Rise of the Machines The ancient games of chess and Go are now mere staging posts in the journey toward robots demonstrating their superior performance to humans - the machines can now beat us fleshbags at ping-pong.…
peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:
Rikugo Yamazakura
陸郷山桜 夢の郷
The upper right corner of this photo is a place called Rikugo Ousenkyo. From that spot, you can see the mountain range and the cherry blossoms of this place.
この写真の右上の峠が陸郷桜仙峡という所。あの場所から山並みとここの桜が見渡すことができます。その景色はきっと桃源郷のよう。
Ikedamachi, Nagano pref, Japan
peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Rikugo Yamazakura
陸郷山桜 夢の郷
The upper right corner of this photo is a place called Rikugo Ousenkyo. From that spot, you can see the mountain range and the cherry blossoms of this place.
この写真の右上の峠が陸郷桜仙峡という所。あの場所から山並みとここの桜が見渡すことができます。その景色はきっと桃源郷のよう。
Ikedamachi, Nagano pref, Japan
Brand, who will be tried in October over allegations of rape and sexual assault, tells podcast he slept with 16-year-old when he was 30
Russell Brand said he had “exploitative” consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl at the height of his fame.
The comedian, actor and podcaster, 50, will be tried in the autumn over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against him by six women. Brand denies all the charges, which date from 1999 to 2009. Speaking about his past actions in an appearance on the YouTube show of the US journalist Megyn Kelly, Brand described himself “selfish” and an “exploiter of women”.
Continue reading...FoI data reveals that 438 people with criminal convictions were given licences in Wolverhampton, UK’s ‘taxi capital’
More than 150 people convicted of violent crimes were granted taxi licences last year by Wolverhampton city council, dubbed the UK’s “taxi capital”, data has revealed.
The Guardian obtained data via a freedom of information request that revealed 438 people with criminal convictions were last year granted taxi and private hire driver licences by the West Midlands local authority – which has issued far more taxi licences than any other authority.
Continue reading...(Mercury)
All but repeating the formula of his breakout album, Kahan seems torn between whether success is sustainable or even repeatable on songs defiantly rooted in small-town life
Last week, Netflix released a feature-length documentary about Noah Kahan called Out of Body. Over its 90 minutes, we learn that the 29-year-old Stick Season singer-songwriter is a worrier – about his weight, his career, his parents – and prefers his home state of Vermont to his new home in Nashville. He is self-deprecating, likable and perhaps not someone you can make a 90-minute documentary about at this stage of their career without recourse to padding.
That someone has tried says a lot about Kahan’s vertiginous rise over the last three years, a firm rebuttal to the idea that the privations of lockdown had changed the face of pop: that listeners were now after glitzy escapism rather than the dressed-down, earnest introspection of the post-Ed Sheeran troubadours this newspaper dubbed “the ordinary boys”. In fact, a new wave of dressed-down introspection was about to become a thing: Myles Smith is playing arenas, Alex Warren’s single Ordinary spent 13 weeks at No 1; Teddy Swims’ I’ve Tried Everything Except Therapy spent more than two years in the UK album chart. And the biggest thing of all is Kahan, who used to introduce himself on stage as “the Jewish Ed Sheeran”, has a thing for the stomp-clap rhythms of Mumford & Sons and stirs a little heartland rock – Springsteen via Sam Fender – into his sound. He was catapulted to success by Stick Season in 2022: a sweet, sad shiver of autumnal wistfulness written from the perspective of someone left behind in their home town when their friends and ex-girlfriend head off to university. It sold 10m copies, the first of eight huge hits from an album of the same name.
Continue reading...Reduction procedures and implant removals reflect shift toward comfort and more active lifestyles, surgeons say
Breast reductions and implant removals have overtaken enlargements for the first time, data shows, as experts link the shift to more active lifestyles.
The latest annual audit from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) shows there were 4,761 breast enlargement procedures in 2025, down 8% on the previous year.
Continue reading...World’s worst nuclear disaster leaves mixed legacy of nature’s resilience amid serious contamination, as wars increase lobbying for energy supply
Forty years on from the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Chornobyl is still contaminated with almost half the caesium-137 that exploded from the Unit 4 reactor in 1986, as well as much longer-lived hazards such as plutonium, tritium and americium. But according to some experts, the long-term affects on nature may be less than if the area had been left to humans, resulting in unexpected consequences in an environment left to its own devices.
The reminder of the protracted fallout from Chornobyl was made ahead of Sunday’s anniversary, which coincides with renewed lobbying for nuclear power and a rise in fears about atomic brinkmanship due to the oil crisis and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Continue reading...Judge’s repeal of Trump ban on gender-affirming care for children ‘a meaningful win for patients’, experts say
A federal judge overturned the Trump administration’s ban on gender-affirming care for children on Saturday, decrying Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “wanton disregard” for the law that “causes very real harm to very real people”.
It’s another loss for Kennedy’s agenda as secretary for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the second Trump administration – an agenda that has focused on restricting healthcare, including vaccines, abortion and gender-affirming care.
Continue reading...The ‘experience’ in New York sensationalizes history’s most gruesome murders – and pays little respect to the victims
It occurred to me the second I idly tapped “submit” on the waiver required to enter Mind of a Serial Killer: the Experience – perhaps I should have read this one more closely. Just what were they going to do to me in there?
I was entering an exhibit about the (mostly) men who committed some of history’s most gruesome murders: Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy and others. The extravaganza just hit New York after opening in Dublin earlier this year. Though it looks like a low-budget haunted house, the exhibit purports to examine the motives of murder via crime scene recreations, wall texts and psychological profiles.
Continue reading...The Oscar-nominee on Hollywood burnout, Black resilience and her Broadway debut in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
On a Wednesday evening in midtown New York, generations X through Z spill out of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre to cluster around the venue’s side stage door. They’re waiting for Taraji P Henson.
“I feel like I’m Cardi B on tour,” Henson jokes. When we talk over a video call this April, the actor is one week out from the opening night of her Broadway debut in the revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Throughout the show’s preview period, Henson has made an effort to make it out to street level after performances to shake hands, take pictures and sign playbills. “It’s good to see my fans like this, up close and personal,” she says.
Continue reading...AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Schiphol geeft luchtvaartmaatschappijen een tijdelijke korting op zijn havengelden van ruim 10 procent, vanwege de situatie in het Midden-Oosten. De luchthaven doet dit omdat de kosten van de maatschappijen onverwacht en sterk zijn gestegen door de hoge kerosineprijs.
"Het is zeker in de huidige geopolitieke situatie belangrijk om Nederland verbonden te houden met de rest van de wereld en noodzakelijke vluchten te kunnen blijven maken. Een sterke luchtvaart draagt bij aan de weerbaarheid, onafhankelijkheid (bijvoorbeeld voor leveringszekerheid van producten en voedsel en voor repatriëring) en de economie van Nederland", aldus de luchthaven.
Shell heeft bekendgemaakt dat de exploitatie van nieuwe olie- en gasvelden gelukkig uitsluitend desastreus zal zijn voor al het leven op aarde. Een gevolg waar het bedrijf naar eigen zeggen ‘prima mee kan leven’ en daarom geen reden ziet om te stoppen.
Volgens Shell is er uitgebreid onderzoek gedaan naar de impact. “We wilden uitsluiten dat dit ook nadelig zou uitpakken voor aandeelhouders”, aldus een woordvoerder. “Gelukkig kunnen we bevestigen dat de schade zich volledig beperkt tot ecosystemen, het klimaat en de toekomstperspectieven van volgende generaties.”
Deze week heeft Milieudefensie de dagvaarding afgeleverd en daarmee is de Klimaatzaak officieel begonnen. Shell heeft wereldwijd zo’n 700 olie- en gasvelden. Dat zijn onontwikkelde velden waarin Shell een aandeel heeft. Als die alsnog worden aangeboord, zou dat zorgen voor een rampzalige extra CO₂‑uitstoot. Word supporter van onze zaak.
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404 Media reports (alternate site):
The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database….
The news shows how forensic extraction—when someone has physical access to a device and is able to run specialized software on it—can yield sensitive data derived from secure messaging apps in unexpected places. Signal already has a setting that blocks message content from displaying in push notifications; the case highlights why such a feature might be important for some users to turn on.
“We learned that specifically on iPhones, if one’s settings in the Signal app allow for message notifications and previews to show up on the lock screen, [then] the iPhone will internally store those notifications/message previews in the internal memory of the device,” a supporter of the defendants who was taking notes during the trial told 404 Media.
Geopolitieke schokken, achterstallig onderhoud en veeleisende spoorgebruikers: ProRail staat voor grote opgaves. Financieel directeur Mirjam van Velthuizen vraagt politici om visie: „Ik snap dat er pijnlijke keuzes gemaakt moeten worden. Maar vraag dan ook niet nog om meer sociale veiligheid, of een hogere punctualiteit.”
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