stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of the “Shikairou Building” near the Nakashima River Walk with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting and walking around Nagasaki. This is a famous five-story Chinese restaurant built in 2000. I love its design, architecture, stone steps, and tall red pillars. It is the birthplace of Nagasaki champon noodles…

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of the “Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max during a visit to Nagasaki, Japan. It sits adjacent to Nagasaki Seaside Park along the city's historic waterfront. The surrounding pathways, manicured green hedges, and steps are integrated into the public park system, allowing visitors to walk freely along the water canal beneath the museum…

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

In a class of their own

Hidden within this beautiful wispy star-forming nebula (captured by Webb in one of its largest images to date) are strange objects called brown dwarfs. They are generally less massive than stars and more massive than planets, but they are neither planets nor stars. They form the same way stars do, but unlike stars, they never quite “ignite” - that is, their cores never become hot enough to fuse ordinary hydrogen into helium. The question is, how small are the smallest objects created by the star-formation process?

The brown dwarfs found here within nebula IC 348 are just twice the mass of Jupiter, and the least massive brown dwarfs we’ve found to date. They are consistent with past Webb observations that suggest this as a possible lower limit on how small brown dwarfs can be. For comparison, brown dwarfs typically range from around 13 to 80 times Jupiter’s mass. Smaller ones are less common than more massive ones, but none have yet been spotted smaller than these are, though Webb has the ability to theoretically see brown dwarfs as low as half the mass of Jupiter. These are so small, their existence poses challenges to the models of how stars form.

Adding to their strangeness, one of these tiny brown dwarfs showed signs of a disk, suggesting small planets could be forming around an object that itself is only the mass of a planet.

In addition to the brown dwarfs and young stars scattered across the swirling nebula, this image provides a unique perspective on a handful of protostars, which can be seen in the upper-right corner. These protostars are ejecting powerful jets that have crashed into the gas and dust surrounding them, creating luminous regions called Herbig-Haro objects.

Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-dynamic...

Note - the full image to too large for Flickr, but you can download the full 6.6 GB panorama here: esawebb.org/images/weic2619a/

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)

Image Description: A star-forming region. The left two thirds of the image is blanketed in thick clouds of green and yellow gas and dust that form swirling patterns. Some of the gas is spread into thin, thready wisps. The right third of the image is the black background speckled with stars and multi-colored dots that represent distant galaxies. Bright stars are scattered throughout the clouds, with the densest cluster situated in the center of the scene. Each is crowned with six long spikes and two shorter spikes created by the optics of the telescope’s mirrors.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst (IND) is dit jaar 106 miljoen euro kwijt aan dwangsommen voor het te traag afhandelen van asielverzoeken. Die verwachting van het kabinet valt te lezen in de miljoenennota. Waarschijnlijk is dit het laatste jaar dat zoveel geld naar dwangsommen gaat. Een voorstel om deze dwangsommen af te schaffen wordt namelijk binnenkort behandeld door de Eerste Kamer en kan waarschijnlijk rekenen op een meerderheid.

De senaat debatteert in oktober over het wetspakket waaronder ook het afschaffen van de dwangsommen valt. Als de partijen die voorstemden in de Tweede Kamer dat ook doen in de Eerste Kamer, dan zal een meerderheid zich achter het wetsvoorstel scharen. Als de wet vervolgens in werking treedt, kunnen asielzoekers alleen nog een dwangsom vragen voor het te langzaam afhandelen van hun asielprocedure als ze hierover nog een rechtszaak hebben lopen.

UTRECHT (ANP) - Ziggo mikt erop in mei of september volgend jaar naar de beurs in Amsterdam te gaan. Die maanden ziet het telecombedrijf als de meest voor de hand liggende voor een beursgang, is dinsdag bekendgemaakt.

In februari verkocht het Britse Vodafone zijn belang van 50 procent in het Nederlandse VodafoneZiggo aan samenwerkingspartner Liberty Global. Dat Amerikaanse bedrijf heeft zijn belangen in VodafoneZiggo en het Belgische Telenet samengebracht in de Ziggo Group.

De voorbereidingen voor de beursnotering daarvan zijn in volle gang. Onlangs werd bekend dat de mobiele masten van VodafoneZiggo worden verkocht voor 669 miljoen euro. Dat geld wordt gebruikt om de schuld te verlagen.

De veranderingen moeten ook leiden tot veel kostenvoordelen. Op vragen over mogelijke gevolgen voor de werkgelegenheid, zegt een woordvoerster: "Een reorganisatie is nu niet aan de orde". Voor klanten in Nederland verandert er niets. Ook de merknaam Vodafone blijft behouden.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het kabinet heeft de Tweede Kamer vier verschillende scenario's voorgelegd voor de toekomst van de belasting op inkomsten uit vermogen (box 3). De nadelige gevolgen voor de schatkist in de jaren tot en met 2035 kunnen, afhankelijk van de gekozen richting, oplopen tot bijna 20 miljard euro.

In de Eerste Kamer ligt een veelbesproken wetsvoorstel voor een heffing op het daadwerkelijk behaalde rendement op spaargeld en beleggingen. Rechtse partijen, waaronder ook de coalitiepartij VVD, vallen er evenwel over dat beleggers daarin jaarlijks een aanslag krijgen over de waardestijging van hun portefeuille. Zij willen dat alleen de winst bij verkoop wordt belast.

In de senaat dreigt het voorstel daardoor te sneuvelen. Om dat te voorkomen, kan een wijzigingsvoorstel (novelle) uitkomst bieden. Als daarin alle wensen van dwarsliggende partijen worden meegenomen, ligt de opbrengst in de jaren tot en met 2035 al vele miljarden lager. Sneuvelt het wetsvoorstel en wordt per 2030 een vermogenswinstbelasting ingevoerd, dan loopt dat op tot bijna 20 miljard euro.

Het schrikbeeld van Trump is dat China de VS voorbijstreeft bij de ontwikkeling van geavanceerde AI. Maar dat betekent nog niet dat het verstandig is om de eigen Amerikaanse AI-bedrijven maar te laten voortrazen op weg naar steeds geavanceerdere, en moeilijker in de hand te houden kunstmatige intelligentie.

Fotograaf Alexandre Moreels bekeek voor ons wat er langs de route van de rijtoer gebeurde en maakte een impressie van de sfeer. Publiek in historische dracht.

Was Yoshua Bengio, een van de ‘peetvaders van AI’, eerst vooral trots op zijn bijdrage aan de ontwikkeling ervan, nu is hij vooral bezorgd. „Overheden moeten AI niet slechts zien als een mogelijke economische motor, maar ook als iets wat tegen ons gebruikt kan worden.”

Actrice Sydney Sweeney poseert in een reclame voor een gokbedrijf halfnaakt tussen de sportattributen. Vrouwelijke sporters voelen zich gekleineerd en geseksualiseerd en reageren woedend op sociale media. „Dít is hoe vrouwelijke sport eruitziet.”

Spooky Character Collection A collection of monsters, ghosts, strange creatures and spooky characters created over several years. Some of these characters were originally created for Halloween, while others came from personal experiments, sketches and ideas that simply felt at home in the darker corners of my imagination. This collection brings them together as an ongoing exploration of character design, shape, personality and visual storytelling ? from friendly little monsters to weird creatures and mischievous ghosts. Created as a personal character design project, the collection explores playful horror, fantasy, humor and expressive silhouettes while keeping a strong focus on personality and storytelling. The collection is still growing, with new creatures joining the lineup from time to time. If you're looking for character design, creature design, illustration or visual development for a project, I'd love to hear from you.

Alex Gibney’s documentary reveals that Elon Musk has always been a racist, sexist fraud. “Musk’s ex-wife Justine, whom he married in 2000 and divorced in 2008, says the man the world began to see in 2020 was the one she’d always known.”

A digital fly brain has been trading bitcoin, parallel parking, exploring bisexuality, cutting doner kebab, playing games—including Minecraft, Doom, and Beat Saber—and generally lighting up social media timelines since it was released earlier this month.

The simulated brain, known as a connectome, is a complete map of more than 166,000 neurons that make up the nervous system of an adult male Drosophila fruit fly. Developed by HHMI Janelia Research Campus in partnership with Google Research, the connectome (dubbed MaleCNS v1.0) was unveiled earlier this month, following the release of the first adult female fruit fly connectome in 2024.

But can it run DOOM?!

Well...actually, yes. https://t.co/ZN6ELH751g pic.twitter.com/EYPCCeEgp4

— Andrei Apanasik 🔜 TGS (@a_apanasik) September 7, 2026

“We present the first finished connectome of an entire male Drosophila central nervous system, encompassing the central brain, optic lobes (analogous to mammalian retina) and the ventral nerve cord (analogous to the spinal cord),” the team announced in a press release on September 3. “Together with existing female connectomes, this resource enables the first comprehensive, synaptic-resolution comparison across sexes of an adult animal with complex anatomy and behaviors.”

The humble fruit fly is a powerhouse species in science for the same reason they might plague your kitchen—they reproduce quickly and are highly adaptable to different environments, distinguishing them as cheap and versatile model organisms. By virtually recreating their brains, researchers aim to make breakthroughs in neuroscience, pharmacology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and many other fields.

In the meantime, however, MaleCNS v1.0 has been enthusiastically received by online modders who have dropped the brain into a wide range of virtual environments and tasked it with different activities. Evan Sinclair Smith, a graduate student in computer science at Georgia Tech, pioneered the viral trend after he programmed the fly brain to play Minecraft. Within a day of releasing the results on September 4, the Minecraft fly had accumulated millions of views.

I’ve successfully run the full retained MaleCNS v1.0 fruit fly connectome, all 166,700 neurons, inside Minecraft, with its simulated neural activity driving a fly’s movement.

V1 Currently in development. Built with the help of GPT-6 Astra.

Props to the @OpenAI team and… https://t.co/wqsrsN5DFn pic.twitter.com/BN9cGvwVP1

— evnsnclr (@evnsnclr) September 4, 2026

“It's just been amazing how big this has gotten, and how many other people are just taking this idea and just making so many different creative projects,” Smith told 404 Media in a call. “That's been just really cool to see.”

In addition to playing video games, the fly has been trained to trade bitcoin (becoming “stonkfly”), write LinkedIn posts, and to retire to a virtual “fruit fly heaven.” Nico Christie, an entrepreneur and AI researcher, programmed the fly to be attracted to other males (becoming “bi fly”).

 In an email, Christie told 404 Media that he came across the trend on X and found it funny, but hoped to make “the science behind it more rigorous.” To that end, Christie and his colleague Peter Wang trained the fly to navigate using a continual learning process that is distinct from LLMs.

I and @nicochristie ran the fly connectome and found the group of neurons (hΔH, hΔA, hΔI and hΔG) that could allow the fly to navigate using fast synaptic weight updates, not neural activations. This is fast-weight continual learning in a fly, something current LLMs don't do! https://t.co/TFgVaPA7B3 pic.twitter.com/kUqtfNTwQN

— Peter Wang (@BrainsAndTennis) September 14, 2026

In addition to fueling a wave of giddy online experimentation, the connectome has sparked moral and ethical debates on Reddit and other forums. However, it’s worth emphasizing that MaleCNS v1.0 is only a digital map of the brain that is not capable of sentience or conscious perception in any tangible biological sense. The connectome recreates a fly’s neural wirings and overall structure, but it does not contain any of the complex biochemical makeup of the real organism upon which it is based. 

Though the connectome has inspired a literal brain wave of online content, it is intended to be a resource for the scientific community. The female fruit fly brain that was released in 2024, known as FlyWire, has already been used in a host of studies about motor control, sensory systems, fly sociability, and more, according to the neuroscience publication The Transmitter. The completion of both the male and female fruit fly connectomes has also allowed researchers to assess differences in the neural wirings of this sexually dimorphic species.

 Smith, who made the Minecraft fly, hopes that these models will ultimately pave the way toward connectomes of the full human brain within his lifetime. Since the human brain contains 86 billion neurons, orders of magnitude more than the fruit fly brain, it would take an enormous amount of effort to create a digital copy with the same resolution as MaleCNS v1.0 or FlyWire. 

But Smith speculates that such an achievement could unlock new approaches to brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, or enable human intelligence to navigate space missions without having to haul along our cumbersome meatbag bodies. 

“I think it has so many implications for understanding ourselves,” Smith said.

The colourful and larger-than-life staging of the opera about an enchantress who transforms her lovers into beasts returns to the Royal Opera stage this week. We went behind the scenes on the final day of rehearsals

All photos: Tristram Kenton

• Alcina is at the Royal Opera House from 15 September to 3 October

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One of Anders's most important concepts was the "Promethean gap": the "growing asynchronicity between the human and the world of their own products." It is the difference, today widening into a chasm, "between our action and our imagination." Our technological prowess has grown stupendously, enabling us to incinerate millions in a moment; but our mental and moral capacity to contemplate the significance or meaning of our actions has not grown proportionately.

Nitter and XCancel, a pair of social media services which let you view posts on X without an X account, are down again after the latest round of legal wrangling. While the XCancel site now displays the message "Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice," Nitter's site is offline, and the code repository was archived on September 11, 2026. Things were not looking good in August for the services, which allowed a user to view posts on X (formerly Twitter) without an account or having to endure adverts and accept trackers. X's lawyers fired off a cease-and-desist letter, and the services acquiesced, going offline while the implications were digested. A few weeks later, the services were back up and running. At the time, zedeus, Nitter's maintainer, wrote, "an announcement will be made within a week, once we're able to reveal more information." Alas, that "more information" appears to be another cessation. XCancel wrote simply, "We can't share more details," and added a link to X for users keen for content. It is difficult to say for sure if and when the services might be back, or if users have headed elsewhere for their microblogging fix. Users not wishing to sign up for an X account have plenty of alternatives – Mastodon and Bluesky, for example. X has considerable form when it comes to rolling out the lawyers to fend off perceived threats or alleged abuses of its services, and is perfectly within its rights to do so. In the case of Nitter (and XCancel, which uses the project), the concern likely centered on how posts were viewed without an account, JavaScript, or ads. X also attempted to defend the Twitter and blue bird trademark and branding in a spat with tweet.app. It kept hold of Twitter (despite ditching the name after Musk's takeover), but tweet.app snapped up the word 'tweet' and the bird imagery. That's for the time being, at least. ®