The Joy Of Shifting
Baby, Can You Drive My Car? Not If It’s a Stick Shift
Manual transmissions are increasingly rare in America, foiling teenage carjackers and frustrating valet parking lots
Mary Sampietro got the scare of her life five years ago. It left her disappointed in America’s young people.
The mental health professional was in her stick-shift 2016 Jeep Patriot in a rough neighborhood in her native Houston when she rolled down the window to smoke a cigarette. Suddenly, a teenager stuck a gun in her face, ordering her out of the car. He got in but only made it to the next traffic light before stalling the engine and running away.
“I was like ‘How can you be a carjacker and not know how to drive a manual?’”
For Sampietro, who learned to row her own gears in a 1970s Datsun pickup truck with no power steering, the skill’s increasing rarity is a frequent source of annoyance. Her husband’s career requires her to attend events with mandatory valet parking. The job often attracts college students. One particularly bad experience convinced her that they often lie about being able to handle the odd stick shift like hers.
“This young man ground my gears in a way that made me want to throw up,” she says. “I turned around and parked way down the street and walked. I did not tip.”
Happy Independence Day!
New Manu!
Manu Chao will release ‘Viva Tu,’ first new album in 17 years
Latin alt and reggae musician Manu Chao is releasing his first studio album in 17 years. The French-Spanish singer-songwriter is following 2007’s La Radiolina with Viva Tu, out this fall. Following the release of “Viva Tu,” he dropped another single from the LP, “São Paulo Motoboy.”
Though Manu Chao’s sound is upbeat and beachy, he uses this single to bring awareness to couriers in cities like São Paulo and the dangers they face daily, from traffic to the weather. Chao himself was a courier in Paris for a time. In a translated statement, Chao said, “São Paulo is a living monster. And the couriers are the blood which comes and goes through its veins, allowing the city to function.”
Viva Tu drops September 20th and will include collaborations with Willie Nelson and French R&B singer Laeti. Watch the video for “São Paulo Motoboy” below.
Robert Towne Gone
Robert Towne Dies: Oscar-Winning ‘Chinatown’ Screenwriter Was 89
Robert Towne, who won an Oscar for his Chinatown original screenplay and was nominated for his The Last Detail, Shampoo and Greystoke scripts, died Monday at his home. He was 89.
Towne also earned BAFTA, Golden Globe and WGA awards for Chinatown, the L.A.-set 1974 thriller starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It was one of three Writers Guild Awards he won during his career, along with Shampoo and the drama series Mad Men. He also was nominated for The Last Detail (1973) and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1985). He was honored with teh guild’s Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement in 1997.
Centenarian Sun Ra
The Sun Ra Arkestra’s Maestro Hits One Hundred
Marshall Allen, the musical collective’s sax-playing leader, is celebrating with a deep-spacey video installation during the Venice Biennale.
The Sun Ra Arkestra, the musical collective founded in Chicago in the mid-fifties, moved out of the Lower East Side in 1968, and wound up in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, on a very green side street along the edge of a hill that feels a million miles from anywhere. An old row house became the Sun Ra Arkestral Institute, a place to practice at all hours, in order to be ready. “One day it will happen,” Sun Ra said at the time. “It could be happening now—that a voice from another dimension will speak to earth. You might as well practice and be prepared for it.” The Arkestra practiced and eventually toured the world, the row house filling with gig posters, its plaster walls soaking up decades of music from a band that, under Sun Ra’s leadership, had set out on a course of inter-dimensional travel, using chords and time signatures and equations rather than rocket fuel. Sun Ra died in 1993, and his saxophone players replaced him as director—first John Gilmore, and then Marshall Allen, who last month turned a hundred.
Allen bounded down the stairs to greet a visitor the other day, in between birthday celebrations near and far—near being Philadelphia, where a public performance of the Arkestra was followed by a party for family and friends at a club called Solar Myth, named for a Sun Ra-ism. Across the Atlantic Ocean, during the Venice Biennale, a celebration occurred in the form of a site-specific video installation in an abandoned sixteenth-century church and hospital; it is directed by Ari Benjamin Meyers, a Berlin-based composer, who met Allen in person in 2022, in Philadelphia, and was, like a lot of people, “blown away.”
AI Michaels Born
“It Was Astonishing”: How NBC Convinced Al Michaels to Embrace His AI Voice for Olympics Coverage
The network will use an artificial clone of the legendary broadcaster’s voice to narrate its daily recaps of the summer event. “It was not only close,” he says of the technology, “it was almost 2% off perfect.”
BY TOM KLUDT
ew voices in American life are more recognizable than the one belonging to Al Michaels—play-by-play announcer for nearly a dozen Super Bowls and the source of perhaps the most famous line in sports history.
For generations of sports fans, Michaels has been a near-constant presence, providing the soundtrack of last-second field goals, ninth-inning walk-offs, and fourth-quarter buzzer-beaters. He was the voice of Monday Night Football for 20 years, then Sunday Night Football for 16. When the 1989 World Series was disrupted by an earthquake, Michaels’s voice was the one viewers heard just as the broadcast went static. And when a plucky United States hockey team pulled off an upset for the ages against the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics, Michaels channeled the prevailing sense of disbelief with a call as iconic as the game itself. (“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”)
Skinbots
Robots keep getting creepier
by Jaures Yip
It’s not just nuts and bolts keeping robots together — now they can be made with living skin. Skin that can be made to smile.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo revealed on Tuesday a rather unsettling humanoid robot covered with lab-grown skin. The team said it was able to mimic human skin ligaments by bonding skin tissue to perforated 3D facial molds and 2D robots.
A press release said the team hoped the advancement would be “useful in the cosmetics industry and to help train plastic surgeons.”
While the development could prove helpful, some people online reacted to the robot’s fleshy skin and facial movements with jokes or said they found it disturbing. One person on X wrote, “You will live to see man-made made horrors beyond your comprehension.” Another said: “We don’t want this. Nobody wants this. Stop it.”
The researchers said that, unlike other materials, biological skin granted these robots self-healing capabilities without requiring triggers such as heat or pressure.
Kinky Friedman Gone
Kinky Friedman, provocative musician, author and one-time politician, dies at 79
The satirical country and western iconoclast ran for governor of Texas in 2006 with campaign slogans like “My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy.”
By Variety
Kinky Friedman, the satirical and often provocative musician, author and one-time politician, has died at the age of 79.
“Kinky Friedman stepped on a rainbow at his beloved Echo Hill surrounded by family & friends,” read a post on his social media. “Kinkster endured tremendous pain & unthinkable loss in recent years but he never lost his fighting spirit and quick wit. Kinky will live on as his books are read and his songs are sung.”
Throughout his career, Richard Samet “Kinky” Friedman developed a cult following for his unique, quirky approach to country and Western music. The self-proclaimed “governor of the heart of Texas” released a robust number of albums starting with 1973’s “Sold American,” often considered his foundational record, and in addition to touring with Bob Dylan on his “Rolling Thunder Revue,” he became the “first full-blooded Jew” to appear at the Grand Ole Opry.
Outside of his music career, Friedman was a prolific writer, penning detective novels and serving as a columnist for Texas Monthly. He dabbled in politics, running for Governor of Texas in 2006 with campaign slogans like “My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy.” In the end, he received 12.6 percent of the votes among six candidates.
Next To Heaven (Summer 2025)
Authors Equity’s First 100 Days
Since Readmagine, Authors Equity has issued a list of the first 10 authors and books it has named for publication—a list released on the new company’s 100th day in business, which may be a record for a new publishing house.
You can read the list and some of the rationale around each selection here at Authors Equity’s Substack. We’ll run through the simplest listing of books, authors, and projected publication dates here:
- This is Strategy by Seth Godin (October 22)
- Don’t Believe Everything You Think: The Expanded Edition by Joseph Nguyen (October 29)
- New book by Rachel Hollis (December)
- Superagency: Empowering Humanity in the Age of AI by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato (January 28)
- We Hold These “Truths” by congressional staffer turned George Washington University legislative affairs professor Casey Burgat (February 4)
- Kweli Journal’s 15th Anniversary Short Story Collection (spring 2025)
- Next to Heaven by James Frey (summer 2025)
- New series from Kyle Mills (summer 2025).
- Pregnancy Personalized by Rachel Swanson (fall 2025)
Assange Down Under
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returns to Australia a free man after US legal battle ends
BY RICK RYCROFT AND ROD MCGUIRK
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet and raised a celebratory clenched fist as his supporters cheered on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.
Assange told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a phone call from the capital Canberra’s airport tarmac that Australian government intervention in the U.S. prosecution had saved his life, Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson said.
Assange embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac, but avoided media at a news conference less than than two hours after he landed.
There is no dark side of the moon…
China has just returned the first-ever samples from the far side of the moon
A Chinese probe has returned to Earth carrying the first samples ever taken from the far side of the moon. Chinese state television broadcast images Tuesday of the capsule holding the samples, as it floated down under parachute onto the grassy steppe of Inner Mongolia.
Scientists say the rocks inside the little space capsule could open a new window into how our nearest neighbor formed.
Chang’e 6, which landed on the far side in early June, wouldn’t be the first space mission to send home moon rocks that rewrote textbooks. Samples taken by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 upended what was then the prevailing theory about how the moon came to be.
Do It Mayor Adams!
New York City Schools Should Be Next to Ban Mobile Phones
Los Angeles is moving in favor of students’ well-being. Mayor Eric Adams can ensure NYC does, too.
Last week the Los Angeles Unified School District took a big step in favor of common sense: It voted to ban mobile-phone use during school days. Other districts should follow its lead, starting with the largest one in the country: New York City.
Two decades ago, our administration banned mobile phones in all public schools, despite the storm of protests it generated. The ban was one of many policy changes that allowed us to transform the school system in ways that dramatically raised student achievement levels. Although it was undone by our successor, public support for mobile-phone bans has grown nationally — and across party lines.
Teachers know all too well how disruptive phones are to learning, with 72% of high school teachers nationwide calling phone use a “major problem.” No wonder: One study found that 97% of teens use their phones during school hours, receiving a median of 237 push notifications a day. Much of that screen time consists of playing video games, browsing social media and watching pornography — not exactly the three R’s.
Biology Lesson From The ’40s
Another Big Boom
‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ explosive event in space expected soon: What to know
BY ADDY BINK
(NEXSTAR) — Stargazers and skywatchers have been treated to a stunning show of celestial events already in 2024: the total solar eclipse, the return of the ‘devil comet,’ and multiple nights colored by the northern lights have undoubtedly topped the list for some.
But if that wasn’t enough for you, space experts say we’re due for another stellar sighting: a rare nova explosion that’ll bring a “new star” to the night sky.
Earlier this year, NASA reported a star system, some 3,000 light years away, is expected to erupt.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “It’ll fuel the next generation of scientists.”
Here’s what you need to know.
Beautiful Americans
Europe Has a New Economic Engine: American Tourists
Free-spending visitors are fueling a powerful boom in southern Europe, flipping economic power in the EU. Some economists think it could end badly.
By Tom Fairless
LISBON—The Americans are here, and this sun-bleached coastal city is booming.
At bars, hotels and restaurants that line winding cobblestone streets, business is so good that Mayor Carlos Moedas recently slashed local income tax for residents. With economic growth of 8.2% last year and a 20% rise in tax revenue from prepandemic times, he’s also made public transportation free for young people and the elderly.
Centuries-old facades are being polished up after years of neglect. Planning is under way for a new airport, twice the size of the existing one, and for a three-hour high-speed rail link to Madrid in neighboring Spain. The Tribeca Film Festival will come to town this fall.
Room rates in the city are rising, and tourism investment is flooding in. Gonçalo Dias, director and co-owner of the Ivens, a $1,000-a-night hotel in downtown Lisbon, said he plans to add a jazz club in the basement. More than half of his room reservations come from Americans.
“Great times. The best times for the last 45 years,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
Donald Sutherland Gone
Donald Sutherland, stately star of ‘MASH,’ ‘Ordinary People’ and ‘Hunger Games,’ dies at 88
By Nardine Saad
Donald Sutherland, the prolific Canadian actor who roared to fame in the irreverent antiwar classic “MASH” and captivated audiences with his dramatic performances in films such as “Ordinary People” and “Don’t Look Now,” has died.
A mainstay of Hollywood for more than six decades, Sutherland died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, his agency confirmed in a statement. He was 88.
Son Kiefer Sutherland also confirmed his father’s death “with a heavy heart” in a statement Thursday morning on social media. “I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”
Donald Sutherland’s body of work showcased his transformative range, shifting comfortably from drama to comedy and bouncing between heavier and lighter roles with ease. Tall at 6-foot-4 with a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes, he was difficult to miss whether he was playing a zany oddball, an icy tyrant or a sadistic villain. In all, he had nearly 200 film or television roles.
A Toast to the Boogie: Art in the Name of Funkadelic
Founding father of funk George Clinton to launch new art exhibit in DC
The summer exhibition celebrates funk, and its impact on D.C.’s music scene.
Go-Go may be D.C.’s official music, but the District has gotta have that funk, too. Parliament-Funkadelic Founder George Clinton is in D.C. Tuesday to kickoff a new funk-centric art exhibit celebrating the genre.
The new exhibit, “A Toast to the Boogie: Art in the Name of Funkadelic,” opens Tuesday at the I Street Gallery. It will feature works of art from 50 artists, including 16-year-old Sophia Sterling. The exhibition focuses on Clinton’s funk group Parliament-Funkadelic and the group’s influence on Washington D.C.
An opening reception is happening Tuesday night. Clinton will also be part of a panel discussion on Wednesday at the Rubel Museum.
In addition to artwork, there will also be never-before-seen memorabilia from the Clinton family on display.
“As a professional musician, this project is near and dear to my heart,” said DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Executive Director Aaron Myers. “Seeing all these beautiful and vibrant paintings, the creative sculptures, the original photos of Parliament-Funkadelic from the Terrell family and the memorabilia from the Clinton family takes me back to the days of my childhood hearing the lyrics of the song ‘One Nation Under a Groove’ on the radio,” Myers added.
Cup o’ Genes
All the Data on Earth Can Fit in a Cup Full of DNA. This Is MIT’s Jurassic Park-Inspired Project
by Juan Carlos López
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the molecule of life. While there are other essential molecules for life as we know it, DNA holds a special significance because it contains the instructions that cells use to produce proteins or RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules. DNA is also responsible for genetic inheritance. However, this is far from everything DNA can be used for.
Since the early days of computing, scientists have been intrigued by the idea of using DNA to encode and store information, similar to how it functions naturally within living organisms. However, they’ve encountered challenges in manipulating DNA and preserving it over time without degradation, making it difficult to recover stored information in perfect condition.
Chemist James Banal, Jeremiah Johnson, and other scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argue that DNA is the future of data storage. They also believe that DNA’s density is so high that it’d be possible to store all the information currently contained in all the computers and servers worldwide in a coffee cup if it were filled with DNA molecules. Because of the work of these scientists, we’re now closer than ever to achieving this goal.
Airposh
THE ONE PLACE IN AIRPORTS PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO BE
Inside the competition to lure affluent travelers with luxurious lounges
By Amanda Mull / Illustrations by Max Guther
On a bright, chilly Thursday in February, most of the people inside the Chase Sapphire Lounge at LaGuardia Airport appeared to be doing something largely absent from modern air travel: They were having fun. I arrived at Terminal B before 9:30 a.m., but the lounge had already been in full swing for hours. Most of the velvet-upholstered stools surrounding the circular, marble-topped bar were filled. Travelers who looked like they were heading to couples’ getaways or girls’ weekends clustered in twos or threes, waiting for their mimosas or Bloody Marys or the bar’s signature cocktail—a gin concoction turned a vibrant shade of violet by macerated blueberries, served in a champagne coupe.
Other loungers in the golden-lit, plant-lined, 21,800-square-foot space chatted over their breakfast, boozy or otherwise. At the elaborate main drink station that formed one wall of the lounge’s dining room, I chose the tap that promised cold brew, though spa water and a mysterious third spigot labeled only as “seasonal” beckoned. When I reached for what I thought was a straw, I pulled back a glistening tube of individually portioned honey, ready to be snapped into a hot cup of tea.
The Fourth Protocol (almost)
How Legendary Spy Novelist Frederick Forsyth Learned He’d Been ‘Bowdlerized’
BY: LARRY TAUNTON
“Good morning. A pleasure to meet you. Please forgive my attire. A difficult night.”
Somewhat disheveled and wearing only a bathrobe and slippers, Frederick Forsyth greeted me from what I assumed to be a favorite armchair in his living room. I felt slightly envious of a man who had reached an age and level of success where he doesn’t care what people think about him and doesn’t need to care.
Crisp, unwrinkled copies of The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph sat neatly on an ottoman in front of him awaiting his inspection. With an unexpected display of strength, his 60-something personal assistant lifted a substantial chair off the floor and moved it close to her employer, inviting me to sit down before she withdrew to get us coffee.
“So what is required of me?” Forsyth began with a formality that belied his ensemble. “An interview, is it?”
Now 85, his impeccable English manners were on display and, once primed, so was his agile mind.
Frederick Forsyth must be considered one of the inventors of the modern thriller novel. The author of such bestsellers as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, and The Fourth Protocol, all major Hollywood productions, his career has spanned six decades, and with Eddie Redmayne set to play the Jackal in a television miniseries reboot of the 1971 novel-turned-film, his popularity shows no signs of slowing down, even if he does. To date, Forsyth has sold more than 70 million books in more than 30 languages.
Up To Become Down, Left To Become Right?
The sun’s magnetic field is about to flip. Here’s what to expect.
The sun is on the verge of a significant event: a magnetic field reversal.
This phenomenon happens roughly every 11 years and marks an important stage in the solar cycle. The shift in polarity indicates the halfway point of solar maximum, the height of solar activity, and the beginning of the shift toward solar minimum.
The last time the sun‘s magnetic field flipped was toward the end of 2013. But what causes this switch in polarity, and is it dangerous? Let’s take a deep look at the sun’s magnetic field reversal and investigate the effects it could have on Earth.
To understand the magnetic field’s reversal, first, it’s important to be familiar with the solar cycle. This approximately 11-year cycle of solar activity is driven by the sun’s magnetic field and is indicated by the frequency and intensity of sunspots visible on the surface. The height of solar activity during a given solar cycle is known as solar maximum, and current estimates predict it will occur between late 2024 and early 2026.
Still Discovering…
Greek archaeologists discover mysterious 4,000-year-old building on hill earmarked for new airport
By the Associated Press
Greek Culture Ministry/AP
A big, round, 4,000-year-old stone building discovered on a Cretan hilltop is puzzling archaeologists and threatening to disrupt a major airport project on the Greek tourist island.
Greece’s Culture Ministry said Tuesday that the structure is a “unique and extremely interesting find” from Crete’s Minoan civilization, famous for its sumptuous palaces, flamboyant art and enigmatic writing system. Resembling a huge car wheel from above, the ruins of the labyrinthine, 1,800-square-meter (19,000-square-foot) building came to light during a recent dig by archaeologists.
The site was earmarked for a radar station to serve a new airport under construction near the town of Kastelli. Set to open in 2027, it’s projected to replace Greece’s second-biggest airport at Heraklion, and designed to handle up to 18 million travelers annually.
Wu-Tang Shkreli
Martin Shkreli Sued for Allegedly Copying One-of-a-Kind Wu-Tang Clan Album
The lawsuit alleges Shkreli played the music on social media and bragged about it.
The media-dubbed “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who served four years of a seven-year sentence in prison for securities fraud, is now facing a lawsuit alleging he copied the secret Wu-Tang Clan album he was forced to sell after his conviction.
Wu-Tang Clan, the pioneering hip-hop group formed on Staten Island in 1992, sold its album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (2015) to Shkreli for $2 million in a 2015 auction by Paddle8. It was seized by the U.S. government, which sold it to PleasrDAO, a collective of digital art enthusiasts and cryptocurrency investors, for $4.75 million in 2021.
The album, released as a single physical copy enclosed in a handcrafted silver and nickel case, stands as a unique artistic statement that challenges the commodification and mass production of music in the digital age and draws parallels to fine art, a field where scarcity enhances value and significance. When the album was sold to PleasrDAO, the ownership deed came in the form of an NFT.
The Big Whack
A Big Whack That Made the Moon May Have Also Created Continents That Move
by Lucas Joel
Some 4.5 billion years ago, many scientists say, Earth had a meetup with Theia, another planetary object the size of Mars. When the two worlds collided in a big whack, the thinking goes, debris shot into space, got locked into the orbit of the young, damaged Earth and led to the formation of our moon.
But the collision with Theia may have done more than that, according to a study published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The impact may have given rise to something else: plate tectonics, the engine that drives the motion of Earth’s giant continental and oceanic plates and causes earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the eventual remaking of our planet’s surface about every 200 million years.
A Residency In Portland
Sci-Fi Author Ursula Le Guin’s Portland Home Is Becoming a Writers Residency
Le Guin had a clear vision for her home to become a creative space for writers and a beacon for the literary community, according to Literary Arts director Andrew Proctor.
By Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
A cozy second-floor studio in a three-story Portland home is where Ursula Le Guin, the late author renowned for her achievements in science fiction and fantasy, created seminal works like The Books of Earthsea, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin’s longtime home is now set to host other promising authors as it transforms into a new writers residency overseen by local nonprofit Literary Arts.
The family of Le Guin, who died in 2018 at age 88, donated the property to Literary Arts with the goal of celebrating and supporting historically underrepresented writers. “Although Ursula’s reputation is international, she focused much of energy on the local community of writers, libraries and literary organizations,” said the author’s son Theo Downes-Le Guin in a statement. “So it’s fitting that this residency, ambitious in the breadth of writers it will reach, will be rooted in the house and city she loved and lived in for more than a half-century.”
Next To Heaven
Who Is Anonymous, The Author Of Hot Book ‘Next To Heaven?’ Deadline Solves The Mystery As TV Rights Deal Closes With Publishing Pact Coming
By Mike Fleming Jr.
The novel Next to Heaven hit the market this week. Written by Anonymous, it’s a social satire that is being shopped by WME simultaneously for both a publishing deal and a TV deal. The TV deal has just closed, and the publishing deal will be next.
The rights to turn the book into a TV series were snapped up by former AGBO and Chernin executive Mike Larocca and Michael Schaefer for their as yet-unnamed production venture. They will produce with Entertainment 360’s Guymon Casady (Game of Thrones). Schaefer most recently ran New Regency and produced The Martian.
So, who is Anonymous?
Deadline sniffed out that it is James Frey, known for A Million Little Pieces and many other literary works. Actually, this was not like cracking the case of the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping. Lit scouts who read the novel quickly deciphered the mystery. Frey has a way with grammar and sentence structure that makes his works move at 60 mph, and those trademark flourishes were there.
In Next to Heaven, best friends Devon and Belle are the Queen Bees of super-affluent New Bethlehem, Connecticut (a town that suspiciously resembles Frey’s hometown of New Canaan). They are very beautiful, very rich and very bored, their marriages mostly business arrangements at this point. And so they decide to host a carefully curated, invitation-only swingers party. But later, when one of the invitees ends up dead, the stakes in their game turn out to be much higher than any of the guests could have anticipated.
AIgnore, No
Ray Kurzweil: AI Is Not Going to Kill You, But Ignoring It Might
We talk to the famed futurist about his new book, ‘The Singularity is Nearer,’ and why he’s doubling down on his prediction that humans will merge with machines by 2045.
Discussions about AI inevitably turn to the potential for disaster, but futurist Ray Kurzweil argues in his new book that focusing on the downsides will instead create “delays in overcoming human suffering.” Out June 25, The Singularity is Nearer is a follow-up to 2005’s The Singularity is Near, and offers updated data and new guidance on how humans can fully pursue AI without fear.
The book contains dozens of graphs intended to convince the naysayers that technology—including AI—has given us a far better life than our ancestors. Literacy rates are up while murder rates are down, democracy is more widespread, and the use of renewable energy is on the rise, according to Kurzweil, who warns against taking anti-AI sentiment too far.
“We need to take seriously the misguided and increasingly strident Luddite voices that advocate broad relinquishment of technological progress to avoid the genuine dangers of genetics, nanotechnology, and robots (GNR),” Kurzweil writes in The Singularity is Nearer.
Time For The Moon
Why scientists say we need to send clocks to the moon — soon
Perhaps the greatest, mind-bending quirk of our universe is the inherent trouble with timekeeping: Seconds tick by ever so slightly faster atop a mountain than they do in the valleys of Earth.
For practical purposes, most people don’t have to worry about those differences.
But a renewed space race has the United States and its allies, as well as China, dashing to create permanent settlements on the moon, and that has brought the idiosyncrasies of time, once again, to the forefront.
On the lunar surface, a single Earth day would be roughly 56 microseconds shorter than on our home planet — a tiny number that can lead to significant inconsistencies over time.
NASA and its international partners are currently grappling with this conundrum.
Camp 6200 B.C.
A 8,200-Year-Old Campsite Was Found on a U.S. Air Force Base in New Mexico
Geomorphologists made the chance discovery while driving past a roadcut.
Two researchers have stumbled upon an 8,200-year-old campsite formerly covered by sand dunes at the Holloman Air Force Base just outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
While driving past the side of a roadcut, the geomorphologists from the University of Arizona noticed “an unusual rock sticking out,” a spokesperson from the base explained over email. Upon closer inspection, the duo realized the rock might be an artifact, and contacted Matthew Cuba, the 49th Civil Engineer Squadron cultural resource manager. Cuba and his team unearthed “a significant and well-preserved site” over six feet beneath the earth, according to the base’s source.
“The formation of the white sand dunes inadvertently buried the site, with windblown silt protecting the delicate archaeological remains,” Cuba remarks in this week’s release “This site marks a pivotal moment in shedding light on the area’s history and its early inhabitants.”
Anora d’Or
Cannes Film Festival: ‘Anora’ Wins Palme d’Or; ‘All We Imagine As Light’ Takes Grand Prize; ‘Emilia Perez’ Jury Prize & Best Actress Ensemble – Full List
Sean Baker’s New York-set romantic dramedy Anora has scooped the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. This marked Baker’s second time in the competition after 2021’s Red Rocket, and tonight’s win amounted to the realization of what Baker said has been his “singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years.”
Anora stars Mikey Madison as a stripper from Brooklyn who transforms into a modern Cinderella when she meets the son of a Russian oligarch. Complications arise when his parents find out and try to get the marriage annulled.
In his review, Deadline’s Damon Wise called it “a high-decibel screwball comedy… that accelerates at speed, cruises at high altitude for a surprisingly long time, then comes back down to Earth with a deeply affecting and almost unbearably melancholy coda that sends the audience out in silence.”