Tony Dokoupil's CBS News road trip, where each episode ends in a squishy pabulum, revealed the problems with CBS' Bari Weiss-era focus on viewers' feelings (James Poniewozik/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/arts/television/cbs-news…
So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/
Series D, Episode 02 - Power
VILA: Not too close. The gap is all connected with the thickness of the door. So what's the difference between Seskas and Hommiks?
PELLA: How do you know how thick it is?
VILA: By the stress pattern.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/402/132 B7B4
Optimal Pair Matching Combined with Machine Learning Predicts a Significant Reduction in Myocardial Infarction Risk in African Americans following Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplementation
Shudong Sun, Aki Hara, Laurel Johnstone, Brian Hallmark, Joseph C. Watkins, Cynthia A. Thomson, Susan M. Schembre, Susan Sergeant, Jason Umans, Guang Yao, Hao Helen Zhang, Floyd H. Chilton
Conductance Plateaus at Quantum Hall Integer Filling Factors in Germanium Quantum Point Contacts
Karina Hudson, Davide Costa, Davide Degli Esposti, Lucas E. A. Stehouwer, Giordano Scappucci
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12554
"Avatar 3": Exklusiver Filmausschnitt für Meta Quest macht Lust auf VR-Kino
In zwei Wochen startet "Avatar: Fire and Ash" in deutschen Kinos. Auf Meta Quest gibt es vorab eine Filmszene mit tollem 3D-Effekt zu sehen.
Want a used car that works?
You’d be wise to not get an older Tesla.
In Consumer Reports’ latest ranking for used cars,
the Elon Musk-run automaker came dead last in terms of reliability,
trailing by over forty points from the top spot on a scale between 0 and 100
https://futurism.co…
Series B, Episode 11 - Gambit
CALLY: But you operated on the people who built Star One.
DOCHOLLI: The technicians, yes, thirty of them. I had no choice.
JENNA: Then you must know where Star One is located. How could you not?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/211/487 B7B4
Series D, Episode 08 - Games
VILA: So you've had some practice, then. That's a bit of luck.
TARRANT: Well not exactly. These things chuck the lot at you. Flying the real thing's nothing after one of these.
GAMBIT: Countdown eight minutes, still running.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/408/456
#Blakes7 Series D, Episode 05 - Animals
SLAVE: I can find no trace of one, sir.
[On planet's surface, Dayna looks around and sees an animal following her]
TARRANT: Dayna.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/405/13