One hundred and fifty million years ago, the Solnhofen Limestones of Germany were covered in small islands and warm saltwater lagoons. Coral reefs flourished with crinoids, sponges, jellyfish, and crustaceans ; Dragonflies buzzed above the water as small reptiles sunned themselves at the water’s edge. Pterosaurs and Archaeopteryx took to the skies, but there was trouble in this Jurassic paradise: Tropical storms would turn it into a pterosaur graveyard.

What paleontologist Rab Smyth found in this graveyard finally revealed why so many fledgling pterosaurs had succumbed to the storm. Smyth, a researcher at the Center for Paleobiology and Biosphere Evolution at the University of Leicester, unearthed two Pterodactylus antiquus hatchlings, and their bones showed exactly how they had succumbed to storm winds. The wings of both specimens (ironically named Lucky I and Lucky II) revealed clean, slanted humerus fractures that suggested they had been twisted in the storm. Unable to fly, they drowned and were rapidly buried in the lagoon depths.

“Our results show that most pterosaurs are preserved predominantly through catastrophic events, often reflecting mass mortality episodes,” Smyth and his research team said in a study he led, recently published in Current Biology.

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We’re about a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

Summers across the global north are now defined by flash floods, droughts, heat waves, uncontainable wildfires, and intensifying named storms, exactly as predicted by Exxon scientists back in the 1970s. The United States secretary of health and human services advocates against using the most effective tool we have to fight the infectious diseases that have ravaged humanity for millennia. People are eagerly lapping up the misinformation spewed and disseminated by AI chatbots, which are only just getting started.

It is against this backdrop that a climate scientist and a vaccine developer teamed up to write Science Under Siege . It is about as grim as you’d expect.

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Late last week, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story about an "AI Stan Lee hologram" that would be appearing at the LA Comic Con this weekend . Nearly seven years after the famous Marvel Comics creator’s death at the age of 95 , fans will be able to pay $15 to $20 this weekend to chat with a life-sized, AI-powered avatar of Lee in an enclosed booth at the show.

The instant response from many fans and media outlets to the idea was not kind, to say the least. A writer for TheGamer called the very idea "demonic" and said we need to "kill it with fire before it’s too late." The AV Club urged its readers not to pay to see "the anguished digital ghost of a beloved comic book creator, repurposed as a trap for chumps!" Reactions on a popular Reddit thread ranged from calling it "incredibly disrespectful" and "in bad taste" to "ghoulish" and "so fucked up," with very little that was more receptive to the concept.

But Chris DeMoulin, the CEO of the parent company behind LA Comic Con, urged critics to come see the AI-powered hologram for themselves before rushing to judgment. "We're not afraid of people seeing it and we're not afraid of criticism," he told Ars. "I’m just a fan of informed criticism, and I think most of what's been out there so far has not really been informed."

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You can't spot a hedgehog from space, but you might be able to find where they live by looking for brambles. That's the premise behind ongoing research at the University of Cambridge, where scientists are using satellite imagery and AI models to map potential hedgehog habitats across the UK by first identifying their favorite hiding spots: bramble patches.

European hedgehog populations have declined by roughly 30 to 50 percent over the past decade, so tracking these nocturnal creatures across large areas remains difficult and expensive. Rather than searching for the hedgehogs directly, researcher Gabriel Mahler developed an AI model that identifies brambles, which are thorny shrubs that hedgehogs use for shelter and foraging, from satellite data.

These small mammals rely on this type of dense vegetation for daytime shelter, nesting sites, and protection from predators. Brambles also attract insects and provide berries, supporting the invertebrate populations that hedgehogs eat.

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A 63-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston with severe stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting.

She told doctors that for the past month she had developed severe nausea, non-bloody vomiting, and pain she described as a burning feeling that spread from her upper abdomen, through her right side, and around to her back. Nothing she did made it better.

The doctors started collecting her medical history, which was lengthy. The woman had Type 2 diabetes, Stage 2 chronic kidney disease, opioid use disorder, and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), among other conditions. While she was taking many medications, she noted that for the past year she had also been taking semaglutide, a GLP-1 weight-loss drug, and had lost about 40 pounds (over 19 percent of her body weight).

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LG is looking to create a new market: TVs for senior citizens. However, I can't help thinking that the answer for a TV that truly prioritizes the needs of older people is much simpler—and cheaper.

On Thursday, LG announced the Easy TV in South Korea, aiming it at the “senior TV market,” according to a Google translation of the press release . One of the features that LG has included in attempts to appeal to this demographic is a remote control with numbers. Many remotes for smart TVs, streaming sticks, and boxes don’t have numbered buttons, with much of the controller's real estate dedicated to other inputs.

The Easy TV's remote. Credit: LG

LG released a new version of its Magic Remote in January with a particularly limited button selection that is likely to confuse or frustrate newcomers. In addition to not having keys for individual numbers, there are no buttons for switching inputs, play/pause, or fast forward/rewind.

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Video game mega-publisher Electronic Arts is planning to take the company private in a deal that could be worth as much as $50 billion, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal , Reuters , and Financial Times .

All three outlets cite anonymous sources in reporting that the deal could be announced next week, with Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners reportedly interested in investing. The Wall Street Journal says the move "would likely be the largest leveraged buyout ever."

The Saudi PIF already had a roughly 9 percent stake in EA as of a year ago , making it one of the largest shareholders in the company. That fund also has significant investments in gaming giants such as Nintendo, Take-Two, Activision Blizzard, Capcom, Nexon, and Koei Tecmo managed through the Savvy Games Group.

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YouTube has a new Labs program, allowing listeners to "discover the next generation of YouTube." In case you were wondering, that generation is apparently all about AI. The streaming site says Labs will offer a glimpse of the AI features it's developing for YouTube Music, and it starts with AI "hosts" that will chime in while you're listening to music. Yes, really.

The new AI music hosts are supposed to provide a richer listening experience, according to YouTube . As you're listening to tunes, the AI will generate audio snippets similar to, but shorter than, the fake podcasts you can create in NotebookLM. The "Beyond the Beat" host will break in every so often with relevant stories, trivia, and commentary about your musical tastes. YouTube says this feature will appear when you are listening to mixes and radio stations.

The experimental feature is intended to be a bit like having a radio host drop some playful banter while cueing up the next song. It sounds a bit like Spotify's AI DJ, but the YouTube AI doesn't create playlists like Spotify's robot. This is still generative AI, which comes with the risk of hallucinations and low-quality slop, neither of which belongs in your music. That said, Google's Audio Overviews are often surprisingly good in small doses.

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Conservative broadcaster Sinclair is putting Jimmy Kimmel Live! back on the air. In a statement today, Sinclair said it will end its preemption of the show on its ABC affiliates starting tonight, even though ABC and owner Disney haven't accepted its request for an ombudsman and other changes. Facing the threat of lost advertising dollars , Sinclair said it "received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives."

Sinclair also said its decision to preempt Kimmel "was independent of any government interaction or influence." Sinclair's preempting of Kimmel last week came just as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said TV station owners that didn't preempt the show could lose their FCC licenses.

Sinclair last week said it wouldn't air Kimmel on its stations "until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability." Sinclair at the time praised Carr for his stance against Kimmel and urged the FCC to "take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks."

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