As a robotics researcher, learning scientist, and author who has followed Realbotix for years, I'm compelled to do a Bluesky thread on this whole pivot that Realbotix is now trying, turning from humanoid sex robots to classroom "education" robots. Buckle up. nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/n... 🧵

Rural NY School To Launch Humanoid Robot Teacher

Plans to deploy a "lifelike" robot and avatar teaching assistant at Salamanca High School have sparked debate over the role of technology in schools.

nysfocus.com

In case you missed it, Utrecht, Netherlands has begun building the largest Dutch “car-free” neighbourhood. With: 12K people 6K homes 1.8K social rental homes 1.5K mid-range rental & affordable owner-occupied homes 21K bike parking spaces 250 shared cars 2 parcel hubs Parking structures on the edge.

Utrecht to start construction on largest car-free neighborhood in the country next week

Construction of a new neighborhood is set to begin in Utrecht next week. The neighborhood, called Merwede, is scheduled to be the largest car-free district in the Netherlands, with 6,000 homes. The ar...

nltimes.nl

tea.o.graphy opens new downtown cafe For nearly 12 years, tea.o.graphy founder Dana Blair has worked largely behind the scenes to supply hand-blended teas to some of the most iconic hotels, restaurants and stores in New Mexico. Now, through a new tea cafe ... Read more: https://ow.ly/am5250Z8vHi

tea.o.graphy opens new downtown cafe

For nearly 12 years, tea.ography founder Dana Blair has worked largely behind the scenes to supply hand-blended teas to some of the most iconic hotels, restaurants and stores in New

ow.ly

Today would be Coretta Scott King’s 99th birthday. CSK was a lifelong freedom fighter & more of an activist than MLK when they met. As a student she’d supported the Progressive Party’s 3rd party challenge for president opposing US militarism, racism & economic inequality. We need to know her.

We have records of diabetes diagnoses going back 2,500 years. We only developed a reliable treatment (insulin) 100 years ago. Now we might have a cure. What an amazing thing to get to witness.

Ian Weissman, DO@drianweissman.bsky.social · 12mo ago

A patient with type 1 diabetes has begun producing his own insulin after receiving a transplant of pancreatic cells. For the first time, islet cells have been edited so they wouldn't be rejected by the patient, removing the need for immunosuppressant drugs. www.sciencealert.com/first-of-its...

tell your doctor not to use AI notes

Nick Kapur@nickkapur.bsky.social · 3mo ago

An auditor for the Ontario, Canada government found that AI agents tasked with turning doctor/patient conversations into structured notes routinely hallucinated false treatments, replaced drug names with entirely different drugs, and missed crucial information

Ages ago the Institute for Local Self-Reliance published a study that showed just a 10% shift in spending away from Amazon to locally owned businesses like bookstores can have a profound positive impact on the local economy. If anyone is looking for an easy way to do some good

Brad Johnson@ahablives.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Other lessons include: it actually doesn't take an impossibly enormous bump in daily sales for a store suddenly to be fiscally stable. At the scale of most independents, fifteen more sales a day (two more an hour while you're open, let's say), would make night-&-day difference for lots of stores.

“officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.”

A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure — POLITICO

Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year. The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses.

apple.news

NASA just dropped more than 12,000 photos from the Artemis II mission. It'll take me a few days to go through them all, but so far it's one stunner after another. Link: eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos... Credit: NASA/Artemis II Crew (h/t @jonostrower.com)

This is catastrophic.

Analysis Finds That Google's AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization

A new analysis commissioned by The New York Times suggests that Google's AI Overviews are wrong an astonishing percentage of the time.

trib.al

Here I am, talking about one of the central arguments of THE WESTERNERS! Out in a little more than one week! #squee #skystorians @scribnerbooks.bsky.social

We’re looking a potentially bad peak fire season this spring so this would be welcome news.

Grant Tosterud@granttosterud.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Need some good news, New Mexico? Well the new precipitation outlook released today by the Climate Prediction Center is favoring above average rainfall across the state this monsoon season! ⛈️ #NMwx #AZwx

If you're not familiar, the format for a "truth sandwich" is: * start with a true statement * introduce the newsworthy lie or distortion * true statement again The idea is that the false claim should not be the first or last impression. It's useful when you think a lie should not be ignored.

All this. Yes.

Happy Pi Day to all who celebrate.

Was thinking of maybe canceling a subscription to a service. Couldn't find the page so headed to the AI chatbot: Me: Where do I cancel? AI: I've gone ahead and canceled you. Concerning that AI canceled an indecisive customer's subscription. What else is it doing without explicit instruction?

This reminds me of something Toni Morrison wrote.

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich@riogranderift.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Rivers are living beings.

This basically happens in “American War” by Omar El Akkad.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 5mo ago

A small drone, with a small solar panel charging its small battery, so it can run indefinitely, autonomously...controlled by AI, flying around assassinating people based on its own judgment. You could just tell it "kill America's enemies" & then set it loose. You could set thousands of them loose.

My last night at the Ranch I was just walking back from the bathroom to my tent when I stopped to look up at the Milky May. It was Perseids season, and a giant fireball reentered right over the iconic Tooth of Time. I gasped audibly enough that someone behind me whispered "did you just see that?!"

Can confirm: I've gone from living in a Bortle 9 to high 5 to low 3. Getting into the 3s and below is life-changing. To see the Milky Way while taking out the trash ain't bad.

Alex Turnbull@alejandroturnbull.space · 5mo ago

And beyond even our research, it's important to protect the night sky just for its own sake. I spent most of last summer living in a Bortle 2 area, and the stars were life-changing. Everyone should be afforded that experience, and AI compute shouldn't be allowed to take it away.

My head explodes a little when the premise of a novel finds it way into the news. Still, everyone should read “How High We Go in the Dark” by @sequoian.bsky.social.

CNN@cnn.com · 6mo ago

In a cave in Romania, scientists found a bacterial strain entombed in ice that is resistant to 10 modern antibiotics. But it may also help fight superbugs. https://cnn.it/4b21lB2

As long as we rely on screens rather than on forests and sunsets to soothe our pain, we will fight to defend the screens, not the forests.

We cannot have a rational debate about technology.

As long as we rely on screens rather than on forests and sunsets to soothe our pain, we will fight to defend the screens, not the forests.

hilaryagro.com

A coyote walks through the Streeterville neighborhood Monday evening in Chicago.

It's quite incredible how this poor and inaccurate tool has been prioritised and integrated *so* effectively that I regularly have people tell me something they've 'looked up' and I have to say 'you're not just reading the AI overview are you' and they are. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Google AI Overviews put people at risk of harm with misleading health advice

Exclusive: Inaccurate information presented in summaries, Guardian investigation finds

theguardian.com

“In some ways, I think that’s a response to the turmoil of 2025 in this country and reflects a backlash against billionaires and algorithms. Indie bookstores are proving to be an antidote for the time we’re living in.” [gift link] www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/b...

Dragons, Sex and the Bible: What Drove the Book Business This Year

nytimes.com

I generally don't like to post screenshots of text, but someone posted this in our local Strong Towns group and it was too good not to share here.

I think people today don't understand just how dramatically the night sky has changed - it looked like it does in super remote areas *everywhere* before the invention of electric lighting, and light pollution that obscures the sky has gotten dramatically worse in the last 25 years.

Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 7mo ago

If you ever have the experience of seeing a night sky out in the deep countryside you can understand this; it really is a fundamentally different experience, and I can't imagine it not being formative to people.