The Far Out Company is a curated collection of mostly American newsletters, photographs, magazines, and posters, all from the early Sixties to late Seventies. It has a related Instagram as well; both the website and Instagram page are created and maintained by Sean Flannagan.

There's photographic documentation of communes and intentional communities, such as the Renaissance Community in Western Massachusetts (1970s); magazines like the Quicksilver Times from Washington DC (1969-71); and an epic poster from 1972 about Dropping Out by Canada's own Rand Holmes, RIP, author of the Harold Hedd comix. (I saw and internalised this poster when I was 13, which might explain some things.) Enjoy these glimpses into a different, and more optimistic, time. Content note: nudity.

The real question isn’t whether you are being lied to, but why ‘tall tales’ land so heavily with you

When I was 21, I went on a girls’ trip with university friends. Over dinner, one of the girls, who was known for being a liar, announced she had just heard from her doctor that she had cancer and needed chemotherapy. She never had chemotherapy and most of the group (especially me) stopped socialising with her after that. Five years later, she admitted she had been lying.

Recently, a new person joined my work and I think she may be a liar of similar proportions. We get along very well, are a similar age and are both chatty. She is also an over-sharer. According to her, this has been the worst six months of her life, involving injuries, escapades and traumatic events, some of which feel untrue. I feel I have to believe her or I’ll be the worst person ever. Yet, my instincts and life experience tell me these things are probably fiction or at least heavily exaggerated.

Continue reading...

From single mothers to fathers of autistic children and fellow adoptees – some relationships come along just when you need them the most

Lucy Crowe and Mikayla Jolley, London

Continue reading...

Darren Aronofsky among proponents of using technology, while Guillermo del Toro says he would ‘rather die’

Under a white marquee on Cannes’ Croisette beach, with the Mediterranean glistening behind him and superyachts drifting across the horizon, the director Darren Aronofsky addressed an audience of executives and tech evangelists gathered for an “AI for Talent” summit.

“There’s so much pushback against AI,” said Aronofsky, who has faced criticism over his embrace of generative AI projects though his new studio, Primordial Soup, at a time when artificial intelligence has become one of the film industry’s most divisive fault lines.

Continue reading...

Increasingly isolated president is determined to press on with Ukraine war, say well-placed sources, despite ailing economy

Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow earlier in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the lobby and embraced his former schoolteacher Vera Gurevich, who kissed him on both cheeks.

He then helped Gurevich into his car and drove her to dinner at the Kremlin.

Continue reading...

US imposed sanctions on nine judges and a prosecutor after ICC issued arrest warrants for members of Israeli cabinet

A former prosecutor at the international criminal court has called for an EU-wide statute blocking what she describes as “thuggish” and “bullying” US sanctions imposed on members of the court that are designed to send the court into oblivion.

In February 2025, the US imposed sanctions on 11 ICC officials, including nine judges and the chief prosecutor as well three Palestinian organisations, in response to the ICC decision in 2024 to issue arrest warrants for members of the Israeli cabinet, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Continue reading...

It’s been 14 years since he passed, but I can feel his blood coursing through my veins whenever I realise the small ways I am just like him

This sounds like an old-fashioned, “take my mother-in-law” type joke, but is the antithesis of funny: one in five British people would swap their dad for a better model. This is according to a new survey ahead of – you guessed it – Father’s Day in the UK, which also revealed that one in three pretend they have a better relationship with their dad than they really do. Many admitted they buy Father’s Day cards out of obligation rather than love, too. Oof.

As a result of this research, online retailer Thortful has launched a campaign called “Dad’s not perfect, but …” to challenge the stereotype of the “Best Dad Ever”, with a much more honest range of cards.

Continue reading...

Matt Youson takes a look at the different pit stop and tyre options that are available to the teams on race day in Montreal.

Linus Torvalds spoke this week at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit North America, reports ZDNet — and described how AI is impacting Linux kernel development:

"In the last six months, we've seen a lot more commits," Torvalds noted, estimating that "the last two releases, it's been about 20% more commits than we had in the previous releases over many years.... The real change that happened in the last six months was that the AI tools actually got good enough for a lot of people... we're seeing a definite uptick in just development on pretty much all fronts...."

On the positive side, he framed AI-discovered bugs as "short-term pain" with long-term benefits: "When AI finds a bug in any source code... long term is you found a bug, we fixed it, that the end result is better for it." After all, he continued, "I think finding bugs is great, because the real problem is all the bugs you didn't find..." For small teams or solo maintainers, he said, flood-style AI bug reports can cause real burnout, especially when "it's a bug report, and when you ask for more information, the person has done a drive-by and doesn't even answer your questions anymore."

The AI news site Techstrong notes this quote from Torvalds. "I have a love-hate relationship with AI. I actually really like it from a technical angle, I love the tools, I find it very useful and interesting, but it is definitely causing pain points."

The chief challenge with AI is that it forces people to change how they work, he found. People get into a rut, and AI challenges their norm. The Linux security mailing list got the brunt of this new wave of AI-generated commits. Not all bugs are security issues, but when "people think that when they find a bug with AI, the first reaction seems to sometimes be let's send it to the security list, because this may have security implications," Torvalds said. As a result, the security list — watched over by a small group of maintainers — was overrun by duplicate entries...
The Linux project learned to manage the bug influx with a set number of tools to sort out and deprioritize the obvious drive-by reports (ones where the person submitting the report won't even answer any questions). One tool, Sashiko, reviews all the patches submitted on the mailing list. "Sometimes the review is not great, but quite often it finds issues and it asks questions and says, 'Hey, what about this issue?'" he said.


Linux also updated their documentation, partly just to address "an uptick in bug and security reports from discoveries made in full or in part with AI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.