A group of “unauthorized users” have accessed Anthropic’s Mythos AI model, which the company recently said they couldn’t widely release because it was too dangerous. Whoopsie doodle! Maybe don’t use guessable paths for your powerful cyberattack model?

Filmmaker Noah Hawley was invited to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Campfire retreat in 2018. Reflecting on the experience recently for The Atlantic, Hawley writes that today’s super-rich have stopped “pretending that the rules of human society apply” to them. The Jeff Bezos ...

Wow, this interview! “I’ve never had an interview quite like this one with Charlize Theron.”

“In a new book called “Israel: What Went Wrong?,” [Israeli professor of Holocaust & genocide studies] Omer Bartov argues that Zionism has morphed into an ideology of extremism that led to genocide in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7th.”

Lessons from a 1969 documentary on Nazi-occupied France on how fascism takes root. “A former undercover British agent recalls that working-class French were eager to help him and to shelter him. Those who were wealthier preferred to stay out of it.”

A new short story from Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation, etc.) called Constellations about a mission that has crash-landed on a distant planet.

We thought this day would never come. But we kept the faith and now we can begin to reap the rewards: there is actually a trailer for the Coyote vs. ACME movie and the movie itself is actually coming out on Aug 28. Quick recap of the situation so far: Ian Frazier wrote a ...

Well, here it is at last: the new Boards of Canada album is called Inferno and it will be released on May 28. Pre-order or pre-save the album.

Jamelle Bouie on the truly unprecedented open corruption of the Trump regime. I’ve found it useful to think of DJT’s 2nd term primarily as a heist: a theft of money & power from the American people by a con man who finally found the perfect score.

Is the best literary film adaptation of the last 50 years: a) The Silence of the Lambs, b) The Princess Bride, c) The Return of the King (LoTR), d) Apocalypse Now, or e) Jurassic Park?

A French corporation was recently found criminally liable for enabling terrorism. “The court in Paris has just ruled that cynicism and an exclusive focus on profits can constitute a crime.”

This is an animal called the leaf sheep: It’s a species of slug that is partially solar-powered, like a plant. Leaf sheep are kleptoplastic organisms that steal chloroplasts from algae, store them in their bodies, and then can rely on photosynthesis for their energy needs...

Everyone Is Blaming AI for the Water Crisis. We’re Looking at the Wrong Culprit. “One drive to the work I do on the Colorado River used more than 20 times the water of everything I did with AI in 11 weeks.”

The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock. “This clock displays the current time alphabetically.” Totally deranged…I love it.

Every Frame a Painting’s Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou are back with a video essay about pushing the boundaries of genre in Tsui Hark’s 1995 film The Blade.

One reason filmmakers like to work in a genre is that it gives us a pre-made box: a set of expectations, tropes, and boundaries. On the one hand, we want to play within that box, and on the other, we want to push against its edges. Tsui Hark’s The Blade is an exploration and a deconstruction of the box that is wuxia.

If you’re not familiar with wuxia, the video explains the genre; it’s basically Chinese martial arts fantasy — think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. (thx, neil)

Tags: film school · movies · Taylor Ramos · The Blade · Tony Zhou · video

As I watched the teaser trailer for season three of Silo, I discovered that I am very much looking forward to this new season. July 3, 2026.

Tags: silo · trailers · TV · video

Trials for a pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine: “Nearly 90% of people whose immune systems responded to the vaccine were still alive up to six years after receiving the last treatment. The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is around 13%…”

“NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected organic molecules on Mars, including chemicals widely considered building blocks for the origin of life of Earth.” And: “We think we’re looking at organic matter that’s been preserved on Mars for 3.5bn years.”

It’s Getting Harder to Spot AI in Contemporary Publishing. And That’s Very, Very Bad. “The word salads that we might identify as AI today may not be the kind of machine-made writing that we will see tomorrow.”

ReciproCard: “Start by searching for your home library above to instantly see every free reciprocal agreement you qualify for.” Use this to have more options for Libby ebooks.

“The Extrapolated Futures Archive is a reverse-lookup for speculative fiction. Describe a situation you are facing, and find the SF stories that already worked through the implications.”

Nancy Friedman notes the decline in quality in movie taglines. “As movies have become louder, flashier, and more expensive, their taglines have atrophied: they’re limp, lackluster, and uninspiring.”

The 16th season of the Dissect podcast is a deep dive into Daft Punk; here’s the 1st episode.

The Bodega Cats of New York project documents the working cats of NYC’s delis, bodegas, and corner stores. The cat at the local deli wasn’t a pet. She knew the regulars. She kept the mice out. She gave people a reason to walk an extra block. And she was technically a violation of city health code. That was six years ago. Since then, the project has documented over 150 shops, collected 13,500 petition signatures, and helped introduce the first legislation in New York City history to classify bodega cats as working animals. Available soon in book form. Tags: cats · NYC · photography

A few years back, the Mini Cooper’s taillights were designed to look like the Union Jack flag, which is fine until you turn the blinker on and it looks like an arrow pointing in the wrong direction. I hated this design the moment I saw it on the road.

Oh my gosh, look at these tiny snow leopard cubs from the Melbourne Zoo. 🥹

The Astronomy Picture of the Day, in which the International Space Station looks like it’s landing on the Moon.

I’d vaguely heard of Project Plowshare but good god, what a ridiculous and dangerous waste of time and money.

At the height of the Cold War, nuclear weapons were seen not only as devices of destruction, but also as tools for progress. Project Plowshare was a bold attempt to use atomic explosions for more practical purposes: from digging canals and creating harbors to reshaping entire landscapes. This project was designed to push the limits of what seemed possible, but instead turned into an environmental disaster.

This reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when Homer buys a gun and uses it around the house for everything, like changing the TV channel and opening beer cans. If the only tool you have is a hammer…

Tags: Cold War · nuclear bombs · science · video

“Here are some things that have been found in donation bins: A live puppy. Live Japanese grenades. An 1854 tombstone for Rebecca Jane Nye. Old skulls. A stolen Frederic Remington sculpture. Customized Air Jordans made for Spike Lee.”

Historian Eric Cline, author of 1177 BC, explains how the collapse of several civilizations circa 1200 BC was the result of an “overly interdependent system that had no way to absorb multiple shocks at once”.