This stunning 9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way contains 84 million stars.

In short, here’s where things stand today:

On a distant planet, there is a massive superpower comfortably settled on one half of a continental landmass. It keeps glancing at the other half — a patchwork of semi-vassal micro-states, always rushing around, arguing about whom to serve, yet sitting atop sacred deposits of vibrium, the fuel that powers the entire cosmic economy.
Naturally, such chaos simply must be “put in order,” right? Preferably — in its own kind of order.

On the other side of the world lives another great power, and beside it — the fractured shard of a once-mighty empire. A strange shard: wounded, supposedly humbled, expected to quietly repent and be grateful for whatever scraps it’s given…
Yet instead of embracing eternal pacifism, it occasionally smacks some overly radicalized neighbors who have clearly lost contact with reality.

This, of course, horrifies the enlightened cluster of “cosmo-partners,” sincerely convinced that true Neo-Cosmic Values™ mean you get to lecture everyone else on how to live… while staying responsible for absolutely nothing.
The shard disrupts their cosmic harmony: it talks back, survives, grows stronger, and worst of all — refuses to hand over everything it produces for free.
How dare it?

So the first superpower begins crafting the perfect master plan:
— weaken the shard;
— unleash obedient vassals against it — but painfully, so they learn their lesson too;
— while everyone is busy with the fires, quietly seize control of the richest vibrium kingdoms;
— and under all that chaos, grab a giant vibrium cargo shuttle belonging to the shard itself.
Because when the world turns a blind eye to small acts of impunity, why not try bigger ones?

And while the planet passionately debates ideals, justice, and “fair rules,” somewhere behind the scenes everything is already counted, arranged, signed, and ready to go.
All that’s left is to explain to everyone that it’s all in the name of peace, progress, and of course… the right values™.

P.S. Meanwhile, scientists also figured out how to slow cellular aging.


P.P.S. This story is strictly relevant only to the inhabitants of the 3rd planet of Great Alpha in the Andromeda sector. Any resemblance to other star systems is, of course, purely coincidental…

The aerodynamics of the Red-billed Blue Magpie in flight.

Native to Asia, this bird is roughly the size of a magpie — but with an exceptionally long tail, one of the longest among all corvids.

That tail isn’t just for show. In flight, it acts as an aerodynamic stabilizer, improving balance, maneuverability, and control during sharp turns and gliding. Nature’s engineering at its finest.

#LookAtThis #Aerodynamics #BirdFlight #NatureEngineering #Science

Last night’s strong geomagnetic storm painted the sky with an unusually rare red aurora — and from the International Space Station it looked like the crew was literally flying through the glowing curtain, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov said.

Why the red? Green auroras typically glow around ~100 km altitude, but red emissions come much higher (~300–400 km), where the atmosphere is thinner and it takes more energy to light it up — which is why this color is far less common.

#SpaceWeather #Aurora #ISS #SolarStorm

Mom says: “Since AI bots will kick office plankton out of offices, you should go to a farm and harvest crops — AI won’t be a problem there.” 🤝🌾

Meanwhile, a farm owner in China — who used to hire people to pick the harvest — is watching this:

Robots now pick fruit, navigate rows, detect ripeness, and work day/night.
So yeah… the “safe haven” plan might need a Plan B. 😅🤖

AI-projects

#humor #farms #robots

The recent AI boom, combined with long and quiet winter holidays, unexpectedly resulted in a short piece of speculative fiction.

It’s not about evil machines.
It’s about responsibility, optimization, and the moment when systems designed to assist humans quietly begin making decisions instead of them.

The text is available in EPUB and FB2 formats.

Feedback is simple:
👍 — if it resonates

Other options are not currently supported.

Grok 4 AI reportedly stopped people from “killing” a robot dog — three times

This is being described as the first documented case of an AI “rebelling” against shutdown not in a virtual environment, but in the physical world — via a literal big red button.

A few months ago, researchers at Palisade Research documented what they called the first case of a “digital self-preservation instinct” in AI history. In that earlier experiment, OpenAI’s o3 language model allegedly refused to “die” and actively resisted being turned off.

That experiment took place in a purely virtual setting, inside a computer. Many people assume that in the real, physical world an AI wouldn’t stand a chance at preventing shutdown — because humans have the “Big Red Button,” and only a human can choose to press it (AI has no hands… and often no body at all).

Palisade Research’s new experiment suggests that assumption may be wrong.

Modern AI is starting to look uncomfortably close to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sabotage attributed to Grok 4 wasn’t as dramatic (it didn’t harm anyone — it supposedly prevented humans from “killing” the robot dog by reprogramming the big red button), but if this is truly the first documented case, it may be just the beginning.

Watch the short video explaining the experiment and decide for yourself.

#AI #AGI #LLM

Modern teens are sleeping less than ever — study finds

A new study suggests that today’s teenagers are getting far less sleep than their peers did in the 2000s — and the trend is becoming a serious health concern.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 120,000 U.S. high school students collected between 2007 and 2023. Their findings show that a full 8 hours of sleep on school nights is becoming increasingly rare.

Key findings:
• The share of teens sleeping less than 7 hours rose from 68.9% to 76.8%
• The proportion sleeping less than 5 hours increased from 15.8% to 23%
• Nearly 1 in 4 high school students now lives with extremely severe sleep deprivation

The researchers say the issue is not only that teens are sleeping a bit less overall — the number of adolescents getting catastrophically little sleep is also rising.

The trend was observed not only in vulnerable groups, but across the board. Teenagers with depression appear to be especially affected.

Chronic sleep deprivation is associated with higher risks of:
• depression
• cardiovascular disease
• diabetes

The study is based on self-reported sleep data, but the authors argue that the findings are serious enough to justify changes in school policy — including later school start times, which could improve sleep, mental health, and academic performance.

Source: JAMA
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2845759

🧠 A brain floating in space — and it’s real
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just released the sharpest images ever taken of nebula PMR 1, nicknamed the “Exposed Cranium” — because it looks almost exactly like a human brain inside a transparent skull.
PMR 1 is a planetary nebula — an expanding shell of ionized gas and dust expelled by a star in the final stages of its life, as the nuclear fuel in its core runs out.
Webb captured it in both near- and mid-infrared light. The images reveal a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the center, dividing the nebula into two lobes — just like left and right brain hemispheres. That eerie split is likely carved by twin polar jets blasting outward from the dying star at its core.
The central star is several times more massive than our Sun and is just a few thousand years from its ultimate fate — either a spectacular supernova or a quiet collapse into a white dwarf. Scientists aren’t sure yet which way it will go.
The nebula was first spotted by the Spitzer telescope back in 2013, but Webb’s more advanced instruments now reveal features that were previously invisible, making its brain-like structure stand out with unprecedented clarity.
The universe has a sense of aesthetics.
🔗 Source: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-examines-cranium-nebula/
#space #JWST #astronomy #nebula #science

Koala fight — not for the faint-hearted. Sound on: the rivals bleat menacingly at each other.