Science

AI-generated images of food attached to nonsense recipes and Google AI Overview remixes of actual recipes are taking a huge toll on traffic for recipe bloggers. But home cooks are also wasting time and money following recipes that claim to be for cookies but only yield melted pools of cloyingly sweet dough. According to Bloomberg:

The goal is to speed scientific breakthroughs on key priorities including meeting soaring energy demand that’s raising electricity costs for Americans.

Boing Boing plunged the depths of Etsy to find this 3D-printed replica of the Chernobyl power plant, complete with a ruined reactor that lights up and spews “smoke” when you use it as a diffuser or humidifier.

The moss isn’t quite as hardy as the reigning king of extremophiles, the tardigrade, but it put up an impressive showing in an experiment where scientists exposed sporophytes (the reproductive structures that produce spores) to the harsh vacuum of space for 283 days. After crunching the numbers, they believe the moss could survive for around 5,600 days, or a little over 15 years in space and still survive and reproduce. According to the press release:

Negotiators are deadlocked in a tumultuous close to United Nations climate talks. A proposed roadmap for transitioning away from coal, oil, and gas has become a flashpoint. “We’re facing the reality of a no-deal scenario” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said earlier today.

The company plants to start trading power, a move that could support the buildout of new power plants as grids try to keep up with rising electricity demand from data centers and generative AI, Bloomberg reports.

A blaze broke out in the conference venue Thursday, just ahead of negotiations scheduled to come to a close today in Brazil.

Hot on the heels of a second successful launch — and first successful landing — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced the next version of its rocket. The New Glenn 9x4 — named for its number of engines — should operate alongside the existing 7x2, and could compete more closely with SpaceX’s Starship.

More than 1,600 lobbyists for oil, coal, and gas have crowded into pivotal international climate negotiations going down in Brazil. They outnumber delegations from every country in attendance except for Brazil, according to an analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition.

The new trailer for Amazon MGM’s adaptation of Alex Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary teases a bit more of the catastrophe that’s imperiling Earth, but it’s mostly about the friendship that’s going to develop between astronaut Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and an alien that looks like a pile of rocks.

The Utilities for Net Zero Alliance made the announcement Friday during the UN climate conference taking place in Brazil. Investment need to grow from $390 billion in 2024 to $670 billion annually between now and 2030 to update power grids, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

“Sentinel-6B will ensure that we continue to collect the high-precision data needed to understand our changing climate,” ESA’s director of earth observation programmes, Simonetta Cheli said in a press release.

SpaceX has been on a tear with launches, having boosted over 10,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Now it’s celebrating a new milestone that’s become so automatic we just expect it.

So says an EU court in Luxembourg, which ruled there’s no such thing as non-alcoholic gin.

Here’s Jeff Bezos’ video of the landing, which took place after a planned launch was scrubbed earlier this week. Check out CNN’s story for more about the launch.

That means the combined electrocardiogram, stethoscope, and thermometer is now available in the US for $249.95. Nearly two years have passed since The Verge first covered this Swiss Army knife of home health. It launched in Europe, excluding the UK and Switzerland, last April. The company says BeamO can give you a “complete health check-up” of your temperature, heart, and lungs in less than a minute.

Brazil, Canada, Chile, and at least seven other countries have endorsed a new ‘declaration’ to combat disinformation on climate change. It came together during the United Nations climate conference taking place this month, where more than 200 advocacy groups have called on governments to crack down on misleading content in advertising and online platforms.

Growing electricity demand for AI and the Trump administration’s love of natural gas have influenced the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook, Heatmap reports.

Some demonstrators held signs that said “our forests are not for sale.” Indigenous leaders from the Amazon Basin have been pushing governments participating in the climate conference taking place in Brazil to “respect our rights, incorporate our ancestral knowledge, and ensure the protection of indigenous territories”.

The second launch of Blue Origin’s megarocket was initially scheduled for Sunday, but was postponed until today due to poor weather conditions. Now it’s been pushed back again until the sun chills out a little, with no ETA on a new launch window.

The wearable company offers paid blood tests to US users through its Advanced Labs feature, which launched in September. But now users worldwide can upload their blood results into the app for free, and see biomarkers alongside their daily data. Whoop-organized tests will roll out internationally “in the coming months.”

The world-first saw a surgeon remotely remove a blood clot from a human cadaver in Dundee, Scotland, all the way from Jacksonville, Florida. It’s been hailed as a breakthrough, and potential life-saver if approved for use on patients.

Italian pasta companies are preparing to pull their products from US grocery stores as early as January, the Wall Street Journal reports — another downstream effect of the Trump administration’s sky-high tariffs and duties on imports. Some of the new taxes (which total 107 percent) come after a US Commerce Department review of several pasta companies, and the severity of the penalty has Italian producers worried.