An awe‑inspiring investigation of the untamed places and inhospitable environments in which life – besides humans – finds a way

Off the coast of California, two miles down, there exist geothermal nurseries: gatherings of tens of thousands of small violet octopuses, each the size of a grapefruit. Known as pearl octopuses (Muusoctopus robustus), they congregate around hydrothermal springs which warm their eggs, allowing them to hatch in less than two years (in cold water it can take 10 years). When I want to calm my mind, I think of these gatherings, this factory of octopuses powered by the Earth’s energy that exists quietly away from our gaze, and might easily never have been discovered. How many more such worlds exist?

The seafloor is just one setting in Cal Flyn’s carnival of a book, The Savage Landscape, a wondrous personal journey to locate and understand wilderness. It’s a work of extraordinary physical and narrative movement that takes us from the depths of the ocean to volcanoes and icebergs, but is also a journey into our own psyches, and the stories we tell ourselves about “wild” landscapes. Above all, it is a reminder that the places we might conceive of as empty or barren are no such thing; that within wildernesses there is abundant life, both human and nonhuman.

Continue reading...

The island of Samsø offers tranquil walks, biking, birding, distillery and pottery tours, and locally sourced fare – including citrusy ants

‘We have lammerullepøllse – lamb rolled sausage – today,” says Daniel Hesseldal-Haines, chef at Det Lille Sommerhotel on the Danish island of Samsø. “It tastes better than the translation sounds. And,” he gestures towards a woman sitting by the window, “the lamb is from Camilla’s farm.”

Camilla gives us a friendly wave, and my eyes fix upon her sweater, featuring row upon row of colourful motifs. Think Fair Isle but less orderly: each stripe holds a different design. “Oh, I made this,” she says. “It’s hønsestrik – chicken knitting. You can use it to tell your story – so this one is about hiking,” she adds, pointing to each section: “These are my footprints, this is my tent, my coffee flask …”

Continue reading...

Jack Archer’s gentle film follows the immensely likable Rob MacNeacail as he journeys across Scotland and Ireland in a bid to save these traditional songs of people and place

There’s no word in Scottish Gaelic for “moreish” – or if there is, it slips Rob MacNeacail’s mind as he reaches for another biscuit in a church hall. MacNeacail is a Gaelic psalm singer and the eccentric star of this gentle and rather lovely film from Jack Archer that follows him on a mission to meet other singers keeping the tradition alive. Not that you’ll learn an awful lot about the history of psalm singing from this film; it is essentially an observational portrait of MacNeacail, at his home on the Scottish borders then out on the road to the Outer Hebrides, Skye, Belfast and County Cork.

But no knowledge is necessary to enjoy the extraordinarily rich and textured sound of psalm singing, once practised at Free Presbyterian churches all over Scotland. It’s a community activity: one person – the precentor – sings a line of a psalm from the bible, and everyone else sings it back slowly, each with their own interpretation, at their own tempo. No instruments, just voices; like the sea, the sound comes in great swells and then retreats. It’s haunting; shut your eyes and you might be in a stone chapel in the 1800s.

Continue reading...

DEN HAAG (ANP) - PostNL heeft een boete van bijna 7 miljoen euro gekregen voor te trage postbezorging in 2023. Volgens de Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM) voldeed PostNL niet aan de kwaliteitsnormen voor tijdige postbezorging in dat jaar. Het bedrijf bezorgde 89,48 procent van de brievenbuspost op tijd en dat was onder de wettelijke eis van minimaal 95 procent, laat de toezichthouder weten.

Wie ’s ochtends meteen strak zijn bed opmaakt, helpt huisstofmijten onbedoeld aan een ideale leefomgeving.

Na een nacht slapen zitten matras, dekbed en kussen vol warmte en vocht, afkomstig van zweet en huidschilfers. Huisstofmijten gedijen juist in zo’n warm en vochtig microklimaat, waarschuwen experts. Door het bed direct dicht te slaan met dekens en een sprei blijft die vochtige lucht opgesloten, waardoor de mijten zich kunnen vermenigvuldigen.

Artsen en slaapexperts raden daarom aan om het bed na het opstaan eerst een tijd open te laten liggen. Door dekbed en kussen volledig terug te slaan en een raam open te zetten, kunnen textiel en matras beter drogen en neemt het aantal mijten en hun allergenen af. Vooral voor mensen met astma of huisstofmijtallergie kan dit verschil maken, omdat de uitwerpselen van mijten klachten als benauwdheid en eczeem kunnen verergeren.

De praktische richtlijn: laat je bed minstens een half uur, liever één tot twee uur, open en onopgemaakt liggen voordat je het netjes maakt. In die tijd kan het bed luchten en drogen, terwijl de slaapkamer door het open raam verlucht wordt. Pas daarna is het verstandig om het dekbed weer recht te leggen of een sprei over het bed te trekken.

A Georgia data center developed by QTS used nearly 30 million gallons of water through two unaccounted-for connections before residents complained about low water pressure and the county utility discovered the issue. "All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water," reports Politico. "That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process." From the report: The details were revealed in a May 15, 2025 letter from the Fayette County water system to Quality Technology Services, which outlined the retroactive charge of $147,474. The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months. Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.

The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center's meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up. "Fayette County is a suburb, it's mostly residential, and we don't have much commercial meters in our system anyway," she said. "And so we didn't realize our connection point wasn't working." The incident became public last week when a county resident obtained the 2025 letter to QTS through a public records request and posted it on Facebook, prompting outrage from residents concerned about the data center's water consumption. [...]

Tigert, who sent the 2025 letter to QTS, said the utility didn't know about the water hookups because the connection process "got mixed up" as the county transitioned to a cloud-based system while also trying to accommodate an industrial customer. Tigert also said her staff is small and at capacity. "Just like any water system, we don't have enough staff. We can't keep staff," she said. "I've got one person that's doing inspections and plan review, and so he's spread pretty thin." She said it's possible her staff did know about hookups but that she hadn't been able to locate the inspection report. "I may have hit 'send' too soon," she said about the 2025 letter to QTS. While the utility charged the data center a higher construction rate for the unapproved water consumption, Tigert confirmed the utility did not penalize or fine the data center.
For what it's worth, the Blackstone-owned company says its data centers use a closed-loop cooling system that does not consume water for cooling. The reason for last year's high water use, according to QTS, was the temporary construction work such as concrete, dust control, and site preparation.

Once the campus is fully operational, it should only use a small amount of water for things like bathrooms and kitchens. But that point could still be years away, as construction and expansion in Fayetteville may continue for another three to five years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi has ordered a review of government cybersecurity strategy, citing the arrival of Anthropic’s bug-hunting model Mythos as a moment that makes it necessary to order a cabinet-level project. In a Tuesday cabinet meeting, the PM instructed cybersecurity minister Hisashi Matsumoto to devise measures to check the state of government systems to determine whether it’s possible to detect and fix vulnerabilities, and to develop a plan to ensure critical infrastructure operators can do likewise. Japan’s leader ordered the checks because she feels Mythos and similar frontier models may be misused, and that attacks on infrastructure may therefore increase in speed and scale – perhaps even exponentially. Over the last couple of years cybersecurity vendors and researchers have often pointed out that AI models make it possible to find flaws and automate attacks. When Anthropic debuted Mythos in early April, the notion that AI has the potential to vastly complicate the security landscape went mainstream. Many regulators around the world have issued guidance to point out that now is the perfect time to revisit and improve security strategies and capabilities, because Mythos and other AI models mean defenses are going to be tested like never before. India’s securities regulator went a step further by ordering a security review at the organizations it oversees. And now Japan’s leader has decided the matter is of sufficient importance that her office needs to weigh in and set new policy to ensure AI doesn’t go on a destructive rampage through Japanese infrastructure. Whether Takaichi’s urgency is needed is open to debate. Some researchers have said that while Mythos can find bugs at speed, but doesn’t find flaws humans can’t detect with their naked brains. Others suggest Mythos is not vastly better at finding bugs than open source models that pre-date it and are publicly available – unlike Mythos which is restricted to certain users. Others have all but dismissed Mythos as a marketing stunt. ® .

Het cruiseschip Hondius, waar het hantavirus is vastgesteld, komt naar Rotterdam voor desinfectie. Het schip is maandagavond met vertraging vertrokken uit Spanje. Eenmaal in Rotterdam wacht een enorme operatie. Want hoe krijg je zo’n drijvend hotel eigenlijk weer virusvrij?

Aan de Groenendijk in Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel is maandagavond een auto in het water beland. Het voertuig kwam ondersteboven in het water terecht. Hoe dat kon gebeuren is niet bekend.

Op een parkeerplaats achter een zwembad in Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel is in de nacht van maandag op dinsdag een auto afgebrand. Hoe dat kon gebeuren is niet bekend.