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From The Smithsonian: “In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Wild Bill” Donovan, the leader of the Office of Strategic Services told his scientists to find a way to outfox the Axis enemies. In response, the scientists produced a number of dirty tricks, including explosive pancake mix, incendiary bombs strapped to live bats, truth drugs for eliciting information from prisoners of war, and a foul-smelling spray that mimicked the repulsive odor of fecal matter. But Operation Fantasia was the most desperate—and peculiar—of them all. Operation Fantasia was the brainchild of OSS psychological warfare strategist Ed Salinger, an eccentric businessman who had run an import/export business in Tokyo before the war. Operation Fantasia, he pitched the organization in 1943, would destroy Japanese morale by exposing soldiers and civilians to a Shinto portent of doom: kitsune, fox-shaped spirits with magical abilities.”

Two ranchers faked drought numbers to claim millions in crop insurance

From The Colorado Sun: “Into the spring of 2017, U.S. weather experts watching southeastern Colorado noticed something they’d never seen before. Storm clouds would gather over the thirsty sagebrush ranges surrounding tiny Colorado and Kansas towns like Springfield and Coolidge. On a normal day, the promising storms produced snow or rain that would fall onto a system of official weather stations at airstrips or town halls, into heated “tipping buckets.” When the teeter-totter buckets filled with a thimbleful of water, the seesaw tilted, dropping one miniature metal bucket downward to close an electrical circuit. One “tick” of the bucket, and a signal went out to National Weather Service sensors around the world that the High Plains had recorded one hundredth of an inch of water. But on many of those days, those buckets were not tipping.”

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Continue reading “The WWII plot to fight Japan with radioactive foxes”

From Scientific American: “Quantum physicists are familiar with wonky, seemingly nonsensical phenomena: atoms and molecules sometimes act as particles, sometimes as waves; particles can be connected to one another by a “spooky action at a distance,” even over great distances; and quantum objects can detach themselves from their properties like the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland detaches itself from its grin. Now researchers led by Daniela Angulo of the University of Toronto have revealed another oddball quantum outcome: photons, wave-particles of light, can spend a negative amount of time zipping through a cloud of chilled atoms. In other words, photons can seem to exit a material before entering it.”

How North Korea’s Kim Jong-un assassinated his brother with a deadly nerve agent

From GQ: “When Kim Jong-nam was a boy, his father, the dictator of North Korea, sat him on his office chair and said, “When you grow up, this is where you’ll sit and give orders.” If the child had fulfilled that promise—if his half brother, Kim Jong-un, had not ultimately usurped his throne—he would have tyrannized 25 million people. His pudgy finger would have caressed the launch buttons of nukes. America and China would have debated how to manage him. But as Jong-nam glanced up at the departures board in the international airport of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the jostling crowd ignored him. He had become just another overweight 45-year-old, the bald spot that he usually hid with a cap showing through his remaining hair like a bull’s-eye.”

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 “Quantum physics experiment finds evidence of negative time”

Last month, Google was hit with a significant ruling in an antitrust case involving its dominance in the search business: A federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled that the payments that Google makes to Apple and other companies in return for being the default search engine — payments that totaled more than $20 billion dollars last year — are an unfair restraint on competition. Judge Mehta found that Google controls almost 90 percent of the search market, a figure that rises to nearly 95 percent for mobile devices, and that the company has used its monopoly to charge higher prices. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote.

Less than a month later, Google is in court for a second antitrust trial, this one involving its control over online advertising. The case was launched in January of 2023 by the Department of Justice and eight states, including New York, New Jersey, and California (nine more states joined later). It states that Google “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising.” The government concluded its main arguments last week and asked the court to force Google to sell off some of its ad technology.

Google deserves to lose

Predicting the outcome of this kind of trial is difficult at the best of times, but this one is especially difficult for a couple of reasons, including the fact that the way the courts interpret antitrust law is a moving target, combined with the reality that the online ad market is a complex animal — so complex that it makes online search look like a kid’s birthday party. That gives Google a lot of wiggle room to argue that it doesn’t have a monopoly in the legal sense of the word, and that even if it does, it hasn’t done anything anticompetitive to maintain that monopoly (simply having a monopoly is not illegal under US antitrust law — the government has to show that a company obtained the monopoly through illegal means, and/or used illegal methods to maintain it.)

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Continue reading “Why Google deserves to lose its advertising antitrust case”

From Cascadia News: “Robert Schock, 39, set off for a day run in the North Cascades at the end of July with minimal supplies and his dog. He was in an adventurous mood and wanted to piece together a big loop, possibly by way of Copper Ridge, which has stunning views of the North Cascade range. A generally nomadic person, he once lived in Mount Vernon and has hiked and camped in the Mount Baker area in the past. But he never returned to the trailhead. Family members and first responders were alerted to his disappearance in early August. After extensive searches of the remote, mountainous area, including by helicopter, most believed he would likely not be found alive. But on Aug. 30, young crew members of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association discovered Schock, dangerously emaciated and unable to move but still alive, lying on the rocky bank of the Chilliwack River. How did he manage to survive?”

Inside the island fortress built by America’s richest men

From Business Insider: “As we near the northwestern side of the island, I spot the bright red steel beams of “La Petite Clef,” the Mark di Suvero sculpture that towers 20 feet over the front lawn of the car magnate Norman Braman’s mansion. We glide past a modern palace hidden behind a dense cluster of palm trees, purchased for $50 million in 2019 by a mysterious LLC linked to the emir of Qatar. On the southwestern shore, we come upon the island’s most sought-after mansions. This is where the elite of the elite live: Tom Brady, Carl Icahn, and the neighborhood’s most recent arrival, Jeff Bezos. The wealth here is staggering — 25,000-square-foot mansions with ivy-strewn stucco walls, fronted by sprawling lawns and sleek yachts. Today, almost all the mansions appear to be empty. As we get closer to the shore, I start to notice the cameras. Many are connected to an Israeli-designed system capable of detecting passersby from half a mile away.”

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 was lost in the woods for a month without food or shelter”

From The Cut: “Over the next six years, 8 Passengers would grow into one of the most-watched family YouTube channels of all time, amassing, at its peak, roughly 2.5 million subscribers and more than a billion views. Ruby and her husband, Kevin, distinguished themselves as a messy-but-wholesome alternative to the polished, world-traveling, Montessori-practicing parenting influencers taking over feeds. The most die-hard 8 Passengers fans not only followed along on YouTube but also gathered in dedicated online forums, where they analyzed the affairs of the Franke family, of which they had encyclopedic knowledge. These fans were, in late 2019, among the first to realize something was off. In 8 Passengers’ posts, Ruby appeared colder, they thought; the couple’s already stern parenting style had sharpened. Late in the summer of 2023, Ruby’s two youngest children, then ages 9 and 12 were found hundreds of miles from home. They were wounded and emaciated, the victims of abuse by Ruby and Hildebrandt.”

She set a new record by hiking the 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail in 40 days

From I Run Far: “On September 21, 2024, Tara Dower set a new overall supported fastest known time (FKT) on the Appalachian Trail, in a time of 40 days, 18 hours, and 5 minutes, to be confirmed. The Appalachian Trail stretches 2,197 miles from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia, and travels through New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Oftentimes considered the original long-trail thru-hike, it’s an unrelenting path through the eastern U.S. The trail has 465,000 feet of elevation gain. Dower’s mark surpasses Karel Sabbe’s previous overall and men’s supported FKT of 41 days, 7 hours, and 39 minutes, which he set in 2018.”

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 former YouTube influencer is now in prison for child abuse”

From Atlas Obscura: “In the Danish Royal Library and the Bavarian State Library in Munich, rare medieval manuscripts depict something unusual, even for the Middle Ages—a man and woman fighting in a trial by combat. The man is drawn waist-deep in a hole armed with an edged club, while the woman circulates above, flinging what looks like a rock in a sock. Both are drawn with furrowed brows, fierce snarls, and bloodied limbs. Based on obscure 13th and 14th-century German, Austrian, and Swiss laws, these images show trials by combat, known as judicial duels. In a rape trial, the burden of proof fell on the victim, and without concrete evidence, a conviction was nearly impossible. According to 13th and 14th-century legal treatises, judicial duels between men and women only happened in cases of notnunft. The medieval law term describes rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault committed specifically against women.”

The CIA and KGB tried to blackmail this world leader with sex tapes but failed

From Medium: “In 1945, a man known simply by the name Sukarno became Indonesia’s first president after leading an independence movement against Dutch colonial rule. He entered office with overwhelming popular support and was widely regarded as a national hero. He brought with him a reputation for loving his country, and for loving women. In their more desperate but imaginative moments, spies for both governments tried to turn Sukarno’s famed sexual prowess against him. These efforts included a CIA-produced pornographic film and a “honey pot” scheme with KGB operatives dressed as flight attendants. Neither plan went well. Both of the spy agencies apparently misread a crucial aspect of Sukarno’s sexual proclivities — he never tried to hide those tendencies. If anything, he flaunted them. He once bragged to a U.S. diplomat that he was “a very physical man who needed sex every day,” and shocked his government hosts in Washington when he demanded they provide him with call girls during a visit.”

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 “Women in the Middle Ages could challenge their rapists to a duel”

From Bloomberg: “Advanced poker software is now widely available for a few hundred dollars. Forums are full of accusations about everyone from anonymous, low-stakes fish to sponsored professionals. All the big platforms promote a zero-tolerance policy, but no one seems to know how many bots are out there or where they come from. “It’s a scourge,” one gambling executive told me. When I started investigating poker bots, I came across an obscure chatroom thread posted by a whistleblower describing an operation so large it resembled an international corporation. It had a board of directors, training programs and an HR department—everything, it seemed, but a water cooler. Allegedly based in Siberia, the group was said to have absorbed all potential rivals in the region, becoming known as Bot Farm Corporation, or BF Corp. I decided to find out the truth about BF Corp., by following a trail of leaked internal emails, and by conducting interviews with players, gambling executives, security consultants and botmakers. When I finally tracked down BF’s Siberian creators, they agreed to an interview.”

Her children were sick and no one knew why. Was it forever chemicals on the farm?

From the New York Times: “Allison Jumper’s family was a picture of healthy living. Active kids. Wholesome meals. A freezer stocked with organic beef from her in-laws’ farm in Maine. Then in late 2020, she got a devastating call from her brother-in-law. High levels of harmful “forever chemicals” had been detected on their farm and in their cows’ milk, and they were getting shut down. At first, Mrs. Jumper worried only about her in-laws’ livelihoods. But soon, her mind went somewhere else: to her own children’s mysterious health issues, including startlingly high cholesterol levels. Unknown to them, her family’s beloved organic farm had been fertilized decades earlier with sewage sludge tainted by a dangerous class of chemicals linked to certain cancers, liver disease and a host of other health problems. Their cattle had grazed on contaminated pastures, making the beef and milk too dangerous to eat. Yet her family had been eating it for several years.”

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 “The Russian bot army that conquered online poker”