Strange Women Lying in Ponds

"Most of us can’t go a day, or even an hour, without hearing about artificial intelligence (AI). It’s constantly discussed on the news, at work, and among family and friends. It’s everywhere!

As society considers what place AI should have in our daily lives, museums are a relevant part of the conversation as well. Visitors bring their thoughts, ideas, and feelings about AI with them when they interact with museum content, impacting their experience.

With fragrant smoke wafting down Pennsylvania Avenue as a line of administration officials and VIPs stretched around the block, sources reported Saturday that leadership at the U.S. Department of the Interior had begun grilling up the nation’s last remaining endangered species.

“Whooping crane’s served!” said an apron-clad Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who manned multiple grills on the new patio in the White House Rose Garden and was seen struggling to flip the vanishing bird’s three-foot-long wings with a set of tongs. “Hoo boy, that’s looking good. Get ’em while you still can, people! I’m about to throw some woodland caribou on there, too. Oh, and the jaguars! You won’t find these anywhere else in the whole country. Just tell me how you want yours cooked. You know how it is—some folks like their jaguar well-done, others like it still roaring.”

Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment. On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih. “Most of our missions are now related to fires,” Fakih said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.” The Israeli military has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and on agricultural land, according to videos and testimony from emergency services, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

[...]

According to environmental groups, the fires are part of a pattern of Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s environment that threaten the country’s woodlands and the biodiversity they support. Hisham Younes, the founder of Green Southerners, a Lebanese conservation organisation, said: “These are long-established woodlands, dominated by productive stone pine alongside oak. They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds.” Younes called the Israeli attacks an ecocide. “It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate and sustain life. When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”

[...]

It is not the first time Israeli forces have been reported to have set fires deliberately.In the summer of 2024, Israeli troops used trebuchets – medieval catapults – to fling flaming debris over its border wall with Lebanon, while the Lebanese army published photos of Israeli drones that carried hoses that doused forests in flammable materials. Health and environmental experts raised the alarm in February when Israeli planes dropped herbicides linked to cancer on farms in south Lebanon. Besides the environmental and health consequences of these fires, residents of south Lebanon have mourned the loss of the green spaces in the villages where they grew up.

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A Viking ship. Detail from the Överhogdal tapestries, named after the village in Sweden where they were discovered in 1909. The tapestries include imagery drawn from the Norse tradition, such as Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir and (possibly) the world-tree Yggdrasil, as well as Christian imagery. Interpretation of the tapestries differs, but the scenes may represent Ragnarök, the end of the world as recounted/prophesied in Norse religion and myth. Recent radiocarbon dating places the tapestries between 1040 and 1170. They are now located in Jamtli, a museum in Östersund, Sweden.

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Maanvi Singh at The Guardian:

ICE plans to spend up to $20m (£15m) to purchase thousands of gloves for officers and agents that can deliver painful electric shocks by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The devices, called Glove (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. According to the manufacturer, “the discomfort associated with the stimulation is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks or scars”. The company has advertised the device as a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform”. The gloves have previously been used in settings such as jails in the US.

Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode. The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company. “It’s immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting,” said John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, who is studying how the device has been used. “If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool.” Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.