Stinging ants: Amazon indigenous group girds itself to hold ancestral lands "The ceremony begins in the late afternoon in the indigenous village of Fortaleza on the Andirá River in the Brazilian Amazon. A Sateré elder blows smoke into special gloves filled with scores of tucandeira ants (Paraponera clavata), up to 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) long. The insects have been dubbed "bullet ants," because the sting they inflict is so severe it causes pain comparable to being shot, lasting 18 hours and often accompanied by sickness and vomiting."

The Guardian's new list of "The 100 Best Novels of All Time" is introduced in "Who's in, who's out, and how many have you read? The story behind our 100 best novels list." Usual suspects like Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, Dracula, Madame Bovary, and Jude the Obscure are well-represented, and SF/F author John Wiswell has gathered a lot of feedback on other options (his own answers; Wiswell previously), perhaps because whole traditions of novels are not, e.g. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin (translations), Journey to the West (translations; first 7 chapters animated; ch. 72-73 in the silent era; sequels such as The Tower of Myriad Mirrors), The Plum in the Golden Vase, The Dream of the Red Chamber, and The Scholars--not to mention Investiture of the Gods (ch. 12-14 animated), Quelling the Demons' Revolt, or The Pleasing History.

Uncrossy is a fun game by Rob Jagnow where you move linked words to make other words, clearing them from the board. The goal, a clean slate with no words at all.

No renewal notice posted on US Treasury website so far for waiver that had allowed countries such as India to buy Russian seaborne oil. What we know on day 1,544

The Trump administration on Saturday allowed a sanctions waiver to lapse that had previously allowed countries including India to buy Russian seaborne oil after a month-long extension aimed at easing oil supply shortages and high prices due to Iran’s closure of the strait of Hormuz. The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, had previously said he would not renew the general licence allowing the purchase of Russian oil stored on tankers. As of early afternoon Washington time on Saturday, no renewal notice had been posted on the Treasury website.

Two top Democratic US senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren, on Friday urged the Trump administration against renewing the waiver because it was providing revenue to Russia to aid its war in Ukraine, but said there was no evidence it was bringing down fuel costs for American consumers.

An unexploded projectile was discovered on a property in south-eastern Romania near the EU and Nato member’s border with Ukraine on Saturday, its defence ministry said. Romania shares a 650-km (400-mile) land border with Ukraine. Russian drones attacking Ukraine’s ports on the Danube river have repeatedly breached Romanian airspace and fragments have sometimes fallen on its territory as Ukrainian forces shoot them down. An unguided reactive projectile was found in the yard of an uninhabited house in the village of Pardina in Romania’s Tulcea county, the ministry said without indicating its suspected origin.

Last month, an explosive drone landed in a back yard in the city of Galati, marking the first time since the start of the Ukraine war that such an incident had damaged property in Romania.

The leaders of Nato’s 14 eastern flank nations this week said Russia’s repeated violations of their airspace underlined the urgent need to consolidate the alliance’s air defences against missiles and drones. Several Russian and Ukrainian drones have crashed in Latvia since Russia invaded Ukraine, stirring public disquiet in the small former Soviet republic that is now a member of Nato and the EU.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics on Saturday proposed opposition lawmaker Andris Kulbergs as the next prime minister after Evika Silina resigned. Silina stepped down triggering the collapse of her coalition after she dismissed defence minister Andris Spruds because Ukrainian drones strayed into Latvia and exploded at an oil facility. The Latvian army said it failed to detect the drones as they crossed from Russia. Silina blamed Spruds for not developing anti-drone systems quickly enough. In response, Spruds’ Progressives party withdrew support from Silina’s government on Wednesday, leaving her without a parliamentary majority and exposed to a no-confidence vote.

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If case is settled for full amount Trump is requesting, a $10bn payment would more than double his family’s net worth – key US politics stories from Saturday, 16 May at a glance

Donald Trump may agree to drop his massive $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the launch of a $1.7bn fund to compensate people he says were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, according to reports.

The case is the latest example of how Trump has taken over the justice department – which typically operates at arm’s length from the White House – and deployed it for his own ends.

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Johan Cruijff Arena, the Netherlands
Styles’ first stop in his Together, Together tour, which will see him perform lengthy residencies around the world, is a reminder of how talented he is

Midway through the opening night of his world tour, Harry Styles asks where the audience in the Johan Cruijff Arena have come from. To judge by their response, residents of Amsterdam are vastly outnumbered by those who have travelled vast distances to be here: further investigation on the part of the singer reveals audience members from Switzerland and Ireland.

It’s evidence of what – to use a modern term – a huge flex the Together, Together tour is. There are doubtless sound reasons for performing lengthy residencies at single venues rather than dutifully dragging yourself around the globe – Styles’ 10 shows in Amsterdam are the only gigs he’s playing in mainland Europe, followed by similarly lengthy sojourns at venues in London, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York City, Melbourne and Sydney – but it also helps underline the enormity of the former One Direction star’s solo success. Twelve consecutive nights at Wembley is a feat not even Taylor Swift’s Eras tour could match. Here, it suggests, is a man who’s not only pulled off one of the hardest tricks in pop – the journey from manufactured boyband member to respected solo artist is a notoriously thorny one – but done it with an almost unparalleled degree of aplomb. You’d have to look back to George Michael’s post-Wham! career to find even a vague equivalent.

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"Every link leads to an entry that does not exist yet," explains the GitHub page for a Wikipedia-like site called Halupedia. "Until you click it, at which point an LLM pretends it has always existed and writes it for you, in the deadpan register of a 19th-century scholarly press..."


Every article is invented on demand. The footnotes are also lies... The hardest problem with an infinite, on-demand encyclopedia is internal contradiction... When the LLM writes an article, it is required to add a context="..." attribute on every <a> it inserts, summarising the future article it is linking to (e.g. context="19th-century clerk who formalized footnote drift, Pellbrick's mentor")... When that target article is later requested for the first time, the worker loads the accumulated hints and injects them into the system prompt as "PRIOR REFERENCES — these are CANON". The LLM is instructed that the encyclopedia is hallucinated and absurd, but it must not contradict itself.



Fast Company reports that Halupedia was created by software developer BartÅomiej Strama, who confessed in a Reddit comment that the site came about after a drunk night with a friend. In the week since launch, he says Halupedia has amassed more than 150,000 users."


Beyond indulging in silly alternate histories, what's the point of using Halupedia? Strama hinted at one larger purpose in a reply to a donor on his Buy Me a Coffee page: "Your contribution towards polluting LLM training data will surely benefit society!" he wrote.


The site is licensed as free software under the GPL-3.0 license.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

Humans in cars, Paul Davis

BertvB posted a photo:

A close-up view of a stunning peach rose with vibrant pink edges, selected from a beautiful flower bouquet. Captured with sharp detail against a dark background, the intricate layers and delicate textures of the petals create a striking natural contrast that highlights the timeless elegance of the flower.