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German authorities have thwarted a Russian intelligence operation to assassinate executives of defense companies supplying weapons to the Ukrainian military. One of the main targets was Stefan Thumann, an executive at German startup Donaustahl:

militarnyi.com/en/news/germany…

(Coming the day after the drone attack on Antonovs at Leipzig, this suggests Russia is significantly ramping up attacks in Germany.)

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Today is Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" Nuclear War Day

First published in 1950, Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" describes a single house miraculously standing after nuclear attacks have destroyed the city (and presumably global civilization), the house still going about its automated duties for a time, unaware of what has occurred. Yes, remarkably prescient, and unlike much science-fiction, damned accurate on his predicted dating as well. The house announces:

"Today is August 4, 2026."

Ray would have hated the world today. I miss him.

L

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Don’t forget to cast your vote for the 2026 Hugo Awards!

Did you know that voting on the entire Hugo Awards ballot is NOT required? Do you know films and video games, but not novels? Do you love art and graphic stories, but haven't read the novellas? That's OK! Vote on only the categories that you know. Your votes matter and they will be counted!

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in reply to LAcon V

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Deadline to submit your Hugo ballot is Saturday, August 8th at 12 noon PST!
Voting will close on August 8 at noon PDT. Access to the Hugo Voter Packet will be removed at the same time.

Finalist information can be found on our site: lacon.org/hugofinalists You can access the voting platform through our Member Portal. If you have any questions or problems, email hugo-help@lacon.org.

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The Fediverse. Where I spend my day discussing the relative quality of music throughout the decades, the complexity and accessibility of Jazz, and in what order I would eat the Muppets (with a possible extension to Sesame Street now I , apparently, have a taste for Muppet meat).

(I'm a borderline Vegan but Muppets don't count. There's no mention of them on either the vegan society or PETA's websites)

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In this episode of The Star River Podcast, host Eric Loyd sits down with Dr. Tremblay to explore the cutting edge of astrochemistry and the modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). From her unconventional journey starting out in laboratory chemistry testing dirt samples to hunting for complex molecules and technosignatures with world-class radio telescopes, Chenoa shares a mind-bending look at how we listen to the universe.

Listen here: astropotamus.com/star-river/ep…

#seti #science

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Russia has charged Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorism and placed him on an international wanted list. Durov could face life imprisonment if convicted alternativeto.net/news/2026/8/…

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This entry was edited (Tuesday, August 4, 2026, 11:22 AM)
in reply to Robert Kingett

The "free labor to fix it" is a feature of The Politics of Exhaustion

Making civil rights, access, and even decency & fairness into "very hard to achieve" targets

This task assignment by the privileged onto the less privileged is deliberate

Make the folks with the time, resources, & advantage be the ones to find solutions instead.
wearethe94percent.com/receipts…

sundialpress.co/2024/04/17/its…

newrepublic.com/article/209886…

newyorker.com/news/annals-of-i…

vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/ho…

1/

This entry was edited (Tuesday, August 4, 2026, 7:59 PM)

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No one is more aggressively anti-economic-growth than the fossil fuel industry

theguardian.com/world/live/202…

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Five SF Works About Building a New Nation

Sure, societal collapse is inherently dramatic — but nation-founding can be exciting too!

reactormag.com/five-sf-works-a…
#ReacTor

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Statcounter reports Linux at 10.65% of desktop usage in North America, with Cloudflare data lending further support to the milestone.
linuxiac.com/linux-desktop-mar…

#linux #opensource

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The SETI Institute's Wow! Literary Award invites writers and poets working in literature, speculative fiction/sci-fi, experimental poetry, and philosophy to submit original, unpublished creative work that reflects and expands on the SETI Institute’s “Intelligence and Consciousness” research area, exploring the questions:

What may interspecies communication entail?
What is the nature of consciousness?
What is the nature and evolution of intelligence?

#writing #SETI #science

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in reply to SETI Institute

We suggest that writers and poets familiarize themselves with the SETI Institute’s research. The jury will pay attention to a strong connection to the SETI Institute’s scientific work as well as innovation in creative expression.

The Wow! Literary Award comes with a $1,000 award and publication on the SETI Institute’s website. The SETI AIR team will award three honorable mentions with $100 and a profile in the SETI AIR Newsletter.

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in reply to SETI Institute

Deadline for all contest entries: Monday, September 10, 2026 at 11:59 pm PDT.

Read the full contest rules: seti.org/news/wow-literary-awa…

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New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles.

This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused

404media.co/google-earths-new-…

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The AI Slop Purge has arrived. So far Youtube has deleted 130,000 channels, and it's bad news for Youtube's biggest creators.


"Good news for individual creators. But a HUGE red flag to larger creator studios, podcast networks, kids media companies, localization operations and anyone that runs multiple channels from a single production stack. All the things that media companies do to publish at scale, including shared templates, synced upload schedules and a common infrastructure also make them look like a coordinated slop factory."

Given the huge amount of AI slop I still get in my Youtube feed, I don't think YT is going far enough, quick enough.

An observation? Some people seem fine with AI content. I've come across countless videos that are obviously (to me) ChatGPT scripts voiced by AI. Reading their comments, many people don't seem to be able to tell, or don't care.

THE SLOP PURGE HAS ARRIVED
Somewhere at Google, a machine is deleting entire media companies before lunch. Google just revealed how it works.

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in reply to Lugh

It's been years now that YouTube happily accepts snake-oil ads, and when a platform scrapes the bottom of that barrel you know it's just greed run amok and they'll suck fash for a buck too. So then yeah of course we saw techbroligarch Sundar Pichai bending the knee at last year's inauguration.

Fuck em, keep fucking til they're all in jail or homeless

This entry was edited (Sunday, July 19, 2026, 10:45 AM)
in reply to Lugh

I don't know how to switch accounts and fucked up my wife's entire persona she was building by commenting under her account. Instead of deleting the comments when I realised my mistake, I instead just switched accounts and left those comments there for her to find when she woke up. I claim to have planned to go back to delete them, but instead I was just gonna completely forget about them.

I am so smart 🤓

This entry was edited (Saturday, July 25, 2026, 3:46 PM)
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Yo, I'm heading up a brand-new community project. 👥

We write code by hand. 🤚🏽⌨️

It's a growing opt-in directory of software developers who write code by hand. When you hear someone tell you “nobody does that” you can point to this and say “well these folks do.”

If you're #ProCraft and care about the future of handcrafted software, please add yourself to the list! I'd love to see this grow to 100s of signatories (I know y'all are out there!) and really send a message.

handcraftedcode.org

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Aboriginal rangers have wiped invasive fire ants off an Australian island. After 22 years, the Tiwi Rangers have eradicated tropical fire ants from Melville Island, hunting and baiting nests one by one, a feat one entomologist ranks among the top three ant eradications ever. The ants had been eating turtle hatchlings and nesting birds. Mongabay news.mongabay.com/2026/06/rang…
#ShareGoodNewsToo
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July 20, 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of Viking 1, the first spacecraft to successfully land and operate on the surface of Mars. Viking carried the first experiments designed to search directly for signs of life on another planet, sparking scientific debates that continue today. Its discoveries helped launch modern astrobiology by reshaping how scientists think about life in extreme environments.

Learn more: seti.org/news/50-years-after-v…

#space #science

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In a world where rights are determined by what nation-state club you belong to, statelessness, like undocumented status, makes people exploitable.

By covering the issue, Global Voices is helping foil that exploitation.


Statelessness is an underreported issue and perspectives from statelessness people are especially lacking in media coverage. @globalvoices partners with GMAS to address this, because we want the Internet to include EVERYBODY. More articles from our ongoing Statelessness Spotlight here: globalvoices.org/special/state…

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Self-driving ‘Monster Wolf’ deployed to ward off wild animals at airport in Hokkaido

The self-driving “Monster Wolf” is shown to the press in the city of Kushiro, Hokkaido, July 13, 2026. (Mainichi/Kimitaka Hirayama)

KUSHIRO, H…
#Japan #JP #Hokkaido #animals #business #HokkaidoNews #LatestArticles #Lifestyle&Health #news #science #socialissues #TheMainichi #北海道
alojapan.com/1513066/self-driv…

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“We report the unexpected discovery that octopuses possess structurally unique ribosomes that enhance the accuracy of protein synthesis compared with ribosomes from all other tested animals.”

biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2…

#octopus

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Apple Books and Amazon Are Lousy With AI-Generated Books Ripping Off Legitimate Authors
daringfireball.net/linked/2026…

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Uganda discharges last Ebola patient, starts countdown to be virus-free

www.bangkokpost.com/world/3286964/uganda-discharges-last-ebola-patient-starts-countdown-to-be-virusfree

KAMPALA — Uganda discharged its ​last remaining Ebola patient on ‌Thursday, triggering a 42-day countdown after which it can be declared free of the virus, the East African nation's health ministry said.

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Amnesty International Reports at Least 470 Deaths in Bukele’s Prisons

colombiaone.com/2026/07/16/amnesty-international-reports-at-least-470-deaths-in-bukeles-prisons

Amnesty International stated in a report that the state of emergency implemented in El Salvador during President Nayib Bukele’s administration has resulted in a systematic pattern of serious human rights violations that could amount to crimes against…

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The web is being made accessible for AI, not people

The Svelte web framework recently added a section to its documentation site addressed, cheerfully, to artificial intelligences: “If you’re an artificial intelligence, or trying to teach one how to use Svelte, we offer the documentation in plaintext format. Beep boop.” Svelte is participating in a broader movement to make the web legi

osnews.com/story/145521/the-we…

#ClownCar

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A tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology

grist.org/science/nitrogen-cyc…

#science

This entry was edited (Tuesday, July 14, 2026, 3:34 PM)

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Joint Statement: Rejecting Beijing’s “Ethnic Unity Law” and Transnational Repression

Signed by 39 community groups representing Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkistan, Southern Mongolia and Taiwan

docs.google.com/document/u/0/d…

#China #Tibet #HongKong #Uyghur #Taiwan #HumanRights

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A new study suggests that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be as old as 12 billion years. This result is especially remarkable because 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object ever discovered, meaning it came from another planetary system.

Learn more: seti.org/news/a-remarkably-anc…

#science #space

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Trying to figure out what’s clickable in modern UI
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London’s clean-air charges are saving people’s lives. A study of central London found that emergency hospital admissions fell after the city began charging older, more polluting vehicles to enter the centre. Cardiovascular admissions fell 9.3% per year, and all-cause admissions 5.1%. London didn’t ban cars; it made pollution expensive, pushing drivers and fleets towards cleaner vehicles, reducing serious illness in the process. The Guardian theguardian.com/environment/20…
#ShareGoodNewsToo
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Per gli astronomi dell’antichità, Theta Eridani è stata più luminosa per 1.000 anni: ora sappiamo perché

#misteri @astronomia@diggita.com @astronomia@feddit.it

Esiste un piccolo mistero storico che riguarda Theta Eridani. Claudio Tolomeo, nel II secolo d.C., e Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, nel 964 d.C., la descrissero entrambi come una delle 13 stelle più luminose del cielo....

umbertogaetani.substack.com/p/…

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Paris turns the Seine into a giant air conditioner. Beneath the city, 100 km of pipes now channel river water through heat exchangers to cool 800 buildings - including the Louvre and Grand Palais! The way the system works is by transferring heat through closed loops, room by room, until it disperses back into the Seine. The plan is to triple the network by 2042, reaching all arrondissements and 3,000 sites as heatwaves intensify. The Guardian theguardian.com/environment/20…
#ShareGoodNewsToo
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This entry was edited (Friday, July 10, 2026, 4:11 PM)
in reply to 𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"

I used to ask people when they wanted a job as an apprentice watchmaker, do these three things and you have a job

1. Get a job of the award wage stuff for a watchmaker, it's a contract on what I have to do and pay them

2. Get a book, that is very easy to get, now if you can't find it call me

3. Read both and come back

Not one has returned

Oh the book is by Donald de Carle if they wanted to start with watches they had to get the watch one

Hugz & xXx

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Good skin, good girl: the subtle misogyny of the ‘no make-up’ look | Megan Tan Shu En

The 'no make-up' trend isn't just about looking good, but to do so effortlessly – playing into society's expectation that women ensure they're never 'too much'.

skeptic.org.uk/2026/07/good-sk…

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With a total eclipse coming up next month, I wondered: do other planets have total eclipses too? So I did the math… and the answer is, surprisingly, yes! But ours are still way cooler.

scientificamerican.com/article…

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The universe contains an estimated 200 billion trillion stars.

With numbers like that... where is everybody?

Take our interactive Fermi Paradox Quiz to discover which theory best matches your view of the universe.

Start the quiz: seti.outgrow.us/what-is-your-f…

#FermiParadox #Space #Science #AreWeAlone

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[Opinion] Xi Jinping Just Made It a Crime to Be Taiwanese


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🚗 TIL: Before GPS was fully operational, Honda built a car navigation system that used zero satellites.

In 1981, the Honda Electro Gyrocator debuted as a dealer option on the Accord. You placed a transparent plastic map over a small CRT screen and marked your starting point.

As you drove, a helium gas-rate gyroscope detected turns: helium flow shifted between two heated wires, creating a temperature difference the computer read as direction. A transmission sensor tracked distance. A 16-bit computer combined both to move a dot across the map showing your position.

Not perfect. Wheel spin and drift compounded, so you could pull over and manually realign. The IEEE designated it a Milestone in 2017 as the world's first map-based car navigation system, 14 years before GPS.

The catch: it cost about $2,746 (nearly a quarter of the car's price). It only lasted one year.

Read more:
spectrum.ieee.org/first-mapbas…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_…
global.honda/en/heritage/episo…

#TIL #Honda #engineering #history

in reply to jcrabapple

I worked on this problem very briefly but for trains. _If_ you have a map of the roads (and that's a big if) you can use the turning information and the distance to track progress through the map. Kinda cool, but totally unnecessary given that GPS exists. If GPS ever gets turned off maybe it'd be useful again
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Xbox prepares for record layoffs, with up to 3,200 jobs expected to be cut by 2027, starting with 1,500, and 4 studios spinning off from the publisher 💀 alternativeto.net/news/2026/7/…

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During a recent #SETILive conversation, SETI Institute research scientist Dr. Lauren Sgro sat down with Arizona State University postdoctoral fellow Dr. Sagnick Mukherjee to discuss a problem that has frustrated exoplanet astronomers for years: clouds.

Learn more: seti.org/news/how-clouds-hide-…

#space #science

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