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Science (General/Chat)

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  • These mice have human (nerve cells) on the brain

    09/17/2026 3:40:21 AM PDT · by DFG · 9 replies
    Science News ^ | 09/16/2026 | Elie Dolgin
    Scientists have made mice with a remarkable amount of room for human brain tissue to grow. By genetically engineering animals lacking part of their brain, researchers created a living model in which pea-sized clumps of human neurons could expand, mature and wire into a developing nervous system, ultimately coming to dominate the mouse cortex, the brain’s outer layer. The model offers a new way to study human neural circuits and brain disease, researchers report September 16 in Nature. “Our goal has been to make aspects of human brain development and function accessible for investigation, so we can develop therapeutics,” says...
  • America Just Confirmed It Has Weapons in Space. Which Stocks Could Benefit?

    09/16/2026 8:29:02 PM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 9 replies
    The United States has publicly confirmed for the first time that it has weapons deployed in orbit. The revelation could accelerate spending on missile defense, military satellites and space security, creating opportunities for defense stocks and space ETFs while raising the risk of a costly new arms race. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink delivered the news almost casually during the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland. “We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” Meink said. Then the details stopped. Meink...
  • U.S. Admits It Has Weapons In Orbit...Space Force has finally confirmed it has weapons in space and has also shared details about its "space control" mission set.

    09/14/2026 7:28:22 PM PDT · by Red Badger · 58 replies
    TWZ ^ | September 14, 2026 | Joseph Trevithick, Howard Altman
    Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink made a bombshell admission this morning, disclosing that there are on-orbit weapons deployed right now to protect America’s interests in space. Those weapons support a Space Control mission set, and the U.S. Space Force has now also shared additional details about that directly with TWZ. Meink first made mention of what he described as “on-orbit space control weapons” during his keynote speech earlier today at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, at which TWZ is in attendance. As head of the Department of the Air Force,...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Webb's View of M64

    09/16/2026 5:23:10 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 10 replies
    NASA ^ | 16 Sep, 2926 | Image Credit: NASA, CSA, ESA, F. Belfiore (ESO), J. Lee (STScI), A. Leroy (OSU), and D. Thilker (JHU
    Explanation: Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are embedded in pink star-forming regions in the secondary Hubble-only image. M64’s inner and outer gas regions counter-rotate, creating regions of increased star formation where the two gas “currents” meet and compress. A...
  • Why female athletes lose their mind over Sydney Sweeney’s ad — but stay quiet on men in women’s sports

    09/16/2026 4:17:39 PM PDT · by Libloather · 89 replies
    NY Post ^ | 9/16/26 | Jennifer Sey
    Sydney Sweeney is doing what Sydney Sweeney does. She is hot and she knows it. She is using her hotness to sell something. The something happens to be Novig, a sports betting app. So she’s holding footballs. She is not pretending to be an athlete; she is being a woman men like to look at. That is the entire point of the ad. Predictably, a posse of female athletes is furious. Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a training montage: “idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.” Sydney isn’t claiming to...
  • ChatGPT Straight Up Tries to Gaslight User After Being Confronted About Its Obviously Wrong Answer...The AI is hellbent on being right.

    09/16/2026 10:15:58 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 67 replies
    Futurism ^ | September 15, 2026 | Frank Landymore
    Don’t ask an AI chatbot how many letter e’s there are in the word “seventeen.” Or do, actually, if you want to see how dodgy the tech remains. In a clip that’s gone viral in AI circles, the content creator who goes by “Husk” asks ChatGPT’s Voice mode to answer this simple counting question. Not only does the confident-sounding AI get it wrong — insisting there’re only three e’s instead of four — it doubles down so vehemently that it effectively tries to gaslight the user. “Let’s go through it. S-e-v-e-n-t-e-e-n,” ChatGPT spells out, after assuring that its underlying model,...
  • Feds smash multi-million dollar LA homeless scheme as bigwig and ‘charity’ worker dragged from their homes

    09/16/2026 9:18:30 AM PDT · by Libloather · 41 replies
    NY Post ^ | 9/16/26 | Ben Chapman
    A charity worker who allegedly took massive bribes in exchange for pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of a corrupt homeless service bigwig was busted by the feds in a sweeping operation that targeted infamous homeless services fraud in that’s crippling Los Angeles. FBI agents in a dramatic raid swarmed the South Los Angeles home of Lakiya Malone just before dawn, taking to bullhorns and yelling for her to “come out!” As the SSG worker emerged, she was placed in handcuffs by men in Kevlar vests, while others trained rifles on her house. FBI agents collared Malone, 48,...
  • Ukrainians are now stocking up on semiautomatic shotguns to take out Russian drones

    09/16/2026 4:37:41 AM PDT · by Libloather · 17 replies
    NY Post ^ | 9/15/26 | Colin Freeman
    From the gun cabinet of his shooting range, Volodymyr Sukhomlyn pulls out a semiautomatic shotgun. **SNIP** Not an easy target “But more recently it’s been bus drivers and cabbies buying them, too — anyone who is out on the streets a lot.” One FPV attack this month injured several people at a supermarket, leaving the floor stained with blood. Another ploughed into the upper floors of a government building downtown. “I heard it coming and we had to hide in a shop when it exploded,” said Julia Sologub, 31. “It used to be just a problem for soldiers — now...
  • Stealth Startup Kepler Computing Says It Cracked the AI Memory Shortage

    09/15/2026 9:04:36 PM PDT · by Red Badger · 20 replies
    Startup Fortune ^ | September 15, 2026 | Ron Patel
    Kepler Computing, a stealth startup led by CEO Debo Olaosebikan and CTO Sasi Manipatruni, says it developed a ferroelectric composite material that boosts memory density while cutting power needs, and it's already working with GlobalFoundries to manufacture it. The claim lands as AI data centers have doubled SSD and hard drive prices over the past year and the US government has committed up to $245 million toward Kepler's technology through the CHIPS Act. ============================================================== Kepler Computing says it has found a way around one of AI's nastiest hardware bottlenecks: memory. The hard part now is proving that a clever material...
  • Trump and Fetterman vs. Anthropic's Communists: The Battle for America's Economic Future — Promethean Overviews

    09/15/2026 5:05:14 PM PDT · by jacknhoo · 2 replies
    Promethean Action ^ | Sep 13, 2026 | Mike Steger
    President Trump, the GOP, artificial intelligence, Anthropic, Effective Altruism, John Fetterman, and American reindustrialization collide in the battle over America’s future. In this Overview, Mike examines President Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party, Senator John Fetterman’s appearance at the GOP midterm convention, and America’s attempt to escape decades of debt, globalization, and industrial decline. He connects new investments in steel, energy, artificial intelligence, nuclear power, and manufacturing to a broader American economic revival. Mike then investigates warnings from inside Anthropic, the influence of Effective Altruism, and proposed federal restrictions on advanced AI. At the center of the episode is one...
  • A Special Diet Could Help Slow the Growth of one of the Deadliest Brain Tumors

    09/15/2026 12:35:20 PM PDT · by nickcarraway · 21 replies
    New York Post ^ | Sep. 15, 2026 | Rachel Sacks
    The key to slowing deadly brain tumors could be right on our plates. Gliomas are a group of tumors that develop in the brain or spinal cord and can range from slow-growing — like the one Busy Philipps was diagnosed with this year — to highly aggressive, like the ones John McCain, Beau Biden and Sophie Kinsella had. New research from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health may have found a way to slow down the growth of these tumors — and it could come down to what people eat. A study published Tuesday found that high-grade...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - A Daytime Eclipse: Moon Occults Venus

    09/15/2026 12:23:12 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 6 replies
    NASA ^ | 15 Sep, 2026 | Image Credit & Copyright: Arnaud Mariat
    Explanation: There was something behind the clouds. Upon close inspection, it was the Moon, which was hard to see yesterday around noon above the small village of Cessy, France. But soon, it was not only the Moon. As expected, a bright dot suddenly appeared from behind the Moon -- the planet Venus far in the distance. Captured in the single featured exposure, both appeared to show a crescent phase. The Moon's crescent was quite slight -- with only about 10 percent of its face illuminated by the Sun. In contrast, Venus's crescent was more full -- showing about 25 percent...
  • We Must Pace the Frontier

    09/15/2026 6:56:43 AM PDT · by posterchild · 21 replies
    Dario Amodei ^ | September, 2026 | Dario Amodei
    I have worked on AI for the last twelve years because I believe it could dramatically raise the quality of human life. I’ve written often about these incredible benefits: I believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom. I feel the urgency personally. My own father died of a disease that was cured just a few years after his death, and I myself survived an early-stage cancer that would not have been treatable even...
  • Why the AI Merchants of Doom are Dead Wrong

    09/14/2026 9:14:04 PM PDT · by fireman15 · 7 replies
    Watts Up With That ^ | 9/11/2026 | Eric Worrall
    Hacking a weak computer system does not equal global doomsday. The news has been full of articles recently about how we’re all going to die by 2030, 2027, or insert your year number. (The piece then quotes from an article from another source... and then continues.) For starters, we can discount the AI supervirus threat. AI doesn’t have to develop a doomsday virus, that world killing doomsday virus was already developed by the Aussie CSIRO in 2001 – who then promptly went on to tell everyone how to replicate their work. Aussie researchers stumbled across a simple genetic hack which...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Where Your Elements Came From

    09/14/2026 12:04:34 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 26 replies
    NASA ^ | 14 Sep, 2026 | Image Credit: NASA's GSFC, SVS
    Explanation: The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are...
  • The Disaster BEFORE the Black Death [10:34]

    09/14/2026 11:07:52 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 9 replies
    YouTube ^ | September 13, 2026 | Paul Whitewick
    This is the story of a largely forgotten disaster that struck medieval Britain between 1315 and 1319. Overshadowed by the Black Death just a generation later, it rarely gets the attention it deserves. 1315 was an extraordinarily bad year. The real problem was… things just kept getting worse. The Disaster BEFORE the Black Death | 10:34 Paul Whitewick | 267K subscribers | 12,109 views | September 13, 2026
  • Something About Canada's Viking Site No Longer Makes Sense [8:45]

    09/14/2026 11:02:12 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 11 replies
    YouTube ^ | September 8, 2026 | Genefall
    Something About Canada's Viking Site No Longer Makes Sense | 8:45 Genefall | 3.37K subscribers | 243,818 views | September 8, 2026 Video Timestamps: 0:00: The Three Seeds That Reopened the Vinland Question 1:03: Why the Newfoundland Landscape Contradicts the Sagas 1:47: The Biological Border: Butternuts in Subarctic Peat 2:56: A Shipyard, Not a Farm: The Bog Iron Bloomery 4:10: The 993 CE Solar Storm: Pinpointing the Year 1021 5:20: The Clean Decommissioning of an Outpost 6:14: American Timber in 14th-Century Greenland Homes 7:38: The Gateway Base: Three Centuries of Silent Resource Voyages
  • Tesla's latest software update is a biggie.

    09/14/2026 11:00:21 AM PDT · by eastexsteve · 14 replies
    Tesla ^ | 09/09/2026 | not a tesla app
    Automatic Collision Evasion Tesla Automatic Collision Evasion feature in update 2026.27.5 Available in the US HW4 Models: S? 3 X? Y CT Automatic Collision Evasion activates Full Self-Driving (Supervised) to try to keep your vehicle safe and then continue driving. It can engage in the following situations while you are driving manually: - Scenario 1: A frontal collision is imminent and braking alone may not avoid it. - Scenario 2: Your vehicle detects that you are not sufficiently attentive to the road (for example, reaching toward the back seat), or that Full Self-Driving (Supervised) may have been unintentionally disengaged. See...
  • Comet NEOWISE Rising over the Adriatic Sea

    09/13/2026 11:43:59 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 12 replies
    NASA ^ | 13 Sep, 2026 | Video Credit & Copyright: Paolo Girotti
    Explanation: This sight was worth getting out of bed early. Just over four years ago, Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake that early. Up before sunrise on July 8th, the featured photographer was able to capture in dramatic fashion one of the few comets visible to the unaided eye this century, an inner-Solar System intruder that has become known as the Great Comet of 2020. The resulting video detailed Comet NEOWISE from Italy rising over the Adriatic Sea. The featured time-lapse video combines over 240 images taken over 30 minutes. The...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Apollo 11: Catching Some Sun

    09/13/2026 4:41:18 AM PDT · by MtnClimber · 12 replies
    NASA ^ | 12 Sep, 2026 | Image Credit: Apollo 11, NASA (Image scanned by Kipp Teague)
    [Note: Catching up for yesterday] Explanation: Bright sunlight glints as long dark shadows mark this image of the surface of the Moon. It was taken on July 20, 1969, by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the lunar surface. Pictured is the mission's lunar module, the Eagle, and spacesuited lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin is unfurling a long sheet of foil also known as the Solar Wind Composition Experiment. Exposed facing the Sun, the foil trapped particles streaming outward in the solar wind, catching a sample of material from the Sun itself. Along with 22...