Sotheby’s Big T. Rex Auction Raises Concerns Hype and Wealth Are Upending Science

Private buyers are increasingly outbidding museums for fossils. That’s making it difficult—or even impossible—for researchers to improve our understanding of the past.

wired.com

America at 250: Ken Burns on the 'violent birth' of the US - ABC listen

Ken Burns is one of the great chroniclers of US history. Over a nearly 50-year career, the filmmaker has produced long-form works about America's Civil War, the Vietnam War, and, his latest epic prod...

abc.net.au

Submission to Senate Inquiry into AI and data centres | Climate Council

The Climate Council welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee inquiry into artificial intelligence and data centres. As Australia’...

climatecouncil.org.au

Where Have All the Teenagers Gone?

New York’s streets and parks used to be teeming with them. Now they’re inside on their phones—and the city’s culture is all the worse for it, says Nancy Jo Sales.

airmail.news

Russell Brand Struggles To Find Bible Verse During Ultra-Cringey Piers Morgan Interview

comicsands.com

Did a Documentary Just Help Defeat Hungary’s Viktor Orban?

On Sunday Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orban fell in an election after 16 years of some of the most bigoted and, by many accounts, corrupt rule in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.And a documentary may have helped make it happen.Peter Magyar’s center-right  Tisza trounced Orban’s Fidesz  in parliamentary elections by a margin of nearly three-to-one, a stunning turn after so many years of Orban consolidating power with extrajudicial tools like gerrymandering, court-packing and the co-optation of an independent media. Tisza won 135 out of 199 seats (Fidesz took just 55), giving the former a supermajority that will allow constitutional changes.Many factors contributed to the polarizing prime minister’s loss, including an economy persistently among Europe’s weakest and a fatigue with the ruling party’s demagoguery, often deployed to cover up its own alleged corruption.But Tisza also had a a secret weapon: an independent documentary called The Price of a Vote released just two weeks before the election.Clocking in at just under an hour, the film makes up with investigative brawn what it lacks in formal polish. The filmmakers travel through the Roma villages in the nations’ rural countryside —hard-core Fidesz strongholds — to uncover a wide network of bribery and blackmail.As a series of whistleblowers reveal, a highly developed network of Budapest-based operatives promise (and deliver) everything from food packets to 20,000 forint notes (about $75) to those who would vote for Fidesz. The operatives accompany people to the voting place and, using a loophole that allows them to be accompanied as they vote, ensures they place a vote for the right (Fideszian) candidate. Other parties have tried this too, the film reports, but at nowhere near the level of scale or skullduggery.Meanwhile at the local level, the film alleges, mayors loyal to the government often go a step further: they threaten public employees and others to vote for Orban’s party.“You don’t get public work, you can’t go to work, you can’t do this, you don’t get that, they take away your housing subsidy,” says one whistleblower who used to work to bribe and intimidate on behalf of the party.” Added a second whistleblower: “There are so many things they could do to hurt these families.” Among the most draconian: kidnapping their children.These tableaux helped explain how Orban stayed in power so long. And their exposure, especially on the eve of an election, may have ensured that time has now ended. Price of a Vote was showed in a Budapest movie theater last week and also released on YouTube; the two platforms cannily circumvented Orban’s largely state-controlled television news. In just two weeks the film has garnered 2.2 million views on YouTube. (You can watch it below.)While there’s little evidence it stopped the network of goons from operating again, the film may have helped motivate people to vote against Orban who otherwise would have stayed home. Turnout in Hungary Sunday hit a post-Iron Curtain record of an eye-popping 74 percent, or some 6 million people, which means as many as a third of all voters watched the movie (a number that would equate to more than 50 million people in the U.S.)

bit.ly

Orban defeated: Good morning and goddamn it's a beautiful day

All of a sudden, after months of total darkness, there is hope.

iandunt.substack.com

More whales are visiting Sydney out of season. Scientists debate why

The first whales swimming north for the winter have already been spotted off the coast of Sydney, while artificial intelligence is helping reduce one of the marine mammals’ deadliest direct threats.

smh.com.au

This Film Festival Should Be Better Known

nytimes.com