“ This map shows the predicted density of...
“This map shows the predicted density of underground networks created by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These networks form one of Earth’s circulatory systems, moving massive amounts of carbon, nutrients, and water across plant communities.”
Longreads
• Peter Rubin
The Children Who Loved a Killer
“The Carr family took in Steven Judy, hoping to ‘save’ a troubled teen. They didn’t know he would become one of the most hated men in America.”
Longreads
• Longreads
How Reporting Creates Change: A Conversation with Pamela Colloff

US signs landmark nuclear pact with Saudi Arabia
Quoting Seth Larson
The Python Package Index (PyPI) now rejects new files being uploaded to releases that are older than 14 days. This restriction was put in place to prevent old and long-stable releases from being poisoned in case publishing tokens or workflows of PyPI projects were compromised. As far as we are aware this has not yet been abused, but there is no technical reason beyond that attackers weren't aware it was possible.
— Seth Larson, PyPI blog
Tags: packaging, python, supply-chain, pypi, seth-michael-larson
Quoting Thomas Ptacek
I genuinely believe that if you took an open weights model from 2025 and built a pentest harness for it, it could do this kind of sandbox escape and scan/hack in most networks. This is only surprising because you assume OpenAI has sounder sandboxes.
— Thomas Ptacek, doesn't think this even needs a frontier model
Tags: thomas-ptacek, openai, security, generative-ai, ai-security-research, ai, llms, sandboxing
OpenAI’s accidental cyberattack against Hugging Face is science fiction that happened
Orchestrions
San Francisco tip: it only costs around $15 ($10 in quarters plus a $5 bill for the self-playing violin) to activate every single Orchestrion in Musée Mécanique.
And because most people are bad at allocating their funds you may well be the ONLY person activating the Orchestrions, which means you get to craft the soundscape for the entire museum.
Tags: san-francisco
California Sea Lion
Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing?
Oh wow, The Verge made a 70-minute video on how The...
Oh wow, The Verge made a 70-minute video on how The Clapper became a viral sensation. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a Clapper, no one I knew had one, and I couldn’t understand why every single household didn’t have one of these magical devices.
Frozen Polygon Waves
Well, this is just absolutely lovely: photographer and artist Jan Erik Waider shot these videos of cracked-but-unbroken Baltic Sea ice undulating with the gentle motion of the sea. Mesmerizing…I could watch these for hours.
Tags: Jan Erik Waider · mesmerizing · video
Longreads
• Carolyn Wells
Beyond Greece and Rome
"A dramatic shift in perspective is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world.’"
What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us...
What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us about America? “A menu describes what a restaurant serves — but a menu also describes who is being served. They reflect the class, gender, political, technological, and environmental shifts of history.”
Colossal
• Kate Mothes
Debra Broz’s Kitschy ‘Superorganisms’ Are Both Familiar and Strange
The Seattle-based artist's quirky sculptures are made from from found figurines.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Debra Broz’s Kitschy ‘Superorganisms’ Are Both Familiar and Strange appeared first on Colossal.
A list of Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail...
A list of Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail, including an Apple Powerbook 100, a SGI R4000 Indigo, the Motorola Envoy (PDA), and some Thinking Machines CM-5s. “This is a Unix system, I know this!”
There is nothing more I love in this world right now than...
There is nothing more I love in this world right now than these two lunch ladies performing Firestarter by The Prodigy.
Colossal
• Grace Ebert
Saman and Sasan Oskouei’s Sculptures Puncture the Weight of Everyday Objects
The brothers puncture everyday objects with irregular yet cohesive holes, rendering their former functions impractical.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Saman and Sasan Oskouei’s Sculptures Puncture the Weight of Everyday Objects appeared first on Colossal.
Unclassifiable Artists
Using William Blake (aka “the patron saint of unclassifiable artists”) as an example, Evan Puschak’s latest video explores how society often rejects artists whose work doesn’t fit neatly into established categories and frameworks of criticism and commerce.
What you’re seeing here, these are not paintings. They’re prints of engravings from Blake’s illuminated books, which he designed, wrote, etched, colored, and printed himself using a technique that he invented. These extraordinary books are works of art that mix and synthesize categories. And as a result, the art world of the late 17 and early 1800s didn’t really know what to make of them. And Blake never sold more than a handful.
Tags: art · Evan Puschak · poetry · video · William Blake