Hubble Telescope captures a galaxy’s ‘forbidden’ light in stunning new image Space.com. Image:
Bears in Japan: Living with Wild Neighbors Nippon
Chimpanzees and Bonobos May Remember Faces for More Than 20 Years Smithsonian
How science fiction helped write AI’s first rule book Financial Times
Norway joins defense forces in Red SeaNewsinEnglish Norway
The secrets of frost New Statesman
The Cause of Alzheimer’s May Be Coming From Inside Your Mouth ScienceAlert (Chuck L). Note they admit to finding the same marker in the brains of people with no Alzheimers.
Nobody Knows What’s Happening Online Anymore
The Atlantic [read free]: “You are currently logged on to the largest version of the internet that has ever existed. By clicking and scrolling, you’re one of the 5 billion–plus people contributing to an unfathomable array of networked information—quintillions of bytes produced each day.
The sprawl has become disorienting. Some of my peers in the media have written about how the internet has started to feel “placeless” and more ephemeral, even like it is “evaporating.” Perhaps this is because, as my colleague Ian Bogost has argued, “the age of social media is ending,” and there is no clear replacement. Or maybe artificial intelligence is flooding the internet with synthetic information and killing the old web. Behind these theories is the same general perception: Understanding what is actually happening online has become harder than ever.
The internet destroyed any idea of a monoculture long ago, but new complications cloud the online ecosystem today: TikTok’s opaque “For You” recommendation system, the ascension of paywalls that limit access to websites such as this one, the collapse of Twitter—now X—under Elon Musk, the waning relevance of news across most social-media sites. The broad effect is an online experience that feels unique to every individual, depending on their ideologies and browsing habits. The very idea of popularity is up for debate: Is that trend really viral? Did everyone see that post, or is it just my little corner of the internet? More than before, it feels like we’re holding a fun-house mirror up to the internet and struggling to make sense of the distorted picture…”
KYLE SMITH: Ferrari Review: Adam Driver in a Drama of Speed and Steel.
[Michael] Mann has been developing this project for more than 20 years. His screenwriter, Troy Kennedy Martin, died in 2009. Mr. Mann’s first choice to play the lead, Christian Bale, eventually backed off and made another movie about the same milieu, 2019’s “Ford v. Ferrari.”
Now Adam Driver is the one with his foot on the gas, and it’s a relief to note that Mr. Driver, who gave a cartoonish performance as another Italian icon in the awful “House of Gucci,” this time is elegantly restrained, without overdoing the accent, as the man who in 1939 founded the eponymous car company. He tells us all we need to know about his obsession when he says, “Jaguar races to sell cars. I sell cars in order to race.” Enzo isn’t an especially likable man: He has adopted a strategy of steadfast stoicism in the face of adversity, which looks like coldness when one of his racers gets killed, seemingly because of a manufacturing flaw in one of Ferrari’s cars. He cheats on his wife, who sometimes responds with gunfire. But with all of his personal failings, Mr. Driver’s Ferrari becomes a monument to all of the fanatically obsessed men who, determined to produce something great, correctly bet that their creations would outlive the memories of their sins.
Mr. Mann’s slow-burning, intensely focused drama is occasionally ponderous, especially in its sleepy midsection, but its third act is absolutely thrilling.
It’s not a great film, and no one will mistake Mann’s Ferrari with Thief, Manhunter, or Heat. But as a biopic with some brilliant racing scenes, it’s well worth a watch on the big screen during the holiday season, if only to see Driver performing a grownup character, rather than Kylo Ren in yet another execrable Disney Star Warssequel.