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A committee of professors and students spent 5 months studying how AI changed learning on campus, and the findings read like a warning to every university on the planet.

⭕ Study groups are disappearing.

⭕ Office hours are emptying out.

⭕ Problem sets and take-home exams no longer prove anything, because AI can produce credible solutions to almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum.

⭕ Students who lean on chatbots lose mastery and confidence, and some slip into what the report calls cognitive surrender, reaching for AI at the first hint of struggle.

The committee warns MIT professors against replacing undergraduate research assistants with AI agents just because they're cheaper, because a university exists to grow people, not output.

https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/

I single out bats (Chiroptera, "hand-wings") because those other ones are already under the grandorder Ferungulata. Scrotifera just brings the bats into the fold.

"As the principal tissue for insulin-stimulated glucose disposal, skeletal muscle is a primary driver of whole-body glycemic control. Skeletal muscle also uniquely responds to muscle contraction or exercise with increased sensitivity to subsequent insulin stimulation. Insulin’s dominating control of glucose metabolism is orchestrated by complex and highly regulated signaling cascades that elicit diverse and unique effects on skeletal muscle."

Over 90% of those deaths are Americans.

Til: The Red-Tailed Hawks, are the hawk noises that are dubbed over Bald Eagles in most Hollywood movies because in reality Bald Eagles don't sound as powerful or as cinematic.

This is so much easier than pressing hard on the bottom side of the touchpad why did no one tell me this was a thing 😭😭

(Kevin Nealon interviews his wife) https://youtu.be/hV6mNEaoTWY Time stamp 7:06

I mean I've always subconsciously figured there must be some secret secure method of conveyance for celebrities to get around clandestinely & safely but nobody ever talks about it because it's secret and now I'm curious to know where the entrance and exits are for these tunnels.

The highest-specific-impulse chemistry ever test-fired in a rocket engine was lithium and fluorine, with hydrogen added to improve the exhaust thermodynamics (all propellants had to be kept in their own tanks, making this a tripropellant). The combination delivered 542 s specific impulse in vacuum, equivalent to an exhaust velocity of 5320 m/s.

The impracticality of this chemistry highlights why exotic propellants are not actually used: to make all three components liquids, the hydrogen must be kept below −252 °C (just 21 K), and the lithium must be kept above 180 °C (453 K).

Lithium and fluorine are both extremely corrosive. Lithium ignites on contact with air, and fluorine ignites most fuels on contact, including hydrogen. Fluorine and the hydrogen fluoride (HF) in the exhaust are very toxic, which makes working around the launch pad difficult, damages the environment, and makes getting a launch license more difficult.

Both lithium and fluorine are expensive compared to most rocket propellants. This combination has therefore never flown.

i love how utterly expectable and yet humorous this whole article reads.

"oh so you think you finally found the best possible fuel, that has the highest specific impulse? think again: it's toxic, corrosive, expensive, difficult to work with, etc."

And the author of this article is tying himself into a pretzel trying to absolve Tolkien of this great shame.

In the early 19th century, humans and orcas had an agreement in Australia, until humans broke it.

Pasted for your convenience:

The Legend of Old Tom and the Gruesome "Law of the Tongue"

This is the story of an orca named Old Tom, who during the early 20th century spent almost four decades helping fishermen catch baleen whales off the coast of Australia.

BY BEC CREW

This is the story of an orca named Old Tom, who during the early 20th century spent almost four decades helping fishermen catch baleen whales off the coast of Australia. In return, Old Tom and his pod feasted on the lips and tongues of the whalers' haul.

The coastal town of Eden sits just over 470 kilometres south of Sydney, Australia. Originally occupied by the indigenous Thaua, or Thawa, people of the Yuin nation, it became a major whaling spot for the Europeans during the early 19th century. At this time, carpenter Alexander Davidson and his grandson, “Fearless” George Davidson, built a small whaling station about 7 km away on the southern shore of Twofold Bay - the third deepest natural harbour in the southern hemisphere. Still recognised as one of 12 coastal aggregation areas for southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) in Australia, Twofold Bay was the perfect place to set up shop, and by 1860, the Davidsons had established what would become the longest running shore-based whaling station in the country.

Each year as autumn gave way to winter, a population of orcas would migrate from Antarctic waters to Eden in search of food. Initially the Davidsons wrote the orcas off as a nuisance, always getting in the way of their catch, but attitudes changed when they hired a number of Yuin locals to join their whaling crews. It’s said that the indigenous inhabitants of Eden had been hunting baleen whales in the bay for at least 10,000 years prior to European settlement, and in that time had developed a unique relationship with the orcas.

According to aSydney Morning Herald edition from the 18 September 1930, the orcas would track down baleen whales congregating around the mouth of Twofold Bay, and shepherd them closer to the coast. While the pod trapped the whales in the bay, one of the males would position himself outside the whaling station, and breach and thrash his tail on the water until he'd attracted the whalers' attention.

Named Old Tom, this orca was almost seven metres long and weighed a hefty six tonnes. Because of his continued interaction with the whalers, he was known to the whalers as the leader of the pod.

Once a baleen whale had been caught and killed by the whalers - during their best season they caught as many as 22 - its carcass was left in the water, hitched to the boat, for the orcas to feed on its enormous tongues and lips. The orcas left the rest of the carcass, including the highly valuable blubber and bones, to the whalers, and this unique arrangement became known as 'the Law of the Tongue’.

Three generations of the Davidson family whalers honoured this arrangement, and it’s rumoured that the crew would help orcas trapped in nets in the bay and the orcas would drive sharks away from the whalers’ small, open rowboats.

But like our sweet prince of Dorne, all great things must come to an end.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald report, in about 1923, a local retired pastoralist, John Logan, went out on the water in Twofold Bay with George Davidson. When Old Tom saw the little fishing boat, he drove a small whale to the surface nearby, and Davidson harpooned it. Poor Old Tom fought, but he didn’t get his share:

But this particular day, says [local historian, Barry] Smith, "Logan saw a storm coming. He said, 'George, this might be the last whale you get all season. If we leave it for Tom, you'll lose it.'

"George said, 'But what about Tom?' To which Logan replied, 'Bugger Old Tom!'

"The upshot was a tug-of-war developed between Logan and Old Tom, which led to Old Tom losing a couple of teeth.

"Logan's young daughter, who was with them that day, remembered her father saying, 'Oh God, what have I done?’”

As a former military veterinarian, Logan knew what a bunch of missing teeth could mean for a wild orca. Sure enough, the holes in his gums became infected, and Old Tom starved to death. His body washed up on the shore in 1930, and out of guilt, Logan financed the construction of the Eden Killer Whale Museum, which still holds the bones of Old Tom to this day.

Soon after his death, Old Tom’s pod stopped appearing in Twofold Bay. Perhaps it was related to his death, but another theory is that the remainder of the pod was hunted down in Jervis Bay - about 300 km up the coast - by oblivious Norwegian whalers.

Either way, this is why we can't have nice things.

Watch a wonderful 50-minute documentary on Old Tom:

The Reagan administration pulled right-wing media executives Rupert Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife into a CIA-organized “perception management” operation which aimed Cold War-style propaganda at the American people in the 1980s, according to declassified U.S. government records.

Although some records relating to Murdoch remain classified, several documents that have been released indicate that he and billionaire Scaife were considered sources of financial and other support for President Ronald Reagan’s hard-line Central American policies, including the CIA’s covert war in Nicaragua.

A driving force behind creation of Reagan’s extraordinary propaganda bureaucracy was CIA Director William Casey who dispatched one of the CIA’s top covert action specialists, Walter Raymond Jr., to the National Security Council to oversee the project. According to the documents, Murdoch was brought into the operation in 1983 when he was still an Australian citizen and his media empire was much smaller than it is today.

Footnote with more information if you like learning about "perception management, propaganda, and how/why America has gone so far off the rails:

Rupert Murdoch is the most easily recognizable name mentioned in the main article, but you should really know the names William Casey and Richard Mellon Scaife in the context of creating the modern U.S. right wing propaganda machine:

•Early in his career, as a business lawyer, William Casey created the concept of a tax shelter to help his wealthy clients escape regulations mandated under the New Deal.

•In addition to being recruited by Casey into the perception management operation, Richard Mellon Scaife was also responsible for helping launch the conservative think tank, Heritage Foundation. Without Heritage, humanity never would have been blessed with the moral majority movement or Project 2025.

•The precursor organization to Heritage, which focused mainly on social (rather than economic) conservatism, was created by self described "political mechanic" Paul Weyrich (who would eventually coin the term "moral majority") and funded by heir to the Coors brewing fortune, Joseph Coors. When the precursor organization failed, Weyrich was connected with the economic expertise of conservative Ed Feulner. Soon, another investment from Coors helped launch Heritage, and Coors' money was then followed by large donations from Richard Mellon Scaife and other wealthy conservatives.

•Once they had funding, Heritage created their first edition of Mandate for Leadership (the most famous edition would become Project 2025), and both Carter and Reagan received a copy before the upcoming election. Carter ignored it. Reagan loved it.

•The Iran hostage crisis unexpectedly allows Reagan to defeat Carter. Except, the history nobody really talks about is the fact that Jimmy Carter and several members of his administration firmly believed that prior to the election, Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, traveled to Iran and helped orchestrate the delayed release of the hostages. The delayed hostage release (the October surprise) is believed to be the main factor leading to Carter's defeat and Reagan's victory. Once in office, Reagan implements the majority of the Mandate for Leadership within his first year and appoints William Casey as CIA director.

• Coincidentally, it turns out, Joseph Coors and William Casey were good friends, and when the Iran Contra scandal happens, Coors names Casey while testifying (which could really be a whole other TIL post). Casey dies very suddenly during the Iran Contra hearings and subsequently takes all the blame for the entire scandal.

The rest is history.

Footnote TLDR: Starting as early as the 1970s, the man who would eventually become Reagan's CIA director, (who also held intelligence ties due to his work with the CIA precursor, OSS, during WWII), joined forces with several wealthy oligarchs to do some wild shit to the United States. Including interfering with global political negotiations, influencing public perception, subverting democracy, and essentially setting into motion Project 2025 decades before it was written.

I know that sounds like a crazy conspiracy, but at the end of the day, it really just boils down to the lengths a group of nepo babies and their high powered lawyer went in order to: 1. Skirt the regulations created to protect the people they continue to harm and manipulate to this very day, 2. Avoid paying the taxes they continue to avoid paying, and 3. Stack the decks in their favor in order to remain in control.

TIL why the Mona Lisa became so famous I’ve always wondered why the Mona Lisa is so admired when there are so many other famous paintings from the Renaissance. What surprised me is that its fame didn’t come from one single thing. Leonardo’s technique, the painting’s history, its connection with the Louvre, and especially the attention it received after the 1911 theft all played a role