~metafilter | Bookmarks (989)

. . . in the fullness of his years (1928-2024) after a fall. In the 1970s, he developed a cheap and cheerful Petri dish test for whether 'chemicals' mutated bacterial DNA. That indicated that they might cause cancer in humans. "To Ames and Gold, that meant that the public should understand that a synthetic carcinogen is not always worth worrying about, compared to ones...

Machines of Loving Grace Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publishes a 14,000-word post on How AI Could Transform the World for the Better, detailing how the 5-10 years following availability of an "Expert-Level Science and Engineering" AI, or "country of geniuses in a datacenter" will play out advances in biology, (Amodei's specialty,) neuroscience, economic development, governance, and work and meaning.Amodei draws on Iain M. Bank's...

"I've been chasing after snakes my whole life" In 2017, biologist Mike Kirkland was tasked with putting together a three-month pilot program for python bounty hunters [...] And so he found himself with just six weeks to assemble his team. "We started by choosing twenty-five spirited individuals from the public," Kirkland recalls. He remembers reading Kalil's résumé: "She had martial arts experience, she had...

This wasn't just a rivalry between competitors. Matthews had been obsessed with Thomas Flohr, VistaJet's founder, for about a decade. Matthews and his AirX employees had been emailing, at times anonymously, with VistaJet suppliers, bondholders, ratings firms and journalists. He and his staffers raised questions about VistaJet's corporate structure. They called out its $4.25 billion in debt. And they portrayed Flohr as unethical and...

"Any trans person's story would be labeled as pornography... I think you can see where this is going." [A repost of a previously seen link since there has been a ton of new content posted since the last discussion! Also to amplify its timely and important message.] A bunch of comic book artists got together and made a Project 2025 summary comic, because 900...

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, cartoonist Chris Ware pens an appreciation of the great Richard ScarryVideo of an enthusiastic parent & their child reading a much-loved copy of Cars and Trucks and Things That Go A small gallery of Richard Scarry original art Scarry originals on Heritage Auctions

A storm surge on Tuesday has flooded the coastal town of Kotzebue in Alaska. Dr Kat Napaaqtuk has gathered some photos and videos to show the dramatic impact on local homes, including her father's house in 2022 and yesterday. Kotzebue, as Napaaqtuk writes, "is at sea level. It's surrounded by water on 3 sides." In the Arctic, that puts it on the front line...

Tasmania's convict records are part of the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register along with the convicts records for New South Wales and Western Australia.The Founders and Survivors Digitization Project is a dataset of life course history generated from the extensive collection of Tasmanian convict records between 1802-1853. The project involved "a mass-digitisation of over 100,000 images, manual transcription of the convict records,...

"She helped me lure him": How bird expert captured cockatoo stuck in supermarket for weeks. A cockatoo named Mickey became trapped inside Macarthur Square Shopping Centre at Campbelltown in Sydney's south-west last month. He "took up residence" at the Coles supermarket before he was captured by a local bird expert.

Think of it like a social media site, but for the dead. People can use it to "visit" the graves of their loved ones—in some cases, maybe even for the first time. But it's not just for mourning or nostalgia: The revelations held in cataloged graves have proven vital for everyone ranging from historians to journalists to your aunt who is really into your...

On the Thursday evening before the Thanksgiving holiday long weekend, the Review of the Federal Approach to Pandemic Science Advice and Research Coordination, calling for fundamental changes in how Canada handles medical information and manages public health in a crisis, was released without fanfare.Though delayed since at least May and published without a press release, news conference or announcement of any kind, Paul Wells...

You might have heard that ASMRer Gibi recently released a homemade ASMR version of the entirety of Shrek. Want to be part of a collaborate movie remake yourself? A Back to the Future collab was recently announced (Twitter, Tumblr) - but if that sounds like too much work, MSCHF recently started making their fourth frame-by-frame Free Movie: David Lynch's 1984 Dune film, for anyone...

This combination of the now-familiar and the new-unknown are among the various factors that come together to create the irresistible pull of these objects. This re-iterated fascination and the overwhelming desire that follows is central to my art practice. from Real Life Tetris [Art-Ctrl-Del]

Vision Video is a goth-pop band from Athens, Georgia. Gen-Xers like yours truly will find their sound to be very familiar as evidenced by their influences; the Cure, New Order, the Smiths, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, among others (I swear they could take a Time Machine and drop into my teenage years with nary a hitch). They also have a flair for horror movies....

Scientists and fishers collaborate to save this peculiar-looking, elusive ray. Sawfish have a shark-like body behind an extended nose resembling a saw. A study collecting fishers' knowledge hopes to discover more about the endangered species.

It's been ten years, almost to the day, since payment processor Digital River got acquired by private equity. As of a few months ago it has stopped paying the vendors it purports to represent even though it's still been billing their customers. If you have any recurring subscriptions via that platform, now would be a good time to cancel them.

MONSTER FACTORY is a long-running, beloved comedy video series that is a strong contender for one of the funniest goddamn things ever published on the internet. Each episode features brothers Griffin and Justin McElroy (of MBMBAM fame) diving headlong into the character creator of a random game -- Griffin controlling the sliders, Justin providing color commentary. Over the next half-hour or so of relentlessly...

17th Century Death Roulette ☠️. What it says on the tin. Click twice to find out how you died. The death options are taken from the reports of deaths London in the 1600.

Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, has been indicted on 16 federal counts of sex trafficking and international prostitution in New York, and is accused of leveraging "a network of employees, contractors and security professionals" while he led the retailer.Mike Jeffries previously 1, previously 2, previously 3.

"All nonfiction writers can end up writing incorrect or controversial things, but why does every Gladwell book push half-formed and inaccurate theories?" A modest proposal: Forget Gladwell. [W. David Marx in Culture: An Owner's Manual]Especially valuable for the rundown of critiques of all of Malcolm Gladwell's books. (An early favorite is Isaac Chotiner's takedown of Gladwell's Outliers, Mister Lucky: "And didn't Salieri also have...

A Queensland-first solar panel recycling plant to stop 240,000 panels going into landfill annually. The Pan Pacific plant on Brisbane's southern fringe is expected to take apart the panels, recycling each individual element, which is essential to the future of renewable energy in Australia.

Who's that standing on my lawn? Who's that fellow with the LCD eyes? A 12-foot Home Depot Skeleton! (A song from Louie Zong and Kitsch Club.)I can't find room in my budget, I can't find room in my home. But I got so much room in my heart, and I want those bones for my own! Home Depot 12-foot skeleton (12-foot skeleton) Thousands of...