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Spanish police uncover syndicate allegedly selling fake Banksy pieces for up to $2480 each. Four people have been arrested as part of the syndicate suspected of selling up to 25 pieces world wide.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:59 PM PST - 11 comments

From TED To PERNOCTATED, Scrabble’s Best Player Knows No Limits by Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak
posted by lalochezia at 8:28 PM PST - 6 comments

Tech firms and Silicon Valley billionaires have been pouring money into nuclear energy for years, pitching the sustainable power source as crucial to the green transition. Now they have another incentive to promote it: artificial intelligence.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:38 PM PST - 49 comments

Reported by the BBC. "The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday. It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating. [...] At the time of his death, Mr Barnett had been in Charleston for legal interviews linked to that case. Last week, he gave a formal deposition in which he was questioned by Boeing's lawyers, before being cross-examined by his own counsel. He had been due to undergo further questioning on Saturday. When he did not appear, enquiries were made at his hotel. He was subsequently found dead in his truck in the hotel car park."
posted by AlSweigart at 4:45 PM PST - 111 comments

Daniel Davies is a finance expert, journalist, and former investment banker whose writing I've been reading for over 20 years on Crooked Timber and on his own blog as well as elsewhere. Sometimes he writes analogies, games, or flights of fancy to help readers think about complex issues more clearly. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 12:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Yo La Tengo are once again playing requests for pledges beginning at 9pm US EDT TODAY (Sat March 9) on WFMU. Every year, Yo La Tengo perform requests live on-air in exchange for pledges, to help keep freeform noncommercial radio station WFMU (91.1 FM in Jersey City, NJ) on the air. This year is no exception. They will begin playing at 9pm US EDT Tuesday March 12, and will be playing listener requests for several more hours.
posted by trashflow at 12:23 PM PST - 20 comments

Is Super Mario Marker beaten yet? Back in 2015, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for the Wii U, which allowed users to create their own Mario levels and upload them for others to play. Over 8 million levels were created for the game. On March 31, 2021 Nintendo "discontinued" the game, which meant no new levels could be uploaded. Then the second shoe dropped: Nintendo announced the Wii U servers would be turned off forever on April 8, 2024, effectively removing all of these user levels from existence. Upon hearing this news, the Super Mario Maker community began to rally around a single goal: clear every single level uploaded to the servers before the shutdown date. [more inside]
posted by lubujackson at 10:55 AM PST - 54 comments

Zeteo is a new media venture from news personality Mehdi Hasan, who was previously host of the long-running MSNBC/Peacock show The Mehdi Hasan Show. Zeteo is currently a Substack newsletter, YouTube channel, and on TikTok as well. Hasan plans to evenually offer a weekly news program and a podcast. He promises: content anchored by Mehdi Hasan and his sharp-edged journalism, the kind that takes the power of the media as a public service seriously. You’ll also see original content from an array of high-profile contributors: award-winning journalists, New York Times best-selling authors, Hollywood celebrities, and others. He began the debut with Debunked! The Top 7 Lies About Gaza. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 9:44 AM PST - 16 comments

“It’s not quite the same fun festival if I don’t protect Grandpa.” The Frozen Dead Guy and his quirky eponymous festival have been moved to Estes Park, Colorado after troubles keeping the freezer on 40 miles south in Nederland, establishing the world’s first cryonics museum. [more inside]
posted by rubatan at 9:32 AM PST - 7 comments

This Place has Everything!!!! (SL NYMag) No spoilers. Just a rolicking California real estate story. ungated
posted by wowenthusiast at 7:17 AM PST - 25 comments

How SARS-CoV-2 contributes to heart attacks and strokes. The virus that causes COVID-19 can infect coronary arteries and increase inflammation in atherosclerotic plaques. An NIH-funded research team, led by Dr. Chiara Giannarelli at New York University School of Medicine, analyzed coronary artery tissue samples from people who died of COVID-19 between May 2020 and May 2021. Results appeared in Nature Cardiovascular Research on September 28, 2023.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:46 AM PST - 20 comments

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies LexisNexis, which generates consumer risk profiles for the insurers, knew about every trip some G.M. drivers had taken in their cars, including when they sped, braked too hard or accelerated rapidly.
posted by spork at 6:15 AM PST - 129 comments

"For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us." (slCBC)
posted by Kitteh at 5:20 AM PST - 59 comments

Maybe you've heard of Smashmallow; maybe you even bought some. In the couple of years before the pandemic, they were everywhere. Now? Pfft. The problem wasn't the marshmallows — they were, by all accounts, delicious. The problem was scale. Smashmallows were designed to look like an artisanal, boutique product, but that wasn't enough for Sebastiani: He wanted to manufacture billions of them, to build a company that would bestride Candyland like a squishy colossus. That meant he had to grow fast and figure out the engineering on the fly — the classic entrepreneurial strategy of Silicon Valley. When it works, you get Tesla; when it doesn't, you get Theranos. from Silicon Valley tried to mass produce fancy marshmallows. It got messy, fast. [Business Insider]
posted by chavenet at 2:30 AM PST - 28 comments