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The artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso and Diane Arbus were surrendered by actor Leonardo DiCaprio and producer Christopher McFarland.

Experiments in using AI to build AI show that the future doesn’t just belong to the frontier labs.

“Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, his office has provided few updates about his condition. The scant official statements have led to speculation around Washington and efforts to piece tog...

A Sage journal that holds the distinction of highest number of retracted articles in the Retraction Watch Database likely made in excess of $400,000 in revenue from those papers, by our calculation…

For a while there, you might remember how giant telecom monopolies, running out of new subscribers, all decided to get into the media business. But because terrible telecom monopoly executives can’t innovate and generally don’t know how competition works, it never really goes that well. The various Yahoo/Tumblr/Verizon/AOL exploits were a legendary mess, only outshined […]

Read to the end for Tucker Costanza

Internal emails from 2021 reveal tensions among researchers hunting for elusive Majorana particle

After reading my posts earlier today about Eliza, the first “hit” chatbot from the 1960s, DF reader AP sent me a link to the Kickstarter page for Searching for SmarterChild, a project from documentary filmmakers Lindsey Sitz and Zan Gillies to make a movie about SmarterChild, an AOL Instant Messenger chatbot that once had 30 million “friends” (a.k.a. users). I don’t recall ever hearing of SmarterChild before, let alone using it. (I think I was on a very different level of the Internet back then.)

But this looks like a great indie nerd documentary. The Kickstarter campaign has just one week left and they’re a wee bit short of their primary goal, and quite a bit short of their stretch goals. I just chipped in.

Pancreatic cancer has long been considered a death sentence. But a revolutionary new treatment has been shown to double survival times.

Phenix, 1905 #surrealism #paulklee

Death is a rather big part of life, so it makes sense that author Haralambi Markov kept writing about it, whether that was intentional on his part or not. In the Big Idea for his newest collection of short stories, Markov talks about his own experience with mental illness and death that contributed to this […]

Matthew Danzeisen’s lawyer says the case is a “shakedown about a bag” that brushed someone’s leg. Stefanie Bojar says she was injured aboard the jet—and that the lawsuit is a bullying tactic.

More young girls sue X over Grok CSAM; X accused of shielding child predators.

The mural stood for nearly three decades before workers began painting over it last month, causing an uproar among residents who admired its grand scale and message of ocean conservation.

This isn't about economics, it's about mental health

Physical vs. digital media and how we organize it, our system for the digital “deal with it later” pile, what we do with old hardware, and iPhone ergonomics.…

What’s the Point of Sex, Anyway? “There is yet another kind of male, known among ichthyologists as a ‘sneaky mater.’ This type dispenses altogether with nest-building and partnering and simply darts around squirting.”

A new book claims that Mystery, who teaches awkward men how to hit on women, had sex and smoked weed with an AI chatbot named Miss Shira Always.

Thanks to everyone who helped support our new project yesterday to track the transition from DOGE to the National Design Studio. We were able to bring on a team to help develop the site, and it’s already making great progress. We’re hoping to have it live in about a week.