go?” but “which countries might allow you to immigrate”.
If you are an EU citizen, you probably already know that you can move to any of the other countries, similarly if you are an Australian or NZ citizen you can move to the other country under the Trans-Tasman agreement, and if you are a British or Irish citizen you can swap countries through the Common Travel Area.
But what are some of the other options? [more inside]
Isaiah 6 from Homeland but this in America
Twitter link DHS quoting bible with a recruitment ad for (from the tone graphics etc.) what looks like internal war. Some discussion on theologian Christin du Mez's substack Taking the Lord's name in vain
It's not just a theological problem. [more inside]
In the end, we must take a point of view
In that bygone world, the postman was of paramount importance. Fat envelopes were fatal, thin ones ecstatic. Plath and Hughes stared through the blinds and accosted him when he came. Had they won an oatmeal-naming contest? Had a poem been taken? I caught the very tail end of this life. It was important – we can no longer imagine it – to believe in this way. In a dream she recounts in the journals, Plath describes her brother, Warren, ‘discovering me about to bed with someone whose name was Partisan Review’. You may believe these institutions create your ambition; they do not. It is inherent, or inborn, or created in you by adversities, luck, love or the lack of it. The real document is already written: her diaries, a biography of aim. from Arrayed in Shining Scales by Patricia Lockwood [LRB; ungated]
July 8
Barn owls a hit in farm anti-poisons pilot project
Barn owls a hit in farm anti-poisons pilot project. With the imminent release of a review into the risks of rodent bait in Australia, an award-winning initiative uses barn owls as a natural alternative to controlling rats and mice on farms.
Prime numbers are the bomb!
Another addictive web game from vole.wtf: Primesweeper. It's Minesweeper, but every space is also marked with a 3-digit number. The numbers that are prime mark the locations of the mines. You still get the normal numbered hints, but you don't get to mark spaces where you believe mines to be. Win by revealing every non-mine square. (via projects) [more inside]
I sure like being inside this fancy computer!
Tower Records
Cook with a bird's eye view
Gobsmacked provides a high-level snapshot of your recipe, highlighting the essential ingredients and core actions to help you quickly grasp what's involved. Key times are included to help you plan your cooking schedule, so you can manage prep and cooking phases efficiently without feeling rushed. Ingredients and main steps are visually grouped to reveal how the dish progresses from start to finish, giving you a clear sense of the overall cooking sequence.
cache me if you can
Planetscale explores caching in a highly graphical, animated and interactive way. I've been working on a hydrological problem involving relocating a river and Planetscale's animated interface helped me understand some fundamentals about short-term detention and release of water flow that I hadn't realised before. I suspect there is a lot of heuristic depth for other disciplines to learn from their approach. Planetscale self deprecatingly describe their approach as just scratching the surface.
Inside the Traffic Apocalypse
"It all amounts to a kind of traffic apocalypse in which it seems all spigots for traffic are being turned off, affecting news organizations big and small, new and old. ... The whole premise of internet publishing — that you could reach audiences far and wide — is starting to crumble, forcing publishers to reevaluate what kind of stories they produce and what kind of readers they want — and, ultimately, to think smaller and more bespoke." [more inside]
She Wanted to Save the World From A.I.
Then the Killings Started. At first, Ziz LaSota seemed much like any other philosophically inclined young tech aspirant. Now, she and her followers are in jail, six people are dead, and Rationalists are examining whether their ideas played a role. [more inside]
This London Museum Lets You Order Objects From Its Vast Collections
This London Museum Lets You Order Objects From Its Vast Collections—and Maybe Even Touch Them. At the new V&A East Storehouse, visitors can get up close and personal with 250,000 historic and culturally significant items spanning 5,000 years of human creativity.
“All the rage, all the shame."
Live Aid at 40: When Rock ’n’ Roll Took on the World A three part documentary looking back at the Live Aid, 40 (!?) years on. [more inside]
Not yet completely out of the Woods
In this sense, the post-1990 monetary-policy regime contributed to global stability by ensuring that central banks remained focused on putting their own house in order. But can the cooperative model of global monetary policy survive in an age of geopolitical fragmentation? Will central banks remain independent and maintain their commitment to price stability above all? The answers will depend on the frameworks adopted to govern the interplay between fiscal and monetary policy in an increasingly conflictual world. from The Twilight of Bretton Woods by Giancarlo Corsetti [Project Syndicate; ungated]
July 7
TERF Island
Lots of people on the left dismiss these women as fake feminists. Can they really be feminists in any meaningful sense if they organize against trans women? Can’t feminism just drum them out of its ranks? I’d like to suggest that there are strands of thought that are both authentically feminist and irredeemable — even fascist.
An article-length intro to the argument fleshed out in her latest book, Enemy Feminisms TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation, Sophie Lewis, for Lux, makes the case that we must reckon with the reactionary and fascist threads that run through the history and present of feminist thought.
War on Temporary Protected Status
The Trump administration ended deportation protections for about 76,000 migrants from Honduras and Nicaragua who have lived and worked legally in the U.S. for over 25 years. The decision terminates Temporary Protected Status, first granted after Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and will take effect 60 days after the notices are officially published. [more inside]
Deafness reversed: Single injection brings hearing back within weeks
Deafness reversed: Single injection brings hearing back within weeks. A cutting-edge gene therapy has significantly restored hearing in children and adults with congenital deafness, showing dramatic results just one month after a single injection. Researchers used a virus to deliver a healthy copy of the OTOF gene into the inner ear, improving auditory function across all ten participants in the study. The therapy worked best in young children but still benefited adults, with one 7-year-old girl regaining almost full hearing. Even more exciting: this is just the start, as scientists now aim to target other genes that cause more common forms of deafness.
Word choices
Writers discuss particular word choices and what they imply. "It turns out" as a disarming assertion (by an author in the US). Asking for someone's pronouns, in particular in questions coming from monolingual English speakers (by an author in the UK). "Why I no longer say 'conservative' when I mean 'cautious'" (by an author in Brazil). White-collar US workplace norms that allow "I'm concerned" but not "I'm angry" and "misrepresenting" but not "lying".
“I couldn’t tell you the thesis for either paper hahhahaha.”
There are no reliable figures for how many students use A.I., just stories about how everyone is doing it. Bard College literature professor Hua Hsu (archived) reflects on AI and the university, interviewing students and faculty members.
What happens when you choose to do something simple and do it well
What happens when you choose to do something simple and do it well
What kind of paper would you use to fold flowers? As folders, we know that finding the right paper for the model we want to fold (and vice versa) is important for achieving the right form and appearance. Personally, I’ve used a lot of different materials for my work, including everything from printer paper and aluminum foil to cellophane, fabric and more. When folding origami flowers, why not use flower petals? from The Art of Hanakami [The Fold]
Austerity comes to Canada
Carney's cabinet asked to find 'ambitious savings' ahead of fall budget. "Ministers are being asked to reduce program spending by 7.5 per cent in the fiscal year that begins in April, followed by 10 per cent the year after and 15 per cent in 2028-29."
What wakes you? It's your free thread...
As the residents of Marlborough are woken at 5:30am by a peacock, people in Ynyslas by a mini-tornado, those of Litton are woken by an earthquake, and people in Cheam are kept awake by a bottom-pinching ghost, the optional question for this week is ... what wakes you? Or just chat about what's going on in your life (no politics, as there's a billion other threads on this site for that).
So many ways to waste your time, so little time
The America Party
The dispute between Republican President Donald Trump and his main campaign financier Elon Musk took another fractious turn on Saturday when the space and automotive billionaire announced the formation of a new political party, saying Trump's "big, beautiful" tax bill would bankrupt America. A day after asking his followers on his X platform whether a new U.S. political party should be created, Musk declared in a post on Saturday that "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom." [more inside]
Capybaras on ice
A snapshot of the first moments of a union
At its broadest, the collection spanned from the New Jersey nuptials of David Thomas and Helena Van Boskerk in June 1728 (“the first Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord GEORGE the Second”) to the 2013 marriage of Loreen M. Bloodgood and Alicia A. Terrizzi, the first same-sex couple to wed in Pennsylvania, before it was even clear their union would be recognized in the commonwealth. Gold-Bikin framed scores of these marriage mementos and displayed them in the hallways of the Norristown, Pennsylvania, law firm where she worked as one of the country’s top divorce attorneys. from First Comes Love [Jstor]
July 6
We've been waiting all year
It's been on your calendar, right? Great British Pea Week starts tomorrow! "It aims to increase awareness and understanding of the provenance and heritage of peas, giving British consumers a reason to celebrate the little green nutritional wonders during harvesting time." [more inside]
Culture literally changes how we see the world
The article and the referenced study is very interesting, but: do you see rectangles or circles?
Five baby beavers born at Cairngorms National Park
(HAVE YOU EVER FANTASIED 4 WHILE YOU WERE AWAKE)
ELIZA, created by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the early 1960s, is considered the earliest chatbot. He programmed it in Michigan Algorithm Decoder-Symmetric List Processor (MAD-SLIP) on MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) operating system, on an IBM 7094. We discovered an original ELIZA printout in Prof. Weizenbaum’s papers at MIT’s Institute Archives, including an early version of its famous DOCTOR script, a nearly complete version of the MAD-SLIP code, and various support functions in MAD and Fortran Assembly Program. Here we describe the reconstruction and reanimation of this original ELIZA on a restored CTSS, running on an emulated IBM 7094. from ELIZA Reanimated: Restoring the Mother of All Chatbots to One of the World’s First Time-Sharing Systems [IEEE.org]
Why did the marmoset cross the road?
Hundreds of monkeys can now safely cross roads in Alta Floresta, a city in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Seven canopy bridges have reconnected rainforest fragments that were separated by urban roads. [more inside]
Strategic Intelligence in Large Language Models
"Our results show that LLMs are highly competitive, consistently surviving and sometimes even proliferating in these complex ecosystems. Furthermore, they exhibit distinctive and persistent "strategic fingerprints": Google’s Gemini models proved strategically ruthless, exploiting cooperative opponents and retaliating against defectors, while OpenAI’s models remained highly cooperative, a trait that proved catastrophic in hostile environments. Anthropic’s Claude emerged as the most forgiving reciprocator, showing remarkable willingness to restore cooperation even after being exploited or successfully defecting."