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On Thursday afternoon, (Shohei) Ohtani's legend continued to grow as he wrote the next chapter of one of the best individual offensive seasons in Major League history with arguably the best single-game performance the sport has ever seen. In an otherworldly game in which he stole two bases and went 6-for-6 with a career-high three homers and 10 RBIs, Ohtani proved he's in a...

It's Friday, so it's a good time to try to Guess the (video/computer) game! Or to go back into the archives and try to guess some of the 859 previous games. (hat tip to Buried Treasure.)

New York magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi placed on leave after disclosing RFK relationship Nuzzi disclosed that she "had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign." While the magazine did not identify the subject, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that the relationship was with Robert F....

"Google has decided that Forbes is the authority in everything. Credit cards, cockroach removal, and getting too high from gummies. Forbes is now the dominant authority in damn near everything. [...] I know a lot of folks in the SEO industry. Not one person thinks this is normal or okay. I even heard from a source that I deeply trust that Google employees were...

Farmer invents machinery that smashes bejesus out of weed seeds. Weeds cost Australia's crop farming industry around $3.3 billion dollars [US $2.25 billion dollars] each year, but a home-grown invention that crushes herbicide-resistant weed seeds could make that a problem of the past.

In 2021, House House, the makers of Untitled Goose Game, created a proof-of-concept for an animation series involving the Goose and its hapless victims. It never made it to production, but they've released the proof-of-concept animation to Youtube. So for just four minutes of your time, please journey back to the beleaguered village, and watch the Untitled Goose Programme. (Previously and first on Untitled...

"conventional wisdom has been that black hole jets can't be larger than about a quarter the radius of a cosmic void, and none larger has ever been seen. That all changed with the discovery of Porphyrion..." [bigthink]cosmic web [ucla, nasa, wiki] previously: map, early image

It is now difficult to imagine the mass of general readers—assuming they exist—being reached even by a historian of genius. The exigencies of modern academic publishing, declining levels of general culture among historians themselves, and, in some cases, what occasionally looks less like sloppiness or indifference and more like a positive hostility toward good writing among peer reviewers, above all the atrophying of readers'...

Hopes for future hatchlings outside Perth as rare western swamp tortoise returns to southern home. An endangered tortoise that excited wildlife carers by surviving outside its only known habitats in Perth has returned home to its birthplace and site of a relocation trial in Western Australia's South West.After shocking wildlife carers by surviving outside of its only known habitat, a rare western swamp tortoise...

At least according to Carter Vail, a musician on YouTube (and probably Tik Tok, but I am old). Let him tell you about the thing all guys do, how to succeed at wizarding school, or how to appreciate marine life. Or you could listen to his really good serious music if you are into that sort of thing, I guess.

There are some interesting people moving their bodies interestingly in the music video half•alive - Sophie's House (Official Video). [5m]

Explore the beautiful, intricate paths of ships over a year - tracked from America's busiest ports to the open ocean via AIS marine tracking data.

Euripides Unbound is an account of the recent discovery by archeologist Heba Adly of a papyrus containing 97 lines from Polyidus and Ino, lost plays by Euripides, written by Robert Cioffi who participated in the dig led by Basem Gehad. The fragment was deciphered by classicists Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert, who have been interviewed about it by Johanna Hanink on the Lesche Podcast....

"It is not often that one in the process of learning of, or reading, a book develops three different opinions about the book. I have heard of Lea Ypi's Free after it became an international bestseller. I was even then somewhat intrigued by the topic, an autobiographical story of growing up in Albania at "the end of history", given that Albania was somewhat of...

A few short, brisk fantasy stories, published this year, involving peril and rescue. "The Dragon Shepherd" by George S. Walker, in Electric Spec: a young girl challenges complacent dragonslayers. "The Doomsday Book of Labyrinths" by LM Zaerr, in Uncharted Magazine: a tax assessor (who doesn't care to look too closely at his own emotions) needs to figure out why a scared kid is running...

How to be a butler to the super rich. (archive link here)Yes, Jeeves and Wooster are referenced. How could they not be?

All large planets in our Solar System have rings, and it has been suggested that Mars may have had a ring in the past. This raises the question of whether Earth also had a ring in the past.

Ring of Gyges: A shepherd named Gyges discovers a magical ring that grants him the power of invisibility when he twists the ring on his finger. With this newfound power, Gyges seduces the queen, kills the king, and takes over the kingdom. The Ring of Gyges is a dialogue featured in The Republic by Plato. The story raises a moral question: would people still...

For the second time ever (the first was in 2020), Scientific American endorses a presidential candidate. For the first time since 1996, the Teamsters union does not.Endorsements, endorsements, endorsements.

BatCam offers glimpse into secret life of threatened flying fox species. A live-streaming camera is offering insights into a grey-headed flying fox colony in northern New South Wales, aiming to change public perception that the animals are pests, and guide conservation work.A new initiative known as BatCam is giving people a glimpse into the normally secret world of Australia's largest native bat. The grey-headed...

Everyone was bereft and unnerved at the loss of this soft-spoken person they had been tending to near constantly for months. "I couldn't believe it," Cheatham says. "I was so sad that he died. They were telling me that they were hoping he would get over the spell that he was in." But that day, Flores and Moore also managed to spend $7,017.73 at...