bones, books, and brilliant defectors

Friday, July 31, 2026

Odysseus met me wandering among the dead.

1. Fields Medal winner joins OpenAI the same day he wins it
2. AI firms scanning rare books, then destroying them at scale. The secrecy here is telling
3. The devil worm lives 1.3km underground — and it shouldn’t
4. Did Paleolithic hunters specifically target female mammoths?
5. Enslaved women used the peacock flower as an abortifacient — and European naturalists erased it
6. In China, people are selling their faces by the hour for AI training videos