Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies that stood out to me this week, covering everything from silver to scat.First, a story about an ancient Andean tradition that will somehow end with a full-sized replica of a person posthumously made with his own hair. Enjoy the ride!Then: the health risks of climate change for children; youll never guess what came out of this otters butthole; and wow, Vikings sure were good at raiding, huh.The tangled origins of Inka khipusHyland, Sabine et al. Stable isotope evidence for the participation of commoners in Inka khipu production. Science Advances.For thousands of years, Andean peoples have woven intricate patterns, known as khipus, that encode information into clusters of knots and multi-colored threads. Made from cotton, wool, and often human hair, khipus are an idiosyncratic form of writing used for a range of purposes like arithmetic, census-keeping, calendrical cycles, and more.Spanish invaders, who overthrew the Inka empire in the 16th century, reported that only high-ranking bureaucratic men became khipu-makers (khipukamayuqs)though this assertion has been challenged in the past by Indigenous sources.Now, a strand of human hair woven into a 500-year-old khipu has resolved this centuries-old question. Scientists performed an isotopic analysis of the hair, revealing that the individual who wove it into the khipu was likely a low-status commoner with a simple plant-based diet. The discovery confirms that khipus were made by people from different classes and backgrounds, and that Inka women probably made them as well.Khipukamayuqs have been viewed primarily as imperial male elites who played key roles in running the empire, said researchers led by Sabine Hyland of the University of St. Andrews. However, the indigenous chronicler, Guaman Poma de Ayalawho lived in the 16th centurystated that women also made khipu records, explaining that females over fifty [kept] track of everything on their [khipu], the team added.Hyland and her colleagues found a solution to the discordant accounts in a khipu called KH0631, which was made around the year 1498. Though the provenance of the khipu is not known, the primary cord was made of human hair, allowing them to unravel the diet of this ancient khipukamayuq from the elemental composition of their tresses.The primary cord of KH0631. Image: Sabine HylandThe sampled strand was more than three feet long, and would have taken about eight years to grow. Carbon and nitrogen analysis of the hair indicated that it belonged to an individual that ate a plant-based diet consisting primarily of tubers and greens with little consumption of meat or high-status plants such as maize, according to the study. Strontium analysis showed little marine contribution to the diet, indicating that the individual likely lived in the highlands. Overall this diet is a characteristic of low-status commoners, unlike the diet of high-status elites who consumed considerably more meat and maize, the researchers said.The team speculated that this long-haired khipukamayuq could have just been a proto-vegan, but that wouldnt explain why there was so little maize in their diet given elites were professional beer drinkers.Obligatory drinking of maize beer formed a central feature of Inka ceremonies of governance in which high-ranking khipukamayuqs participated, the researchers said. Given the symbolic importance of hair in the Andes, and the frequent use of hair on the primary cord to indicate the khipukamayuq, our results indicate that the creator of KH0631 was likely a non-elite commoner suggesting that khipu literacy in the Inka Empire may have been more inclusive and widespread than hitherto thought.IIn addition to broadening our understanding of khipukamayuq origins, the study is full of amazing insights about veneration of hair in Inka culture.Hair in the ancient Andes was a ritually powerful substance that represented the individual from whom it came, the researchers said. Historically, when human hair was incorporated into a khipus primary cord, it served as a signature to indicate the person who created the khipu.For important ceremonies, the Inka emperor sacrificed his own hair, they added. His hair clippings were saved during his lifetime; after death, they were fashioned into a life-size simulacrum revered as the emperor himself.I strongly suggest we revive this funerary practice, so start saving your hair clippings for your wake.In other newsThe kids are not going to be alrightReichelt, Paula et al. Climate change and child health: The growing burden of climate-related adverse health outcomes. Environmental Research.The climate crisis is a tragedy for people of all ages, but kids are among the most exposed to harm. A new study provided an exhaustive review of climate-related threats to babies, children, and adolescents, which include: food insecurity, malnutrition, water scarcity, bad air quality, infectious diseases, exposure to extreme weather, displacement, trauma, and mental illness.Children are particularly affected by adverse environmental influences, as their immature organ systems are less able to cope with thermal stress and disease, said researchers led by Paula Reichelt of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. Moreover, their developmental stage makes them especially vulnerable to long-term consequences; early-life nutrient or health disruptions can lead to permanent impairments in growth and development.A visual summary of climate-related threats to children. Image: Reichelt, Paula et al.Due to the relatively modest global efforts by political decision-makers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, further global warming and the associated negative developments in child and adolescent health are likely, the team concluded.Relatively modest is doing a lot of work in that sentence. While I recognize the allure of doomerism or tuning out from these horrible realities, I recommend carrying around a manageable dose of incandescent rage at all times over the world were leaving behind to kids who had nothing to do with this mess.Parasite lost (in otter poop)Wise, Calli et al. North American river otters consume diverse prey and parasites in a subestuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Frontiers in Mammal Science.You have to love a study that was inspired by an otter crapping out a weird red worm on a dock in the Chesapeake Bay. Curious about the poopy parasite, researchers sought out other otter latrines and discovered that these furry floaters eat a lot of parasites, probably because infected prey is often easier to catch. In this way, otters efficiently remove parasites from ecosystems; it may be a bummer for any infected prey on the otter menu, but is beneficial to the wider population.This study is the first to characterize river otter latrines and diet in a tidally influenced estuarine habitat within the Chesapeake Bay, said researchers led by Calli Wise of Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.Our results indicate that river otters consume a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic fauna, primarily consisting of finfish and crustaceans, but also including frogs and ducks, the team said. Multiple parasite species were identified, including parasites of river otters and those infecting prey, indicating that parasites likely play an important role in both prey availability and otter health.Tl;dr: Otters are parasite vacuums. Yet another reason to love these cuddly creatures and forgive their more unsavory attributes.Some Viking booty, as a treatKershaw, Jane et al. The Provenance of Silver in the Viking-Age Hoard From Bedale, North Yorkshire. Archaeometry.Well end, as all things ideally should, with treasure. A new study tracks down the likely origins of a hoard of gold and silver itemsincluding a sword pommel, jewelry, and several ingotsthat were stashed by Vikings in the English town of Bedale, North Yorkshire, more than 1,200 years ago.The Bedale Hoard. Image: York Museums TrustVikings are well-known for their epic raids (source: Assassins Creed: Valhalla) and this particular hoard included far-flung loot sourced from across Europe and the Middle East.The results indicate a dominant contribution of western European silver, pointing to the fate of loot seized by the Vikings during their raids on the Continent in the ninth century, said researchers led by Jane Kershaw of the University of Oxford. Nonetheless, Islamic silver is also present in several large ingots: silver from the eastthe product of long-distance trade networks connecting Scandinavia with the Islamic Caliphatepermeated Viking wealth sources even in the western part of the Viking overseas settlement and should be seen as a significant driver of the Viking phenomenon.The Vikings were not only extracting wealth locally; they were also bringing it into England via long-distance trade networks, the team concluded.With that Viking spirit in mindskl, and see you next week.

Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. For more than a million years, early humans crafted stone tools as part of the Oldowan tradition, which is the oldest sustained tool-making industry in the archaeological record. Now, scientists have discovered that Oldowan tool-makers who lived in Kenya at least 2.6 million years ago transported high-quality raw materials for tools across more than seven miles to processing sites.The find pushes the recorded timeline of this unique behavior back half-a-million years, at minimum, and reveals that hominins possessed complex cognitive capacities, like forward planning and delayed rewards, earlier than previously known, according to a study published on Friday in Science.Hominins at this site, called Nyayanga, used their tools to pound and cut foraged plants and scavenged animals, including hippos, to prepare them for consumption. Intriguingly, the identity of the tool-makers remains unknown, and while they may have been early humans, its also possible that they could have been close cousins of our own Homo lineage.I've always thought that early tool-makers must have had more capabilities than we sometimes give them credit for, said Emma Finestone, associate curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the study, in a call with 404 Media.I was excited to see that at 2.6 million years ago, hominins were making use of many different resources and moving stones over large distances, she added.While many animals craft and transport tools, hominins are unique in their ability to identify and move special materials across long distances, which the team defines as more than three kilometers (or 1.86 miles). This innovation reveals a capacity for forward planning, complex mental maps, and delayed payoff of food consumption.What's unique is the amount of effort put into moving resources around a landscape, said Finestone. There's several steps involved, and there's also time in between these efforts and the reward. Although you see that to some extent in other animals, humans really separate themselves, especially as we get further and further in evolutionary time, in terms of the complexities of our foraging system."Nyayanga amphitheater in July 2025. Image: T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology ProjectPreviously, the earliest record of this behavior in hominins came from a site called Kanjera South, which is about two million years old. Both sites are on the Homa peninsula, a region dominated by soft rocks that are not durable as tools; this may have prompted early hominins to search elsewhere for high-quality resources, such as quartz, chert, and granite.Given that long-distance material transport was present at Kanjera South, the discovery of similar behavior at Nyayanga was not completely unexpectedthough Finestone and her colleagues were still surprised by the scope and variety of materials these hominins gathered.Often, when you're dealing with these really old archeological assemblages, it's dominated by one type of raw material that's coming from a single source, or a few sources that are really nearby, said Finestone. Nyayanga has a lot of different raw materials, and they're using a variety of different sources, so that was surprising and exciting to us.Finestone and her colleagues have made many discoveries during their decade-long excavation at Nyayanga. The team previously reported that the tool-makers butchered hippopotamus carcasses which were probably scavenged rather than hunted, providing the earliest evidence of hominin consumption of large animals, according to a 2023 study led by Thomas Plummer, a professor of anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York.That study also reported fossils from Paranthropus, a close hominin cousin of our own Homo genus, which went extinct more than a million years ago. So far, these are the only hominin remains recovered from Nyayanga, raising the possibility that the Oldowan tool-making industry was not limited to our own human lineage.It is interesting because Paranthropus is not traditionally thought to be a tool-user, Finestone said. There's debate over whether Paranthropus made tools or whether it was only genus Homo that was making Oldowan tools. I don't think that evidence at Nyayanga is definitive that Paranthropus was the tool maker. It's still an open question. But because we found Paranthropus remains at Nyayanga, and we haven't found anything from genus Homoat least yetthere's definitely reason to consider that Paranthropus might have been manufacturing these tools.With luck, the team may uncover more fossils from these ancient hominins that could shed light on their place in the family. Finestone and her colleagues are also working on constraining the age of the Nyayanga artifacts, which could be anywhere from 2.6 million to three million years old.But for now, the study marks a new milestone in the evolution of Oldowan tools and their makers, which eventually dispersed across Africa and into Europe and Asia before they were succeeded by new traditions (like the one from our story last week about yet another group of ancient tool-makers with an unknown identity).The stones once used to butcher hippos and pound tubers offer a window into the minds of bygone hominins that pioneered technologies that ultimately made humans who we are today.What's really interesting about humans and their ancestors is we're a technologically dependent species, Finestone said. We rely on tools. We're obligate tool users. We don't do it opportunistically or occasionally the way that a lot of other animals use tools. It's really become ingrained in our way of life, in our survival, and our foraging strategies across all people and all cultures.What was exciting about this study is that you see this investment in tool technology, and you see tools becoming ingrained in the landscape-scale behaviors of hominins 2.6 million years ago, she concluded. We might be seeing the roots of this importance that technology plays in our foraging behaviors and also just the daily rhythms of our life.Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss OSINT for chat groups, Russell Crowe films, and storage problems.JOSEPH: On Wednesday we recorded a subscribers podcast about the second anniversary of 404 Media. That should hit your feeds next week or so. Towards the end of recording, I went silent for a bit. I said on air sorry about that, a source just sent me an insane tip, or something like that.That tip led to ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat, Exposes Details of Manhunt in Real-Time. Definitely read the piece if you havent already. It presented an interesting verification challenge. Essentially I was given these screenshots which included phone numbers but I didnt know exactly who was behind each one. I didnt know their names, nor their agencies. It sure looked like a conversation involving ICE though, because it included a Field Operations Worksheet covered in ICE branding. But I needed to know who was involved. I didnt think DHS or ICE would help because they are taking multiple days to reply to media requests if they do at all at the moment. So I had to do something else.

A team of researchers at Columbia University, funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have developed machines that can grow by consuming other machines.Video of the experiment shows tubular robots that move by extending their shafts to inch along the ground. As the tubes gather, they connect and form into more complex shapes like triangles and tetrahedrons. With each piece consumed, the whole moves faster and with more elegance.AI systems need bodies to move beyond current limitations. Physical embodiment brings the AI into the messy, constraint-rich real worldand thats where true generalization has to happen, Phillipe Martin Wyder, lead researcher on the project, told 404 Media.The researchers said the experiment was done with a view towards developing a body for AI. The idea is to give artificial intelligence a form that can grow, heal, and change similar to a biological body. They published their research in Science Advances under the title Robot metabolism: Toward machines that can grow by consuming other machines.For the experiment, the researchers designed what they called truss links: a simple, expandable, and contractible, bar-shaped robot module with two free-form magnetic connectors on each end. Each truss link is almost a foot long when fully contracted and weighs more than half a pound. When the Links move individually they look like plastic worms inching across the ground, but their motion becomes more fluid and interesting as they gather to each other, forming complex shapes that allow them to move faster.Right now, the truss links are controlled by a human on a keyboard and not artificial intelligence. Its not AI-controlled yet, but thats partially the point: this architecture is a step towards future AI-controlled self-assembling physical systems, Wyder said.Wyder and his team controlled the truss links remotely and ran the robots through several obstacle courses. Some of the motions of the machines were preprogrammed with specially designed loops with names like ratchet crawl and tetrahedron topple that the researchers could activate with the push of a button. Theres no autonomous AI running in the loop yet, but thats the direction were heading, he said.Image via Columbia University.Wyder said that giving AI a body was in its very early stages. Miniaturization is also on the tablemore links, smaller size, finer resolution, he said. But I dont believe a single platform will suit every task. Deep-sea robots, Mars colony builders, assistive home systemstheyll need different form factors. The deeper idea here is the metabolic principle, not just the physical design.Human consciousness happens at the point where the mind and body interact. A person is not just the thoughts in their head, but also how they react to their environment with their body. All that stimuli shapes our thoughts. Wyder and his team are seeking to, eventually, recreate this phenomenon for AI. The research is exciting, but its also very new and theres no way to know how itll play out in the long term.This need not be a world where AIs are stuck in human-like bodies. He pointed to previous research out of Sweden that used a swarm of robots to form furniture on demand. If such a system were to break, we should not expect the average person to be able to replace the part. But what if the system could order a replacement part and repair itself?For this vision to become a reality, we must build robot systems that are intelligent in a way that allows them to keep track of their changing morphology, Wyder said. When the idea of modular robots first surfaced in the late 80s this was unthinkable, but I believe that our recent progress in machine learning could allow for intelligent, modular self-assembling machines.He also acknowledged there are dangers here. With our current robots, the worst-case risk is probably a pinched finger. But yes, autonomy plus embodiment demands careful consideration of all the risks. Most robots today still struggle with navigation and manipulation. Theyre far from being autonomous agents in the wild, but rather need our care, he said.Wyder also said that he doesnt consider the ethics of this work as an optional part of the research. Malicious use of robotics is a broader concern and not unique to this platform. Like any powerful technologynuclear, biotech, AIgovernance matters, he said. I dont think this class of robot poses near-term risks, but that doesnt mean ethical foresight is optional. We have to think about it so we can get it right.The researchers will build on this work and that one direction is teaching robots how to exploit environmental factors. Imagine a climber choosing which rocks to grabrobots need that same affordance awareness, he said. Were working on how robots can reason about their environment and use it to drive reconfiguration or mobility.Along with the paper, the researchers have a GitHub and Zenodo that contain the CAD and mesh files, firmware, software, and simulation code for the truss links. Anyone, if they so desired, could build their own bundle of robot-devouring-robots.

The Trump administration has busied itself in the past six months by abandoning prosecutions and investigations into corporations at an unprecedented rate. According to a new report from Public Citizena nonprofit government watchdogthe Trump administration has dropped one third of all pending enforcement actions against tech companies. Those same companies collectively spent $1.2 billion on political contributions since 2024, most of it going to Republicans. Some of it went to Trump directly.According to the report, Trumps White House has withdrawn or halted enforcement actions against 165 different companies, a quarter of those are tech firms. The administration halted nine of the investigations outright, including a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) investigation into Metas alleged misuse of customer financial data. It dismissed or withdrew an additional 38 enforcement actions against big tech, including 13 charges against the crypto exchange Binance for operating as an unlicensed securities exchange.Everyone with eyes knows that Big Tech has gotten cozy with Trump during his second administration. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos were at his inauguration. Elon Musk spent millions to help Trump get elected and Trump rewarded him by giving him direct control of much of the government by allowing him to spearhead DOGE.In a way I think the cumulative picture is the most shocking thing, because it reveals a clear pattern of these corporations going to great lengths to both ingratiate themselves with and enmesh themselves within the administration, and Trumps agencies rewarding those corporations by treating them as if the laws do not apply to them, Rick Claypool, a research director at Public Citizens Presidents Office and the author of the report, told 404 Media.Musk has been one of the big winners. The Department of Labor halted an investigation into Tesla and the Department of Justice dismissed a civil rights case against SpaceX. All it cost him was an estimated $352 million in political spending.Claypool said that corporate enforcement plummeted during the first administration, and he knew it would happen again during the second term. But this massive retreat from enforcement and dropping categories of cases involving corporate misconduct is something Ive never seen before, he said. Many of these cases being dropped now originated in the first Trump administration. They were, correctly in my view, pursuing crypto scams.One of the more shocking cases involved crypto billionaire Justin Sun. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Sun for manipulating the market in 2023. After Trumps election, he purchased $75 million worth of tokens from Trumps crypto currency company as well as $18.6 million of $TRUMP meme coins. After the inauguration, the SEC sent a letter to the Federal Judge overseeing the case asking for a stay. The Judge granted it.For Claypool, the signal dropping enforcement against Big Tech sends to the public (and more importantly to corporations) is simple. Its not illegal if a tech company does it, he said, paraphrasing President Richard Nixons famous off-the-cuff remark about his crimes during the Frost/ Nixon interviews.The big winners are instances when the industry wins policy that serves as pretext for a retreat from whole categories of enforcement, he said. This is crypto corporations winning the total retreat of the SEC, fintech corporations winning the near-complete shutdown of the CFPB, andcoming soonthe retreat from FTC enforcement against AI corporations signaled in the admins AI Action Plan.Claypool said that this kind of massive retreat from corporate enforcement will have long term effects on society. It distorts the incentives. It gives companies that are willing to risk pushing the limits of the law an unfair advantage over law abiding companies, he said. Members of the public are so much more at risk of falling prey to a whole range of scams, privacy invasions, and manipulations. At a societal level, it puts us at much greater risk for the next corporate catastrophe.The years leading up to the 2008 Financial Crisis coincided with an unprecedented increase in what Claypool called questionably legal so-called innovations such as credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations on subprime mortgages.Were seeing a similar kind of innovation happen in the tech space where billionaires use crypto and AI to spin value out of thin air and curry favor with the Trump administration to avoid the consequences of hurting normal people. Its only a matter of time before something terrible, on a grand scale, happens again.In many ways, whats happening now is the culmination of years of lax enforcement against corporate lawbreakers. Democratic and Republican administrations for decades have been far too open to striking deals with corporate offenders to help them avoid the full consequences of accountability, Claypool said. So now we have this class of corporations and executives that believes it is entitled to escape the consequences of their misconduct. They dont believe the laws should protect consumers and the public, and they dont seem to mind risking widespread harms and violations if it means they might grab another billion. And the apparently corrupt way its going now, with dropped enforcement seeming to be a reward for insiders and donors, risks leading to a full retreat from federal authority to protect the public from corporate lawbreaking.

Members of a law enforcement group chat including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies inadvertently added a random person to the group called Mass Text where they exposed highly sensitive information about an active search for a convicted attempted murderer seemingly marked for deportation, 404 Media has learned.The texts included an unredacted ICE Field Operations Worksheet that includes detailed information about the target they were looking for, and the texts showed ICE pulling data from a DMV and license plate readers (LPRs), according to screenshots of the chat obtained and verified by 404 Media. The person accidentally added to the group chat is not a law enforcement official or associated with the investigation in any way, and said they were added to it weeks ago and initially thought it was a series of spam messages.The incident is a significant data breach and operational security failure for ICE, which has ramped up arrest efforts across the U.S. as part of the Trump administrations mass deportation efforts. The breach also has startling similarities to so-called Signal Gate, in which a senior administration official added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a group chat that contained likely classified information. These new ICE messages were MMS, or Multimedia Messaging Service messages, meaning they werent end-to-end encrypted, like texts sent over Signal or WhatsApp are.

August2025. The new limited edition 4K Blu-ray of the 2005 film Master and Commander has sold out everywhere. Secondary markets are now battlefields.There are two kinds of people in this world: those who read the above sentences and feel an intense pain and yearning for comradery and combat on the high seas, and those who have never seen Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.Copies of the new 4K release of the film are now selling on eBay for roughly double its MSRP, proof that physical media is not dead.Released in 2005, Master and Commander is a war movie set in the Napoleonic period that focuses on the relationship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and ships surgeon Stephen Maturin, played by Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany respectively. The film, which is based on a 20-book-long novel series of the same name, grossed $212 million on a $150 million budget but didnt become a runaway hit at the time.But in the two decades since it first hit screens, Master and Commander has grown in esteem, especially in American national security circles. Its a cult favorite. The occasional live screenings at revival theaters routinely sell out, memes involving the films opening text are ubiquitous, and it often lands on lists of the the best movies of the 2000s. In the middle of July, a joint venture of Sony and Disney studios announced it would publish a high quality 4K UltraHD limited edition steelbook Blu-ray to be released in August. Fans went nuts.This would be the highest quality home release of the beloved film ever seen. Fans tracked pre-orders as they went live on Amazon, Wal-Mart, and other retailers. It sold out in days, and has done so consistently every time its been restocked. Master and Commander heads are so hungry for 4K Crowe that theyre now paying double and triple the asking price for the steelbook copy on eBay and several notable people have posted about how they cant find a copy.totally missed that there was a new master and commander 4K out and naturally it is completely out of stock jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) 2025-08-13T20:04:19.823ZIts rare in 2025 that the physical release of a 20 year old film is met with such fervor. Delight is especially high among members of Americas military community. Soldiers, officers, journalists, and the extremely online NatSec weirdos love Master and Commander. Like Star Wars, the movie has become a lingua franca in U.S. military circles where its a source of memes and concepts that drives discussion.There's no doubt that Master and Commander is beloved within the national security community. What's harder to explain is why, Robert Farley, a senior lecturer at the University of Kentucky, told 404 Media. Farley said he just rewatched the movie two weeks ago after forcing a friend to watch whod never seen it.If I had to hazard a guess, it's because the movie depicts the tight functioning of a community of warfighters, a community that is mostly comfortable with itselfand yet is deeply grounded in English social structure, Farley said. As in any well-functioning military, everyone has a place to be and a job to do. Jack Aubrey isnt so much brilliant as lucky, which adds to the workmanlike aspect. I'd say that there's a male bonding aspect to it (I don't believe any female character has even a single line), but I know plenty of women in the NatSec space who will quote Oceans are battlefields in everyday conversation.Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a former military ethics professor at the U.S. Naval War College, told 404 Media that shed used Master and Commander in her classes as a way to teach Aristotles three kinds of friendship and, separately, the Ethics of Care. I think its really about the friendship between the Captain and doctor, as well as a portrayal of leadership and comradeship that is still masculine and strong, but not brutal and gratuitous, she said.When reached for comment about the film, Remap Radios Robert Zacnyfamously a fan of the filmwas actively debating paying $140 for a copy of the 4K steelbook. 404 Media informed Zacny that eBay had listings for half that price and asked the Remap founder for his thoughts on the movie and its enduring legacy.There's a moment in the film where Aubrey snaps at Maturin about the things that hold together their little wooden world. Master and Commander is a war movie where the entire concerns of the world are reduced to the interior or a single ship. But it's also a character study about the worlds held within and between individuals. The roles people have to inhabit and the things they have to do in service to duty, the state, to ethics, to morality.Yet this movie is also backdropped by the vastness and wonder of nature, of time considered on an evolutionary scale and the awareness that beyond that bubble of consciousness awaits eternity in the darkness of the sea. The oft-memed opening text is deceptive. It doesn't really matter that Napoleon is the master of Europe. The concept of a battlefield is meaningless to the ocean. The movie is about men waging battles inside themselves to reconcile their own contradictions and choose their own meaning. It's immaculately directed, acted, and scored, but so are a lot of movies. This one endures because it's always offering a berth on this voyage of introspection, and it's so much fun you don't even mind how insistently it reminds you to think about mortality.His thoughts exhausted, Remaps founder pressed 404 Media for information. Now link me some of these good deals on steelbooks, he said. I am gonna be buried with one.

The Department of Energy (DOE) said in a public notice scheduled to be published Thursday that it will throw out all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to the agency before October 1, 2024 unless the requester proactively emails the agency to tell it they are still interested in the documents they requested. This will result in the improper closure of likely thousands of FOIA requests if not more; government transparency experts told 404 Media that the move is insane, ludicrous, a Pandoras Box, and an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible.The DOE notice says requesters who submitted a FOIA request to DOE HQ at any time prior to October 1, 2024 (FY25), that is still open and is not under active litigation with DOE (or another Federal agency) shall email StillInterestedFOIA@hq.doe.gov to continue processing of the FOIA request [] If DOE HQ does not receive a response from requesters within the 30-day time-period with a DOE control number, no further action will be taken on the open FOIA request(s), and the file may be administratively closed. A note at the top of the notice says it is scheduled to be formally published in the Federal Register on Thursday.The agency will send out what are known as still interested letters, which federal agencies have used over the years to see if a requester wants to withdraw their request after a certain period of inactivity. These types of letters are controversial and perhaps not legal, and previous administrations have said that they should be used rarely and that requests should only be closed after an agency made multiple attempts to contact a requester over multiple methods of communication. What the DOE is doing now is sending these letters to submitters of all requests prior to October 1, 2024, which is not really that long ago; it also said it will close the requests of people who do not respond in a specific way to a specific email address.FOIA requestsespecially complicated onescan often take months or years to process. I have outstanding FOIA requests with numerous federal agencies that I filed years ago, and am still interested in getting back, and I have gotten useful documents from federal agencies after years of waiting. The notion that large numbers of people who filed FOIA requests as recently as September 2024, which is less than a year ago, are suddenly uninterested in getting the documents they requested is absurd and should be seen as an attack on public transparency, experts told 404 Media. The DOEs own reports show that it often does not respond to FOIA requests within a year, and, of course, a backlog exists in part because agencies are not terribly responsive to FOIA.If a requester proactively reaches out and says I am withdrawing my request, then no problem, they dont have to process it, Adam Marshall, senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told me. The agency cant say weve decided weve gotten a lot of requests and we dont want to do them so were throwing them out.I was pretty shocked when I saw this to be honest, Marshall added. Ive never seen anything like this in 10 years of doing FOIA work, and its egregious for a few reasons. I dont think agencies have the authority to close a FOIA request if they dont get a response to a still interested letter. The statute doesnt provide for that authority, and the amount of time the agency is giving people to respond30 daysit sounds like a long time but if you happen to miss that email or arent digging through your backlogs, its not a lot of time. The notion that FOIA requesters should keep an eye out in the Federal Register for this kind of notice is ludicrous.The DOE notice essentially claims that the agency believes it gets too many FOIA requests and doesnt feel like answering them. DOEs incoming FOIA requests have more than tripled in the past four years, with over 4,000 requests received in FY24, and an expected 5,000 or more requests in FY25. DOE has limited resources to process the burgeoning number of FOIA requests, the notice says. Therefore, DOE is undertaking this endeavor as an attempt to free up government resources to better serve the American people and focus its efforts on more efficiently connecting the citizenry with the work of its government.Lauren Harper of the Freedom of the Press Institute told me in an email that she also has not seen any sort of precedent for this and that it is an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible, because who in their right mind checks the federal register regularly, and it should be challenged in court. (On that note, I am filing a FOIA request about this proposal.)The use of still interested letters isn't explicitly allowed in the FOIA statute at all, and, as far as I know, there is absolutely zero case law that would support the department sending a mass still interested letter via the federal register, she added. That they are also sending emails is not a saving grace; these types of letters are supposed to be used sparinglynot as a flagrant attempt to reduce their backlog by any means necessary. I also worry it will open a Pandora's Boxif other agencies see this, some are sure to follow.Marshall said that FOIA response times have been getting worse for years across multiple administrations (which has also been my experience). The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have cut a large number of jobs in many agencies across the government, which may have further degraded response times. But until this, there hadnt been major proactive attempts taken by the self-defined most transparent administration in history to destroy FOIA.This is of a different nature than what we have seen so far, this affirmative, large-scale effort to purport to cancel a large number of pending FOIA requests, Marshall said.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) propaganda video that featured Jay-Zs music was hit with a copyright takedown request on X, and appears to have been hit with copyright violations on both Instagram and Facebook as well.The video features footage of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents training and doing immigration raids set to Jay-Zs 2003 song Public Service Announcement, which has recently been used in at least two DHS videos. DHS tweeted the video alongside the caption Hunt Cartels. Save America. JOIN.ICE.GOV. The original tweet, from August 10, has 2.9 million views on X; the video has been replaced with the message This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.DHS also posted the video on Instagram and Facebook. On both platforms, the video has stayed up but Jay-Zs music has been removed, suggesting that it got hit with a copyright notice on those platforms too. On Instagram, where it has nearly a million views, a message that says This audio is no longer available plays if you try to unmute the video. The sound on the video has been removed on Facebook as well, but a quirk of the platform allowed me to check what the removed audio was by clicking the name of the sound in the bottom left corner of the Reel, which showed it was indeed Jay-Zs Public Service Announcement. A Facebook user ripped and reposted the video, which still has the sound, and can be found here at the time of publication.Neither Meta nor X responded to a request for comment. The Recording Industry Association of America, which files a huge number of copyright takedown requests across the internet for major artists, declined to comment to 404 Media. DHS also did not respond to a request for comment. Jay-Zs Roc Nation also did not respond to a request for comment.In recent weeks, DHS officials and agents have heavily ratcheted up the number of videos they post to social media. Many of the videos are heavily edited sizzle reels from immigration raids set to rap music or songs like the Bad Boys theme and Johnny Cashs Gods Gonna Cut You Down.The footage is being used to recruit new ICE agents and to promote the cruelty of Trumps immigration raids; a video posted by chief border patrol agent Gregory Bovino features Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass warning about the overreach of the federal government in LA and includes a remixed version of Public Service Announcement over first-person footage of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents doing an immigration raid Thursday at a Home Depot in Los Angeles. That particular raid may have violated a court injunction, experts have argued.The Call of Duty aesthetic is sickening, Chris Gilliard, co-director of The Critical Internet Studies Institute and author of the forthcoming book Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media.404 Media reported last week that CBP agents have been wearing Metas AI camera glasses to at least two recent immigration raids in Los Angeles (it is unclear what cameras were used to film the footage used in either of the videos featuring Jay-Z music).CBP utilize Go Pros mounted to helmets or body armor at times, as well as traditional DSLR handheld cameras, a CBP spokesperson told 404 Media when we asked about its agents wearing Meta AI glasses. The spokesperson added CBP does not have an arrangement with Meta. The use of personal recording devices is not authorized. However, Border Patrol agents may wear personally purchased sunglasses.DHS has also allowed Fox News reporters to embed with and film agents on raids, and footage from these raids shows DHS agents with DSLR cameras running alongside each other to capture footage. It is clearly important to this administration to capture and widely publicize this footage, which often emphasizes agents grabbing people who are running away from them.The copyright takedown is notable because it shows DHS is not getting permission from artists to use their music in these propaganda videos, which are being used to recruit ICE agents in the immediate aftermath of a huge funding increase. As we reported earlier this month, ICE is trying to do a social media advertising blitz with part of this new funding, and is looking to plaster ads on social media, TV, and streaming sites. Despite this cash injection, early reports suggest that ICE is having trouble finding people to work for it.

Last month, age verification laws went into effect in Wyoming and South Dakota, requiring sites hosting material that is harmful to minors to verify visitors are over 18 years old. These would normally just be two more states joining the nearly 30 that have so far ceded ground to a years-long campaign for enforcing invasive, ineffective methods of keeping kids away from porn online.But these two states laws leave out an important condition: Unlike the laws passed in other states, they dont state that this applies only to sites with 33.3 percent or one-third harmful material. That could mean Wyoming and South Dakota would require a huge number of sites to use age verification because they host any material they deem harmful to minors, not just porn sites.Louisiana became the first state to pass an age verification law in the US in January 2023, and since then, most states have either copied or modeled their laws on Louisianasincluding in Arizona, Missouri, and Ohio, where these laws will be enacted within the coming weeks. And most have included the one-third clause, which would theoretically limit the age verification burden to adult sites. But dropping that provision, as Wyoming and South Dakota have done, opens a huge swath of sites to the burden of verifying the ages of visitors in those states.Louisianas law states:Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall be held liable if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.A substantial portion is 33.3 percent or more material on a site thats harmful to minors, the law says.The same organizations that have lobbied for age verification laws that apply to porn sites have also spent years targeting social media platforms like Reddit and X, as well as streaming services like Netflix, for hosting adult content they deem sexploitation. While these sites and platforms do host adult content, age-gating the entire internet only pushes adult consumers and children alike into less-regulated, more exploitative spaces and situations, while everyone just uses VPNs to get around gates.Florida Sues Huge Porn Sites Including XVideos and Bang Bros Over Age Verification LawThe lawsuit alleges XVideos, Bang Bros, XNXX, Girls Gone Wild and TrafficFactory are in violation of Floridas law that requires adult platforms to verify visitors are over 18.404 MediaSamantha ColeAdult industry advocacy group the Free Speech Coalition issued an alert about Wyoming and South Dakotas dropping of the one-third or substantial requirement on Tuesday, writing that this could create civil and criminal liability for social media platforms such as X, Reddit and Discord, retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, streaming platforms such as Netflix and Rumble, and any other platform that simply allowed material these states consider harmful to minors but doesnt age-verify. Under these new laws, a platform with any amount of material harmful to minors, is required to verify the age of all visitors using the site. Operators of platforms that fail to do so may be subject to civil suits or even arrest, they wrote.Kansas Is About to Pass the Most Extreme Age Verification Law YetThe bill would make sites with more than 25 percent adult content liable to fines, and lumps homosexuality into sexual conduct.404 MediaSamantha ColeA version of what could be the future of the internet in the US is already playing out in the UK. Last month, the UK enacted the Online Safety Act, which forces platforms to verify the ages of everyone who tries to access certain kinds of content deemed harmful to children. So far, this has included (but isnt limited to) Discord, popular communities on Reddit, social media sites like Bluesky, and certain content on Spotify.On Monday, a judge dismissed a case brought by the Wikimedia Foundation that argued the over-broadness of the new UK rules would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedias volunteer contributors, expose the encyclopedia to manipulation and vandalism, and divert essential resources from protecting people and improving Wikipedia, one of the worlds most trusted and widely used digital public goods, Wikimedia Foundation wrote. For example, the Foundation would be required to verify the identity of many Wikipedia contributors, undermining the privacy that is central to keeping Wikipedia volunteers safe."As we're seeing in the UK with the Online Safety Act, laws designed to protect the children from harmful material online quickly metastasize and begin capturing nearly all users and all sites in surveillance and censorship schemes, Mike Stabile, director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition, told me in an email following the alert. These laws give the government legal power to threaten platform owners into censoring or removing fairly innocuous content healthcare information, mainstream films, memes, political speech while decimating privacy protections for adults. Porn was only ever a Trojan horse for advancing these laws. Now, unfortunately, we're starting to see what we warned was inside all along."