A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).
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“We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?”
Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder | The Guardian
“Amateur is a word that’s kind of a pejorative, but the original meaning of the word ‘amateur’ is ‘lover of,’” he explained. “So being an amateur at something just means that you’re more interested in doing it for the love of the thing rather than the making money of the thing.” The last point is key, he says, because we live in a culture that’s become obsessed with monetizing every hobby. That results in the belief that if we aren’t doing something that can somehow be turned into a side hustle, or we aren’t supremely talented at a particular activity, there’s no point in doing it. And in the end, many people wind up with no hobbies at all.”
Artist Austin Kleon Offers Tips on Finding Creative Freedom
“Our nervous system consists of 80% of afferent neurons, which move from the body to the brain—in contrast to roughly 20% of efferent neurons, which run in the opposite direction, from the brain to the body. As a result, so-called bottom-up interventions—or practices that leverage our physiology by consciously shifting our respiratory or visual systems—are 4x more effective at altering our blood chemistry and, therefore, shifting our state.”
The Operating Manual for Your Nervous System
“When we detect unauthorized crawling, rather than blocking the request, we will link to a series of AI-generated pages that are convincing enough to entice a crawler to traverse them. But while real looking, this content is not actually the content of the site we are protecting, so the crawler wastes time and resources. As an added benefit, AI Labyrinth also acts as a next-generation honeypot. No real human would go four links deep into a maze of AI-generated nonsense. Any visitor that does is very likely to be a bot, so this gives us a brand-new tool to identify and fingerprint bad bots, which we add to our list of known bad actors.”
Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth
“Although Earth might seem like a stable, flat surface where we live our lives, seismologists have discovered that it’s far from passive. In fact, Earth has a ‘heartbeat’ that pulses every 26 seconds, according to Discover Magazine. Known as “microseisms,” these faint seismic tremors resemble tiny earthquakes, though they aren’t exactly the same. For decades, scientists have been baffled by these mysterious tremors, and despite many theories, no definitive explanation has been found.”
Scientists puzzled by Earth’s ‘heartbeat’ that causes slight tremors every 26 seconds – GOOD
“The implications of this research extend far beyond the world of cryptocurrency. The methods developed by Dr. Clegg and his team could be applied to a wide range of complex systems, from financial markets to social networks. For regulatory agencies, this work offers a new way to monitor and safeguard against systemic risks, protecting both individual investors and the broader economy.”
Mathematicians uncover the hidden patterns behind a $3.5 billion cryptocurrency collapse
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A free online Anagram Generator for all your anagramming needs.
A recreation of the classic TR-808 Drum Machine online so you can play with.
I missed this: BBC Maestro is basically the BBC trying to be masterclass.com.
✱ dori the giant ✱: 13 Animals Made From 13 Circles – delightful and super-imaginative.
Check out this Curved Text Generator – Completely Free, No Signup which is pretty neat.
MLA Labs is a free online interface to slow or speed up sound and detune as well to then export.
tv.garden is an online gateway to free live TV streaming from anywhere (just click the dice in the top corner for random selection).
The Kelmscott Chaucer Online Colouring Book features all 87 illustrations that Edward Burne-Jones designed for the Kelmscott Chaucer.
Cities and Memory – global sound map, field recording and sound art covering 130 countries and territories with more than 7,000 sounds and more than 2,000 contributing artists.
mobygratis – Free Moby music to empower your creative projects, all for free (apart from this pop-up: “there are only 2 things you can’t do with the music here; use it to advertise right wing politics or causes, or use it to promote meat, dairy, or other animal products.”)!