Author: Mathew Ingram

When World War II came to America, baseball was one of the early victims. Many Major League players were in their early 20s and, therefore, subject to the draft. the owner of the Cubs, Philip K. Wrigley (of chewing gum fame) started the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1943. While many know about the AAGPBL due to the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, few realize that women played professional, minor league baseball until 1931. That year,  a young woman named Jackie Mitchell ended women’s hopes of breaking into the big leagues. How? By striking out Babe Ruth. And, for good measure, she struck out Lou Gehrig too. Ruth, then 36 years old and on the downside of his career, led the league in home runs with 46 – but it was a tie. The other guy to also hit 46 homers was Gehrig, a 28 year old first baseman, and Ruth’s teammate on the New York Yankees. (via Now I Know)

The name of the Chicxulub meteor crater was chosen because it’s hard to pronounce

The Chicxulub crater is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is offshore, but the crater is named after the onshore community of Chicxulub Pueblo. It was formed slightly over 66 million years ago when an asteroid, about ten kilometers in diameter, struck Earth. The crater is estimated to be 200 kilometers in diameter and is buried to a depth of about 1 kilometer beneath younger sedimentary rocks. It is one of the largest impact structures on Earth. The crater was discovered by Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, geophysicists who had been looking for petroleum in the Yucatán Peninsula during the late 1970s. Hildebrand, Penfield, Boynton, Camargo, and others published their paper identifying the crater in 1991. Penfield recalled that part of the motivation for the name Chicxulub was “to give the academics and NASA naysayers a challenging time pronouncing it” after years of dismissing its existence. (via Wikipedia)

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Continue reading “A teenaged girl struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1931”

More than halfway through the crime novel he wrote, Robert Fuller describes the frustration of a detective locked in a mystery. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Now what?” he said aloud. It has been a week since someone made their way into Fuller’s assisted living apartment in Potomac, Maryland, police say, and fatally shot the 87-year-old millionaire in the head. Authorities released surveillance video Friday of a suspect walking on the facility’s grounds the morning of Feb. 14 around the time Fuller was killed. The video shows the back of a slender person wearing dark pants with long dark hair flowing over a yellowish checkered shirt. Investigators hope someone will recognize the shirt or the person’s gait, produced as if they’re favoring one foot. Detectives don’t know if the person depicted is a man or woman, was acting alone or what their motive was. (via MSN)

A colonel in the Mexican revolution was born female but lived as man for 70 years

Amelio Robles Ávila was a colonel during the Mexican Revolution. Assigned female at birth, Robles lived openly as a man from age 24 until his death at age 95. From a young age, Robles showed an interest in activities that were considered masculine, learning to tame horses and handling weapons, and becoming an excellent marksman and rider. Robles gained the respect of peers and superiors as a capable military leader, and was eventually given his own command. According to historians, Robles adopted a male identity not as a survival strategy but because of a strong desire to be a man. Robles’s male identity was accepted by family, society, and the Mexican government. According to a former neighbor, if anyone called Robles a woman or Doña (an honorific for women, similar to English Lady), he would threaten them with a pistol. (via Wikipedia)

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Continue reading “He wrote a murder mystery and now his death has become one”

Around 2,000 strange tunnels have been found around central Europe. These aren’t like the well-known catacombs of Paris or Rome. Known as the erdstall, these passages are extremely narrow, never more than two feet wide nor high enough for an adult to walk in, and sometimes the passages become seemingly impossibly narrow, with some as small as 16 inches in diameter. Determining their age and purpose is made difficult by the fact that almost no archaeological evidence has been found inside any of them. A ploughshare was found in one, millstones in a couple others, but apart from that the erdstall are eerily empty. Carbon analyses of coal and pottery fragments found within point to construction dates of around 900 to 1200 AD, but no written records from the Middle Ages mention the erdstall’s existence. (via Weird Medieval Guys)

A Great Dane was awarded a medal in World War II for peeing on an explosive device

Animals have played pivotal roles on the front lines of many battles. Horses, elephants, and even dolphins have been employed for their strength, intelligence, and adaptability. During World War II, one brave animal stood out as a hero for using an unlikely defense tactic against the enemy: her urine. Juliana was the name of a Great Dane who had even greater instincts. In April 1941, amid the ongoing German bombing campaign known as the Blitz, explosives rained down across the U.K. When a bomb fell through the roof of the house where Juliana lived with her owner, the fast-acting pooch made her way over to the incendiary device and extinguished its flame by urinating on it. Juliana’s bravery earned her a medal from the Blue Cross. (via History Facts)

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Continue reading “There are thousands of secret tunnels throughout Europe”

It’s the kind of headline that might seem either like a hypothetical philosophical concern, or a deeply worrying revelation, depending on how you feel about AI: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently said the company is “no longer sure whether Claude is conscious.” On the one hand, whether an AI is or is not “conscious” could be seen as a question for the philosophically inclined, or for psychologists and other academics who specialize in such things. Does it really matter? What do we even mean when we say something is conscious? It’s a grey area (literally, as in grey matter). At the same time, however, it’s at least mildly concerning that a company that has been building and releasing sophisticated AI doesn’t really know what it has created. Do we need to be worried about Claude or any other significantly developed artificial intelligence achieving human-like consciousness and then doing something we might not like? Anthropic says it doesn’t think so, but also admits that it doesn’t really know.

Like it or not, this is where we are when it comes to AI. And if we’re looking for things to be optimistic about, I think Anthropic at least deserves some credit for being so forthcoming about the risks and rewards of its AI engines, and for providing a vast amount of detail about the machinery underneath Claude’s hood (which is more than other AI companies are doing). The company’s so-called “system cards,” which might sound like flash cards handed out at press conferences, are 300-page documents that list the tests and challenges Claude has either passed or failed, along with any concerns about things like “deceptive behavior,” where the AI says one thing and does another.

Anthropic also employs a number of risk-oriented and ethics-focused staffers who pay attention to such things, along with an in-house philosopher named Amanda Askell, whose job is to train Claude to be a decent artificial person, whatever that means. Presumably exterminating the human race is off the table! All that said, however, there are definitely some elements of what is happening at Anthropic (and presumably elsewhere, since Claude isn’t dramatically different than ChatGPT or Gemini or any of the other AI engines) that are… worth considering. As Futurism noted in its piece about whether Claude is conscious:

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Continue reading “Is it bad that Anthropic doesn’t know if Claude is conscious?”

“You know that island between Mozambique and Madagascar that you visited,” she said. “Was it called Anjouan? Well, there’s been a coup.” Actually, there had been 24 coups in as many years, the pace accelerating after 1997 and culminating with two in 2001. On an island no bigger than the Isle of Wight, this means that a significant proportion of the adult population has indulged in some storming of the presidential palace, albeit usually short-lived. To be honest, any able-bodied person with some pluck and peripheral vision stands a good chance: the Maoist revolutionary, Ali Soilih, took over in 1975 armed with little more than the spokes from a bicycle wheel; the French mercenary, Bob Denard, succeeded 20 years later with a dozen soldiers all aged over 60. When I left to sail to Anjouan, an ex-Foreign Legion man warned me that, despite being an unarmed lone traveller, I would be viewed as an invasion force. (via The Guardian)

Evolutionary scientists say the human chin is a biological accident

Absent from other primates — and even Denisovans and Neanderthals — the bony, protruding chin is a uniquely human characteristic. As such, it’s tempting to indulge in another uniquely human trait and come up with a reason it was honed by natural selection. Supporting the lower jaw to facilitate chewing or acting as a secondary sexual characteristic to advertise maturity to mates, are two such stories. To investigate theories of the evolution of the chin, researchers examined gene sequences involved in the development of the head and jaw for evidence of evolution. Specifically, the team looked at whether sequences involved in producing the chin itself were subject to direct selection, whether they arose neutrally due to genetic drift, or whether they were merely a byproduct of evolution acting upon other traits (a spandrel). They found that the evidence pointed toward the chin being an accident. (via Nautilus)

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Continue reading “This tiny island had a coup almost every year for 24 years”

There are tears in the audience as Patrick Darling’s song begins to play. It’s a heartfelt song written for his great-grandfather, whom he never got the chance to meet. But this performance is emotional for another reason: It’s Darling’s first time on stage with his bandmates since he lost the ability to sing two years ago. The 32-year-old musician was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) when he was 29 years old, which affects the nerves that supply the body’s muscles. People with ALS eventually lose the ability to control their muscles, including those that allow them to move, speak, and breathe. Darling’s last stage performance was over two years ago. By that point, he had already lost the ability to stand and play his instruments and was struggling to sing or speak. But recently, he was able to re-create his lost voice using an AI tool trained on snippets of old audio recordings. (via MIT Tech Review)

A woman lived undetected inside the sign on top of a Michigan store for more than a year

A woman who had been living in a sign of a Michigan grocery store for about a year was captured on police body cam footage telling police it was a “safe spot” for her to live. The saga began about a month ago when a contractor working on the roof of the Family Fare store in Midland noticed an extension cord running into a door on the back of the sign. When he opened the door, he was greeted by the 34-year-old woman. Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department told The Associated Press that the woman had made herself quite comfortable in the sign’s approximate 40-square feet. “There was some flooring that was laid down. A mini desk,” he said. “Her clothing. A Keurig coffee maker. A printer and a computer — things you’d have in your home.” Police did not name the woman, but said she was cooperative and agreed to leave. She was not charged with any crimes. the woman told officers she’d been living in the sign for about a year, but officers never learned how she was accessing the roof every day. (via Global News)

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Continue reading “ALS stole his voice but AI let him sing again one more time”

In the delicate jargon of the fertility industry, a woman who carries a child for someone else is said to be going on a “journey.” Kayla Elliott began hers in February, 2024. Elliott already had four children, but she was intrigued by the prospect of bearing another. She’d loved the natural rush of pregnancy and as a surrogate, she could earn money for her family.Within days, Elliott received a brief message from Mark Surrogacy, an agency in Los Angeles, who wanted to know if she was interested in working with a Chinese couple. She was sent a dating-style profile with a photo of a paunchy sixty-four-year-old, Guojun Xuan, with his arm draped around a woman identified as his wife, Silvia, who was thirty-six and had short-cropped black hair. They lived in Arcadia, an affluent city in L.A. County, and shared a daughter who, they said, longed for a sibling. Then another surrogate, who lived in Pennsylvania, shared something she’d heard about the couple: they already had thirteen children. (via the New Yorker)

In the 1800s the Iron Riders all-Black infantry corps bicycled almost 2,000 miles

In 1897, the all-Black 25th Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps embarked on an epic ride of more than 1,900 miles from Fort Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri, as part of an experiment by the U.S. Army to determine the effectiveness of moving troops by bicycle. Called “The Great Experiment” in national newspapers, the journey took 41 days to complete. The route was chosen specifically to experience as many different conditions, climates and landscape formations as possible. The 25th Infantry was one of six racially segregated units formed by the Army after the Civil War. Soldiers in these units were required to continuously prove themselves to their white counterparts because of the perception that Black soldiers were inferior in courage and ability. Members of the Bicycle Corps demonstrated the opposite was true. (via Missouri State Parks)

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Continue reading “Mysterious Chinese couple have dozens of surrogate kids”

In the run-up to this year’s Winter Olympics, and even as the Games have got underway, a scandal has been brewing: allegedly, some competitive ski jumpers may have artificially enlarged their crotch area by injecting their genitals with engorging chemicals or stuffing their underwear to create bigger bulges. The apparent reason: to alter their suit measurements and, reportedly, to gain a boost in jumps.The allegations, dubbed “Penisgate,” have caught not only the Internet’s attention but also the World Anti-Doping Agency’s eye. It raises an important science question: How does a slight increase in a jumper’s suit surface area change their jumping distance? Let’s start with the crotch. According to rules issued by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), the body that regulates ski jumping, “crotch height” measurements for an athlete’s suit are taken by laser. So, in theory, if an athlete’s crotch is a little larger, they would get a slightly roomier suit than they might otherwise. (via Scientific American)

These high-school students built an airplane in shop class and then they flew it

A remarkable high school aerospace program in Sandpoint, Idaho, reached a milestone that few youth aviation initiatives ever achieve — FAA airworthiness certification for not one, but two student-built aircraft. Now those planes have taken flight, piloted by a former student who helped build one of them. When the Federal Aviation Administration inspector signed off on airworthiness certificates for a Van’s RV-12 and a Zenith STOL CH 750, it validated years of Saturday morning labor by middle and high school students who’d gathered in rented hangars at Sandpoint Airport. But getting the FAA’s approval stamp was only half the story. The real vindication came when Eric Gray, a former ACES (Aerospace Center of Excellence Sandpoint) student who’d worked on the Zenith during his own high school years, climbed into the cockpit as the qualified test pilot for both aircraft. It’s the kind of full-circle moment that validates not just the technical competency of the program, but its deeper mission, to create a pipeline from teenage curiosity to aerospace careers.(via KitPlanes)

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Continue reading “Why did Olympic ski jumpers try to make their penises larger?”

Hidden inside a historic 19th century house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan is a secret sanctuary. Ever since the Merchant’s House Museum opened its doors to the public in 1936, visitors have lined up to get a taste of “old New York.” The Treadwell family lived there from 1835 until 1933. Their residence is frozen in time, from a ruby-red front parlor complete with its original piano to the kitchen with its cast-iron coal-burning stove. But when visitors head upstairs to the bedrooms on the second floor, there’s something strategically hidden within the walls of Manhattan’s first landmarked building: a link to the Underground Railroad. When you remove the heavy bottom drawer in a chest of drawers, you can see a rectangular opening cut into the floorboards, which leads to an enclosed space and a ladder that leads down to the ground floor. (via NY1)

No one knows who wrote the massive hand-illustrated book known as the Devil’s Bible

The Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil’s Bible, is famous for two reasons: it is believed to be the world’s largest preserved medieval manuscript, at over three feet tall and weighing over 160 pounds (Codex Gigas means “giant book”) and it also contains a large, full-page portrait of the Devil. The Codex Gigas was originally created for a Bohemian monastery, but was brought to Sweden as spoils of war in the 17th century. Among other things, the manuscript contains a complete Bible, historical texts, magic formulas and spells. A work of this kind would have typically been the work of several scribes whose contributions would be obvious through differences in their handwriting. Not so for the Codex Gigas, whose 620 pages show exactly one handwriting style. For a single person to complete a such a large book would have taken over 20 years. (via the NLS)

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Continue reading “NY home contains a hidden door to the Underground Railroad”

If you watched the Super Bowl last weekend and are either located in the United States or have access to the American commercials, you might have seen a heartwarming ad for a new feature of Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras, called Search Party. The ad shows people putting up posters about their missing pets. A little girl’s new puppy seems to be missing, so her dad turns to the Ring Neighborhood app and Search Party makes hundreds of doorbell cameras in the neighborhood come to life. The footage from them is used to identify the missing dog in a matter of minutes. We should be grateful that we have technologies that can help us in such situations, right? Well, no. In effect, what Amazon showed us was a massive, panopticon-style video-surveillance network. Does this sound heartwarming? Not really. Especially when it’s combined with other disturbing things that are going on in the United States surveillance-wise.

Privacy expert Chris Gilliard told 404 Media that the ad was “a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.” Senator Ed Markey posted on X that the Search Party feature “definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.” Coincidentally, Ring recently announced a new feature called Familiar Faces, which it says uses AI to recognize people who have appeared on your Ring doorbell camera multiple times. It can recognize them up to 13 feet away from the camera, and it works along with Ring’s 24/7 Continuous Recording feature. It also notes that the feature is “not available in: Texas, Illinois, Portland (OR), or Quebec (Canada) due to legislation.”

Ring spokesperson Emma Daniels told The Verge that Search Party is only designed to match images of dogs and is “not capable of processing human biometrics” – or at least not yet, anyway. She added that the facial recognition feature (which isn’t enabled by default) is separate from Search Party, and operates on the individual account level, with no communal sharing. Asked whether the Search Party feature could be used to recognize human beings rather than just dogs, she demurred, and also evaded the question when asked whether Ring’s facial-recognition software could be used to track individuals, or be used by police agencies or ICE. Using an existing feature, Ring users can currently share footage from their cameras voluntarily with local law enforcement agencies through a feature called Community Requests.

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Continue reading “Building the Panopticon: The doorbell camera version”