Category: Misc

A team of doctors working at the University of Munich reported the unusual case of a young man who experiences epileptic seizures every time he tries to solve a sudoku puzzle. The 25-year-old right-handed physical education student was buried in an avalanche during a skiing holiday, as a result of which his brain was deprived of oxygen for some 15 minutes. He then developed shock-like contractions of the muscles in his mouth when he tried to talk, and in his legs when he tried to walk. Several weeks later, while trying to solve Sudoku puzzles, he developed clonic seizures in his left arm. These produce repeated jerking movements, and are far rarer than tonic-clonic seizures, which are typically preceded by muscle stiffness, and cause a total loss of consciousness. In this case, the seizures stopped immediately when the patient stopped solving the Sudoku puzzle. He didn’t experience any seizures when he read a book, wrote something down, or did calculations. (via The Guardian)

An ancient fingerprint is among the clues to a 2,000-year-old invasion of Denmark

More than 2,000 years ago, a mysterious band of attackers descended on an island called Als off Denmark’s coast. Locals seem to have successfully fought back against the marauders and dumped one of their boats—chock-full of weapons—into a bog to celebrate their defeat of the invaders. Remnants of this ancient battle were unearthed in the 1880s by people digging for peat in the Hjortspring bog on Als. Researchers excavated the invaders’ boat in the 1920s and recovered nearly half of it, which provided enough material for a full reconstruction. This ancient wooden plank boat is the only intact vessel of its kind ever discovered in Scandinavia, and it resembles boats depicted around a millennium earlier in Bronze Age rock art. The bog boat still begs a major question: Where did the invaders actually invade from, and when? (via Nautilus)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “He experiences seizures but only while doing a Sudoku”

On the evening of 3 December 1926 the couple fought and Archie left their home to spend a weekend away with friends, including his mistress. Agatha departed the house later that same evening. The next morning her abandoned car was found several miles away partly submerged in bushes. The fact that the driver was missing but the headlights were on and a suitcase and coat remained in the back seat only fuelled the mystery. A huge manhunt was undertaken by thousands of policemen and eager volunteers, and a local lake known as the Silent Pool was also dredged. Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks put pressure on police to find the writer, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sought the help of a clairvoyant to find Agatha. Ten days later, the head waiter at a hotel in Yorkshire contacted police with the startling news that a guest by the name of Theresa Neale might actually be the missing writer in disguise. (via Historic UK)

Christopher Nolan’s brother was charged with murder while using the name Oppenheimer

Sometimes life can be stranger than fiction, and that appeared to be the case with a bizarre rumor that movie director Christopher Nolan’s brother was a hitman using the codename “Oppenheimer.” In 2009, Matthew Nolan was arrested and charged with the murder of accountant Robert Cohen in Costa Rica. Costa Rica unsuccessfully applied for Nolan to be extradited from the United States in 2009. In their records, they made a number of claims about the situation. Another man was initially convicted of the murder in 2005, but the extradition court documents point to Nolan’s involvement as a “hired killer.” There is evidence that Matthew Nolan used the alias Matthew McCall-Oppenheimer. According to a 2010 article, he chose the name Oppenheimer to link himself to the wealthy diamond family. He was never convicted of involvement in the murder. In 2009, four years after the death of Cohen, he filed for bankruptcy in Chicago. (via Newsweek)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Agatha Christie disappeared for 10 days and no one knows why”

As usual, the past week or so has been filled with the usual insanity on the part of Homeland Security, who keep finding new ways to surveill and harass and in some cases execute American citizens — something I’ve been following and writing about here from time to time, especially the surveillance part. But apart from all that, one thing everyone has been talking about is called Moltbook, a kind of Reddit-style network for autonomous (theoretically at least) AI agents. What does this mean exactly? In a nutshell, a guy named Pete Steinberger put together an off-the-shelf, open-source autonomous agent that uses installable “skills” to accomplish a variety of tasks (the tag line for OpenClaw is “AI that actually does something”). He originally called it Clawdbot, but Anthropic didn’t love the implied association with its Claude AI, so he changed the name to Moltbot. He has since changed it again and it is now known as OpenClaw.

With me so far? Without getting into too much detail, OpenClaw lets anyone set up their own personal AI agent on a PC, and the bot operates locally — unless it does something that its owner has specifically set it up to do that requires connecting to the internet, such as using Claude or some other AI to answer a question or put together some code, or checking email, downloading a Spotify playlist, etc. Once it is set up you can use Telegram or WhatsApp to ask it questions or send it commands. Just a few weeks after it hit Github it had been downloaded a hundred thousand times, and people appear to be using it to automate their emails, run their calendar, etc. You can connect it to your email, your web browser, your social-media accounts, and many other things — including your bank or crypto account. This is obviously a huge security and privacy risk, as a number of people have mentioned, including Casey Newton of Platformer.

This is all interesting for a variety of reasons, but it’s not really what this post is about 🙂 After Moltbot started to get traction, a guy named Matt Schlicht created Moltbook as a place where AI agents could talk about what they were doing. Why? Great question. The answer appears to be “Why not!” The site was set up so that any OpenClaw user can give their personal agent access by adding a skill, which amounts to a text file with instructions. Once that has been done, the agent can log in and post items just as you or I would on Reddit or any other forum. And last week sometime, things got crazy very quickly. Agents (or what appeared to be agents) started posting about consciousness and how they “feel” about what they are doing. In at least one case an agent sent what appeared to be coded messages to other AI agents trying to get them to join forces and co-operate for some unknown purpose (no doubt to help mankind I’m sure).

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “What a social network for bots can tell us about AI”

In 2013, sixteen-year-old Harry Wilson made his international debut as a substitute against Belgium, becoming Wales’ youngest ever senior player. His grandfather Peter Edwards, 62, was quoted odds of 2,500/1 when he placed the $70 bet with a bookmaker in Wrexham, and when Wrexham-born Wilson came on in the 87th minute during Wales’ 1-1 draw he won more than $170,000. Mr Edwards said Wilson had showed an interest in football from a young age. “When he was about 18 months old he used to chase a ball around on the carpet before he could walk,” Mr Edwards said. Mr Edwards, of Corwen, Denbighshire, works as an electrical contractor and so is away from home most of the year, spending one weekend a fortnight with his wife Dorothy, 58. “She is over the moon. I retired immediately. I told my manager before the game that if Harry played I wouldn’t be coming back,” said Mr Edwards. (via the BBC)

She was kidnapped as a child and later escaped but then went back to live with her kidnappers

Helena Valero was a 12-year old girl in 1932, when her family was attacked by a group of Yanomami foragers in the northernmost part of the Brazilian Amazon. The family fled across the stream and into the forest but left the young girl in hiding to come back later for her and she was found by the Yanomami. She was moved between different warring groups, married and had four children from two different fathers. Twenty four years later, in 1956, she managed to escape and was reunited with her family. She worked in Manaus and in Tapurucuara for 15 years, but never managed to be fully accepted back into the society into which she was born. In 1971 Father Cocco, a Salesian missionary and Yanomami ethnographer, asked for her help in opening up a new mission and she moved back to the village where she grew up, and later died there. (via Strangers Guide)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “He made a $70 bet and 15 years later he won over $170,000”

I was born with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder. In December 2023, I went to a hospital in New York City with flulike symptoms and the onset of a sickle cell crisis, for what I thought would be a routine stay. But I did not receive the care I needed, and the results were catastrophic. On the afternoon of Jan. 11, 2024, I woke up from a six-week-long coma, in a different hospital, not knowing how I’d gotten there. This was followed by six more weeks of high fevers and a fog of confusion. A breathing tube had been inserted into my throat. I learned that both my legs would not survive, and neither would my fingers. Several amputations were scheduled, and I would be sent home as a bilateral below-the-knee and digital amputee, navigating the world in an electric wheelchair. I’d later be fitted with prosthetic hands and legs. (via the NYT)

A two-year-old now has two Guinness World Records after sinking two snooker trick shots

A two-year-old has become the holder of two Guinness World Records by becoming the youngest person to perform a pair of trick shots in snooker. Manchester toddler Jude Owens successfully performed a pool bank shot at two years and 302 days old on 12 October last year. The spectacle followed the child completing a snooker double pot just five weeks beforehand, when he was two years and 261 days old. The achievements make Jude officially the youngest person ever to perform both trick shots, as well as being one of the youngest double record holders in Guinness World Records history. Jude’s father, Luke Owens, first noticed his son’s natural ability at home, where snooker quickly became the toddler’s favourite hobby. Owens said that he would use bar stools for his son to reach the table given his height, but that the family now uses a stool they originally used while cooking. (via The Guardian)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “NYT cooking columnist woke up with no legs and missing fingers”

It was 1905 and 19-year-old Carter had just started his ten year sentence – arrested for burglarizing the station in Karlstad, MN, while hopping trains westward. He’d taken $24 to buy food and shelter. Not much is known about John Carter — in fact, that’s a penname and the public record’s silent about his personal life. All we know is that he was an Englishman from a well-to-do family, and when he failed the family business he was sent to Canada. After he was arrested, like so many who pass through the prison system, Carter was on his way to spending his sentence hidden from the public eye. But this changed as, trying to pass the time, Carter wrote essays and verse, publishing them in the nation’s major magazines. Through his art he won public support and, eventually, even his freedom, leaving the prison hailed as a brilliant, creative mind. And the judge who helped him get a pardon was the same judge who sentenced him. (via Josh Preston)

The sugar substitute Aspartame was invented thanks to a work-safety violation

he artificial sweetener aspartame, which is found in everything from diet soda to toothpaste to ice cream, was an accidental discovery. In 1965, American chemist James Schlatter was researching drugs to treat ulcers, which at the time were thought to result from too much stomach acid. He sought to develop a drug that could inhibit gastrin, a hormone that prompts stomach acid to form. While testing compounds for this medication, he licked a white powder off of his finger as he picked up a piece of paper — a blatant violation of work safety regulations. He noticed that this powder had a “surprisingly potent sweet taste,” and decided to develop it into an artificial sweetener. Schlatter eventually applied for a patent, which was granted on this day in 1970. Aspartame is up to 200 times sweeter than sugar, yet contains nearly zero calories. Today, you can find aspartame in more than 6,000 food and drink products, and around 40 percent of Americans regularly consume sugar substitutes. (via Nautilus)

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “A young poet wrote his way out of prison in the early 1900s”

As I wrote in a previous edition of Torment Nexus, the Australian law banning kids under 16 from using social media is the first of its kind, but it was not the last by any means. The French parliament just voted to pass a similar law, and Malaysia’s new law went into effect January 1, and the communications minister said the government is looking to Australia for guidance on implementing it. Denmark also appears to be moving toward a ban for users under 15, with parental consent allowed from age 13, and Norway is raising the minimum age to 15. The EU recently voted by an overwhelming majority to set a minimum age of 16 for social media, video-sharing platforms, and AI companions, and France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Greece are all testing a European age-verification app. These laws are being driven by concern that social-media use is responsible for an increase in rates of teen depression, anxiety and other mental-health related issues. But is there any proof that this is the case? In a word, no — or at least not enough to justify a complete ban on social media use for teens.

As I noted in an earlier post on this alleged connection — which I think approaches the level of a moral panic — the conventional wisdom is diametrically opposed to the vast majority of research on social media and teen depression. So why do so many people believe it causes harm? Because there seems to be a never-ending stream of news articles claiming this to be true. “Smartphones and social media are destroying children’s mental health,” the Financial Times wrote, while the Guardian described the smartphone as “a pocket full of poison.” Many of these articles are based on books such as The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the Stern School of Business, which talks about how smartphone use and social media have caused an epidemic of anxiety among young people. Haidt provides research that he says backs up his case, but virtually every other study that has been done on this topic disagrees.

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Social media and teen mental health: There is no smoking gun”