July 13
A Jewish Case for AI work exemptions
I Bought the $3,000 Fitness Suit That Electrocutes You.
[404 Media] [archive] One of the instructors in the app said pins and needles in your hands can happen and should go away quickly. But mine would last for hours, and my feet multiple days. Then my limbs would feel numb and I would be incredibly cold, so much I would start sneezing. [Katalyst's CEO Brendan] Kennedy told me getting pins and needles for this long was “extremely abnormal.” [...] “This suit looks like the biggest scam I’ve ever seen,” Johnston wrote. She pointed to the Relaxacisor, a device from 1949 that blasted your abs with electrical pulses. “This thing is no different, and equally scammy,” Johnston said. [more inside]
The alternative burial method that could soon come to Australia
The alternative burial method that could soon come to Australia. Advocates say human composting offers a sustainable, greener alternative to burials and crematoriums, and can also provide a cheaper and equitable option after death.
Surprisingly elastic
If Foucault is inescapable, then he is also, perversely, elusive: both celebrated and reviled, sometimes by people in the same political camp. He’s been called a relativist, a reactionary, a faux-radical, an anarchist, a nihilist and an idealist, among many other things. Foucault himself took pleasure in being hard to pin down. [NY Times; ungated (note: archive site)]
Free Thread - Idioms and sayings
What's an idiom you find yourself using a lot in life or that you used to hear but rarely do now?
This is your free thread! So you can also talk about anything like food, love, life or the number 42. Just no politics.
Meu amigo nietzsch
An impoverished 11-yo Brazilian boy finds a discarded book at the city dump in MY FRIEND NIETZSCHE (2012. 15 min). Even though he can barely read it at first, the book eventually changes his life. A short film by Fáuston da Silva.
"Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it."
Beloved actor Sam Neill has died, aged 78. Born in Ireland, the New Zealand actor was an honorary Aussie and called Australia his home for many decades. [more inside]
"all of us are only one or two bad events away from that"
'No matter how bad, it is always fixable': how Bea Elton cleans up the houses – and lives – of desperate people. Emily Retter interviews Bea Elton, cleaner of extreme situations, in the Guardian. Elton's YouTube and Instagram.
July 12
If you've ever been curious...
Spend a half-hour on a guided tour through two notorious Amsterdam cruising hotspots in the video Inside Dirty D & Eagle - Gay Cruising Clubs Amsterdam: FULL TOUR. Tours given before hours so the clubs are empty. See what even people attending for a night of fun won't see because lights can be strictly forbidden. Adventurous, flirty, perhaps eye-opening.
Using "Explosive" In This Context is Never Good
The CDC has recently announced (through albeit limited channels) that there is an outbreak of cyclosporiasis in the United States. While not fatal, cyclosporiasis is an intestinal illness that causes "explosive" diarrhea, nausea and fatigue, and has been detected in 31 states, with 1,562 cases in Michigan alone. [more inside]
Experiment finds yoghurt can lower house temperature
Tandi Iman Dupree - Holding Out For A Hero
What’s New in Old Books
Some highlights from special collections libraries’ blogs this week.
Rare Books on Sex Have Spiced Things Up at a Library Franklin Founded (NYT gift link)
Public Schools and Empire Selling South Africa to the sons of Britain’s elite.
Napoleon, Henry VIII, Beethoven, Poe: The Amazing Autograph Collection of John D. Batchelder
The Other Declaration of Independence The 1876 Declaration of the Rights of the Women of the United States
Rare Books on Sex Have Spiced Things Up at a Library Franklin Founded (NYT gift link)
Public Schools and Empire Selling South Africa to the sons of Britain’s elite.
Napoleon, Henry VIII, Beethoven, Poe: The Amazing Autograph Collection of John D. Batchelder
The Other Declaration of Independence The 1876 Declaration of the Rights of the Women of the United States
I just have a little something I need to get drilled.
Nick Offerman's Wife Came to Work and Chose Chaos [YouTube 21:18] Megan Mullally joins real life husband Nick as his unpredictable ex-wife Tammy - a collection of scenes pulled together by the Parks and Recreation channel. (Includes scenes with Aziz Ansari if that bothers anyone.)
Nick and Megan previously [more inside]
The red colour of the dedicated species is a reminder of his feat
After winning plaudits across the globe for his World Cup performances with Cape Verde, goalkeeper Vozinha has another honour - with a newly discovered species of sea slug being named after him.
As the cost of living rises, old-school bartering makes a comeback
As the cost of living rises, old-school bartering makes a comeback.
Bartering is one of the oldest trade systems in the world, and as the cost of living soars, there is growing interest in trading homegrown and homemade goods.
July 11
Lindsey Graham is dead
US Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham has died at age 71. A Republican senator, Graham said in 2016, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.” The Republican party has yet to be destroyed, and if it is to be destroyed Graham will not see its destruction. Because he is dead.
Waiata 100: New Zealand's most beloved homegrown songs
10,000 Kiwis voted. More than 65,000 votes in the Waiata 100 have been tallied. Aotearoa has spoken. [more inside]
Preservation underground
Duke University would like to tell you about its conservation program. From modesty flaps to apology notes written on the effigy of a cat with a lettuce on its head, Duke library's conservation blog runs the gamut. Insight ranges from conservation methods and equipment, to the items themselves. In their blog, Duke have made accessible some of the knowledge and techniques which allow preservation of some of our oldest and most charming artifacts.
this wretched place where they never stop watching
Following a teensy data mixup, Flock cameras tracked automobile journalist Joel Feder for days and sent police to arrest him.
"The Plymouth Police Department had been tracking me for days using Flock license plate cameras, waiting for the right moment to strike, because they thought I’d stolen the Range Rover. And the reason I was ID’d as a dangerous car thief was a simple data error made 2,000 miles away in California[.]"[more inside]
Secretly moving the world’s most famous tapestry
The journey this truck has made over the previous 10 hours, by road and rail from northern France, was undertaken in great secrecy, due to the importance and value of the cargo within (reported to be insured for over a billion dollars). Great secrecy, anyway, until the secret was blown a couple of hours before the truck’s arrival, in a social media post from French president Emmanuel Macron: “The Bayeux Tapestry is heading for London. This age-old treasure that tells our shared history is crossing the Channel.” National Geographic reports on the big move, which took place over July 9-July 10, 2026. [more inside]
Technofeudalism and the Permanent Underclass
AI researchers and tech-adjacent people have convinced themselves that asymptotic AI development is inevitable and that it will fully devalue labor, creating a perpetual/permanent underclass (New Yorker). The only logical course of action is to gain enough capital that you (and your descendants) will be on the winning side of things. [more inside]
The beer scientist turning his attention to recording rare orchids
The beer scientist turning his attention to recording rare orchid species.
Robert Mitchell's interest in rare orchids in the area around Frankston results in him naming three and penning a research paper.
Deep Roots, Tall Order
The Rise of Unitree. DJI in drones and BYD in electric cars...now Unitree in robotics? The robotics frontier in levels of autonomy. But what the hey, let's see some dancing. (Spoiler: the human is a lot better than the robots). [more inside]
In a way, he’d been working on it his whole life
For the past few days, he has been unsubtly trying to write this story, the Tom Junod profile. Perhaps that explains why he steered his sensible midsize SUV to an eerie graveyard. (He knows texture.) And, of course, he quickly finds the most dramatic detail, the headstone of a dead infant. “Huh,” Tom says. “Looks like Clara had one day.” [Esquire; ungated] [more inside]
July 10
Pictures & Pilots
The spectacular silent film Wings (1927; Fanfare)--now considered the Oscars' first Best Picture--is among dozens of classics referenced in the Cthulhu homage Minions & Monsters (2026; earlier trailer). Two LGBTQ-coded scenes in Wings led one TikToker to expect "the greatest cinematic crossover." Other WWI biplane combat films online include the romance Lilac Time (1928) and The Dawn Patrol (1930) & Hell's Angels (1930). Some WWI biplane combat memoirs: Rickenbacker (well-known but arch-conservative pilot / airline CEO), von Richthofen, McCudden, Bishop (subject of a musical), Grider & Springs (subject of an unproduced script by Faulkner), Bölcke, McConnell, Biddle, Bott, and Hall (co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty). Some biplane games: Tryplane, Bit Planes, and many old tabletop games including Dawn Patrol, "the first to have character advancement"?
The GRAS Loophole
99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food Additives Amendment. NPR Planet Money report.
Ecosystem engineers returned to desert decades after local extinction
Ecosystem engineers returned to desert decades after local extinction.
Wiped off mainland Australia by the introduction of cats and foxes, burrowing bettongs are making a triumphant comeback in outback New South Wales.
Unprompted
A coder named [SnailMail] has taken on the challenge of writing his own text editor, from scratch, in C, on a 386. Modern IDEs, code completion and AI integration did not gel with him, so he dug up diskettes for Borland Turbo C and Turbo C++ and did it 1980s style -- poring over books and coding by hand.
This was the first programming language the young coder learned. In order to emulate the developers of the time, hardware was also limited to period PCs (an IBM he won on an auction for $630.) [more inside]
Call us / we won't pick up
A brutal takedown of the upcoming live action Moana movie
An objectively pointless rehash of beautiful source material that Disney seems desperate to strip-mine until even its memory is nothing more than the skeletal remains of something once alive.
Jackson Weaver of the CBC has some things to say…
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17-19): Reach! Teach! Preach!
This month's major national USA protest event is Good Trouble Lives On, July 17-19. "Coined by civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis, “Good Trouble” is the act of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice. The power of collective non-violent action resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and we must maintain that same collective action to fight for voting rights today. This year’s weekend of action will honor the legacy of Congressman John Lewis and carry the torch of the civil rights movement by doing what Lewis loved most – organizing, educating, and taking action." [more inside]
No quiet at home
This is a train sim, not a plane sim, you’ve no business in the sky.
A sugar rush with scuffed knuckles
Pleasure's All Yours(Bandcamp) the debut full-length from Atlanta's Ultra Lights is "a sugar rush with scuffed knuckles... pulling a thread connecting Johnny Thunders, the Replacements, Pavement, Parquet Courts, and (most obviously) the Strokes." (Pitchfork) Frontman John Robinson recently sat down with The Big Takeover to talk about being an up-and-comer again at 42 after two decades of near-misses in the underground scene with bands like Illegal Drugs and Turf War. [more inside]
Magnets: how DO they work?
There aren’t many babies in outer space
"I’ve loved the sickbay on Star Trek: The Next Generation since I was a teenager... Cortical stimulators that revive the unconscious, no matter how traumatising their injuries. Biobeds that enclose patients within sensor arrays, short metal tunnels that scan and analyse —all, I imagine, while keeping sick and hurt beings warm... Our delivery suite has a pseudo-dot-matrix printer, a team of blue scrubs, and the promise of a scalpel."
Both facts must be held at the same time, and that holding is the point
What the attack on Monticello cost was not the truth. The truth is in the ground, in the archive, in the oral histories collected beginning in 1993, in the names Stanton and Swann-Wright recovered, in the descendants’ faces in the photographs taken on the West Lawn steps. Those things were put in the record by specific people doing specific work over three decades, and they remain; the work was done carefully enough that it survives the institution’s retreat from it. What the attack cost was the institution’s willingness to stand in front of that truth without flinching. That is a real cost.
Secrets of Indigenous astronomy revealed in new exhibition
Secrets of Indigenous astronomy revealed in new exhibition. Newcastle Art Gallery presents the distinctive and intricate work of the Torres Strait Islander artist in its first major solo survey following a four-year refurbishment. (Australia)
The Victorian Web: Literature, History, & Culture in the Age of Victoria
From the intro:
The Victorian Web… originated in hypermedia environments (Intermedia, and Storyspace) that existed long before the World Wide Web. One of the oldest academic and scholarly websites, it entered the Internet in 1994… [I]n contrast [to Project Gutenberg and other archives], [it] presents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. In other words, it emphasizes the link rather than the search tool.
In the Victorian Web we encounter books, paintings, political events, and eminent and not-so-eminent Victorians in multiple contexts, which we can examine when and if we wish to do so. [more inside]
The Victorian Web… originated in hypermedia environments (Intermedia, and Storyspace) that existed long before the World Wide Web. One of the oldest academic and scholarly websites, it entered the Internet in 1994… [I]n contrast [to Project Gutenberg and other archives], [it] presents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. In other words, it emphasizes the link rather than the search tool.
In the Victorian Web we encounter books, paintings, political events, and eminent and not-so-eminent Victorians in multiple contexts, which we can examine when and if we wish to do so. [more inside]
July 9
Cloudflare to scroogle Google
Adweek reports, that Cloudflare is set to deny access by multi-purpose crawlers to many sites in their content delivery network by default, particularly those that serve to gain data for training generative AI, which stands to block Google's access to up to one-fifth of the World Wide Web. [more inside]
Einstein? Smart guy.
The Earth is dragging spacetime around its orbit, just as Einstein predicted: "The famed physicist’s revolutionary general theory of relativity debuted in 1915, positing that gravity can be understood as objects falling along the curvature of spacetime. One well-tested product of this is frame-dragging, in which a heavy, rotating object—like a black hole or the Earth itself—drags spacetime and anything in its orbit around with it. (Some researchers have compared the effect to a spoon spinning in honey, moving the honey and anything in the honey as it turns.) Now researchers have managed to measure this phenomenon with more precision than ever before, confirming Einstein’s greatest theory once again in a study published Wednesday in Nature."
Lab-Leak Payback Has Begun
The Trump administration's COVID lab-leak retribution is in full swing: a flu expert was hauled off by the FBI, a coronavirus researcher was indicted in Detroit, two prominent virologists stepped down or were removed from senior roles, and Anthony Fauci, MD, has been subpoenaed to appear before the U.S. Senate. (The Atlantic) [more inside]
Ian McKellen reads "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Read along as Ian McKellen reads "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge [30m].
I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do
"Is it working?"
Every John Oliver Scene on General Hospital Meet Zee (or Zed? or Zeke on the captions?). He's got black hair, he shot a guy, and he got slapped. [more inside]
Loop-de-loop
The Loop: A picture puzzle game from the Britannica Arrange the pictures so that each one is connected to the previous and the next (semi) logically.
Building a WWII Jeep from parts in 2026
The editor of The Autopian built an entire vehicle out of individual parts David Tracy, editor-in-chief of theautopian.com, built a WWII Jeep from parts that he bought online (and a few from specialty shops). Then he drove it hundreds and hundreds of miles, and took it off-roading in Moab.
Tasmanian devils the winner from feral cat trapping effort
Tasmanian devils the winner from feral cat trapping effort.
A successful feral cat trapping effort in northern Tasmania leads to a spike in the devil population.
More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of on a stick
Every year in the heart of North America through the spring and early weeks of summer the gastronomic anticipation builds, radiating outward across the continent, exciting imaginations and stimulating appetites in even the most isolated coastal metropolises, until a day in mid-July when The List is at last released to a hungry world — the list of new foods at this year’s Minnesota State Fair.
36 concoctions (only 5 of which appear to be on a stick or skewer) are slated to bow this year, joining the roughly 1,600 other culinary offerings at the 2026 Great Minnesota Get-Together (running August 27 to September 7). [more inside]
