All posts tagged: Appears

70-Ton Statue of Lionel Messi Appears in Argentina

70-Ton Statue of Lionel Messi Appears in Argentina

Published by Jenni Sidey

Lionel Messi, the Argentine superhero of soccer who is the highest-scoring player in World Cup history as of last week, has been monumentalized in a remote town in Patagonia. The stats: 85 feet tall, 70 tons in weight, and $130,000 to fabricate. As reported by the New York Times, the statue by artist Aldo Beroisa follows from other creations of his including statues of dinosaurs and Jesus, and has been in the works for more than a year. “This is going to be our Sistine Chapel,” said the mayor of Cutral Có, a town in the Patagonian desert that commissioned the work. “You can manage to convey what Christ looked like, or in the Last Supper—what the apostles looked like is open to interpretation. But with this one, you can’t make a mistake. Messi is Messi.” Source link

Banksy signature appears on mysterious new London statue

Banksy signature appears on mysterious new London statue

Published by Daniella Wilson

A mysterious new sculpture has appeared in central London – and has been claimed as the work of elusive street artist Banksy. The statue depicts a suited man stepping off a plinth after having his sight obscured by a waving flag, and was first spotted on Waterloo Place in St James on Wednesday (29 April). Those who encountered it noticed Banksy’s name scrawled at the bottom – and he has since confirmed the artwork is his on his official Instagram page. Banksy’s signature has appeared on a new statue in London (Getty) The artist, more commonly known for his graffiti, typically takes ownership of his work on his website shortly after they surface. The artist previously installed a statue on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2004. Named The Drinker, the piece, his own take on The Thinker by Rodin, was stolen shortly after being erected. Banksy, long thought to have been born Robin Gunningham, began creating street art in Bristol in the Nineties and became one of the world’s best-known artists. His paintings and installations sell for …

An OpenAI-linked news outlet appears to be entirely AI-generated

An OpenAI-linked news outlet appears to be entirely AI-generated

Published by Miika Tikkanen

A new report from The Midas Project’s Model Republic publication has found that news site, The Wire by Acutus, relies almost entirely on AI-generated content. The publication has been operational since the end of 2025 with nearly 100 published articles across tech, energy, media, science, business, and healthcare. Stranger still, their About page describes their work as “collaborative journalism” led by an “editorial team,” but the site has no masthead and credits no editors or journalists in its publications. The official explanation for this anonymity is buried in their How It Works subhead: Our editorial team identifies timely topics and invites contributors with relevant, firsthand experience to share their perspective through structured conversations. Those perspectives are synthesized and edited into stories that reflect where contributors align, where they diverge, and what it all means — offering depth, balance, and clarity beyond the headline. But when journalist Tyler Johnston ran the site’s content through Pangram, an AI detection tool that boasts a 99.98% accuracy rating, he discovered just how widely AI was relied upon: “Of the …

Val Kilmer’s AI replica appears in trailer for new movie a year after his death

Val Kilmer’s AI replica appears in trailer for new movie a year after his death

Published by Daniella Wilson

A new trailer has offered the first glimpse of Val Kilmer’s AI likeness as it will appear in the upcoming Coerte Voorhees film As Deep as the Grave. Kilmer was cast to play Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist Father Fintan in 2020, but he was unable to shoot due to health issues from throat cancer, which he had been diagnosed with in 2014. He had a tracheotomy, which resulted in the loss of his voice. AI was previously used to recreate Kilmer’s voice for his appearance in Top Gun: Maverick. Kilmer died in April 2025 at the age of 65 from pneumonia. As Deep as the Grave, which was previously titled Canyon del Muerto, tells the real-life story of early archaeologists Ann and Earl Morris, played by Abigail Lawrie and Tom Felton, as they work in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, while engaging with Navajo history and culture. The trailer features Kilmer in various stages of his life, and includes a moment where he tells a child: “Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me.” …

Contributor: Antisemitism appears from the left and the right, but not equally

Contributor: Antisemitism appears from the left and the right, but not equally

Published by Sam Flores

The attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., belongs to a terrifying new phase in the global surge in antisemitism that has shown its ugly face in recent months in the United States, Canada, Europe and of course at the massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney last December. A much larger tragedy was prevented in Michigan by a mix of quick action by the temple’s security and good fortune. What accounts for this major new uptick in antisemitic expression and action? This has become a hotly debated and intensely political question in the United States, as both sides of the political spectrum accuse each other of being the chief instigators. The right accuses the left of harboring anti-Israel sentiments that all too easily merge with antisemitism. The left accuses the right not only of weaponizing antisemitism but also of harboring neo-Nazis and anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists. Some observers have sought to add nuance to the matter by arguing that antisemitism exists at both extremes, left and right. They call this approach the horseshoe theory of …

Ibogaine appears to trigger an accelerated “auto-psychotherapy” process during PTSD treatment

Ibogaine appears to trigger an accelerated “auto-psychotherapy” process during PTSD treatment

Published by José Betancourt

A new study published in npj Mental Health Research suggests that U.S. Special Operations veterans treated with a combination of magnesium and ibogaine experience a rapid, self-directed form of psychological healing. The findings suggest that the treatment triggers a state of “auto-psychotherapy,” where patients revisit traumatic memories, reframe their life narratives, and feel a physical sense of brain repair. Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance derived from the root bark of the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga. While it has been used traditionally for centuries in West-Central Africa, it has gained attention in modern medicine for its potential to treat addiction and severe mental health conditions. However, ibogaine interacts with the heart in ways that can be dangerous. To mitigate these risks, the treatment protocol in this study combined ibogaine with magnesium, a mineral that supports heart health and nervous system stability. Previous observational studies have indicated that ibogaine can lead to reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. Despite these promising clinical outcomes, scientists have not fully understood what the patient actually …

Doechii Appears To Come Out As Lesbian After Subtle Instagram Tweak

Doechii Appears To Come Out As Lesbian After Subtle Instagram Tweak

Published by Sam Flores

Grammy-winning rapper Doechii appears to have come out as lesbian after fans spotted a subtle change to her Instagram. The Denial Is A River performer – who has spoken candidly about her queerness in the past – recently updated her personal Instagram bio to include the message: “Home life… wellness… books/essays… clubbing… lesbian… luxury… travel… beauty… music… side quests… fashion… more…” In 2024, Doechii said that she identified as bisexual, telling Gay Times: “I think I’ve always been gay. I always knew I was gay. I’m currently bisexual. I am with a woman now and I have always known that I loved women.” Two years earlier, she told GQ that she became more “comfortable” incorporating queer references in her music after “getting more gay friends”. “I always knew that I was queer, and I was bisexual. But I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about it, because nobody around me was gay,” she said. “So, it’s not like I was hiding it – but I also wasn’t fully embracing it. I just started indulging myself with …

virtue appears to be vital for personal happiness

virtue appears to be vital for personal happiness

Published by José Betancourt

Virtues such as compassion, patience and self-control may be beneficial not only for others but also for oneself, according to new research my team and I published in the Journal of Personality in December 2025. Philosophers from Aristotle to al-Fārābī, a 10th-century scholar in what is now Iraq, have argued that virtue is vital for well-being. Yet others, such as Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche, have argued the opposite: Virtue offers no benefit to oneself and is good only for others. This second theory has inspired lots of research in contemporary psychology, which often sees morality and self-interest as fundamentally opposed. Many studies have found that generosity is associated with happiness, and that encouraging people to practice kindness increases their well-being. But other virtues seem less enjoyable. For example, a compassionate person wants to alleviate suffering or misfortune, but that requires there be suffering or misfortune. Patience is possible only when something irritating or difficult is happening. And self-control involves forgoing one’s desires or persisting with something difficult. Could these kinds of virtues really be …

Star appears to have vanished in a failed supernova

Star appears to have vanished in a failed supernova

Published by Miika Tikkanen

A massive star in a nearby galaxy that reached the end of its life appears to have vanished rather than blown up, forming a black hole in what astronomers think is a rare way. The most common black holes in our galaxy begin as stars. When these stars explode in a supernova, they can leave behind a black hole. But it is thought that black holes can also form from stars that fail to go supernova, instead simply collapsing under their own mass and producing a black hole directly. In 2024, Kishalay De at Columbia University in New York and his colleagues observed an unusually bright star called M31-2014-DS1 in the nearby galaxy Andromeda that was around 20 times as massive as our sun. The star appeared to grow briefly brighter in 2014, before becoming dramatically dimmer between 2017 and 2020. De and his colleagues thought this pattern of brightening and then fading matched predictions for a failed supernova producing a black hole, but there was no sign of the black hole itself, such as …