WTF-Beta

Mercury: The planet that shouldn't exist

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251223-mercury-the-planet-that-shouldnt-exist

@Bernard Ice is beautiful but can also be so destructive. We don't get a lot of ice storms around here (they tend to be a couple of hundred miles to the south of us). We did get more than a 1/4" of ice in a storm maybe 35 years ago and it took power lines down all over the place and our power was out for three days in the middle of winter.

@bernard I was having trouble with Firefox crashing on me a lot a few years ago, so when I heard about Brave I gave it a try and I love it.

For the logout problem, don't know if this will work but maybe you can give it a try:

On a related note…Hard to believe this is the first baby born in this little Italian town in the last 30 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/26/italian-village-first-baby-in-30-years

This is an annual event not far from me, a celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

https://www.chicagocatholic.com/photos/-/article/2025/12/23/frigid-temps-no-match-for-guadalupe-pilgrims

Have seen a couple of stories about events involving horses. I was struck by how emotionally powerful these events are for participants.

Here’s one about a memorial ride honoring the Dakota 38.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/26/dakota-38-2-riders-return-back-to-mankato-on-horseback

Trump and members of his administration often refer to him as "a builder" and at a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump described himself as having strong opinions about the shape of the arms on chairs he put in his hotels. "I am a very aesthetic person," he said.

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/29/nx-s1-5645066/president-trump-says-being-a-builder-is-his-second-job

I actually think it’s just shameless self-promotion. Or a huge branding exercise at the expense of the American public

Some interesting thoughts from a guy who knows AI.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/andrew-ng-says-ai-limited-wont-replace-humans-anytime-soon-rcna246074

I think the world will be watching the shifts in population dynamics and the effects on Japanese society.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/12/29/japan/society/japan-2050-predections-depopulation/

That is cool! And it has the potential to be a new hobby for @mark ....

I went outside and had planned to use the leaf blower to get rid of what I thought was light powdery snow. Turns out the top is light powdery snow but underneath it was semi-frozen slush on the driveway. The driveway is black, so it tends to warm up and retain heat, which it must have done over the last few days, as it has been warm. I had to get the shovel out to scrape everything down to the bare blacktop.

The winds were howling all night and I didn't get much sleep; I was awake worrying about a tree branch coming down on the house.

It was almost 60 yesterday; it dropped down to about 15 last night. And it snowed.

Good grief.

How about this?

https://archive.is/kfnmW

@bernard @realplayer

I don’t get a terms of use consent. I cleared out all the CNN cookies and tried it again and still nothing. Brave has the option to block all cookie consents and I guess it is working.

When the sun rises on May 18 in the small Norwegian fishing village of Sommarøy, located above the Arctic Circle, it doesn’t set again until July 26. Later in the year, it vanishes from November until January.

In the winter, the island is covered in snow. But during the midnight sun, the weather is temperate, even hot. Purple wildflowers stick out of mossy grass, and the electric-blue water and white sand look more Caribbean than Arctic. Walking along the coast around 11 p.m., you might see kayakers paddling on the smooth sea in the distance, or children in pajamas fishing and running along the beach with their catches.

Inspired by the extreme periods of light and dark, in late spring 2019, a group of locals signed a petition to make the village the first “time-free zone,” a place where anyone could buy groceries, cut grass, or eat dinner no matter the time. Their reasoning made sense enough: In a town where the sun shines at 1 a.m. in July and you can see the stars at 1 p.m. in December, the time on the clock is meaningless. International media seized on the time-free zone as a curiosity, and the town leaned into the branding, flaunting its freedom from the clock and inviting others to experience it. The realities of how to run a business, coordinate work, and have a social life without time went unmentioned; what mattered was the fantasy of a time- and stress-free life.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-island-without-time/ar-AA1SLAA7

Survey ends on New Year's Eve.

Unless otherwise stated, you are predicting the state of the world by 11:59PM on 12/31/2030.

About

On The Record 2030 is an attempt to capture this point in time, where the future feels more uncertain than ever. My hope is that this website will provide some stable source of reference for the evershifting goalposts in the dialogues we have about AI, the economy, science, and politics. It's not really meant to be a 'told you so' tool, even if that's what it ends up being. I think it will just be very interesting to see, in 2031, how we did in predicting the near future.

Who I Am

I'm Jacob Sargent, an interested bystander to the ongoing debate on whether certain technologies and ideologies are flashes in the pan or revolutionary upheavals. I do not work in tech, but like everyone, I am impacted by it.

https://www.ontherecord2030.org/?ref=readtangle.com

I'm not much of a traveler, but some of these are tempting.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/most-exciting-new-trains-for-2026

You guys eat well....

In some ways, Gigi is like any other young social media influencer.

With perfect hair and makeup, she logs on and talks to her fans. She shares clips: eating, doing skin care, putting on lipstick. She even has a cute baby who appears in some videos.

But after a few seconds, something may seem a little off.

She can munch on pizza made out of molten lava, or apply snowflakes and cotton candy as lip gloss. Her hands sometimes pass through what she's holding.

That's because Gigi isn't real. She's the AI creation of University of Illinois student Simone Mckenzie - who needed to make some money over the summer.

Ms Mckenzie, 21, is part of a fast-growing cohort of digital creators who churn out a stream of videos by entering simple prompts into AI chatbots, like Google Veo 3. Experts say this genre, dubbed "AI slop" by some critics and begrudging viewers, is taking over social media feeds.

And its creators are finding considerable success.

"One video made me $1,600 [£1,185] in just four days," Ms Mckenzie said. "I was like, okay, let me keep doing this."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3wyplnev1o