Wild Feed

"German-born political cartoonist Thomas Nast gave America some of its most enduring symbols: the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and Uncle Sam. Publishing regularly in Harper's Weekly, the celebrated Nast drew thousands of cartoons during the second half of the nineteenth century."

"Every product sells itself with a story. The story Ford tells us is that its cars are America.

Ford has described itself as the most American automaker. They make their cars in America, and have since Henry Ford developed the automobile assembly line and used it to build the Model T in 1913. So American is it that the Japanese prime minister recently parked a Ford F-150 truck outside the venue for her meeting with President Donald Trump in an attempt to curry favor. (“That’s a hot truck,” Trump said.)

So effective and evocative is Ford’s myth-making that it has even influenced the narratives of economic policy. Part of the subtext of Trump’s tariffs is that they were going to bring back the America of Ford’s glory days, the one where strapping blue-collar men worked good factory jobs and could provide for their families. (Ford CEO Jim Farley has said the tariffs will actually drive up Ford costs.)"

It’s no secret that we live in a sleep-deprived society. More than a third of Americans don’t get enough shuteye, defined as a minimum of seven hours a night. It’s not just the U.S.: much of the developed world is in a similar situation. “Sleep deprivation abounds,” says Eva Winnebeck, a chronobiologist at the University of Surrey in the U.K. “People do struggle to get up. Alarm clock use is high, lack of sleep is high.” (A rule of thumb: If you need an alarm clock to wake up, it probably means you aren’t sleeping enough.)

A mayor in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán was shot dead in a plaza in front of dozens of people who had gathered for Day of the Dead festivities, authorities have said.

The mayor of the Uruapan municipality, Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez, was gunned down Saturday night in the town’s historic centre. He was rushed to a hospital where he later died, according to state prosecutor Carlos Torres Piña.

A city council member and a body

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are worse at retrieving accurate information and reasoning when trained on large amounts of low-quality content, particularly if the content is popular on social media1, finds a preprint posted on arXiv on 15 October.

In data science, good-quality data need to meet certain criteria, such as being grammatically correct and understandable, says co-author Zhangyang Wang, who studies generative AI at the University of Texas at Austin. But these criteria fail to capture differences in content quality, he says.

For centuries, something beneath Seneca Lake in upstate New York has been making a very loud, very disturbing noise. Locals called it the “Seneca Guns,” a cannon-like boom that erupted without warning and rolled across the water like distant thunder. The Seneca people once said it was the voice of an angry spirit. Early settlers blamed ghostly soldiers still fighting the Revolution. James Fenimore Cooper turned it into myth in his 1850 story The Lake Guns. Every few years, the lake would roar again, then fall silent, as if taunting anyone who tried to explain it.

Researchers don’t know exactly how psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in psychedelic mushrooms, evolved. Now, a new study adds to the mystery: Its findings reveal that two different groups of fungi came up with independent ways to produce the seemingly magical molecule.

In a paper published September 21 in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, scientists analyzed the genes and proteins used by Psilocybe and Inocybe mushrooms to make psilocybin. To their surprise, they found that the two genera of mushrooms produce the compound using completely different pathways.

When a life-size skeleton dressed like the Grim Reaper first appeared on a street altar in Tepito, Mexico City, in 2001, many passersby instinctively crossed themselves. The figure was La Santa Muerte – or Holy Death – a female folk saint cloaked in mystery and controversy that had previously been known, if at all, as a figure of domestic devotion: someone they might address a prayer to, but in the privacy of their home.

She personifies death itself and is often depicted holding a scythe or globe. And since the early 2000s, her popularity has steadily spread across Mexico and the Americas, Europe and beyond.

The Eastern hellbender (Cryptobranchus a. alleganiensis) isn’t nearly as fearsome as its name implies. They’re actually somewhat cute, if you can get past the salamander’s slimy, mucousy skin that’s earned it such nicknames, such as “snot otter” and “lasagna lizard.”

Although hellbenders can grow up to two feet long, the amphibians are notoriously elusive and prefer to reside under large, flat rocks in well-oxygenated waterways that snake through Appalachia and the Ohio River basin. They are also increasingly difficult to spot, because their numbers are declining due to ecological issues. Based on a recent environmental study encompassing 90 sites across 73 rivers, researchers at the University of Kentucky now believe that they have identified one of the hellraiser’s main problems. They are losing their habitats to increasingly murky, sediment-filled waters, according to a study published in the journal Freshwater Biology.

Whether you were introduced to Edgar Allan Poe through a literature class or the 1990 “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons, the chilling feeling that runs down your spine while reading his work is universal. His short stories and poems focused on themes of grief, madness, and terror in Gothic settings.

Over the years, many have adapted Poe’s works into films and TV shows. This can be tricky for some, as creating a full-length movie from a short story means expanding on Poe’s ideas. Critics and fans have certain expectations from a story adapted from Poe, and the expansion can be brilliant or disastrous. Here are nine adaptations that succeeded in expanding Poe’s stories to be the Gothic horrors they were meant to be.

For ten years, the latest interviewee on Informer—our series amplifying the voices of insiders and whistleblowers—consulted as a health and safety officer for the petroleum giant Shell, dealing with the psychological fallout of its voracious global expansion.

Their job was to listen to thousands of oil and gas workers airing their concerns about the professional hazards and mental and physical toll of working on the frontlines for a company like Shell. Some days, the job meant hearing from contracted workers in the Global South complaining that they hadn’t been paid. Other times, it would be counseling those driven into a state of extreme mental disrepair by allegedly working 31 days straight to keep the pipeline running.

Hundreds of U.S. air traffic controllers have taken second jobs after missing their first full paychecks due to the government shutdown, intensifying strain on an already stretched aviation safety system, a union official said. Air traffic controllers and trainees are taking side hustles like waiting tables, delivering food for DoorDash, driving for Uber, grocery shopping for Instacart and signing up as weekend tutors to make ends meet as the shutdown enters its 28th day.

Some more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_controller

In the US the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates the hours that an air traffic controller may work: controllers may not work more than 10 straight hours during a shift, which includes required breaks, and must have 9 hours of rest before their next shift.

Bigfoot and the Chupacabra are legendary cryptid figures here in Texas — but what about the tales of legendary creatures more tied to local communities in the state?

From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.”

Halloween is upon us once again, signaling a fresh chance to dream up a costume that salutes the year’s buzziest moments and celebrity couples. From the recent Louvre jewel heist to the ongoing Labubu craze and Emma Stone’s iconic shorn ’do in Bugonia, there’s plenty of pop-cultural fare to draw from for your next ghoulish gathering—even if you only have a few hours to pull something together. So, in no particular order, here are 15 last-minute costume ideas to inspire your Halloween ensemble.

The term paranormal refers to experiences and events that are not scientifically explainable, like a UFO or a kitchen chair seemingly moving on its own. These are things that exist beyond the understood laws of nature. But while nothing has ever been proven, some places are more prone to perceived paranormal activity than others. So, what causes a “ghost meter” to spike in one location? What triggers feelings of extreme fear and unease in a so-called “haunted” place? Turns out the answers are more rooted in scientific evidence than you might think.

...In October, Napoleon called his soldiers back after barely engaging the Russian army. It wasn't a defeat, but it was no win either. And during the march home, winter arrived early.

"They started to die of cold, hunger, and also infectious diseases," says Rascovan. All told, hundreds of thousands perished.

And in a new study published in the journal Current Biology, Rascovan and his colleagues say those diseases likely include two unexpected pathogens that would have helped hasten the soldiers' demise.

According to wildlife biologist Steven Castleberry, one of the study’s authors, the answer might be as simple as a lingering evolutionary vestige. Think of something like the tail bones we humans have as a remnant of when our extremely ancient ancestors had tails.

The glow could be an ancient biological trait that once served a purpose but now hangs around, not really useful to anyone, and acts more like a cool factoid than a valuable trait from back in ancient bat days.

The Gaelic word gruag means ‘hair’, although falt is heard more commonly on Skye, and the word gruagach usually describes a young woman or maiden.

There are many examples in the rich Gaelic song repertoire that reference gruagach as such- songs of unrequited love or heartbreak, describing wistful longing or praising beauty. But this one- ‘Òran mun Ghruagaich’ | ‘A Song about the Gruagach’ (TAD 95653)- notated by Frances Tolmie in 1860 from the singing of Oighrig Ross of Balgown, holds a very different meaning and one that I had no recollection of hearing before.

This song gives voice to a mother’s grief-stricken lamentation on the sudden death of her daughter while staying together at a shieling in Glen Mhic Asgill, Bracadale. In her mourning she implores the dying peat embers to give her light that she might see the gruagach- not in this case the girl, but a tutelary being from the Gaelic Otherworld, described in accompanying notes by Tolmie as a ‘friend of the cattle’, and a strike from whom is believed to have killed the young woman.

With Halloween around the corner, let's take a look at a spooky and supposedly true story going viral this week. Recently, a 911 call surfaced of a North Carolina man calling authorities because he thought he saw a bloody man by the side of a desolate country road. While he was speaking to the operator, something landed in the bed of his pickup truck, causing the 911 caller to start screaming "It's not human! It's not human!"

(Abraham) Loeb has caught the public’s – and NASA’s – attention for his comments about a newly discovered interstellar object, known as 3I/ATLAS, that is hurtling toward the sun and through our solar system. NASA says it’s a comet. Loeb suggests it could be alien technology.

Beginning with the toppling of the president of Sri Lanka in 2022 and the 2024 uprising in Bangladesh, a new revolutionary ferment has begun to spread around the world, gaining momentum with the uprising in Indonesia in August 2025 and the insurrection in Nepal in September. Since then, fierce protests have broken out in Peru, the Philippines, Madagascar, Morocco, and elsewhere. For more insight into the different forms that this wave of activity is assuming in different parts of the world, we spoke with two participants in the Gen Z 212 movement in Morocco.

Background on Gen Z 212: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Moroccan_Gen_Z_protests

How does someone worth $200 billion manage to pay a lower tax rate than a teacher or nurse? Why do some billionaires go years without paying any federal income tax despite their fortunes growing by billions?

June 18th 1999 was an international day of protest, action and carnival, timed to coincide with the meeting of the G8 (Group of Eight, most industrialised nations) Summit in Köln, Germany. Organised under the slogan “Our Resistance is as Transnational as Capital”, there was a massive build up to the day, starting with a call to action “aimed at the heart of the global economy: the financial centres and banking districts”. On the day there were protests in over 40 countries. Over 10,000 people took to the streets of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, at the same time as over 10,000 people occupied the City of London in the UK.

The heart of the beast was transformed into a carnival and a riot, which caused millions of pounds worth of physical damage (though apparently financial trading did not miss a beat). It was a fantastic day…I was involved in mobilising for June 18th from October 1998 onwards and these are my recollections of that process. It’s just one person’s perspective...