Bear Bloom 2024
from The Los Angeles Times via MSN
As hungry bears awaken from hibernation, a California mountain village braces for invasion
by Louis Sahagún
Led by a sense of smell 100 times keener than that of humans, the predators have crashed through windows, ripped tiles off roofs and torn solid wood doors off their hinges to get at leftover pizza in a refrigerator.
They have also defecated on counters, furniture and floors as a “calling card,” officials say.
In a region of Southern California that wildlife authorities call a human-black bear conflict zone, the impending arrival of spring in this small mountain village is met with dread and fear as the hungry giants emerge from their winter torpor to search for food.
“Bears are a major problem here — and it’s getting worse,” said Patrice Stimpson, patrol chief of Pine Mountain Club — a community of some 2,800 residents in the San Emigdio Mountains, about 75 miles north of Los Angeles.
“They’ve caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage,” Stimpson said. “Last year, a house caught fire after a bear climbed onto the gas stove and turned on the burners. A few cars were nearly totaled by bears rummaging for crushed cookies between the seats.”
Return Of The Armadillo
Fran Drescher, John Michael Higgins, Griffin Matthews & More Set For Roles In ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Sequel
By Matt Grobar
EXCLUSIVE: After leading SAG-AFTRA through its latest round of negotiations with the AMPTP, guild President Fran Drescher (The Nanny) has been set to join the sequel to 1984 cult classic This Is Spinal Tap, reprising her role as publicist Bobbi Flekman.
Other new additions to the cast include Don Lake (The Bonnie Hunt Show), John Michael Higgins (Best in Show), Jason Acuña (Jackass), Nina Conti (Family Tree), Griffin Matthews (The Flight Attendant), Kerry Godliman (After Life), Chris Addison (Veep), comedian Brad Williams, and musician Paul Shaffer. Details as to the roles of these cast members are under wraps for now.
Also now aboard the project are Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and Lars Ulrich, Metallica’s co-founder and drummer, who will make cameos. Production is currently underway in New Orleans, with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer reprising their roles as the legendary heavy metal band, Spinal Tap, under the direction of Rob Reiner.
Attack Of The Killer Cleveland Mushrooms
In Cleveland, mushrooms digest entire houses: How fungi can be used to clean up pollution
By Nick Hilden
In the struggle to combat pollution and fight climate change, a growing number of scientists are beginning to look to one of nature’s oldest biotechnologies: fungi.
The city of Cleveland faces an epidemic of abandoned houses. Crumbling homes number in the thousands. These ramshackle structures are riddled with toxins like lead and dilapidated to the point of no return. And if tearing down and safely disposing of the waste of one such home sounds daunting, imagine thousands of them.
Among the numerous issues that arise, one essential question involves waste. What do you do with the waste material from so many teardown structures, when so much of it is toxic?
“All of the material from demolition – the studs, the floors, cellulosic mass [the primary structural component of plants], and even things like ceiling tiles and asphalt material like roof shingles, can be mixed into substrate that then becomes good for growing fungus,” says Chris Maurer, founder of Cleveland-based architect firm Redhouse Studio. Through his firm, Maurer has been advocating for the use of substrate to address Cleveland’s housing crisis, which is also a health crisis for the city’s inhabitants.
No need to define – just ingest it.
Defining ‘Guisado’ Is Just as Messy as the Dish Itself
While the term is most commonly translated as “stew,” it’s not wholly accurate. Guisados are more of a feeling than anything else.
Tacos de guisado are—first and foremost—rule breakers. They so strongly resist identification that an umbrella category had to be created for them. The taqueros who make them don’t care for restrictions. Tacos de guisado are the morning tacos that lead into midday. They’re eaten by blue-collar workers and corporate yes-men, especially in Mexico City. “They’re practically the national breakfast food,” says Alejandro Escalante, author of La Tacopedia: Encyclopedia of the Taco and Acridofagia y Otros Insectos, and co-owner of La Casa de los Tacos in Mexico City’s Coyoacán neighborhood. They’re hefty and hearty and lovely. They’re also a source of confusion.
The trouble begins with the literal English translation of “guisado.” The word means “stew.” But just like “cold” can refer to more than temperature, “guisado” has more nuance than Google Translate is willing to offer. Even in the Phaidon edition of Escalante’s Tacopedia, the chapter on guisados is poorly translated to Stewed Tacos. Finding a completely accurate definition of guisado is a purist’s nightmare.
Cocktail Train
God Bless C-SPAN
The Gift of C-SPAN in an Era of Partisan Media
Forty-five years ago today, future vice president Albert Gore Jr. stood in the well of the House of Representatives to discuss an innovative development in television programming. There was nothing remarkable about that in itself: Al Gore had been a newspaperman before becoming a Tennessee congressman and had a genuine interest in both new technology and mass communication.
Except that there was something momentous about Gore’s speech that day. It was the first time that remarks delivered on the House floor by a member of Congress were televised. It was an event long envisioned by a 38-year-old Indiana-born, Purdue-educated, U.S. Navy veteran who had worked as a White House and Capitol Hill aide before returning to journalism. His name was Brian Lamb. As the Washington bureau chief of the trade publication Cablevision, Lamb had dreamed of creating a nonprofit cable network that would focus exclusively on public affairs, particularly Congress. It was called C-SPAN, and on March 19, 1979, that dream became reality.
Addressing an audience that Lamb later quipped was “in the thousands,” Al Gore said this: “The marriage of this medium and of our open debate have the potential, Mr. Speaker, to revitalize representative democracy.”
Precisely four and a half decades later, C-SPAN is still shining a spotlight on our nation’s elected representatives and our shared national history, even as the technology changes under the network’s feet (yet again.)
Kick Ass Nowhere Boy
The anti-James Bond: Why kale-growing Aaron Taylor-Johnson would be a 007 like no other
He loves baking, keeps chickens and is a regular on the school run. But could he really replace Daniel Craig?
by Liam Kelly
If the latest tabloid reports are to be believed, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is getting measured for his dinner jacket and learning how to handle a Walther PPK as he prepares to be cast as James Bond.
The Nowhere Boy and Kick-Ass star, 33, is hotly fancied to take over from Daniel Craig as MI6’s most famous secret agent in the 26th Bond film. “Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it,” an anonymous source told The Sun. “The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear back.”
Taylor-Johnson, for his part, has had to contend with such rumours for years and always plays a straight bat. “I find it charming and wonderful that people see me in that role,” he said in an interview last week. “I take it as a great compliment.”
Aaron Taylor-Bond
LICENCE TO KICK-ASS: British hunk formally offered role of James Bond and ‘will sign contract this week’ to take over from Daniel Craig
We first revealed in 2022 that the Marvel actor had emerged as a surprise frontrunner
by Howell Davies / Ellie Henman
BRIT actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson is taking his martinis shaken, not stirred, after being formally offered the job as the new James Bond.
Insiders said the Kick-Ass movie star is expected to accept the role as 007, taking over from Daniel Craig, who has played MI6’s most famous spy for 15 years.
Eon Productions, which makes the spy thriller films, is on course to start shooting this year.
A source said: “Bond is Aaron’s job, should he wish to accept it. The formal offer is on the table and they are waiting to hear back.
“As far as Eon is concerned, Aaron is going to sign his contract in the coming days and they can start preparing for the big announcement.”
The next Bond movie had been delayed because of last year’s Hollywood strikes.
M. Emmet Walsh Gone
M. Emmet Walsh Dies: Prolific Actor In ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Ordinary People’, Coen Brothers Pics & Hundreds More Was 88
M. Emmet Walsh, the familiar character actor in Blade Runner, Blood Simple, Best Picture Oscar winner Ordinary People, Knives Out, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Slap Shot and more than 200 other films and TV shows spanning a half-century, died Tuesday, his rep said. He was 88.
Walsh himself is quoted as saying: “I approach each job thinking it might be my last, so it better be the best work possible. I want to be remembered as a working actor. I’m being paid for what I’d do for nothing.”
Born on March 22, 1935, in Ogdensburg, NY, Walsh was raised in rural Vermont. He began his screen career guesting on late-1960s TV series before landing bit parts in films including Alice’s Restaurant, Little Big Man and Escape from the Planet of the Apes. He continued to guest-star in episodes of popular 1960s and ’70s series including Bonanza, All in the Family, Ironside, The Bob Newhart Show, McMillan & Wife, The Rockford Files, The Waltons, Starsky and Hutch, James at 16, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and many more.
He also appeared on the big screen in such ’70s hits as Serpico, The Jerk, They Might Be Giants, Straight Time, What’s Up, Doc? and Slap Shot, in which he played sportswriter Dickie Dunn, who was “Just trying to capture the spirit of the thing.”
He continued to work regularly into the 1980s up to the 2020s, appearing in popular pics including the Coen brothers’ 1984 debut Blood Simple, for which won the inaugural Independent Spirit Award, and their sophomore feature Raising Arizona (1987). He also appeared in the Robert Redford prison drama Brubaker (1980), Academy Award winner Ordinary People (1980), Best Picture Oscar nominee Reds (1981), Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982), Chevy Chase comedy Fletch (1985), horror pic Critters (1986) and more.
The Fall Of The Fourth Estate
Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media
My front-row seat to a slow-moving catastrophe.
By Kara Swisher
n the early 1990s, I was a reporter at the Washington Post. Having just turned 30, I was the “young” person in the newsroom, so when the digital-media start-ups appeared, I got what many reporters looked at as the short end of the beat. They had no interest in understanding the massive changes that were happening. As I learned more, it often fell to me to explain what this newfangled internet was as if I were trying to explain a tree to a child.
The Post did give me the space to report on a broad range of digital topics, largely because no one else would — including the many come-and-gone technologies, like CD-ROMs, that were heralded as “multimedia killers” but would soon be killed themselves.
During that period, I made one prediction that started coming true much more quickly than even I expected. This was about the end of old media, starting with the destruction of one of its most important economic pillars: the classified ads in newspapers.
Flamin’ Hot Deviance
Abcarian: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and iPhones are ruining my kid and yours
by Robin Abcarian
With apologies to Allen Ginsberg:
I am seeing the best minds of our middle-school generation destroyed by Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and iPhones,
Teenagers on the cusp of young adulthood dragging themselves out of bed each day to mainline TikTok and Snapchat,
Measuring themselves by the yardstick of uber-filtered Kardashian perfection and falling short,
Getting expelled from school for sending AI-generated naked photos of classmates.
I want to howl about what’s happening to our kids. Between the negative brain effects of ultra-processed foods, and what can only be described as smartphone use disorder, something has gone terribly awry.
As it happens, you’ve caught me at a bad moment. In our home lately, the 13-year-old and I seem to be having daily conflicts over food and phones.
When she moved in with me at age 8, she had a smartphone, which I immediately put away. Her preference for ultra-processed food was already well-established; she’d been raised on a diet heavy on fast food and Lunchables.
Navy Seals?
from The Washington Post via Yahoo News!
How many dogs have government jobs? What about sea lions?
by Andrew Van Dam
Washington is going to the dogs – for real this time.
As of 2022, the federal government employed 5,159 German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, beagles, Jack Russell terriers and other forms of everyone’s favorite furry friend. Another 421 worked as canine contractors.
The job descriptions for these four-legged feds range from the sublime – 31 help “park rangers traverse Denali National Park in winter” – to the subprime: Others “detect waterfowl feces” infected with bird flu.
Director BEE
Bret Easton Ellis to Make Directorial Debut With L.A.-Set Horror Movie ‘Relapse,’ Starring Joseph Quinn (EXCLUSIVE)
“Less Than Zero” writer Bret Easton Ellis is set to make his directorial debut with “Relapse,” an elevated horror film he wrote starring “Stranger Things” breakout Joseph Quinn.
Paris-based SND has boarded the project as producer, alongside Adrian Guerra’s Nostromo (“Penny Dreadful”) and Simon Wallon’s Kiss & Kill (“Bonnie”). SND will handle worldwide sales on “Relapse,” as well as French distribution, and will tease the title at the EFM with a sizzle reel.
Quinn, who will next be seen in “Fantastic Four,” “A Quiet Place: Day One” and the “Gladiator” sequel, stars in ”Relapse” as Matt Cullen, who checks into rehab after witnessing a horrific death during a debauched party. Three months later, he is set to get his life back together, staying at his parent’s mansion in the hills of Los Angeles. But things have changed around Matt and everything seems off balance.
Cartoons Still Old-school
Newspaper Cartoonists Rely on Digital Tools, but Not as You’d Expect
I spent dozens of hours last fall interviewing newspaper cartoonists about how they draw their work, assuming that many would have adopted modern tools like a Wacom Cintiq tablet or at least a digital stylus paired with something like an iPad. Instead, I was surprised to find that many rely on traditional media, like ink, paint, and watercolor. Even more surprising? Many younger artists, who had the choice of whether to start in analog or digital, work on paper instead of on screen.
I expected that most artists producing daily cartoons would have made a partial or total conversion to drawing and producing their work digitally, thanks to the advantages in time and effort. Perhaps those who started working before the 1990s would largely stick to traditional media, but I reckoned even some percentage of them would have shifted over. But no. While they don’t draw digitally, they’re happy to leverage digital technologies in other ways.
The persistent use of liquid stuff on paper is partly because modern reproduction technology makes it just as easy to work in older media as with digital tools. The ease of scanning, or even taking high-resolution flat photos of analog work, outweighs the seeming advantages of an all-digital workflow for those who prefer the messy, unpredictable, and sometimes frustrating limitations of materials for the physical feedback, happy accidents, and familiarity they provide.
These interviews were part of my multi-year research for a book, How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page, that I’m currently crowdfunding with an anticipated ship date late in 2024. My book starts in the 1890s and follows North American newspaper comic production and reproduction to the modern days, focusing on how artists drew their strips and worked their way through the transformations necessary to get artwork onto a newsprint page or digital display.
FRIGHT KREWE Season Two
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK AT SEASON 2 OF ELI ROTH’S ANIMATED HORROR SERIES FRIGHT KREWE
Watch the new DreamWorks Animation trailer for Fright Krewe, the second season of James Frey and Eli Roth’s animated teen horror series.
By Tara Bennett
a’ll, it’s time to get scared again by the good and bad juju mixing it up in the DreamWorks Animation original series, Fright Krewe. The animated series is set in contemporary New Orleans and was created by long-time friends James Frey and Eli Roth. Their first animation collaboration, Fright Krewe is their original contribution to the growing category of entry-level horror, meant to welcome tweens and teens into the genre.
‘We wanted to do a show for parents that love horror movies and want their kids to get into horror movies. Where they could show them something that’s new, something that’s modern, but also beautifully animated,” Roth told SYFY WIRE about he and Frey’s intentions with the series.
Fright Krewe returns March 29 on Peacock with 10 new episodes. Watch the brand-new trailer that teases Belial reanimating an even scarier collection of monsters so he can conquer and reign over New Orleans.
Spoonlady
Collapsing Shelf
Strange rock formations beneath the Pacific Ocean could change our understanding of the early Earth
Our world may seem fragile, but Earth has been around for a very long time. If we ventured far back into the past, would we reach a time when it looked fundamentally different?
The answer lies in some of the earliest extensive relics of Earth’s surface, found in a remote corner of southern Africa’s highveld – a region known to geologists as the Barberton Greenstone Belt.
The geological formations in this region have proved difficult to decipher, despite many attempts. But our new research has shown the key to cracking this code lies in geologically young rocks laid down on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
This has opened up a new perspective on what our planet looked like when it was still young.
“In My Eyes”
One Photographer’s Trip Into Punk History
Jim Saah’s “In My Eyes” features photos of artists ranging from Foo Fighters to Minor Threat
Nearly everyone with a foothold in punk rock has some sort of origin story. For photographer Jim Saah, his unlikely path to the music he loved involved a certain cult film. “I discovered punk rock at, of all places, The Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing at a theater in DC,” Saah tells InsideHook. “They had a DJ, and before the movie started, they played music.”
Young Saah found himself drawn to the music playing at the theater that night: “He was playing a lot of British stuff like The Stranglers and The Buzzcocks and maybe The Sex Pistols. And I thought, What’s this music?”
And so Saah did what countless people before him did: he sought out some local experts. “I went to the record store and asked, ‘Who are these bands?’ The old heads at the record store were great — they were turning me onto stuff and they told me, ‘You know, there’s local punk rock bands too,’” he says.
“My first show was a Minor Threat show,” he adds. “I really got into the scene — the punk scene and the hardcore punk scene.”
They’re Listening To Us
What YOUR music taste actually says about your personality, according to science
By ROB WAUGH
What does it actually say about you if you love chart pop hits, or prefer unwinding with some bass-heavy dance tracks or heavy metal?
Probably not what you expect.
Multiple scientific studies have investigated the personality traits associated with different music genres, and come up with some unexpected facts, like the fact that psychopaths are most likely to enjoy No Diggity by Blackstreet.
If you like popular, chart-topping music, you’re more likely to be an agreeable person.
Meanwhile, people who listen to extreme heavy metal about violence are actually no more likely to be violent themselves (and in fact just find ‘joy’ in the music).
And if you like exaggerated bass in music, it could be bad news.
Secret Cézanne
A Mysterious Cézanne Work Is Discovered in the Artist’s Childhood Home
It’s an entirely unknown work by the French painter.
A new work believed to be by the French painter Paul Cézanne has been found on the walls of his childhood home during renovations, officials announced last week. The work, which measures about 64 square feet, was not included in the 1996 catalogue raisonné by art historian John Rewald.
Sophie Joissains, a French senator and mayor of the town of Aix-en-Provence, shared the news on social media after a conference attended by Philippe Cézanne, the painter’s great-grandson, and experts on the artist from the Société Paul Cézanne and the Musée Granet.
“The walls of the ‘Grand Salon’ in the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, currently being renovated, have just revealed some of the painter’s hidden, unknown treasures,” Joissains said.
The piece was found under wallpaper and plaster in the house’s main living room in August 2023. The home, known as the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, sits on a 12.3-acre property bought by Cézanne’s father, Louis-Auguste Cézanne, in 1859.
Well That Sucks (from, ironically, a lack of sucking)
The Data is Clear: People Are Having Less Sex
And it’s not just the youths!
by RYAN BURGE
There was a bit of kerfuffle on the internet back in August surrounding a piece published with the title “Failure to Launch: Why Young People are Having Less Sex.” Using a survey of Californians aged 18-30, the percentage reporting no sexual partners in the prior year reached an all-time high of 38%.
Here’s an even more eye-raising statistic: in 2021, among that same age group, just 9% of women reported having at least 2 sexual partners. It was 12% of younger men. The widespread belief that these young adults are having a ton of casual sex is demonstrably false. The common perception of ‘sexually promiscuous’ likely doesn’t align with a 25-year-old having only two sexual partners in a year, I’d guess.
But, let me expand the scope of the inquiry even further. It’s not just young people having less sex; this trend spans virtually all adult age groups. People are having less sex.
Here’s how I came to that revelation: it started with the graph below. I had already written the code to do the analysis in prior waves of the General Social Survey and wanted to update the results from the last two years of the GSS.
Who Needs GMT?
‘Cosmic clock’ dates earliest human presence in Europe
By Katie Hunt
Stone tools unearthed in a quarry in Ukraine belonged to ancient humans who used them more than a million years ago, according to new research.
The fresh dating analysis of the artifacts reveals the earliest known presence of hominins in Europe, said Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. The first humans to inhabit Europe made their way from east to west, the report also suggested.
Initial dating of the Korolevo archaeological site, discovered in the 1970s, suggested it had been used for more than 800,000 years. Archaeologists have recovered 90,000 stone tools from the site, which lies close to Ukraine’s southwestern border with Hungary and Romania.
God Bless Venice
Where It All Ended
Patmos: The Greek island where the end of the world began
by John Malathronas
The island of Patmos, sitting under perfect blue skies in the eastern reaches of the Aegean sea, may look like a typical vacation destination in Greece, but it isn’t.
It’s where the end of the world began.
Not that you’d guess that, strolling down the winding path in the center of the island, where a sleepy priest tends a souvenir stall.
Yet, this is the place from where infernal visions of mankind’s ultimate downfall sprang – inspiring St. John to write the Book of Revelation which forms the closing pages of the New Testament and gives the Bible some of its most portentous descriptions.
Raising Union Station
Billionaire Todd Graves Hopes to Use Art to Fuel Infrastructure Improvements
Graves plans to display and then donate a group of Carlos Diniz drawings depicting the 1988 renovation of D.C.’s Union Station.
By Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
Todd Graves, founder of the Raising Cane’s restaurant franchise, is hoping an art exhibition will help spur on the long-awaited renovation of Union Station in Washington, D.C.
A proposed $10 billion redevelopment would be the train station’s first major facelift in more than three decades. With an upcoming display of illustrations detailing its last major renovation in the 1980s, Graves hopes to remind the city of the station’s potential.
Currently on display at Raising Cane’s Union Station location, the six drawings were made by Carlos Diniz, one of the most iconic architectural illustrators of the 20th century. Graves, who acquired a dozen of Diniz’s illustrations of the station for around $200,000, will donate the entire batch to a yet-to-be-announced museum in Washington, D.C., later this year.
Subliminal Da Vinci
Art Bites: Did Leonardo Hide Music in ‘The Last Supper’?
Dinner and a show.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (c. 1495-98) which shows the final meeting of Jesus and the 12 apostles, is one of the world’s most famous artworks.
It has been analysed time and time again, its true cast of figures has been questioned, has been found to contain hidden astrological messages, and in 2007 a University of Oxford doctorate candidate found that the masterpiece was also holding a musical secret: a hidden hymn coded in the bread.
Giovanni Maria Pala, an Italian musician, computer technician, and at the time student at Magdalen College, had been fascinated by Leonardo and The Last Supper for years.
He began examining the straight row of scattered pieces of bread that ran along the iconic table, which were present in the banquet as a symbol of the body of Christ.
What Pala found was that, when paired with the hand-placement of the 13 figures, the bread spelled out a haunting 40-second melody when the painting was overlaid with a standard five-line musical staff.
But what if you turn into a monkey?
If you yearn for the void, try floating naked in a dark tank
Depending on who you ask, spending an hour floating naked in a soundproof, lightproof tank with only your own thoughts for company sounds either like a soothing respite from everyday life, or a nightmarish punishment devised by a uniquely devious and vengeful deity.
Personally, I yearn for the void. So I signed up for a session in a float tank. These used to be called sensory deprivation tanks, but the term has fallen out of favor because your senses aren’t fully deprived; the terms of art are flotation therapy or flotation Rest (restricted environmental stimulation therapy).
Isolation tanks were first developed in the 1950s by John C Lilly, a neuroscientist who used them to enhance his psychedelic experiences. They didn’t become commercially available until the 1970s but their popularity quickly grew.
Eno Illuminated
Brian Eno’s New Illuminated Turntable Does More Than Spin Records
The record player doubles as an artwork and can be yours for a mere $25,000.
Musician and artist Brian Eno has released a new edition of a custom-designed turntable that is as much an artwork as a device for playing music.
“When it doesn’t have to do anything in particular, like play a record, it’s a sculpture,” said the artist.
The turntable features a round base, echoing the shape of the platter; the two parts light up and transition among various colors independently of each other, creating what the artist calls “generative ‘colorscapes.’” The first edition of the turntable, produced in 2021, inspired the stage set for U2’s recent shows at the Sphere, in Las Vegas.
It’s Beginning
Private lander makes first US moon landing in more than 50 years
BY MARCIA DUNN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private lander on Thursday made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years, but managed just a weak signal back until flight controllers scrambled to gain better contact.
Despite the spotty communication, Intuitive Machines, the company that built and managed the craft, confirmed that it had landed upright. But it did not provide additional details, including whether the lander had reached its intended destination near the moon’s south pole. The company ended its live webcast soon after identifying a lone, weak signal from the lander.
“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” mission director Tim Crain reported as tension built in the company’s Houston control center.
Added Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus: “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”
No worries, Eve made the same mistake.
Investigative Issues: The Apple Vision Pro May Rewire Our Brains in Unexpected Ways
By Adam Rogers
The Vision Pro, like the similarly kitted-out Quest 3 and Quest Pro headsets from Meta, uses what’s known as “passthrough” video — cameras and other sensors that capture imagery of the outside world and reproduce it inside the device. They feed you a synthetic environment made to look like the real one, with Apple apps and other non-real elements floating in front of it. Apple and Meta are hoping that this virtual world will be so compelling that you won’t just visit. They’re hoping you’ll live there.
That, unfortunately, could have some very weird and very messy consequences for the human brain. Researchers have found that widespread, long-term immersion in VR headsets could literally change the way we perceive the world — and each other. “We now have companies who are advocating that you spend many hours each day in them,” says Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. “You’ve got many, many people, and they’re wearing it for many, many hours. And everything magnifies at scale.”
Meaning: Our brains are about to undergo a massive, society-wide experiment that could rewire our sense of the world around us, and make it even harder to agree on what constitutes reality.