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How migrating Australian moths find caves hundreds of miles away

Ari Daniel for NPR:

In a paper published in the journal Nature, [neurobiologist Andrea] Adden and her colleagues show that the cue comes from the heavens. That is, the starry sky allows the Bogong moths to both orient and navigate.

"It's the first time that we have found an invertebrate using the stars to navigate," says Adden. "And also the first time that anyone had seen neurons that specifically respond to the starry sky in the insect brain."

Moths fucking rule

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Here's Monday's Astronomy Picture of the Day, edited by Dario Giannobile:

APOD is 30 years old today. In celebration, today's picture uses past APODs as tiles arranged to create a single pixelated image that might remind you of one of the most well-known and evocative depictions of planet Earth's night sky. In fact, this Starry Night consists of 1,836 individual images contributed to APOD over the last 5 years in a mosaic of 32,232 tiles.

Imagine running a website for 30 years, extremely fucked up. No please don't look up how long we've been doing NS, I might actually skeletonize instantly

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A long-standing puzzle of 'missing' ordinary matter in the universe may be solved, astronomers say

Ashley Strickland for CNN:

"If you add up all the stars and planets and cold gas that you see with your telescopes, it only amounts to less than 10% of ordinary matter in the universe," said Liam Connor, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University.

While astronomers thought most of the universe's ordinary matter was floating in the spaces between galaxies, called the intergalactic medium, or within the extended halos of galaxies — vast, spherical regions including stars and hot gas — they couldn't measure this foglike matter. That's because ordinary matter emits light at different wavelengths, but much of it is so diffuse that it's like trying to spot fog, astronomers say.

…

Now, Connor and his colleagues have directly observed the missing matter by using the flashing of fast radio bursts to essentially map out what couldn't be seen before. They reported their findings in a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Oh I've had all that matter in my closet the whole time, y'all should've just asked me I didn't realize you were looking for it

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Off his 1974 album Chameleon, here's Maynard Ferguson playing "Superbone Meets the Bad Man," a song I'm 10000% posting entirely because of its title.

(A superbone is a hybrid valve and slide trombone)

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201 ways to say 'fuck': what 1.7 billion words of online text shows about how the world swears

Martin Schweinberger and Kate Burridge for The Conversation:

Our brains swear for good reasons: to vent, cope, boost our grit and feel closer to those around us. Swear words can act as social glue and play meaningful roles in how people communicate, connect and express themselves – both in person, and online.

In our new research published in Lingua, we analysed more than 1.7 billion words of online language across 20 English-speaking regions. We identified 597 different swear word forms – from standard words, to creative spellings like "4rseholes", to acronyms like "wtf".

The findings challenge a familiar stereotype. Australians – often thought of as prolific swearers – are actually outdone by Americans and Brits, both in how often they swear, and in how many users swear online.

Hahaha get fucked Australia (see what I did there)

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Strange radio pulses detected coming from ice in Antarctica

Marina Naumova with a news post for Penn State University:

A cosmic particle detector in Antarctica has emitted a series of bizarre signals that defy the current understanding of particle physics, according to an international research group that includes scientists from Penn State. The unusual radio pulses were detected by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a range of instruments flown on balloons high above Antarctica that are designed to detect radio waves from cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.

…

"The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice," said Stephanie Wissel, associate professor of physics, astronomy and astrophysics who worked on the ANITA team searching for signals from elusive particles called neutrinos.

She explained that by their calculations, the anomalous signal had to pass through and interact with thousands of kilometers of rock before reaching the detector, which should have left the radio signal undetectable because it would have been absorbed into the rock.

Adding this one to the list of things that are clearly the setup for a sci-fi horror film

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Jaws Behind the Scenes: Exclusive Photos

Yankee Magazine feature:

Back in March, Yankee received an intriguing email from Peter Vandermark, a photojournalist and retired Boston University journalism professor. He had shot hundreds of assignments over his long career, but he wanted to share the story of one in particular.

On July 19, 1974, Vandermark was 26 and working for the weekly Cape Cod News when he was sent to Martha's Vineyard for the day to photograph the filming of a movie there. He had unfettered access to the set, to the cast, and to the young director, a Hollywood upstart named Steven Spielberg. Vandermark's photos appeared in the next week's paper.

Since then, he hasn't published a single frame from that shoot—until now. With movie lovers around the world celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jaws this summer, we present a selection of Vandermark's remarkable photos, along with his account of how it all unfolded.

Pretty cool

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Brazil's Supreme Court justices agree to make social media companies liable for user content

Mauricio Savarese and Eléonore Hughes for the AP:

The majority of justices on Brazil's Supreme Court have agreed to make social media companies liable for illegal postings by their users, in a landmark case for Latin America with implications for U.S. relations.

Brazil's top court decided to rule on two different cases to reach an understanding on how to deal with social media companies as reports of fraud, child pornography and violence among teenagers become rampant online. Critics warn such measures could threaten free speech as platforms preemptively remove content that could be problematic.

Gilmar Mendes on Wednesday became the sixth of the court's 11 justices to vote to open a path for companies like Meta, X and Microsoft to be sued and pay fines for content published by their users. Voting is ongoing but a simple majority is all that is needed for the measure to pass.

Wasn't aware that in Brazil's Supreme Court they don't just publish a ruling when a case is decided but rather the justices apparently just individually post their votes whenever

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An 'invisible threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day collide with Earth, simulations show

Harry Baker for Live Science:

A hidden swarm of "city killer" space rocks, known as co-orbital asteroids, is likely hiding around Venus and could pose an "invisible threat" to Earth over the coming millennia if the asteroids are not found, new simulations suggest. However, there is no immediate danger to our planet, researchers told Live Science.

Do it, Venus, I fucking dare you. Do it, coward.

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For the first time, fossil stomach contents of a sauropod dinosaur reveal what they really ate

Stephen Poropat for The Conversation:

Since the late 19th century, sauropod dinosaurs (long-necks like Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus) have been almost universally regarded as herbivores, or plant eaters.

However, until recently, no direct evidence – in the form of fossilised gut contents – had been found to support this.

I was one of the palaeontologists on a dinosaur dig in outback Queensland, Australia, that unearthed "Judy": an exceptional sauropod specimen with the fossilised remains of its last meal in its abdomen.

In a new paper published today in Current Biology, we describe these gut contents while also revealing that Judy is the most complete sauropod, and the first with fossilised skin, ever found in Australia.

Feels wack to me that we've somehow never found this until now, guess that kind of evidence is just super rare

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Brandon Gates for NPR:

Sly Stone, the remarkable, eccentric frontman, singer, songwriter and producer of his family group, Sly & the Family Stone, died in Los Angeles on Monday, June 9. The musical icon had been battling lung disease, according to a statement provided by his family. He was 82.

Off one of their final albums, Fresh, here's "In Time." J.I.P. (jam in peace)

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Tool to identify poisonous books developed by University of St Andrews

Ella Creamer for The Guardian:

A new tool to quickly identify books that are poisonous to humans has been developed by the University of St Andrews.

Historically, publishers used arsenic mixed with copper to achieve a vivid emerald green colour for book covers. While the risk to the public is "low", handling arsenic-containing books regularly can lead to health issues including irritation of the eyes, nose and throat along with more serious side-effects. The toxic pigment in the book bindings can flake off, meaning small pieces can easily be inhaled.

…

The new device can quickly and cheaply detect the presence of toxic pigment. "A device used in the School of Earth Sciences to detect minerals in rocks was the starting point," said Pilar Gil, who led the research. "The Eureka moment was discovering the unique reflectance pattern from emerald green pigment in the visible spectrum. The idea was then to apply this discovery to an instrument which we could use and share with the sector."

Wait, you're telling me I could've been reading and poisoning myself simultaneously???? I've been doing them separately this whole time and think of how much time I could've saved

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Bill Atkinson, Macintosh Pioneer and Inventor of Hypercard, Dies at 74

Steven Levy for WIRED:

My first meeting with Bill Atkinson was unforgettable. It was November 1983, and reporting for Rolling Stone, I had gained access to the team building the Macintosh computer, scheduled to launch early the next year. Everyone kept telling me, "Wait till you meet Bill and Andy," referring to Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, two key writers of the Mac's software. Here's what I wrote about the encounter in my book, Insanely Great:

"I met Bill Atkinson first. A tall fellow with unruly hair, a Pancho Villa moustache, and blazing blue eyes, he had the unnerving intensity of Bruce Dern in one of his turns as an unhinged Vietnam vet. Like everyone else in the room, he wore jeans and a T-shirt. "Do you want to see a bug?" he asked me. He pulled me into his cubicle and pointed to his Macintosh. Filling the screen was an incredibly detailed drawing of an insect. It was beautiful, something you might see on an expensive workstation in a research lab, but not on a personal computer. Atkinson laughed at his joke, then got very serious, talking in an intense near-whisper that gave his words a reverential weight. "The barrier between words and pictures is broken," he said. "Until now the world of art has been a sacred club. Like fine china. Now it's for daily use."

Atkinson was right. His contributions to the Macintosh were critical to that breakthrough he'd whispered to me at the Apple office known as Bandley 3 that day. A few years later, he would singlehandedly make another giant contribution with a program called Hypercard, which presaged the World Wide Web. Through it all, he retained his energy and joie de vivre, and became an inspiration for all who would change the world through code. On June 5, 2025, he died after a long illness. He was 74.

HyperCard very directly got me into programming; I still remember the chain of events very vividly. I had already been using HC for maybe even a couple of years at that point but very simplistically, just using the drawing tools and automatic button actions. Along the way I slowly picked up how to write code that performed those same actions, so I could make buttons that did multiple things in a row.

Then one day I learned about the "idle" handler, which HyperCard will repeatedly execute as long as you're not doing anything, and I had the thought: "I bet I could make something bounce around the screen." I don't remember if at that point I knew how to change the positions of buttons already or if I had to look it up, but I made a button that bounced around the screen like a screensaver.

Then I had the thought: "could I make something follow the mouse?" And you can get the position of the mouse pretty easily, so yeah, I could do that.

"Could the moving button bounce off the one I'm controlling?" Certainly.

And then it struck I'd basically written Breakout without any blocks. Oops, I'm accidentally become a programmer!

So anyway, Bill Atkinson dying is completely unacceptable and I've already filed a complaint with management

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Researchers genetically altered fruit flies to crave cocaine

Andrew Paul for Popular Science:

In a world first, scientists at the University of Utah have engineered fruit flies susceptible to cocaine addiction. But as strange as it sounds, there are potentially life-saving reasons for genetically altering the insects to crave the drug. The novel biological model could help addiction treatment therapies development and expedite research timelines. The findings are detailed in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Look, sometimes you just have to get fruit flies addicted to cocaine [holds hand to earpiece] excuse me, I'm receiving word that in fact you do not ever have to get fruit flies addicted to cocaine

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A long-running experiment finds a tiny particle is still acting weird

Adithi Ramakrishnan for the AP:

Final results from a long-running U.S.-based experiment announced Tuesday show a tiny particle continues to act strangely -- but that's still good news for the laws of physics as we know them.

"This experiment is a huge feat in precision," said Tova Holmes, an experimental physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who is not part of the collaboration.

The mysterious particles called muons are considered heavier cousins to electrons. They wobble like a top when inside a magnetic field, and scientists are studying that motion to see if it lines up with the foundational rulebook of physics called the Standard Model.

Oh hell yeah, subatomic particles can do the Wobble

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Endangered classic Mac plastic color returns as 3D-printer filament

Benj Edwards for Ars Technica:

On Tuesday, classic computer collector Joe Strosnider announced the availability of a new 3D-printer filament that replicates the iconic "Platinum" color scheme used in classic Macintosh computers from the late 1980s through the 1990s. The PLA filament (PLA is short for polylactic acid) allows hobbyists to 3D-print nostalgic novelties, replacement parts, and accessories that match the original color of vintage Apple computers.

…

Strosnider, who runs a website about his extensive vintage computer collection in Ohio, worked for years to color-match the distinctive beige-gray hue of the Macintosh Platinum scheme, resulting in a spool of hobby-ready plastic by Polar Filament and priced at $21.99 per kilogram.

According to a forum post, Strosnider paid approximately $900 to develop the color and purchase an initial 25-kilogram supply of the filament. Rather than keeping the formulation proprietary, he arranged for Polar Filament to make the color publicly available.

I don't know a damned thing about 3D printing, but I definitely would've expected more than just a $900 outlay on that, so that's great

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19 Black Americans' skulls return to New Orleans after 150 years for memorial service

Curtis Bunn for NBC News last week:

More than 150 years after their heads were severed from their bodies and shipped to Germany for "research," the craniums of 19 Black people, which were recently returned, will be memorialized Saturday during a sacred ceremony in New Orleans.

Dillard University President Monique Guillory said at a news conference Wednesday that the memorial will be "about confronting a dark chapter in medical and scientific history while choosing a path of justice, honor and remembrance."

Those who will be honored died in the city's Charity Hospital in 1872. Their heads were severed and shipped to Leipzig University in Germany to be studied — a common practice at the time, as researchers sought to confirm their unfounded theory that Black people's brains were smaller than those of other races, therefore making them inferior.

Fucked up