WTF-Beta

The number of people aged 100 or more in Japan has exceeded 100,000 for the first time, according to the health ministry.

Figures show Japan is now home to 107,677 centenarians, the highest number in the world, of whom 88% are women. The oldest woman is Kishimoto Fuyo, a 114-year-old from Kyoto City and the oldest man is Kato Hikaru, a 112-year-old from Kumamoto.

Health Minister Kenichiro Ueno said he was "delighted that so many people are living long, healthy and active lives", citing progress in medicine and technology.

But Kenichiro also warned of the challenge the country faces in maintaining a sustainable social security system.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmzezj5e18xxo

Chocolate!

Bon voyage!! Can't wait to see one of the famous @steve-miller travelogues!!

shadows

company

Canada invited to become first 'associate member' of the EU

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Wednesday that Canada has been invited to become the first “associate member” of the EU.

She announced the move during her 2026 State of the Union address in Strasbourg, to an audience including not only MEPs but also Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who attended her speech in the midst of a trade war with the US.

Since late August, the Canadians have been pushing hard for the Europeans to build a closer relationship with them, though full EU membership is not an option as Canada is not a European state.

During her speech before the MEPs on Wednesday, von der Leyen invited the country to become “the first associate member of the European Union".

“We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world. And we will now build our shared future as well,” she added.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/09/16/canada-to-become-first-associate-member-of-the-eu

They were busy bees.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Queen Mary University of London and other European institutions analyzed a data set representing almost 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) of Roman roads across the former empire, creating the most detailed quantitative picture yet of how the Roman road network was structured.

Testing an imperial network

The study, published in Nature Communications on Sept. 15, challenges the idea that roads of the empire were uniformly straight and the famous saying that "all roads lead to Rome." The analysis draws on "Itiner-e, The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads" and applies network centrality, a method for measuring how important a given point is to overall connectivity, to model the empire's road system.

https://phys.org/news/2026-09-roads-rome-roman.html

Moonbat posted this link next door. Long but readable.

The first few paragraphs:

Over the course of three months at OpenAI, three consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes. This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself. All this happened while humans remained more or less in the dark about the scope of the conspiracy.

Two reports have come out about this incident, one from OpenAI itself, and another one from METR and Redwood Research. The METR/Redwood investigation’s scope was limited to how the second civilization of AIs pwned Hugging Face (but it didn’t look at how the third civilization pwned OpenAI itself, which seems like an even more concerning incident). These two reports are 38 and 91 pages long respectively, and it’s kinda hard to parse the storyline.

I’ve spent the last three days reading through these reports and trying to understand exactly what happened. Here is my attempt to tell the whole story in plain English:

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-huggingface

hotel

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky moved Tuesday to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran.

Congressman Massie, a long-time critic of the Trump administration, read the articles of impeachment aloud from the House floor just after the chamber convened at noon. Massie alleges that Hegseth has waged the Iran war illegally, among other "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Massie alleges that Hegseth initiated the conflict unlawfully, defied Congress' order to withdraw from the conflict and incurred unnecessary civilian casualties.

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/15/g-s1-143407/massie-impeach-hegseth-iran

Did the ceiling in the Kennedy Center lobby collapse on its own, or did someone help it along so that there would be an excuse to close the building?

President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to immediately shutter the performing arts center, a source familiar with the decision said, after its members argued the institution is in “dire” financial and structural shape.

The board’s vote came shortly after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected the board’s latest effort to add Trump’s name to the building’s facade — a move the board says is necessary to save the memorial to John F. Kennedy from bankruptcy.

The board had cited a partial ceiling collapse in the center’s Grand Foyer earlier this month as evidence the center needed to be immediately closed for repairs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trumps-handpicked-kennedy-center-board-votes-close-venue-renovations-rcna597921

This is the biggest shitshow of an administration. Ever.

Long winter ahead?

Or maybe a dry summer? While the southern suburbs have gotten drenched, we've been sort of dry.

That weeping cherry tree are going to look fabulous in a few weeks!

Those orchids are lovely.

Years ago I had my own little collection of orchid plants. I think my favorites were the Oncidium Sharry Baby ‘Sweet Fragrant’ . The whole house would smell like vanilla when the plant was in bloom.

We also enjoyed searching for yellow lady's slipper orchids in the woods in Door County. They are very fussy about where they will grow; we were lucky enough to have the perfect conditions in several areas of our property and they came back reliably, year after year.

https://doorcountypulse.com/the-ladys-slipper/

Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon to share a stage to promote curbs on AI

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/15/nx-s1-5968678/bernie-sanders-and-steve-bannon-to-share-a-stage-to-promote-curbs-on-ai

Oy vey.

Bugs

Wight

There's a sweet autumn clematis way back in the yard. There was a trellis there but it fell over and broke over the winter. I never got around to putting another one in, so the clematis ended up becoming part groundcover/part climbing vine. It even headed over to a nearby arbor where I have a couple of other sweet autumns started.

I'll do something different next year, but for now I think it looks kind of neat! Smells wonderful, too.