We named him Squirt ' not because he was the smallest of the 16 cuttlefish in the pool, but because anyone with the audacity to scoop him into a separate tank to study him was likely to get soaked. Squirt had notoriously accurate aim. As a comparative psychologist, I'm used to assaults from my experimental subjects. I've been stung by bees, pinched by crayfish and battered by indignant pigeons. But, somehow, with Squirt it felt different. As he eyed us with his W-shaped pupils, he seemed clearly to be plotting against us. Of course, I'm being anthropomorphic. Science does not yet have the tools to confirm whether cuttlefish have emotional states, or whether they are capable of conscious experience, much less sinister plots. But there's undeniably something special about cephalopods ' the class of ocean-dwelling invertebrates that includes cuttlefish, squid and octopus. As researchers learn more about cehpalopods' cognitive skills, there are calls to treat them in ways better aligned with their level of intelligence. California and Washington state both approved bans on octopus farming in 2024. Hawaii is considering similar action, and a ban on farming octopus or importing farmed octopus meat has been introduced in Congress. A planned octopus farm in Spain's Canary Islands is attracting opposition from scientists and animal welfare advocates....

After months of negotiation, Congress was close to passing a spending bill on Wednesday to avert a government shutdown. Elon Musk decided he had other ideas. He railed against the bill in more than 150 separate posts on X, complaining about the raises it would have given members of Congress, falsely exaggerating the proposed pay increase, and worrying about billions in government spending that weren't even in the bill. He told his followers over and over that the bill was 'criminal' and 'should not pass.' Nothing about Musk's campaign was subtle: 'Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!' he posted. According to X's stats, the posts accrued tens of millions of views. Elected Republicans listened: By the end of the day, they had scrapped the bill. Last night, another attempt to fund the government, this time supported by Musk, also failed. After spending about $277 million to back Donald Trump's bid for the presidency, Musk has become something of a shadow vice president. But it's not just Musk's political donations that are driving his influence forward. As his successful tirade against the spending bill illustrates, Musk also has outsize power to control how information is disseminated. To quote Shoshana Zuboff, an academic who has written about tech overreach and surveillance, Musk is an 'information oligarch.'...

It's the last flight of the day and the plane is pretty empty. So you're thinking, maaaybe you'll just move up a few rows, where there's a nice window seat with a view that's not obstructed by the wing. Not so fast, buster. The flight attendant says that's a no-go. You have to stay in your assigned seat or you'll mess up the weight distribution of the plane. Really' Would moving one normal-size human make a difference' Yeah, you know where this is going: Answering this question requires a bunch of awesome physics. So let's get to it! People often say an object's center of mass is the location at which all of the gravitational force acts. That's a fair working definition, and you can use it to solve many physics problems, but it's not really true. In fact the gravitational force pulls on all parts of an object, not just one point. If you really want to understand the center of mass, you need to think about torque. Looking back at Newton's second law, it says that a net force changes the motion of an object (Fnet = mass x acceleration). So if the net force is zero, the motion of an object won't change. If it's moving with a certain velocity, it will keep doing so. If it's at rest, it will keep on resting....

For decades, the Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad built his power on a single, relentless narrative of survival: The regime presented itself as the only shield against annihilation for the Alawites, the ethno-religious minority that makes up about a tenth of Syria's population and has long understood itself to be threatened by the country's Sunni majority. Supporting Assad, himself an Alawite, was a matter not of loyalty or politics for this community, the regime insisted, but of choosing between existence and extinction. This narrative, and the fear of Sunni extremist groups such as the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, kept many Alawites bound to Assad even as the cost became unbearable. With Assad gone, Syria's new government has a chance to prove that his rule was not only vicious but built on a lie. The fact that Alawites were sustained in a state of fear does not excuse the complicity of those among them who supported the regime's crimes, which included mass incarceration, torture, extrajudicial killings, and meeting peaceful protests with lethal force. But Syria's future will hinge on its ability to refuse the temptation of collective punishment for ordinary Alawites'and its willingness to instead guarantee their safety....