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@HidingInPrivate's video "How the GOP Lies to Us: The Trump Economy" fact checks GOP claims in the 2024 platform, and found it with holes big enough you can probably drive a Star Destroyer through... Some examples to follow:* Platform claimed Trump's term spurred "historic economic growth, job creation, and resurgence in American manufacturing". Would it surprise you that NONE of that was true? *...

We can't live without air. We can't live without water. And now we can't live without our phones. Yet our digital information systems are failing us. Promises of unlimited connectivity and access have led to a fractionalization of reality and levels of noise that undermine our social cohesion. Without a common understanding and language about what we are facing, we put at risk our...

The way teenage girls speak is often derided, but they are in fact our linguistic trailblazers. Teenage girls are the main accelerators of how language changes and evolves. It's a reminder that the most influential people in our society aren't always the most obvious.

Fracking ban takes effect in Queensland's Channel Country, protecting one of the most unique river systems in the world. It took 10 years, but Channel Country communities say they're relieved and overwhelmed as a promised ban to prevent future fracking projects in the precious river system becomes official.

Meet DebunkBot: an AI chat bot that provides factual explanations and counter-evidence for these conspiratorial events. It's strength appears to be that the LLM is inexhaustible and will argue indefinitely. They found that the targeted dialogues resulted in a relatively durable 20% decrease in the misinformed beliefs, which is better than similar dialogues with humans. Science has published the paper, Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs...

I Stayed at This Coast Guard Station in the Middle of the Ocean. So Can You. [Outside; ungated]

Wrecked rain gauges. Whistleblowers. Million-dollar payouts and manhunts. Then a Colorado crop fraud got really crazy. The sordid story of two ranchers who conspired to falsify drought numbers by tampering with rain gauges on the plains of Colorado and Kansas, resulting in millions in false insurance claims. By Michael Booth for the Colorado Sun.

One day, James Williams —the former Google strategist I met—addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: "How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?" There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.

The Washington Post challenges Biden's claim that Turkish-American activist Aysenur Eygi's death was due to an accidental ricochet with new video and eyewitnesses. (archive.is) The Biden administration has released $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, overriding human rights concerns, citing Egypt's assistance with Gaza talks. Brown University held the first of two forums on the issue of divestment and the advisory committee is...

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and...

Calling the mound 'howe' would make perfect sense, as 'haug' (pronounced howg) is Old Norse for a mound [Orkneyology]skara brae, previously

At that point, Groves was just walking a well-trodden path of exploitation and chicanery first blazed by Christopher Columbus, whose initial steps in the New World were taken on the island now known as Grand Bahama. Within two decades, Spanish explorers had killed or carried off the island's native inhabitants, and for centuries afterward, Caribbean historians note, pirates made the Bahamas their base and...

Calls to protect northern Australia's ancient stone wall fish traps from tourists, climate change. Traditional owners say World Heritage listing would help preserve Australia's largest archaeological site, an elaborate network of stone walls designed to trap fish at low tide in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Whatever happened to Rolamite? Invented in 1966 by Donald F. Wilkes, it looks like a simple gadget made with two rollers and a steel band, but it's much more. As basic as the wheel, the lever, or the hinge, it is the only simple machine discovered this century. Its use will be widespread --- in everything from switches, thermostats, and valves to pumps and...

In recent years, the Arctic has become a magnet for climate change anxiety, with scientists nervously monitoring the Greenland ice sheet for signs of melting and fretting over rampant environmental degradation. It wasn't always that way. At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over American and Soviet citizens, idealistic scientists and engineers saw the...

Logging ceases in New South Wales state forest after rare emu chicks hatch. Forestry Corporation of NSW has ceased logging operations near Grafton after the hatching of endangered coastal emu eggs.

VFX artist KanePixels, creator of the breakout video series set in The Backrooms, has finished their latest project: The Oldest View (Youtube playlist).The Oldest View is a six video series about the discovery and exploration of an abandoned Texas Mall. It brings his trademark sense of place, pacing, tension and the uncanny to a new setting. Once you're done, you might be interested to...

102 Minutes That Changed America [YouTube] is an American television special documentary film that was produced by the History Channel and premiered commercial-free on Thursday, September 11, 2008, marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The film serves as a compilation of amateur footage taken by numerous people filming the attacks, edited together to present the film in real time. ***[NSFW] [Content...

Chappell Roan is a Pop Supernova. Nothing About It Has Been Easy. (slRollingStone)Chappell previously Also if you are not into current pop music, it's cool. Just give this post a pass!

Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi's long-awaited report [PDF] on Europe's competitiveness has finally seen the light of day - and its first lesson for Europe's slowing growth since the turn of the century is to stop procrastinating. "We have reached the point where, without action, we will have to either compromise our welfare, our environment or our freedom," Draghi warned at the report's...

"Something we've never seen before": Tasmanian camera-trap photo competition spots wild neighbours. The traps have captured photographs of threatened species, unique animal behaviours — and even a currawong lifting a bin lid.