What are you reading?

Yakster · June 25

https://www.popsci.com/technology/beat-wordle-math/

silvermouse · June 25

IBM has built a prototype chip with around 100 billion transistors on an area the size of a fingernail. https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/25/1139696/ibm-unveils-sub1nm-chip/

silvermouse · June 25

Summary: A monumental study from the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London reveals that popular music lyrics have grown increasingly negative over the past six decades, signaling a profound shift in global cultural values. By deploying advanced artificial intelligence and computational language analysis to scrutinize more than 380,000 songs released between 1960 and 2023, researchers mapped the largest historical dataset of moral content in music to date.

The findings act as a powerful cultural barometer: over the last 60 years, expressions linked to traditional moral virtues like care, decency, and social connection have steadily plummeted. In their place, modern popular music has seen a stark rise in language associated with moral vices, including harm, cheating, subversion, and degradation. This cross-generational evolutionary shift toward darker emotional narratives, anger, and disgust offers unprecedented insight into how contemporary societies communicate identity, collective values, and psychological distress.

https://neurosciencenews.com/music-lyrics-vices-cultural-barometer-30956/

silvermouse · June 25

and in movies too --Film critic Sean Burns writes that the new "Supergirl" movie, starring Milly Alcock, takes a beloved superhero, strips away the inspiration and optimism, and replaces it with a drunk, scowling anti-heroine on a revenge quest.

silvermouse · June 26

Interesting study about cognitive rigidity, flexibility, and vulnerability to extremism

https://psyche.co/ideas/the-thinking-style-that-makes-people-vulnerable-to-extremism

silvermouse · June 27

Sign of the times; we are slowly destroying ourselves.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04448-w

Over the past three decades, early-onset cancers, diagnosed in adults often under age 50 or 55 years, have become a global cancer prevention and public health challenge1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Between 1990 and 2019, cancers diagnosed under the age of 50 years increased by 24% globally and continue to rise4. In the United States (US), this increasing trend is led by several cancers, including multiple myeloma, colorectal cancer and uterine cancer1,5. Notably, this upward trend is more pronounced in recent generations compared to earlier ones in many countries3,5,6,8. In Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom (UK) and the US, people born in the 1990s face at least a fourfold higher risk of early-onset colorectal cancer compared with those born in the 1960s6. In the US, compared with people born before 1950, those born circa 1985 have approximately twice the risk of uterine cancer1. Moreover, cohorts with elevated incidence before age 50 years seem to carry this excess risk into ages 50–54 years. In the US, the proportion of colorectal cancers diagnosed before age 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 20193, and in the UK, incidence among adults aged 50–54 years rose by 0.58% annually between 2008 and 2017 6. Together, these patterns suggest the influence of emerging generational risk factors.

Olekingcole · July 5

Rdp77 · July 5

Pretty similar to Kobe beef

silvermouse · July 5

bread stored in the fridge stales six times faster than bread stored at room temperature

https://everloaf.com/pages/aunt-OB

silvermouse · July 7

Substrate Flexibility and the Copernican Principle of Consciousness

https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/SubstrateFlexibility-260528.htm

silvermouse · July 9

Smart glasses equipped with cameras, microphones, and AI are a creeping privacy and security nightmare, prompting backlash.
https://this.weekinsecurity.com/reframing-smart-glasses-as-pervert-glasses/

DirtyJinx(1) · July 9

I was too tired,
too hot,
too busy
to lift her into my arms.
Now she’s grown,
and time has closed that door
without asking me first.

I once sighed cooking dinner,
stressed by the noise,
the mess,
the endless needs.
Now I sit in silence,
fork against plate,
while they laugh somewhere else.

I fought the car seat,
sweat on my brow,
patience worn thin
under a summer sun.
Now I fight tears
as she drives away
in the front seat
that used to be mine.

I dreaded the cries at 2 a.m.,
the endless rocking,
the sleepless nights.
Now I lie awake at that same hour,
whispering prayers
that the phone will stay silent,
knowing the quiet means she's safe.

One day
you will be old,
weathered,
and in need of care.
Will you be passed by
as you once passed by them?

Absence is not forgotten—
not the way you hope.
It does not erase the bad
and preserve the good.
It erases everything.

The chaos you resent today
is fleeting—
a brief storm
in a long life.

And beyond it—
if you endure,
if you choose love—
there waits a quiet joy:
weekends filled with laughter,
holidays wrapped in small arms
that call you “grandpa.”

Do not trade
that future
for the comfort of escape today.

Breathe.
Stand tall.
Step into the noise.

Learn to love
the mess,
the movement,
the madness.

Because one day
you will reach for it—
desperate to feel it again—
and find it gone,

forever alive
only in the places
you cannot touch.

I don't typically like poems but felt this one was very much worth the share.

Cheapsmoke · July 9

Just finishing Tai Pan

edz · July 10

The poem "If" by Kipiling. Had to read i in school in the early 70's, enjoy it more every year.

Cheapsmoke · July 10

silvermouse · July 12

https://www.vice.com/en/article/even-scientists-think-this-dinosaur-looks-like-zuul-from-ghostbusters/

silvermouse · July 13

An essay about how we write and maintain the script of our identity.

https://aeon.co/essays/when-my-ties-to-my-mother-faded-so-did-my-memories

peter4jc · July 13

That was a good read, Edward. Makes me think I could've done a better job over the years of dealing w/ circumstances, and in turn, 'recording' those events/people so the memories can create a good and cohesive self.

Edit: a buddy sends me a daily email of a devotional tidbit from an author we both like, along with his thoughts on it. I read the devotional, and often think, "How did you come away with this from reading that?" Maybe I do the same for y'all today.

Fiona · July 14

silvermouse · July 16

@MoleRat Naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) queens produce a chemical that prevents other females in their colony from reproducing. The smell of isopropyl myristate — which is also a common ingredient in skincare products — alters the production of hormones in other females, which traps them in a prepubescent-like state. Researchers found that the chemical alone can maintain the status quo in mole-rat colonies when the queen is not physically present. The study solves the “longstanding mystery” of why only one female in a naked mole rat colony reproduces, says behavioural scientist Melissa Holmes.

Nature | 4 min read or watch the 12 min video
Reference: Nature paper