Drie wetenschappers kregen de langverwachte prijs voor hun bijdrage aan „het ontrafelen van een van de grootste mysteries van de mens: hoe het brein werkt”. Zij ontdekten hoe je hersencellen kunt in- en uitschakelen door er licht op te schijnen.
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O Superman by artist Laurie Anderson from 1981. Some of the lyrics:
‘Cause when love is gone
There’s always justice
And when justice is gone
There’s always force
And when force is gone
There’s always Mom
Hi, MomSo hold me, Mom
In your long arms
So hold me, Mom
In your long arms
In your automatic arms
Your electronic arms
In your arms
So hold me, Mom
In your long arms
Your petrochemical arms
Your military arms
In your electronic arms
Ah, ah, ah, ah
60 Minutes did a profile of Anderson a few years ago and she explained the meaning of the song (to her):
This is a song about how basically technology cannot save you. It’s about a lot of things: justice, safety, power.
As a kid growing up in rural Wisconsin, this kind of music wasn’t available to me, so I only actually heard this for the first time fairly recently. So I thought I’d post it in case you hadn’t really heard it either — that and the message & meaning it carries is relevant these days.
I also liked this rendition of it, slowed down and reverbed. There are also several O Superman remixes on Soundcloud of varying quality.
Tags: interviews · Laurie Anderson · music · video
10 poets are in the running for the prestigious £25,000 prize, with collections that ‘remind us why it’s to poetry we turn to reorient ourselves’
The former poet laureate Andrew Motion and Pulitzer prize winner Jorie Graham are among the 10 poets shortlisted for this year’s £25,000 TS Eliot prize, the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious award for a single volume of poetry.
Motion has been selected for Gravity Archives, while Graham, who was previously shortlisted in 2012, is on the list for Killing Spree.
Continue reading...Camera-enabled Meta spectacles are already restricted in UK and US because of fears about covert recording
Norway is planning a temporary ban on smart glasses in some public places, amid rising global concern at the spread of the AI-enabled recording devices.
The Oslo government is planning a bill to prevent the use of the camera-enabled spectacles in parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres, schools, daycare centres, healthcare facilities, gyms and public events, although private use would still be allowed.
Continue reading...Dogs have long been more popular, but for the first time more households own kittens than puppies. Some believe it’s all down to economics
Name: The kitten index.
Age: The debate has probably raged since animals have been domesticated.
Continue reading...Progressive voters and supporters of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left reeling after far-right surge
Flávio Bolsonaro is in pole position to win Brazil’s presidential election, after a far-right tsunami propelled him to a shock first-round victory over the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leaving progressive voters reeling.
The 45-year-old rightwing candidate received 56.1m votes to Lula’s 53.8m – 47.03% to 45.16% – meaning the 80-year-old leftwinger has a mountain to climb if he is to bounce back in the second round on 25 October. Never, since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985, has the first-round runner-up managed to turn the game around and win the second ballot.
Continue reading...The UK government urging households to prepare for unknown threats with a three-day supply of food and water doesn’t feel like an overreaction. But is there a bigger plan to go with it?
There is no national food stockpile and there hasn’t been since it was wound up in the 1990s. It feels like a metaphor for the delusions of that era: nothing bad can possibly happen again; no two countries with a McDonald’s have gone to war with each other (according to the journalist Thomas L Friedman, also in the 90s). Now, we all have a McDonald’s and wars regularly disrupt food supplies. The problem with metaphors is you can’t eat them – not even satisfying ones.
For people who remember the second world war, or feel as if they do, there is always enough muscle memory to do topical household stockpiling. My mum kept a trunk of food that was mainly filled with condensed milk in case of a nuclear war, all the way through the 80s. When the Berlin Wall came down, we should have had a ceremonial toffee-sauce-making event where we ate it all, but we didn’t; in 1990, she was stockpiling again, to mark the Gulf war.
Continue reading...Researchers looked at pain around the world and across the human lifespan, finding steepest rise happens before age 55
Women report suffering more pain than men, a major new global study has found.
That was true for all types of pain the researchers measured, and comes amid continuing concern about the gender pain gap, which means women are less likely to be prescribed the pain relief they need.
Continue reading...Maybe the key to life is being able to bench press 300lb at 75. But do we need more muscle-bound, angry guys around?
I loathe going to the doctor.
Not a controversial opinion, compared to some of the other ones in this section of the Guardian. I’m not exactly arguing for universal basic income or for Manchester City to be relegated to the Saudi Pro League here. No one looks forward to a doctor visit, with its recriminations for bad habits or various intrusive blood tests. People don’t have cocktail parties to celebrate their yearly check-up, and yet, it seems like every day, there’s a new reason to go get prodded by a stranger in a lab coat.
Continue reading...
Once upon a time, insects had 24 legs.
This ancient oddball fills a major gap in the fossil record. Insects are famous for their six-legged body plan, but that wasn't always the rule. A 324-million-year-old fossil dug up from a shale bed in West Texas had a markedly different setup, sporting a whopping 18 extra legs along its belly — a body plan unlike that of any living insect.
Bestuurder C.H. is na de fatale botsing bij Zwartewaal teruggegaan naar de plek van het ongeluk. “Ik wilde weten: hoe kon dit nou gebeuren? Mijn conclusie is dat ik de bus niet heb gezien, omdat hij in een flauwe bocht zat. Het spijt me verschrikkelijk.”
We hadden er net zo'n zin in, maar dankzij aangescherpte regels van Walibi Holland mogen we met onze gladkoppige vriendjes niet meer in NVU-tenue naar het halloween-evenement aldaar. Bezoekers worden voorlopig aan de poort geweigerd bij bepaalde "racistische" of "nationalistische uitingen", zoals wanneer er "eigen volk eerst" op hun t-shirt gedrukt staat of wanneer ze simpelweg een Lonsdale-trui dragen, zo lezen we bij Looopings. Dan is de lol er natuurlijk snel vanaf, maar niet getreurd: de regels gelden alleen tijdens de Halloween Fright Nights, daarna kunnen we weer gezellig in de veertienachtachtbaan. Zin in!
Walibi na halloween:
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AMSTERDAM (ANP) - AkzoNobel is maandag hoger geëindigd op de aandelenbeurs in Amsterdam. De verfproducent verkoopt zijn activiteiten op het gebied van decoratieve verf in Zuidoost-Azië en Australië aan het Japanse Nippon Paint. Met die transactie is een bedrag van ongeveer 1,4 miljard dollar gemoeid. AkzoNobel won 1,8 procent.
Verder was de stemming op de Europese beursvloeren gemengd. De AEX noteerde bij het slot van de handelsdag 0,6 procent hoger op 1123,88 punten. De MidKap, met daarin de middelgrote fondsen op het Damrak, eindigde een fractie lager op 1069,75 punten. De beurzen in Frankfurt en Londen stegen tot 0,2 procent. Parijs daalde 0,8 procent.
IJsbedrijf Magnum was de grootste daler in de Amsterdamse hoofdindex met een min van 1,3 procent. Ook Besi hoorde bij de dalers (min 0,9 procent), nadat het chipbedrijf er vrijdag nog 7 procent bij kreeg. Maritiem oliedienstverlener SBM Offshore eindigde bovenaan de hoofdfondsen en won 2,5 procent.
Zorgen over de hoge Franse staatsschuld en het begrotingstekort, waardoor de rente op Franse staatsobligaties sterk is opgelopen, duwden de euro naar het laagste niveau in zeventien maanden, op 1,1160 dollar. Later op de dag herstelde de munt iets en stond die op 1,1212 dollar. Beleggers hadden daarnaast ook oog voor de politieke situatie in Spanje. De Spaanse premier Pedro Sánchez heeft vervroegde verkiezingen aangekondigd door de woningcrisis die al weken voor grote protesten zorgt.
"Frankrijk stond al onder druk door vragen over de fiscale geloofwaardigheid en politieke stabiliteit", zei marktstrateeg Patrick Munnelly tegen persbureau AFP. "Spanje zorgt nu voor nog meer onzekerheid", voegde hij eraan toe. "Het politieke risico in Europa drukt op de euro."
De olieprijzen gingen omlaag. De landen van oliekartel OPEC+ handhaven hun productiedoelen in november. Vorige week werd daarnaast bekend dat de G7-landen de komende vier maanden tot 100 miljoen vaten olie en diesel uit hun noodvoorraden beschikbaar stellen om de hoge dieselprijs omlaag te krijgen. Saudi Aramco-topman Ami Nasser waarschuwde maandag dat de wereldwijde olievoorraden om schokken op te vangen "angstaanjagend klein" zijn geworden.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Meer bedrijven in Nederland wachten op een aansluiting voor stroomgebruik op het volle net. Volgens brancheorganisatie Netbeheer Nederland stonden eind juni in totaal bijna 15.500 aanvragen op de wachtlijst bij een regionale netbeheerder. Dat waren er eind 2025 nog 15.154.
Netbeheer Nederland meldt bij de cijfers over de eerste helft van 2026 ook dat in de eerste jaarhelft bijna 1700 aanvragen van de wachtlijst zijn gegaan. Op steeds meer plekken in Nederland ontstaat ruimte om meer organisaties aan te sluiten dankzij slimmer netgebruik. Het aantal bedrijven dat flexibel gebruikmaakt van het elektriciteitsnet stijgt volgens de branchevereniging verder. Dat houdt in dat klanten minder stroom gebruiken op momenten dat het druk is op het net. Wel waarschuwt Netbeheer Nederland dat in sommige gebieden meer nodig is.
De wachtlijst voor het leveren van stroom is juist voor het eerst gedaald, blijkt uit de cijfers. Eind juni stonden 8558 aanvragen in de rij, eind 2025 nog 8612.
After adding text-based ads to its chatbot earlier this year, OpenAI announced on Monday that it was adding a new “visual ad format” to ChatGPT, which is precisely what it sounds like: Visual ads, like so much of the advertising content online, will now be part of the ChatGPT experience. OpenAI will initially test these ads during image generation. “Through images showing product inspiration, product usage, or the experiences they make possible, people can discover a new brand, understand what makes an offering distinctive, and decide what to buy,” OpenAI explained. “For advertisers, this creates new opportunities to tell their story through images.” If you build it, someone in the ‘States will inevitably find a way to cram an ad into it, which is why testing of OpenAI’s new ad format will begin sometime in October in the US, given its status as the advertising hellscape capital of the world. Visual ChatGPT ads will be initially tested during image generation in ChatGPT, though like much of the scheme it’s not particularly clear how that’ll work from OpenAI’s announcement. The company didn’t detail much of anything about the process, so ads might appear as a de facto loading screen while ChatGPT conjures up whatever visual slop users ask of it, or they might remain on screen after the image is generated. Or not - OpenAI told us it would have more to share once the ads enter testing. It’s also entirely unclear whether the ads will be generated by ChatGPT on the fly or pulled from a library of ads submitted by companies. OpenAI also didn’t say how it will target visual ads, which has one advertising firm CEO questioning whether the new format will be worth the expense for companies looking for captive eyeballs. "Search ads work because they meet people at the moment they're looking for something,” Donatas Smailys, CEO of creator marketing firm Billo, told The Register in an email. “Someone generating an image in ChatGPT is not shopping." OpenAI has explained how it matches ads to ChatGPT conversations, Smailys added, but given it hasn’t mentioned how it plans to target visual ads, he remains unconvinced that they’ll be an effective advertising tool. That, and they’ll be intrusive - it’s bad enough getting targeted text ads or being invited to chat with an advertising AI after clicking an ad - now visual clutter will be part of ChatGPT, too. Free users can opt out of ads without paying, but doing so disables tools including image generation; if you want to generate images without ads, Plus starts at $20 a month. ®
