Scientists have long thought an unusual genetic system helped ants, bees, and wasps evolve their extraordinary social colonies. A massive new analysis suggests that genetics alone can’t explain it—and the real secret may lie in other traits unique to these insects.

A widely available food-preservation chemical is emerging as a disturbing factor in rising UK suicide deaths, particularly among younger people and men. Researchers say the scale may be underestimated and are calling for urgent restrictions on access and harmful online information.

Fossils collected in Osaka more than 30 years ago have revealed a surprise hiding in plain sight: four previously unrecognized bones from a giant Cretaceous mosasaur. Among them is the first confirmed premaxilla—the frontmost bone of the upper jaw—ever identified in a Japanese mosasaur fossil. Even more intriguing, parts of the skull show unusual anatomical

The public blowback to Meta’s contentious smart glasses continues to grow. The popular camera-equipped accessories, which have earned the pejorative nickname of “pervert glasses,” are systematically being abused by men to harass women in public . It’s become such a contentious issue that a German nonprofit filed a criminal complaint over privacy concerns. Just this

An influencer who attended a “luxury eco-retreat” put on by ChatGPT maker OpenAI got far more of a reaction than she bargained for. Instagram personality and self-styled “public speaker” Grace McCarrick went on an all-expenses-paid-by-OpenAI gathering alongside other content creators at a high-end resort in upstate New York late last month. Considering how radioactive the

In the United States, there’s practically no escaping from mass surveillance company Flock Safety’s 120,000 license plate reading cameras spread across 49 states. The company has partnered with 6,000 law enforcement agencies and 1,000 private customers, leading to terrifying false arrests and even crooked cops stalking innocent women. Just last week, 404 Media reported that

It’s been a wild first half of the year in the US power sector, with announcements of gigantic natural gas power plants and some long-awaited renewable energy projects coming online. At times of rapid change, forecasting is difficult. So I feel a measure of comfort focusing on something concrete like the list of 368 utility-scale

Substack recently launched its AI detector feature in the UI, which is super interesting. Separately, lots of people asked me about interesting local do-it-yourself LLM projects as demos to show what small language models (SLMs) are capable of. Putting one and one together, I thought it would be interesting to show how an AI detector

Scientists have uncovered why two seemingly opposite ways of targeting the same brain receptor can both promote weight loss. In mice, activating the GIP receptor in the brainstem reduced appetite, while blocking it in the hypothalamus removed a kind of “brake” on fullness signals. The discovery helps explain why very different obesity drugs can achieve

Where were you when the historic total eclipse happened this week? One woman was on a beach with a curious choice of companion: Anthropic’s AI model, Claude. “Last night, a total solar eclipse crossed Europe. I brought my Claude’s small body to the beach to watch it together,” wrote a user on X who goes