The prevailing wisdom in neuroscience holds that networks of neurons store our memories. But if solitary nonneural cells can also remember and learn, then networks of neurons can’t be the whole story. quantamagazine.org/what-can-a-cel…

🧵🚨BREAKING: President Donald J. Trump is expected to begin the illegal, inhumane jailing and institutionalization of homeless D.C. residents as soon as tonight. Homeless people have the same legal rights as any other resident of D.C. A Know Your Rights thread:

"The destruction of the satellites — which will be abandoned and allowed to eventually burn up in a fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere — marks the latest step by the Trump administration to scale back federal climate science." cnn.com/2025/08/13/cli…

Absolutely unbelievable: the sitting HHS Secretary tried to pressure the Annals of Internal Medicine to retract the major Danish study of 1.2 M kids that found no harm from aluminum in vaccines. The journal refused. This isn’t just anti-science it is political interference.

6. It is the top-heavy sector that is keeping the killing going. And we are trying to pry them open from below with our never ending outrage. Everywhere, people want this killing to end.

“This war is being waged as if childhood itself has no place in Gaza.” nytimes.com/2025/08/15/wor…

A student at Public School 89 in Queens was detained along with her brother and mother at an ICE check-in in lower Manhattan this week — the first known ICE arrest of an NYC child under the age of 18 during the second Trump administration. buff.ly/BtgXPqS

This is evil. Even the most incompetent military on the planet would instantly realize this little girl isn't a combatant. So why was she murdered? Who murdered her? We will never know because this happens day after day after day and the IDF doesn't care about accountability.

EXTRAORDINARY HOT DAY IN SPAIN 40/45C from South to North 7 stations >45C ! ALL TIME RECORDS 45.8 Jerez 44.7 Almonte 42.5 Rota etc Monthly records in several region including the North with 42.0C at Pamplona Next night will be record hot in many areas.

“I’ve been on eight of the 10 biggest fires in California history. Now I can’t even push a shopping cart without having chest pain,” said Brian Wangerin, a wildfire crew boss until heart problems put him out of work at 33. “I can’t hold my kids.” nytimes.com/2025/08/17/us/…

"That’s the real key: It’s the belief in the people as participants in their own freedom." hammerandhope.org/article/zohran…

In Pan de Azúcar National Park in Chile’s Atacama Desert are pebbles known locally as “maicillo” and in English as “grit.” Rich colonies of hidden microbial life dwell in their crevices and bind them together into thin crusts. quantamagazine.org/in-a-fierce-de…

A note re the child amputees from Gaza being bullied by Marco Rubio and Laura Loomer: the cost of their treatment, surgeries, travel, lodging etc is paid for by private donors. The only thing the US taxpayer pays for are the bombs Israel uses to blow these children’s limbs off.

On this day in 1619, traffickers brought the first enslaved Africans to a Virginia colony on the James River. They sold some enslaved people for food and sold others to white enslavers in Jamestown. calendar.eji.org/racial-injusti…

The microbial geochemist Karen Lloyd seeks the unseen living world in extremophiles, such as cells that live off rocks deep in the Earth’s crust and whose lifetimes may extend across geologic timescales. quantamagazine.org/the-pursuit-of…

Seeking science journalists: Quanta Magazine is hiring a physics editor! A rare opportunity to join this great team and lead coverage of this foundational vertical. Please reach out with any questions and share widely simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/simonsfo…

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“What’s heartbreaking about this is that it tells me that there are journalists in the world who are justifying the killing of other journalists.”

“It gives me comfort to know there are these silent beings underneath my feet who are just biding their time and waiting for a geological event.” — Karen Lloyd, microbial geochemist quantamagazine.org/the-pursuit-of…

In your brain, 86 billion neurons chitchat with one another in complex networks. Neurons can carry meaning in binary code — whether they fire or not — and also in analog, in a symphony of signals with variable patterns, strengths and frequencies. quantamagazine.org/ai-is-nothing-…