Telepathy might initially seem a much softer, psychological proposition, tainted with a sense of the supernatural. Yet both Campbell and Clarke were lifelong advocates of the view that telepathy was highly probable, the scientific proof of its existence likely just around the corner. The promise of telepathy – soon to be achieved, not far off, only a few test subjects away – feels very familiar when reading Musk's boosterish announcements on Neuralink's latest breakthroughs. The promise that telepathy is just about to be realised is not confined to entrepreneurs and science-fiction writers alone. For more than a century, there have consistently been figures in the scientific establishment who have entertained similar hopes that telepathy would soon reach the threshold of proof, promising everything from opening a new evolutionary phase of human development to a new psychic front in the global arms race. from Tomorrow People [Aeon; ungated]

To most people, pulling into a highway rest stop is a profoundly mundane experience. But not to neuroscientist Rita Valentino, who has studied how the brain senses, interprets and acts on the bladder's signals. She's fascinated by the brain's ability to take in sensations from the bladder, combine them with signals from outside of the body, like the sights and sounds of the road, then use that information to act—in this scenario, to find a safe, socially appropriate place to pee. "To me, it's really an example of one of the beautiful things that the brain does," she says. from How Do We Know When to Pee? [Smithsonian; ungated]

In our technological age people are often caught between two worlds, forced to choose between what is pleasurable and what is beyond pleasurable. Activity A may be a genuinely enjoyable activity, but as an ordinary pleasure it comes with certain discomforts and limitations. Activity B, on the other hand, promises to move past those limitations, satiating our desire for maximal pleasure. Who wouldn't want to choose Activity B, then, when the option is presented so readily? from The Rise of Hyperpleasures by Samuel C. Heard (Mere Orthodoxy; ungated)

We might now be on the cusp of a similar sea change, with American policymakers, especially Democrats and the broader center-Left, beginning to craft a new industrial policy and seeking to decouple economically from China. This decoupling is accompanied by an ersatz new Cold War with China—reminding us of how an earlier era of more activist liberal government required the Cold War to legitimate and underpin it. Whether such efforts will take hold is, for now, unclear. But understanding what these efforts are designed to overturn requires returning to the pivotal years of America in the 1990s. from What the 1990s Did to America [Public Books]

But this isn't really about the software. It's about what software promises us—that it will help us become who we want to be, living the lives we find most meaningful and fulfilling. The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It's not about the formal credentials. It's fundamentally about play. It seems to describe a life where it's just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas. from research as leisure activity by Celine Nguyen [Personal Canon]

There are two elements in all this that seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand, things like a proverb, a symbol, or—as in Borges' story—a novel have some sort of universality. They transcend the ages and remain applicable in different contexts. On the other hand, they acquire a unique flavor every time, dependent on the specifics of the people and times involved. This is not a paradox, though, but a typical result of chaotic processes. from Borges on Chaos Theory [Aether Mug]

When, last year, I saw in my prose that falseness and false formality, I wondered where it had come from. I seemed to be a few minutes away from using whence. I seemed to be searching for a rhythm that wouldn't come, and reading over tatters of drafts later, I realized I was attempting to write prose in what was basically iambic pentameter, as if this classic formal constraint contained within it the key, the one key, to a sense of writing well, a sense so rare that year for me to find at all. From whence this sense of language-pressed-through-sieve? from I Cannot by Lucy Schiller [The Paris Review; ungated]

People are flipping out over Leopold Aschenbrenner's gargantuan look at the current and future state of AI in Situational Awareness [PDF]. Is it the start of the world? Is it the end of the world? When? 2027! Summary by ChatGPT.

Maybe you can see the future first in Dallas? [Previously] Or is the future no more than what the markets will pay for?

Starring the Computer is a website dedicated to the use of computers in film and television. Each appearance is catalogued and rated on its importance (ie. how important it is to the plot), realism (how close its appearance and capabilities are to the real thing) and visibility (how good a look does one get of it). Fictional computers don't count (unless they are built out of bits of real computer), so no HAL9000 - sorry.

Starring the Computer previously [2012], now with 12 additional years of computers, organized by title of Movie/TV Show and brand of computer.

Today, QAnon exists in a vastly more complex media ecosystem and seems to be addressing a wider, more amorphous set of concerns. But its rough function is the same: The family order is again seen as being threatened, this time by attacks on gender norms. Q gives people a way to feel they are protecting the traditional atomic family. By devouring fresh posts from QAnon influencers, donning Q gear, or spreading word online about the impending arrest of the cabal, Q faithful felt like they were doing everything they could to support the welfare of children and usher in a new era of conservative family values that would put them in charge. from How Q Became Everything [Mother Jones; ungated] [CW: Q, conspiracy, Felonious Trump, Epstein, pedophilia etc. etc.]

Occasionally, people make music, and then wildly different people cover that music with wildly different sounds and results. I like when this happens. I especially like when it happens without changing the pronouns of the original piece. "Look into his angel eyes..." hits differently when it comes from a sparsely accompanied, gravelly male voice, instead of, ah, ABBA. from Genderswap.fm by Eva Decker

Covers, previously

The North American Crash, the Atari Shock, or whatever else you want to call it, was an incredibly traumatic event for game development in the US. Most of the companies that had been making games just years prior closed their doors, laying off hundreds or thousands of people in the process. These were designers, programmers, artists, marketers, assembly workers, and more who found themselves out of work and trying to pick up the pieces. Some were able to pivot to the home computer space, find work at the surviving developers and publishers, or form new game companies. Others left video games behind entirely. In many of these cases, the projects they were working on were simply and quietly canceled, regardless of how close they were to completion, never intended to be seen again – just a failed product that didn't make it to market. Like Tarzan. from The Long-Lost Tarzan Atari Game, Preserved [The Video Game History Foundation]

If a superluminal—meaning faster than the speed of light—warp drive like Alcubierre's worked, it would revolutionize humanity's endeavors across the universe, allowing us, perhaps, to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, in days or weeks even though it's four light years away. from A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Just Gave Humanity the Keys to Interstellar Travel [Popular Mechanics]

The Alcubierre Warp Drive, previously

What are the load-bearing posts of our time? Obviously 'facing god and walking backwards into hell' and 'miette' are up there. Does Ed Balls still count? PS if you can parse this you should probably log off [X]

If These 15 Tweets Make Any Sense To You, Then It's Definitely Time To Log Off [Digg] 'The load-bearing posts of our time': People are sharing Internet moments that are seared into their brains forever [Daily Dot] Load-Bearing Posts [KnowYourMeme] [CW: Unfiltered X, maximal shitposting, very likely NSFW]

"Well, the time has come to say goodbye ... It's been an incredible privilege to be invited into millions of homes night after night, year after year, decade after decade. I always felt that the privilege came with the responsibility to keep this daily half-hour a safe place for family fun. No social issues, no politics, nothing embarrassing I hope, just a game." from 'The Time Has Come to Say Goodbye': Pat Sajak Bids Farewell to 'Wheel of Fortune' [NY Times; ungated]

Pat Sajak leaves Wheel of Fortune with these final words [BBC] 'Wheel of Fortune' host Pat Sajak delivers speech during final episode [Fox] Vanna White sends tearful farewell to Pat Sajak on 'Wheel of Fortune': 'I love you, Pat!' [USA Today] 43 Years Ago, Pat Sajak of Wheel of Fortune Made a Brilliant Introduction. Here's Why [Inc.] Counterpoint: Don't Pour One Out for Pat Sajak, Wheel of Fortune's Die-Hard Right-Wing Host [The New Republic; ungated]

The mullet is alive and well in AFL [ABC]

Maj. William A. Anders, who flew on the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, the Apollo 8 "Genesis Flight" of Christmas Eve 1968, and took the color photograph "Earthrise" credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement, died on Friday morning when a small plane he was piloting alone dove into the water near Roche Harbor, Wa., northwest of Seattle. He was 90. [NY Times; ungated]

Nasa 'Earthrise' astronaut dies at 90 in plane crash [BBC] NASA Remembers Apollo 8 Astronaut Bill Anders [via] JoeZydeco's LinkMe

"The defendants marketed to investors most in need of income and least able to afford a loss by advertising their schemes as a train to 'financial freedom' and 'freedom from the plantation,'" the suit said. "Cynthia Petion knew that 'it's never the ones who grew up rich who invest in these programs.'" from 'Jesus was the best affiliate marketer in the world': How a 'Reverend CEO' allegedly stole $1 billion in a crypto scam [MarketWatch]

Attorney General James Sues Cryptocurrency Companies NovaTechFx and AWS Mining for Defrauding Investors of More Than $1 Billion [NYAG] New York Sues Novatech Over $1 Billion Crypto Pyramid Scheme [Finance Feeds]

The idea that food can turn you gay speaks to the depth of how food is coded. Food is used as both a signifier of the self and fuel for the body, the singular act of digestion taking what you see on the outside and literally turning it into yourself on the inside. You don't just enjoy ice cream. Ice cream becomes you. What does that make you, and in return, what do you make it? Maybe the fear goes deeper, and finally smacks against something it's been circling around in the dark. We know ice cream cannot make you gay. But if we are what we eat, there is the chance then, that what we eat could reflect, or affect, who we are. And could make us realize, in terror and glory, that who we thought we were is not so fixed. from The Food That Makes You Gay by Jaya Saxena [Eater]

Unzip companies across a range of industries ... and you will find financial companies lurking inside. This week we reprise the theme and spotlight five "banks in disguise": Starbucks, Carnival, Naked Wines, Delta Air Lines and Travel + Leisure Co

Wickwire recalls instances where other climbers lied about their ascents and were quickly banished. "No one would climb with them or believe what they said," he points out. But when it came to stories about Barrett's violence against women, people were too willing to look the other way—even after Barrett was arrested and a detailed indictment from a federal investigation was posted online. "There is a dissonance between how climbers think of themselves and what they actually do," says Kimbrough Moore, a longtime climber, a guidebook author, and a philosophy professor at San Francisco State University. "In my experience, the climbing community has been hostile to women who have come out saying they were assaulted." As for Barrett, Moore says: "I have never heard of anyone doing more to harm the climbing community than Charlie. He has used his status as an elite climber to hurt people for a very long time." from How Did This Climber Get Away with So Much for So Long? [Outside; ungated] [CW: rape, sexual violence, violence to animals, stalking, harassment, enabling]

Eight studies document what may be a fundamental and universal bias in human imagination: people think things could be better. When we ask people how things could be different, they imagine how things could be better (Study 1). The bias doesn't depend on the wording of the question (Studies 2 and 3). It arises in people's everyday thoughts (Study 4). It is unrelated to people's anxiety, depression, and neuroticism (Study 5). A sample of Polish people responding in English show the same bias (Study 6), as do a sample of Chinese people responding in Mandarin (Study 7). People imagine how things could be better even though it's easier to come up with ways things could be worse (Study 8). Overall, it seems, human imagination has a bias: when people imagine how things could be, they imagine how things could be better. from Things could be better [PsyArXiv Preprints]

Tintin inspired away kit homage to cartoonist Hergé [via Kottke]

Blue jersey, brown shorts, white socks: Belgium's new kit a tribute to comic book legend Tintin [AP] Tintin and the Red Devils: Belgian football teams present new comic-themed shirt [The Brussels Times] Belgium's soccer team unveils TINTIN-inspired uniform for European Championship tournament [Comics Beat] Belgium Football Association unveils new Tintin-inspired kit for summer European Championship [Sky] Related: Ranking all 24 Euro 2024 home kits: A familiar winning combination and one absolute disgrace [Football365] Tintin, previously

Meanwhile, there is an ethical conundrum to consider here - and with it a charge of hypocrisy. Many in the West, myself included, have enjoyed the fruits of the post-war travel boom, exploring far flung parts of the world without thinking of the unwanted consequences of mass tourism. So who are we now to preach to younger generations for whom gap years and backpacking are almost a rites of passage and indeed life enhancing experiences? And who are we to lecture people from developing economies who can only now afford to do the same? from Global tourism is booming. These people would rather it wasn't [BBC]

Fake signs and hunger strikes: What's behind Europe's backlash against overtourism? [EuroNews] The travel destinations that want tourists to stay away [Time Out] Japan blocks view of Mount Fuji after local backlash against tourist hordes [FT] What's the problem with overtourism? [National Geographic] Why You'll Pay More and Behave Better When You Travel This Summer [NYT] The problem with 'overtourism' - and how to address it [RNZ]

Thread of fashion designs inspired by art by James Lucas [X; Threadreader version]

It is sad, but it created something different in contrast to Twitter, which is Nostr, and that is something I believe in. I know it's early, and Nostr is weird and hard to use, but if you truly believe in censorship resistance and free speech, you have to use the technologies that actually enable that, and defend your rights. I find it interesting to watch people who say they believe in these things, but aren't invested in learning about Bitcoin or something like Nostr. Because those are technologies no company or government can compromise in any way. But corporations can be compromised. And they have been. from The End of Social Media: An Interview With Jack Dorsey [Pirate Wires]

Since then, the myth of Nickelback's awfulness has only grown through gifs, worst-of polls, clickbait articles, comedian punchlines, and YouTube mashups. But why is Nickelback the internet's punching bag of choice, and what seeded this collective animosity? Is there a quantifiable explanation for all of this Nickelback hatred? from Why Do People Hate Nickelback So Much? A Statistical Analysis [Stat Significant]

In 1994 the Pet Shop Boys were invited to perform 'Go West' at the Brit Awards. They agreed and brought with them 3 separate choirs of miners. Some of those miners had marched with the gay and lesbian members of LGSM in the 1980s. It is one of the great, near-lost music moments [Vimeo, via John Bull, via MetaFilter's own JScalzi]

Can you reach net zero by 2050? Play the Climate game by the Financial Times

Major League Baseball has incorporated the statistics of former Negro Leagues players into its historical records on its website, meaning legendary leaders in some categories like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb have now been replaced in the record books by players who were not allowed to play on the same fields as them during segregation. Josh Gibson, one of the greatest sluggers in the history of the Negro Leagues, is now listed as MLB's new all-time career leader in batting average at .372, moving ahead of Ty Cobb at .367. The MLB website shows Gibson also overtaking Babe Ruth in career slugging percentage.

Top leaderboard changes as Negro Leagues join Major League record [MLB] MLB integrates Negro League statistics into all-time record book with Josh Gibson now career batting average leader [CNN] Josh Gibson becomes MLB career and season batting leader as Negro Leagues statistics incorporated [AP] The MLB's long-overdue decision to add Negro Leagues' stats, briefly explained [Vox] MLB incorporates Negro Leagues statistics, shakes up record books [ESPN] MLB's integration of Negro League stats invites us to explore baseball as never before [The Athletic] MLB Player Comps for Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and More Negro League Legends [Bleacher Report] Seamheads Negro League stats Retro Sheets Negro Leagues site So many previouslies...

Intelligence analysis is a notoriously difficult craft. Practitioners have to make predictions and assessments with limited information, under huge time pressure, on issues where the stakes involve millions of lives and the fates of nations. If this small bureau tucked in the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters has figured out some tricks for doing it better, those insights may not just matter for intelligence, but for any job that requires making hard decisions under uncertainty. from The obscure federal intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right [Vox]

given the current discussions around ai and its impact on artistry and authorship, creating a film reliant on the technology is a controversial but inevitable move. however, the software that hustwit and dawes have built may just hit the sweet spot where human meets machine; where the algorithm works to respect the material and facilitate an artistic vision. from B–1 and the first generative feature film.

'eno' is the first documentary about the pioneering artist brian eno, and the first generative feature film. the narrative is structured at the whim of 'brain one', the proprietary generative software created by hustwit and digital artist, brendan dawes. using an algorithm trained on footage from eno's extensive archive and hustwit's interviews with eno, it pieces together a film that is unique at each viewing. as the order of scenes perpetually changes and what's included is never certain, the version you see is the only time that iteration will exist. "in some ways, the film is kind of like exploring the insides of his brain... it's different memories and ideas and experiences over the 50-year plus time frame." ENO Teaser: Australian Premiere of Brian Eno Film @ Vivid Sydney Opera House Sundance 2024: Generative AI Changes Brian Eno Documentary With Every View [Forbes] 'Eno' Review: A Compelling Portrait of Music Visionary Brian Eno Is Different Each Time You Watch It [Variety] 17-track Brian Eno compilation to accompany new doc [Uncut]

Could my desire to be rag-dolled by a big, strong man be a symptom of some sort of patriarchal Disney brain virus contracted during childhood? Do I want to be romantically rescued by a man? Saved by love? Yeah, unfortunately. Like honestly, that sounds fucking great. Is that gross? Sure. Okay, let's sit with that for a minute. It's not like I want to be a trad wife or anything, but there's a reason a bunch 20-something TikTokers are singing the virtues of baking all day. Life is hard. Jobs are hard. I could never give up my sense of self-worth for the trade-off of being a large adult dependent, but maybe that's what the fantasy is really about — having a brief moment where someone else is responsible for me again. from Pick Me Up by Lauren Bans [The Cut; ungated] [via The Morning News]

The FBI and Interpol announce Operation Endgame, the "largest ever operation against botnets". And they made some animated videos to go with it!

The Stasi files offer an astonishingly granular picture of life in a dictatorship—how ordinary people act under suspicious eyes. Nearly three hundred thousand East Germans were working for the Stasi by the time the Wall fell, in 1989, including some two hundred thousand inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or unofficial collaborators, like Genin. In a population of sixteen million, that was one spy for every fifty to sixty people. In the years since the files were made public, their revelations have derailed political campaigns, tarnished artistic legacies, and exonerated countless citizens who were wrongly accused or imprisoned. Yet some of the files that the Stasi most wanted to hide were never released. In the weeks before the Wall fell, agents destroyed as many documents as they could. Many were pulped, shredded, or burned, and lost forever. But between forty and fifty-five million pages were just torn up, and later stuffed in paper sacks. from Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi [The New Yorker; ungated]

Analyzing my text messages with my ex-boyfriend by Teresa Ibarra

One of those tools, the "Problematic Paper Screener," run by Guillaume Cabanac, a computer-science researcher who studies scholarly publishing at the Université Toulouse III-Paul Sabatier in France, scans the breadth of the published literature, some 130 million papers, looking for a range of red flags including "tortured phrases." Cabanac and his colleagues realized that researchers who wanted to avoid plagiarism detectors had swapped out key scientific terms for synonyms from automatic text generators, leading to comically misfit phrases. "Breast cancer" became "bosom peril"; "fluid dynamics" became "gooey stream"; "artificial intelligence" became "counterfeit consciousness." from Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures [WSJ; ungated]

We walk into the smoking area next door, which is as peaceful and quiet as a library, if it was a library where you can borrow bongs, which you actually can. Most of the tables are full. A lot of people are on laptops. A TV above plays YouTube cat videos on a loop. Sure. We grab a booth and spark up. Immediately, I'm both thirsty and hungry, which provides irrefutable evidence that weed cafes are a good idea. from I got high in an SF weed lounge and these should be everywhere mannnnn by Drew Magary

That all sounds scientific and careful. But is it really science or just applying scientific tools to a fantasy proposition? Is it possible to freeze the human body and revive it decades later? Currently, it's not remotely plausible. Will it ever be? That's probably an open question. As it stands now, cryonics is a bizarre intersection of scientific thinking and wishful thinking. from Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of futurists hoping for immortality [BigThink] [CW: Not Safe for Breakfast]

All this matters because the interfaces in question do the job of the dictator and the censor, and we embrace it. More than being infuriating, they train us to accept gross restrictions in return for trifling or non-existent ease of use, or are a fig leaf covering what is actually going on. from The accidental tyranny of user interfaces by Oliver Meredith Cox

The convention seemed endless. We wandered into Hall J. Everywhere, people clamored to shake the Palm Tree Wholesaler's hand, either nervously introducing themselves or trying to hide their dismay as they reminded him of their names. I asked if he had a booth at the conference, if he was here to sell trees, and he said, "I'm on the board of the association. I'm the keynote speaker this year." from The Smoke of the Land Went Up a short story by Andrew Cominelli [Guernica]

We interviewed three people whose holiday habits seem precision-engineered to wind up people on Twitter and TikTok. The adult Disney fanatic who's been on more than 70 Disney-themed holidays. A private landlord who flies first class while leaving his kids (and their nanny) to slum it in economy. And what about a 47-year-old who still stays in hostels? Do these people deserve their pariah status? Or might we have something to learn from listening to their perspectives? from Three Maligned Modern Tourists Defend Themselves [Vice]

Wrapped up in the thrill of discovering this new, delightful art and securing versions of it to gaze at while stirring tea in the morning, my dark, skeptical, spidey-senses failed to engage. High on consumer dopamine and browsing picture frames, I forgot, for an important moment, that we recently crossed over into a different sort of world. The sort of world where it is trivial to prompt a neural network to create an image that pulls on the traditional patterns, subject matter, and motifs of William Morris, but layered with the hyper-realistic, high-definition, pixel-perfect asethetics of the modern web; dramatic lighting and sweeping landscapes ripped from ArtStation, meticulously art-directed details from Wes Anderson film stills, the two-tone color overlays and soft glow effects popularised on Instagram and Pinterest. A system trained on everything we've clicked like on, priming us to like what it makes. from Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History

This leads us straight back to the original conversation about "Man or Bear," which has nothing to do with bears. (Sorry, bears!) "Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear?" is just another way of asking, "Are you afraid of men?" It's the same question I've been fielding for the entirety of my life as a solo female traveler. It's the same question that hovers over women all the time as we move through the world. And it's a question that's always been difficult for me to answer. from A Woman Who Left Society to Live With Bears Weighs in on "Man or Bear" by Laura Killingbeck [Bikepacking]