If you’re going out to protest, here’s how to keep your digital privacy on lock. Check out the link in our bio for more information. 🔗

The Pentagon announced it’s opening an office specifically to chase down reports of unidentified flying objects in a press release on Wednesday.⁠ ⁠ It’ll be called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and will work to collect and analyze various reports of UFO activity from across America’s various federal agencies.⁠ ⁠ The new office is the result of various disclosures of unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) by the DoD after lobbying and leaks from groups like Tom Delonge’s To the Stars Academy. ⁠ ⁠ Under pressure from Congress and the public, the Pentagon’s Director of National Intelligence released a nine-page report on the phenomenon in June of 2021. The report looked at more than 100 sightings and came to few conclusions. A year later, it seems Congress has agreed to make that resource investment.⁠ ⁠ I want to believe that Kirkpatrick and the AARO will do good work and find out what’s flying around the sky and buzzing American ships and planes. Let’s hope it doesn’t take more years of leaks and the efforts of Blink 182’s former frontman to see results.⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Matthew Gault⁠ 📸 Image: U.S. Navy

TikTok Pink Sauce: what is it? We don't know either. ⁠ ⁠ The substance has been going viral on TikTok after creator Chef Pii launched her online store for it July 1. She's currently selling the condiment for $20 a bottle. ⁠ ⁠ Though it looks like pink ranch dressing, there's no real consensus on how it tastes. Chef Pii posted a video of a bunch of kids trying the sauce—one said it was like "sweet ranch," while another said it was "spicy." ⁠ ⁠ The trouble with Pink Sauce is in its controversial labeling, as many people on social media have pointed out. On one early nutritional label, Chef Pii listed 444 servings per bottle. Some people speculated it was for the "angel number" aesthetic. ⁠ ⁠ Chef Pii has since corrected the mistake, saying she was "only human," and that it should have said 444 grams per bottle. ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Samantha Cole⁠ 📸 Images/Video: Chef Pii on TikTok

Scientists think they have discovered the most distant—and potentially oldest—galaxy ever seen in the universe, just some 300 million years after the Big Bang. ⁠ ⁠ The galaxy, named GLASS-z13, was discovered by a Harvard graduate student, using new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Another galaxy was also recently discovered at just 330 million light years after the Big Bang.⁠ ⁠ While these galaxies are small compared to modern ones, they are unexpectedly large for the early era they are in. The researchers also describe the galaxies as “remarkably luminous” in the study.⁠ ⁠ Since these are preliminary findings, the researchers still refer to the galaxies as “candidates” and caution that more research will be needed to confirm that GLASS-z13 really is the farthest and earliest known galaxy. ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Becky Ferreira⁠ 📸 Image: Pascal Oesch | NASA JWST

Minecraft developer Mojang Studios announced on Wednesday that it is banning integrating NFTs into its game.⁠ ⁠ To that end, the company is completely rejecting blockchain technologies—they will not be used on client and server applications, nor will NFTs be allowed to use Minecraft in-game content. ⁠ ⁠ On news of the decision, NFT Worlds, a popular NFT project that sells NFTs tied to "world seeds" to use in the game, saw its tokens and NFTs plummet in value. ⁠ ⁠ NFT Worlds' developers derided the decision as being "out of nowhere" and said that they were trying to get in touch with Microsoft to find out "what the true internal motivators may have been. " ⁠ ⁠ If they have no success, the developers said, "we pivot." ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Edward Ongweso Jr⁠ 📸 Image: Sopa Images

Apple has agreed to pay a total of $50 million to consumers who owned and had to replace a keyboard on a series of MacBooks and MacBook Pros produced between 2015 and 2019, giving at least the semblance of accountability for the environmental and usability disaster that resulted from Apple’s “butterfly” keys—the worst keyboard design ever put into mass production. ⁠ ⁠ The payment is part of a settlement in a four-year-long class action lawsuit. As part of the settlement, Apple did not admit fault (but has since totally redesigned its keyboards). ⁠ ⁠ As part of the settlement, people who needed multiple keyboard replacements will get up to $300, people who needed one keyboard replacement will get up to $125, and people who only needed key cap replacements will get $50.⁠ ⁠ As part of Apple’s seemingly singular quest during the mid-2010s to make its products thinner, more elegant, and more beautiful at the expense of usability, repairability, recyclability, and sustainability, the company introduced the Butterfly Keyboard in its laptops. This keyboard was included on roughly 15 million laptops sold in the United States, according to the lawsuit.⁠ ⁠ Apple first slightly redesigned the butterfly keyboard, then did away with it entirely in 2020, bringing back the older but more reliable “scissor” switches. MacBook keyboards are now beloved by most. ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Jason Koebler⁠ 📸 Image: Getty Images

The FBI investigated multiple environmental movements as cases of domestic ecoterrorism, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. The documents name groups like Greenpeace, Earth First!, and the Earth Liberation Front, and detail actions from scrawling “ELF” into the side of a diesel tank to shooting flares at a nuclear power plant. ⁠ ⁠ Motherboard obtained the documents using a Freedom of Information Act request; in some cases, it took the FBI four years to provide the documents. They pertain primarily to the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, but have new relevance considering that some environmentalists have called for direct action to prevent or reverse the worst effects from climate change. ⁠ ⁠ The FBI provided Motherboard with more than 100 pages of documents about Greenpeace, one of the most famous environmental organizations in the world. Most of these documents are from the 1970s and 1980s; the FBI says that the group should be monitored for causing "civil unrest." ⁠ ⁠ The FBI has previously said that Greenpeace was improperly put on an agency terrorism watchlist. Other documents obtained by Motherboard relate to Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front.⁠ ⁠ The FBI said Earth First! was usually considered to be the “most radical” of the environmental movements, calling it a “criminal enterprise,” and filed it under cases of domestic terrorism. ⁠ ⁠ The FBI defines ecoterrorism as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons.” Though there were not any instances in the documents we received of criminal actions against people, property damage was very common. ⁠ ⁠ Swipe to see an excerpt from the documents we obtained from the FBI. ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Jules Roscoe ⁠ 📸 Images: Getty Images, FBI

The Parthian Empire was a power in ancient Iran for hundreds of years, but not much is known about it due to a lack of primary historical sources. Now, researchers believe they may have identified the lost Parthian city of Natounia in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.⁠ ⁠ A study published on Tuesday in Antiquity by researchers in Germany and Iraq makes the case for this ancient city likely being the mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly, which they say meets the known criteria. ⁠ ⁠ Rabana-Merquly has been excavated over the years, and evidence shows the fortress was occupied over millennia by different groups, from the time of the Parthians to the Sasanian era, through a period of Islamic occupation, and into the modern era. The new study analyzed the site and came up with some surprising conclusions. ⁠ ⁠ They established that numerous defensive structures built into the mountain are connected as part of the whole site, which sprawls over 100 hectares. They also conclude that it is likely Natounia based on rock-reliefs of an anonymous king they believe was a member of the ruling Parthian dynasty of the ancient kingdom of Adiabene, and the site's location on the Lower Zab.⁠ ⁠ According to Brown, a complicating factor is that Rabana-Merquly is located on a tributary of the Lower Zab, rather than the main channel, however "this is unusual but not unique in ancient toponyms of this type," he said. ⁠ ⁠ As for what life in Natounia was like, the researchers surmise it had multiple facets. Chiefly, the fortress was a military installation aimed at securing the Parthian Empire's hinterlands amid a landscape of independent tribes.⁠ ⁠ But that's not all; the fortress was also the site of worship for a religious cult. It features a sanctuary complex and a waterfall that would appear after heavy rainfall and which was canalized with stone monuments, including possibly a cultic link to the Iranian goddess Anahita.⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Jordan Pearson ⁠ 📸 Images: Getty Images, Brown Et. Al.

It is virtually impossible to take the train in the UK right now. Nearly all of the services on the National Rail network have reduced service or “do not travel” warnings. ⁠ ⁠ The service disruptions are, of course, due to the unprecedented heat wave across the UK. Temperatures have topped 40 Celsius—104 Fahrenheit—setting all kinds of records across the country. ⁠ ⁠ Why is this an issue? Trains run in hot places, like the Mojave and Sahara Deserts, all the time. ⁠ ⁠ The problem for the UK, and anywhere else suddenly experiencing triple-digit temperatures (on the Fahrenheit scale), is that rail networks can only be engineered to accommodate a certain range of temperatures. ⁠ ⁠ Among the biggest concerns during extreme heat is buckling, when the track is literally bent out of shape. If the force of the train and the heat-driven expansion of the steel tracks become too much for the ties to handle, the tracks will buckle, will become permanently damaged, and will need to be replaced.⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Aaron Gordon⁠ 📸 Image: Bruno Vincent / Stringer via Getty Images

Russian government hackers tried to trick Ukrainian and international volunteers into using a malicious Android app disguised as an app to launch cyber attacks against Russian sites, according to new research published by Google on Tuesday. ⁠ ⁠ The app would supposedly launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Russian sites, to "overwhelm their resources." All you would have to do was download the app and press "Start."⁠ ⁠ The app didn't actually DDoS anything, but was designed to map and figure out who would want to use such an app to attack Russian websites, according to Shane Huntely, the head of the Google research team which published the report.⁠ ⁠ Google said the fake app wasn’t hosted on the Play Store, and that the number of installs “was miniscule.” ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai⁠ 📸 Image: Paula Bronstein via Getty Images

The reintroduction of wolves to Germany “has been accompanied by electoral gains for far-right parties,” a new study reports.⁠ ⁠ Wolves once occupied an enormous range across much of North America and Eurasia. Nations including the United States and Germany have spent years reintroducing wolves to regions where they previously were exterminated by human activity. ⁠ ⁠ While that has created positive ripple effects on the environment, it also means wolves prey more on livestock. A new study, published on Monday, showed links between antiwolf sentiment and far right politics, and says that far-right politicians frame the wolf reintroduction as "a threat to economic livelihoods." ⁠ ⁠ To tease out the potential connection, the researchers analyzed voting behavior in communities with and without wolf attacks across time. ⁠ ⁠ The correlation between wolves and far-right electoral fortunes is notable, though the scientists caution against “interpreting the findings in a causal manner." ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Becky Ferreira⁠ 📸 Image: Swen Pförtner/Picture Alliance via Getty Images

People continue to regularly report having anomalous or paranormal experiences while on psychedelics. ⁠ ⁠ David Luke, a psychologist at Greenwich University, has looked at surveys of those who used psychedelics, finding that the percentage of them who said they experienced psi phenomenon ranges from 18 to 83 percent of people depending on the group. Telepathy was the most common, but precognition, or having knowledge of an event before it happens, was also widely reported. ⁠ ⁠ As psychedelics are researched for mental health conditions, and legal access to these drugs broadens, as it will in Oregon starting next year, it will be important to understand and recognize the intersection of these two topics: psychedelics and paranormal beliefs and experiences. ⁠ ⁠ Whether telepathy—however one wishes to define it—is veridical is something of a separate issue. But if psychedelics can lead to people believing in phenomena like telepathy, and potentially induce experiences that can challenge a person’s worldview—that’s something that people should be well informed about if they seek these drugs out for treatment. ⁠ ⁠ There is some evidence so far that psychedelics can change people’s understanding of the nature of the mind and reality, or their metaphysics. “It’s possible that psychedelics would increase a belief in things like telepathy,” said Jules Evans, a philosopher and writer. “Which is not necessarily the same thing as making lots of people telepathic.”⁠ ⁠ These kinds of shifts are important to study, in part because in psychiatry, it is rare to have people rapidly change their beliefs in an enduring and consistent way, said Sandeep Nayak, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. ⁠ ⁠ People should be prepared for the fact they may have an experience like this that fundamentally challenges their worldview. It could be a positive challenge: “People could think that the world or universe is more interconnected than we ordinarily give it credence for,” Luke said. ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 More at the link in our bio.⁠ 📰 Author: Shayla Love⁠ 📸 Image: Getty Images