Today's links

• Disloyalty: Air Canada's frequent flier fuckery.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Indie booksellers v internet; Coke pays dieticians to astroturf soda taxes; Voting in a voter-suppression state; Facebook v your use of Facebook.
• Upcoming appearances: Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Sheffield, Oxford, Montreal.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Disloyalty (permalink)

Up until very recently indeed, airlines were the only businesses that I dealt with regularly that practiced "price discrimination," charging different customers different prices for the same seats.

Economists broadly like this "second-order" price discrimination, where a company charges customers different prices based on the circumstances of the purchase, such as a bakery discounting bread at the end of the day. When an airline cranks up the price of an itinerary that doesn't include a Saturday stay, they're using that fact as a proxy for "price-insensitive" business travelers whose bosses can afford to pay more for a ticket, rather than paying a worker overtime to spend a weekend away from home after a meeting.

Despite the arguments about "efficiency," it's safe to say that *fliers* hate this. The airlines' pricing algorithms are so opaque and capricious that anyone who buys a ticket at *any* price inevitably feels like they got a bad deal. This situation is only exacerbated by the airlines' extreme and aggressive secrecy over their pricing strategies, which includes lawsuits against websites that use historical pricing data to predict when a plane ticket will be the cheapest to buy:

https://www.eff.org/document/preliminary-injunction-american-airlines-v-farechase-inc

When a company wants the government to intervene to prohibit third parties from publishing factual information about its prices, that's a bad look. Hard to believe that they're so sure that you, the customer, will be delighted by these pricing tactics that they can't bear to have these third parties ruin the surprise.

But this second-order discrimination is *so* 20th century. Here in the 21st century, we have *first-order* price discrimination, in which AI-powered pricing algorithms use commercial surveillance data about *you*, personally, to predict the highest price you're willing to pay. In this world of "surveillance pricing," every traveler (or customer) sees a different price, in a kind of cod-Marxist dystopia whose motto is "from each according to their ability (to pay), to each according to their (desperate) needs":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

Airlines *love* this kind of pricing, and they have means, motive and opportunity to practice it. All over the world, airlines have acquired or entered into joint ventures with surveillance pricing companies. These deals put the airlines on the horns of a dilemma: they love to boast to their shareholders about the way that surveillance pricing will let them gouge fliers, but inevitably the public finds out about these investor calls and breaks out the pitchforks and torches.

This triggers embarrassing climbdowns, like Delta's fiasco of summer 2025, when CEO Ed Bastian bragged to shareholders that his deal with the Israeli surveillance pricing company Fetcherr would boost profits by 50% (!) by figuring out which customers could be safely gouged. When fliers, civil society groups and members of Congress got wind of this and raised a ruckus, Fetcherr publicly disavowed Bastian's remarks, insisting that it wasn't even capable of the kind of price-fixing he'd promised. Then Delta launched a smear campaign against its critics, claiming that Bastian never said the thing he *absolutely said* and accusing surveillance pricing activists of peddling "misinformation":

https://groundworkcollaborative.org/news/amid-deltas-ai-pricing-scheme-groundwork-applauds-congressional-action-to-crack-down-on-surveillance-pricing-schemes/

Meanwhile, airlines all over the world have quietly switched their frequent flier reward programs from "mileage-based" rewards to "revenue-based" rewards. That means that you get points and status based on how much you spend on your ticket, not how far you fly. What may not be obvious from this move is that it forces frequent fliers to buy their tickets directly from the airlines, who claim that they can't tell how much you've spent on your ticket otherwise.

So tickets bought on sites like Expedia or through travel agents often qualify for insultingly small points awards, or no points at all. For example, British Airways once gave me *12 points* on a $2,000 Alaska Air ticket because I didn't buy it through British Airways' site (attaining BA's gold status requires *50,000* points).

Forcing frequent fliers to buy their tickets directly from the airline's website sets things up beautifully for surveillance-driven, first-order price discrimination. Airlines you do business with regularly can augment the personal information you provide to them and the data they collect from you with sensitive information purchased from the unregulated data-broker industry, which will cheerfully disclose your salary, credit card debts, or even if you've recently lost a parent and might be flying out for a funeral.

The airlines strenuously deny that they're doing this, of course, but they continue to make investor-facing announcements about their exciting deals with surveillance pricing companies…and things are getting *weird* for frequent travelers.

Thanks to a lot of book-related travel over the past couple of years, I have "Elite" status with Air Canada. Yesterday, I needed to book a last-minute, one-way fare on a route that is only serviced by Air Canada (AC enjoys a monopoly over many Canadian routes, even between major Canadian cities). I checked it out on Google Flights and found a fare for the eye-watering sum of USD829.73.

Now, my normal daily-use browser is Firefox, but I know from long experience that I can't log in to my Air Canada frequent flier account on any browser except Chromium, which I keep installed on my system for just this kind of hostile garbage website. So I tabbed over to Chromium and pasted the Google Flights outbound link that would take me to a pre-populated reservation form on aircanada.com. To my amazement, that same flight was showing as a USD1200 fare!

These were identical trips, loaded via identical referrer URLs. The difference was that in the browser where Air Canada knew that I was an extremely loyal and prolific customer, they had whacked me with a *44.8% premium* to punish me for my loyalty!

I couldn't believe it. I actually called Air Canada's customer service line for "Elite" fliers, and the customer service rep was at a loss for an explanation and could only apologise and suggest that I write a letter to the company.

I'm publishing this instead, because a) this will do more to punish Air Canada for trying to screw me over; and b) this can help you book your tickets in the future.

Yesterday, I finished buying the ticket in my logged-out Firefox window (Air Canada's website will work with Firefox to buy tickets provided you don't try to log in to your Aeroplan account first), paying $829. Then I flipped back to Chromium, where I was still logged into my Air Canada Aeroplan account, located the reservation, and added my frequent flier number to it.

I guess this is how I'm buying my plane tickets from now on.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

* PM Mark Carney pledged to ‘Buy Canadian.’ Since then, $7.8 billion in contracts went to American corporations https://archive.is/zDBfX#selection-3576.0-3576.3

* Tracing the rogue ideology of the frontier labs to their product choices https://buttondown.com/apperceptive/archive/tracing-the-rogue-ideology-of-the-frontier-labs/

* Have you heard of the term "enshittification?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ5V3pk6PEA&t=1220s

* Window display at TYPE Books Toronto to honour David Byrne’s new book https://stopmakingsense.info/window-display-at-type-books-toronto-to-honour-david-byrnes-new-book/

* Red Vienna Is Still Alive https://www.thenation.com/article/society/vienna-public-housing-urban-cities/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Indie booksellers in the age of the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20061026112859/https://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/1,71924-0.html

#10yrsago Wells Fargo whistleblower describes bank’s culture of blackballing threats and coerced corruption https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

#10yrsago Coca-Cola is paying dietitians to tweet scare-stories about soda taxes https://medium.com/cokeleak/is-coke-paying-dietitians-to-tweet-against-soda-tax-12d130d73b9a#.dw8udqccy

#10yrsago What it’s like to register to vote in states with voter suppression law https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37569855

#5yrsago Facebook shouldn't be in charge of how you use Facebook https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/08/unfollow-everything/#shut-the-zuck-up

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

* Hudson, OH: Hudson Library, Oct 7
https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=3850&EventID=596952&PK=

* Calgary: Wordfest, Oct 8
https://wordfest.com/2026/show/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2026/

* Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow

* Paris: Slow Tech Summit, Oct 15
https://slowtechsummit.com/

* Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01

* Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

* Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46

* Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

* Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
https://kilkenomics.com/

* Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

* Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

* Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

* Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

* Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
https://montreal2027.ca/en

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Recent appearances (permalink)

* Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

* AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

* AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

* How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

* Could Tech Bosses Destroy Life As We Know It? (Politics JOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4VktU0SgY

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Latest books (permalink)

* "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

* "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

* "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

* "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

* "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

* "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to *Enshittification*, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

* "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

* "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

* "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 529 (22924 total).

* "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

BBC Earth is returning to the ocean. 25 years after the first installment, the legendary naturalist, presenter, and centenarian David Attenborough narrates Blue Planet III. This first look video, backed by a song Hans Zimmer & Jade Thirwall, is teeming with stunning footage of sea life of all sorts.

Ed Yong called BPIII’s predecessor the best nature series ever:

Blue Planet II is the greatest nature series that the BBC has ever produced.

It is almost transcendentally good—the product of a team that, after six decades of experience, is now at the height of its powers. The Blue Planet II crew traveled to 39 countries to capture over 6,000 hours of footage. They stuck their cameras into coral crevices. They hung off speedboats to film dolphins rocketing behind them. They literally stared into the abyss—and then repeatedly entered it. The resulting episodes, each narrated by David Attenborough in his trademark velvety tones, are hour-long distillations of wonder, featuring sequences that would be breathtaking had earlier shots left you with any breath to take away.

Blue Planet III will air sometime later in the year in the UK; not so sure about timelines in other locations at this point.

Tags: Blue Planet · David Attenborough · trailers · TV · video

Bisschop Christopher Saunders pleegde jarenlang misbruik in geïsoleerde Aboriginal-gemeenschappen in zijn bisdom in West-Australië. Uit angst en wantrouwen jegens de autoriteiten zwegen zijn slachtoffers jarenlang.

Als voormalig economisch veiligheidsadviseur van Joe Biden en als topeconoom bij vermogensbeheerder BlackRock kent Mike Pyle zowel de wereld van overheden als van private beleggers van binnenuit. „Er zijn voor Europa meer mogelijkheden dan vaak gedacht wordt.”

Tijdens het eerste overleg over een nieuw sociaal akkoord heeft FNV-voorzitter Hans Spekman het nog eens duidelijk benadrukt.

Cemil Tugay joins ruling AKP after vowing he would never switch sides in boost for Turkish president

The mayor of Izmir, Turkey’s third city and an opposition stronghold, has defected to the ruling AKP in a move hailed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president.

Turkey’s opposition is battling an increasingly intense crackdown, with a barrage of what observers say are politically motivated arrests and lawsuits targeting its mayors and elected officials.

Continue reading...

The triple release of The Social Reckoning, Musk and Artificial is less a clear political stance, more like movie studio opportunism

Hollywood is sending a clear message: it’s a friend of tech. Netflix is no longer a lone disruptor: historic studio MGM is now the property of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos; David Ellison’s takeover of Paramount and subsequent Warner Bros merger was supported by his tech giant father; and Apple TV has acted as a patron for multiple film-maker passion projects. Everyone, including trendy auteur-factory A24, is tying themselves financially to AI.

The enormous pull of the tech industry – including its many trillions of dollars, oversized influence on politics and heavily pushed algorithms and AI products – means Hollywood is not alone in courting its wealth, but it has intensified the historic tension between art and commerce in the entertainment business. Technology that augments the human experience may be a compelling narrative subject, but this year brings a trio of films about the gurus responsible for the industry’s false promises.

Continue reading...

• ‘Trampoline effect’ can make some feel unwell

• German club ‘regret the ​unavoidable measures’

The German club Bochum have banned their supporters from ⁠jumping up and down in unison in part of their stadium as ⁠the ⁠movement of the stand ​makes some spectators feel unwell.

Engineers ⁠investigated the structure as part of a Ruhrstadion upgrade plan and cleared its load-carrying ⁠capacity. Their report, however, also highlighted the fact that synchronised jumping during ‌matches created what they called a “trampoline effect” ‌in the stand that could trigger discomfort among those who are not used to it.

Continue reading...

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Regionale ziekenhuizen hebben de afgelopen jaren niet meer planbare zorg kunnen aanbieden, terwijl hier wel afspraken over waren, zei minister Sophie Hermans (Volksgezondheid) in een debat in de Tweede Kamer. Hoogcomplexe zorg wordt wel steeds vaker samengebracht in ziekenhuizen met meer specialisten.

In het Integraal Zorgakkoord (IZA) uit 2022 is afgesproken dat lastige behandelingen meer terechtkomen bij ziekenhuizen met meer specialistische kennis, terwijl eenvoudige zorg zoals het stellen van diagnoses weer vaker in regionale ziekenhuizen moet kunnen. "Er moet een been bijgetrokken worden", zei de VVD-minister.

In de Kamer waren hier zorgen over. Ingrid Coenradie (JA21) vroeg zich af of het verspreiden van eenvoudige zorg nog wel gaat gebeuren. Zij denkt dat de ziekenhuizen en de zorgverzekeraars er meer aan verdienen als het in de grote ziekenhuizen blijft. Ziekenhuizen krijgen betaald per behandeling, dus voor grote ziekenhuizen kost het geld om planbare zorg te verplaatsen.

ŠENČUR (ANP) - Wielrenster Marlen Reusser is voor de vijfde keer in haar carrière Europees kampioen tijdrijden geworden. De Zwitserse wereldkampioene tijdrijden was in Slovenië 23 seconden sneller dan Demi Vollering, de wereldkampioene op de weg. Juliette Berthet uit Frankrijk, ploeggenote van Vollering bij FDJ United-Suez, werd derde op 1.09 minuut. De andere Nederlandse deelnemer, Lieke Nooijen, werd tiende op 2.40 minuten van de winnares.

Reusser pakte op het klimmetje in het eerste deel van het 22,1 kilometer lange parcours een voorsprong van 11 seconden op Vollering. In de afdaling en in de vlakke laatste kilometers bouwde ze de voorsprong verder uit.

Vollering haalde de Duitse Franziska Koch, haar ploeggenoot bij FDJ, al in op het klimmetje in aanloop naar het eerste tussenpunt. Maar ze moest haar meerdere erkennen in de als laatste gestarte Reusser.

Regerend wereldkampioen

De Zwitserse won de EK-tijdrit vier keer eerder, waaronder in 2025. Ze is ook tweevoudig regerend wereldkampioen op de tijdritfiets. Vollering prolongeerde in Slovenië haar Europese titel op de weg. De Europese titel tijdrijden won ze nog nooit.

De tijdrit op de Europese kampioenschappen was de laatste wedstrijd van Vollering in een uitzonderlijk goed seizoen, waarin ze bijna overal waar ze aan de start stond won. De kopvrouw van FDJ United-Suez won de Giro d'Italia en de Tour de France, evenals vier klassiekers, waaronder de zogenoemde 'monumenten' Ronde van Vlaanderen en Luik-Bastenaken-Luik. Eind september werd ze in het Canadese Montreal voor het eerst in haar carrière wereldkampioen op de weg, en zaterdag verdedigde ze haar Europese titel met succes in Slovenië.

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn woensdag lager aan de handel begonnen. Daarmee werd een stapje teruggedaan op Wall Street na de nieuwe records door de brede S&P 500-index en de technologiebeurs Nasdaq een dag eerder. De techfondsen gaven daarbij terrein prijs. Later op de dag komen nog de notulen van het rentebesluit van de Amerikaanse centrale bank van vorige maand.

De S&P 500 noteerde kort na aanvang 0,4 procent lager op 7785 punten. De index met de vijfhonderd grootste beursgenoteerde bedrijven in de Verenigde Staten steeg dinsdag nog 0,6 procent en sloot voor het eerst boven de 7800 punten. De Nasdaq daalde in de vroege handel 0,6 procent tot 27.428 punten, na de plus van 0,5 procent op dinsdag. De Dow-Jonesindex verloor 0,7 procent tot 51.118 punten.

BRUSSEL (ANP) - De ambassadeurs van de EU-lidstaten hebben woensdag een akkoord bereikt over EU-sancties tegen 1646 mensen en bedrijven of instellingen die de Russische oorlog tegen Oekraïne steunen. De EU-ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken keuren de lijst maandag formeel goed. Het is de omvangrijkste uitbreiding van de sanctielijst sinds het begin van de oorlog in Oekraïne.

De sancties worden opgelegd aan 743 personen en 826 bedrijven of organisaties, melden EU-bronnen. Daarnaast zijn er nog eens 77 andere mensen op de EU-sanctielijst gezet, stellen zij. Het gaat om verkiezingsfunctionarissen en mensen die zich in door Rusland bezette gebieden van Oekraïne kandidaat stelden tijdens de recente verkiezingen voor de Russische Doema. Die verkiezingen zijn alom bekritiseerd.

Een deel van de mensen en bedrijven die op de EU-sanctielijst zijn gezet, is betrokken bij de productie van raketten.

De sancties omvatten een reisverbod, de bevriezing van tegoeden en een verbod op het verstrekken van financiële middelen.

LONDEN (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - Olie- en gasconcern Shell heeft recordresultaten geboekt met de raffinage van olie. Het verschil in prijs tussen ruwe aardolie en geraffineerde producten, zoals brandstoffen als diesel en benzine, was nooit zo groot als in het derde kwartaal. Daarbij profiteert het Britse bedrijf van de schaarste die is ontstaan door de Iranoorlog en Oekraïense aanvallen op raffinaderijen in Rusland, die leidden tot een Russisch exportverbod voor benzine en diesel.

De marge die raffinaderijen van Shell behaalden was gemiddeld 42 dollar per vat olie in het derde kwartaal. Dat is veel meer dan de marge van 24 dollar in het voorgaande kwartaal en hoger dan het vorige record uit 2022.

Olieconcerns reageerden op de schaarste en hoge prijzen door hun raffinaderijen op volle capaciteit te laten draaien. Shell had daarbij last van de lage waterstanden in de Rijn. Doordat dit het transport bemoeilijkte, kon een raffinaderij in de regio rond Keulen niet volop draaien.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Bokser Gradus Kraus verdedigt op 28 november zijn Europese titel in het lichtzwaargewicht. De Duitser Adam Deines is in Amsterdam zijn tegenstander, meldt organisator Boxing Gladiators.

De 25-jarige Kraus debuteerde twee jaar geleden als prof en veroverde in november vorig jaar de Europese titel in het lichtzwaargewicht bij de internationale boksbond IBF. Hij sloeg de Duitser Rostam Ibrahim in de tweede ronde knock-out. De bokser uit Oss won tot nog toe al zijn elf partijen, waarvan tien op knock-out.

De 35-jarige Deines heeft ook een aardige reputatie. Hij is in het bezit van de Europese titel bij de bond WBO en heeft ook al een gevecht om de wereldtitel op zijn naam. Deines verloor in 2021 wel van de Rus Artoer Beterbiev.

University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist Francis Halzen has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to understanding astrophysical neutrinos. Halzen led the development of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory beneath the Antarctic ice, which has helped trace high-energy neutrinos back to cosmic sources such as supermassive black holes and opened a new era of "multi-messenger" astronomy. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from UW-Madison: Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos. "IceCube is like no other telescope in the world," says UW-Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. "And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe."

Unlike the neutral neutrino, cosmic rays are charged particles whose paths cannot be traced directly back to their sources. But the powerful cosmic accelerators that produce them, like supermassive black holes, will also produce neutrinos. These so-called "ghost particles" travel nearly undisturbed from their accelerators, giving scientists an almost direct pointer to their source. Along with observations by other telescopes, the neutrino first detected by IceCube provided the first-ever evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic rays, whose origins have been notoriously difficult to pinpoint since their discovery over 100 years ago by 1936 physics Nobel laureate Victor Hess.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When something’s stable, dependable, and strong, we might say it’s “like a rock.” Similarly, when things become difficult and challenges feel immovable, we might find ourselves “between a rock and a hard place.” These idioms suggest that perhaps especially when we face challenges, we find ways to beat the odds. And Simon Laveuve’s idiosyncratic, post-apocalyptic dwellings detail just that.

The artist’s 1/35-scale miniature domiciles perch atop stilts and boulders. Laveuve pairs tiny chairs, boxes of produce, fishing gear, and other daily essentials with objects that appear to have been scrounged from who-knows-where and repurposed into useful tools and furniture. While figures never occupy the scenes, evidence of their activities and lifestyle intimates their presence, as if the residents have simply slipped out to run a quick errand.

If you’re in Paris later this fall, see these works in person in the artist’s solo exhibition, Ancré dans la roche (Anchored in Rock). The title nods to Laveuve’s thematic throughline of dwellings in unexpected and often precarious places, where the anonymous builders make do with what’s available—a fitting metaphor for life amid contemporary political and economic turbulence. The work “speaks to this fundamental need: finding a place to hold on,” the artist tells Colossal. “And, from that point of anchorage, to live.”

Ancré dans la roche opens on November 12 and continues through December 22 at Loo & Lou Gallery, which will also present Laveuve’s work during Luxembourg Art Week from November 20 to 22. Check out the artist’s Instagram for updates.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Precarious Dwellings Perch Atop Rocks in Simon Laveuve’s 1/35-Scale Miniatures appeared first on Colossal.

European mobile operators are gaining a slightly larger share of smartphone sales, not because they are selling more devices, but because other sales channels are shrinking faster. This is according to market watcher Counterpoint Research, which says that sales of new smartphones through European operators were down by 4 percent during the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period a year ago. But device sales through the open market fared much worse, declining by 11 percent. This refers to phones that are bought outright from independent retailers or directly from manufacturers, which are typically SIM-free and unlocked so the customer can choose which network they hook up to. Operators accounted for 36 percent of European smartphone sales in the second quarter, up from 35 percent a year earlier. The open market still represented the majority. As The Register has covered numerous times this year, mobile phones have been hit by the AI-driven memory crisis, which has led to a shortage of the DRAM and NAND flash components needed for consumer kit like smartphones and PCs. The resulting rise in prices has been felt most keenly at the lower end of the market, effectively making it commercially unviable to produce budget devices, according to some reports. Phones sold through operators tend to be higher-end models than those bought on the open market. Contracts spread the handset cost over monthly payments, making expensive devices more accessible. Apple played a key part in this slight shift, Counterpoint says, overtaking Samsung as the brand with the greatest market share in Europe's operator channel. Motorola and vivo are highlighted as the fastest-growing bands in the same segment. Counterpoint associate director Jan Stryjak said operators were likely to keep gaining market share for the next few quarters at least, as the lower end of the market continues to be impacted by the memory crisis. "However, we are seeing a steady increase in promotional activity by independent retailers compared to operators, which could mitigate some of the price rises and provide additional stimulus to the open market," he said. Or perhaps more buyers might turn to the second-hand market instead, which has been predicted to see a rise in trade of 12 percent this year, as rising prices make new phones less affordable. Counterpoint forecast that 80 percent of top-flight smartphones will feature agentic AI capabilities by 2027, meaning they will have software agents making decisions and carrying out actions on the owner's behalf. ®