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Posted by AlSweigart

Same mama, different species - Scientists have discovered a gnarly reproductive strategy that is unlike anything ever documented in nature: Ant queens that produce offspring from two entirely different species by cloning the "alien genome" of males from another lineage. This unique behavior has been dubbed "xenoparity," according to a new study.
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Posted by 445supermag

Someone in a 7-11 noticed that a woman gave the hand signal for help behind her back. Police were called, the man attempted to flee and was arrested on an open warrant and possession of a stun gun.

Besides verbal distress calls such as asking for an "Angel Shot" or calling 911 and ordering a pizza, the non-verbal hand signal was developed during the pandemic as a way to ask for help over video by the Canadian Women's Foundation. Since then, Guyana adopted it as a signal for human trafficking by gesturing three times.

Over the dead things

Sep. 4th, 2025 09:44 pm
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Posted by MusingsOfAKind

by

"Aren't they sweet? Falling in love over the dead things," says Dr Hobson in 'One for Sorrow'.

What started as a one shot inspired by this quote has grown to a few more. This is cross posted from FF where a very kind reader suggested I share it here too. As always, I offer my thanks to the talented script writers for whose words I have borrowed. The typos are certainly all mine!

Words: 1170, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

The shots heard 'round the world

Sep. 7th, 2025 08:02 pm
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Posted by chavenet

Fiction will always examine the small anonymous corners of human experience. But there is also the magnetic force of public events and the people behind them. There is something in the novel itself, its size and psychological reach, its openness to strong social themes, that suggests a matching of odd-couple appetites -- the solitary writer and the public figure at the teeming center of events. The writer wants to see inside the human works, down to dreams and routine rambling thoughts, in order to locate the neural strands that link him to men and women who shape history. Genius, ruthlessness, military mastery, eloquent self-sacrifice -- the coin of actual seething lives. from The Power of History by Don DeLillo [New York Times; ungated; published Sunday, September 7, 1997]

G-String By Night

Aug. 28th, 2025 07:47 pm
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Posted by LigerCat

by

Creegan makes himself bait for a serial killer targeting male stripers.

Words: 1306, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

"No more drugs..."

Sep. 7th, 2025 02:51 pm
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Posted by Wordshore

Bulk [trailer] [trailer] is a film by Ben Wheatley [A Field in England], narrated by Bill Nighy and starring Sam Riley and Alexandra Maria Lara. Variety: "...a film that is about nothing so much as its own diverse tapestry of influences, from the handmade whimsy of vintage TV series Thunderbirds to the opaquely minimalist sci-fi world-building of Godard's Alphaville to the luridly cranked-up paranoia of midcentury B-movies like The Quatermass Experiment." List: "Bulk's homespun flavour comes from Wheatley's deployment of old-school filmmaking techniques, from rear projection to false perspectives and model-making. For one scene, as helicopters streak across the sky, Wheatley used Airfix kits bought from eBay."

Smile, You're Outsmarting Cop AI

Sep. 7th, 2025 11:37 am
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Posted by beesbees

Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras Benn Jordan digs into how U.S. police cameras are running AI software that flags "suspicious" behavior—sometimes on the flimsiest of signals.

He shows how to trick, break, and reveal the biases of the system. Creepy surveillance tech meets DIY subversion.
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Posted by chavenet

Given that incumbent newsrooms are failing, and platform-based independence comes with new risks, I don't think the solution is one or the other. Instead, it's worth trying to imagine a new kind of newsroom: one that meets the moment in terms of platform, trust, and voice, but provides the quality assurance, support, continuity, and opportunities for collaboration that newsrooms at their best provide. from When people trust humans more than brands: the incubator newsroom [Ben Werdmuller]
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Posted by kliuless

The Political Awakening of the Oyster Farmer Taking on Susan Collins - "Graham Platner's campaign launch has been a sudden sensation. But what he's building now is rooted in the work of a lifetime." (via)

Fighting Oligarchy in Portland, Maine - "Ladies and gentlemen, your next senator from the state of Maine, Graham Platner."
Our taxpayer dollars can build schools and hospitals in America, not bombs to destroy them in Gaza.
also btw... @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social‬: "It is not a radical idea to say that every man, woman and child in America can have a decent standard of living."[1,2,3]
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Posted by storybored

The Dismal Economics of Bio-Tech Research. A long, detailed analysis of why biotech research is still hard. "Human genetics, drug repurposing, and AI are the most common levers [cited to improve things], and each promises to cut costs or derisk pipelines. But the more you look into specific companies and their stories, the more you notice that these strategies rarely work. This is especially true once you turn to age-related diseases, the only market large enough to rescue pharma's economics, yet the one where our best heuristics work the least."

"There are also plenty of examples of selecting a genetically validated target, often outside of oncology or CNS, and failing over and over again to deliver on the promise. CETP variant was enriched in centenarian cohorts and showed coronary heart disease reduction in people with the variant, yet 4 different drugs failed in early-stage trials (likely asset-specific failure). MSTN inhibition leads to obvious muscle mass gains, yet there were 4 failed MSTN antibodies before Scholar Rock got apitegromab approved earlier this year (indication/trial design failure). The list goes on and on. " --- "One number that is worth appreciating is that 80% of all costs associated with bringing a drug to market come from clinical-stage work. That is, if we ever get to molecules designed and preclinically validated in under 1 year, we'll be impacting only a small fraction of what makes drug discovery hard. This productivity gain cap is especially striking given that the majority of the data we can use to train models today is still preclinical, and, in most cases, even pre-animal. A perfect model predictive of in vitro tox saves you time on running in vitro tox (which is less than a few weeks anyway!), doesn't bridge the in vitro to animal translation gap, and especially does not affect the dreaded animal-to-human jump. As such, perfecting predictive validity for preclinical work is the current best-case scenario for the industry. Though we don't have a sufficient amount and types of data to solve even that. " --- Probability of Success by Clinical Trial Phase and Therapeutic Area. (P1 = Phase 1) Therapeutic AreaP1 to P2P2 to P3P3 to ApprovalOverall Oncology57.632.735.53.4 Metabolic/Endocrinology76.259.751.619.6 Cardiovascular73.365.762.225.5 Central Nervous System73.251.951.115.0 Autoimmune/Inflammation69.845.763.715.1 Genitourinary68.757.166.521.6 Infectious Disease70.158.375.325.2 Ophthalmology87.160.774.932.6 Vaccines (Infectious Disease)76.858.285.433.4 Overall66.448.659.013.8 Overall (Excluding Oncology)73.055.763.620.9
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Posted by ichimunki

A small Finnish town (Pomainen, Finland) is now being heated by a sand battery from Polar Night Energy. This is a giant sand silo encased 100 by 40 feet container. This method is used seasonally to offset wind power. I am posting this because sand batteries were mentioned before in comments and people were debating whether this could work or not. It is out there now - seasonal - but still, out there and functioning. Link is from LiveScience.
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Posted by The corpse in the library

A recent episode of The Rest is Entertainment discusses the ethics of performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 PR campaign.

More details including how much people are getting paid at the Humorism newsletter. Tickets to see the headliners are available on the official site, including Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, Jimmy Carr, Hannibal Buress, and Zarna Garg.
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Posted by chavenet

Thelonious Monk once said "All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians". Musicians like John Coltrane though have been very much aware of the mathematics of music and consciously applied it to their works. The "Coltrane Circle" is (to me) proof of it in Coltrane's case ... from John Coltrane's Tone Circle [Roel's World]

Maru (2007-2025)

Sep. 6th, 2025 10:51 am
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Posted by soundofsuburbia

Maru (まる) - the beloved Scottish Fold boy with a penchant for (among other things) boxes, fish bowls and swings - has passed over The Rainbow Bridge after a short illness.

My thoughts go out to his friends Hana and Miri and, of course, his remarkable human. Maru previously.
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Posted by chavenet

They walked back to the hotel, out of the cold, into the warm bosom of Nations Night, and were whopped by a musky, dark, magnificent smell ... the many cured meats of Europe and Eurasia ... fermented milks and fermented grains ... raw mollusks and salted cod ... goat cheese and anchovies and sausage and wine ... a thrilling blend of sounds and deep stenches ... the French cracking oysters ... the Swiss melting raclette...the Kazakhstanis slicing some kind of dried animal leg ... the Canadians pouring maple syrup on snow... an Italian DJ playing Linkin Park's "Numb" ... from Intrigue on the Slopes of Bardonecchia by Noah Rawlings [The Paris Review; ungated]
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