“Ranxerox a New York” - Stefano Tamburini / Tanino Liberatore “powerhouse of violence, drugs, obscenity, graphic erotica, amorality, and provocations of all kinds” #NowReading #book

Retrofuturista

Ranxerox by Tamburini, Liberatore, Chabat, review - RetroFuturista

Ranxerox is a satire of contemporary society highlighting the violent and sadistic elements inherent in it.

What Hollywood meant to Joan Didion “[John] Wayne would haunt Didion through her career…” #writing #literature

MSN

Mycelial Politics: Radical Ecology & Renewal in the Anthropocene “Drawing on radical ecology, Indigenous theory, and mycology, this paper develops mycelial politics—an ecological metaphor grounded in fungal processes of decomposition, interspecies linkage, and renewal. By modeling political networks on fungal hyphae, one may envision a dialectical process that concomitantly breaks down and decomposes anti-ecological structures as it reconstitutes them into life-affirming forms. This framework highlights circular, post-scarcity economics and interspecies mutual aid, pointing toward a post-capitalist transition where communities regenerate damaged environments and redistribute resources and power in non-hierarchical and liberatory networks.” #solarpunk #postscarcity https://www.wpsanet.org/papers/docs/WPSA%202025%20Conference%20Paper.pdf

The sun's poles have flipped. “While a normal magnet has clear north and south poles, both of the sun's poles occupy the bottom now.” Seems like something so huge should affect earth… #science

Mashable

The sun's poles have flipped. A spacecraft is watching what happens next.

The Solar Orbiter has taken the first image of the sun's south pole region.

Scientists created a battery that lasts 5,700 years without needing to be recharged. For deep space probes? Porch lights? Meshtastic nodes? #scifi #science #renewableenergy

Earth.com

Scientists created a battery that lasts 5,700 years without needing to be recharged

British scientists create a carbon-14 diamond battery that provides continuous power for 5,700 years, reducing nuclear waste.

China Harvests Wheat in Desert “The organization also used precise, quantitative, and high-frequency irrigation methods to deliver the necessary nutrients and water directly to the wheat roots.” #climatechange

Tech Times

China Harvests Wheat From a 400-Hectare Desert, Boosting Country's Crop Yield

China successfully harvests wheat in a 400-hectare desert plot in Xinjiang, marking a milestone in combating desertification and enhancing food sec...

New Class of Materials That Passively Harvest Water from Air #solarpunk #environment

Penn Engineering

Penn Engineers Discover a New Class of Materials That Passively Harvest Water from Air

Researchers from Penn Engineering have discovered nanostructured materials that can passively harvest water from the air without energy input, ena...

Two-in-one solar-wind turbine in prototype stage “ Early computer simulations found that the turbine mounted solar panels would cause blinding beams of light to shoot out across the surrounding area.” Weird. #solarpunk #renewableenergy

Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building | Green design & innovation for a better world

Scientists Develop Solar-Powered Wind Turbine for Ultimate Energy Generation

A team from the University of Liverpool are developing a solar powered wind turbine called The Heat Waver.

Tracing the thoughts of a large language model “What language, if any, is it using ‘in its head’?” #AI #LLM https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language-model

LLMs Can Now Reason Beyond Language “Human reasoning naturally operates through abstract, non-verbal concepts rather than strictly relying on discrete linguistic tokens.” #AI #LLM

MarkTechPost

LLMs Can Now Reason Beyond Language: Researchers Introduce Soft Thinking to Replace Discrete Tokens with Continuous Concept Embeddings

LLMs Can Now Reason Beyond Language: Researchers Introduce Soft Thinking to Replace Discrete Tokens with Continuous Concept Embeddings

“The English bowler hat soon made its way across the pond and became the most popular style in the American West” I always wondered about bowlers in westerns… #hats

Conner Hats

Bowler Hat Men: Stylish Picks

Explore our bowler hat collection for men. Perfect for outdoor adventures or urban style. Shop eco-friendly designs at Conner Hats now!

What Makes a Noir Novel? #writing #noir

G. Connor Salter

What Makes a Noir Novel? Considering Nightmare Alley

When I helped lead a presentation for Inkling Folk Fellowship on William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley, there were some sub-topics ...

The Epic Rise and Fall of a Dark-Web Psychedelics Kingpin “Even before I had the money, even if I never had the money,” Akasha tells me, smiling, staring at me with the wide, blue eyes of a true believer, “I was free.” #entheogens

WIRED

The Epic Rise and Fall of a Dark-Web Psychedelics Kingpin

Interdimensional travel, sex with aliens, communion with God. Anything is possible with just a sprinkle of DMT. Akasha Song’s secret labs made mi...

LLMs Aren’t Mirrors, They’re Holograms The article is pretty soft, but the idea of a re-entrant symbolic hologram is interesting… #AI #LLM

Psychology Today

LLMs Aren’t Mirrors, They’re Holograms

An LLM isn’t a mirror—it’s more like a hologram, one that reconstructs meaning from language.