A 74-year-old Dutch tourist disappeared Sunday

From the moment I entered the center, I knew the experience would be different. 

The Supreme Court sided with Starbucks on Thursday

'We’re up against some timing issues and some workload issues'

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If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. When the Obama White House in 2013 used the “Success Kid” meme to promote, in posts on social media, the adoption of the Immigration Reform Bill – nobody clenched a fist, much less batted an eyelash to brand this PR strategy as a copyright violation. However, the same can’t be said for the case of former Republican Congressman Steve King’s use of the meme (variations of which have been all over the internet for the past 15 or so years). But, when it made its way to one of King’s Facebook posts in 2020, the family of the child whose picture is used as a template sued on copyright grounds. And now a court has once again sided with their arguments. The “new rule” is that the image turned into a meme, when used in a political ad, does not fall under the fair use copyright exemption. The mother of the child, Laney Griner, has no problem with the picture being used in other types of ads – the United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ruling notes that she took the photo in 2007, and after “Success Kid” became extremely popular, copyrighted it in 2012 to then license it to the likes of Virgin Mobile, Vitamin Water, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola, who used it in ads. The original 2022 verdict in the case brought by Griner against King was that unlicensed use took place and that his campaign, but not the congressman himself, was guilty, and ordered them to pay $750. In appealing the ruling, the campaign argued copyright law’s fair use rule to defend the inclusion of the meme in a fundraising effort. Another argument was implied license. Now the court of appeals has found that the latter claim was abandoned during the original trial and, as for fair use – this was rejected based on the criteria the judges set for themselves to consider: whether the use was commercial, and “how much of the photo” was used. Regarding other political campaigns (notably, the Obama administration pushing the immigration legislation), this latest decision saw the circuit judge agree with the trail judge that the evidence about the meme’s association with political ideas should not be considered. We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Court Rules “Success Kid” Meme Use in Political Ad Does Not Qualify as Fair Use appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Congressional Baseball Game Broken Up Again

Lots of Layoffs at the SPLC

Grizzly bears in the Arctic are becoming an increasingly common occurrence as the planet warms, which means that they are beginning to encroach on polar bear territory more regularly. As a result, scientists have found evidence of polar-grizzly hybrids, but new research has confirmed that these “grolar bears” remain extremely rare.Polar bear and grizzly bear hybrids come in two forms: grolar bears and pizzlies, and the difference comes down to the offspring’s parentage. A grolar bear is the offspring of a grizzly bear male and polar bear female, while a pizzly bear is the offspring of a polar bear male and grizzly female. Male grizzly bears are more aggressive than polar bears, and may win out in situations where males of both species are competing.Dr Ruth RivkinAll wild hybrids between polar bears and grizzlies – that is, all the hybrids we know of that exist outside of zoo care – are grolar bears, defined by having a grizzly father and a mother who is either a polar bear or a hybrid. As for why that is, it largely comes down to logistics.“Although polar bear and grizzly bear ranges do overlap, the overlap typically happens in the summer when polar bears are on the mainland coast waiting for the sea ice to form up again,” said postdoctoral research fellow with Polar Bears International, University of Manitoba, and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Dr Ruth Rivkin to IFLScience. “Mating season for polar bears occurs in the winter while the bears are out on the sea ice hunting seals.”Hybridization is not an adaptive capability for polar bears, as the hybrids are still ill-suited to the changing conditions in the Arctic.Image credit: Corradox via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)“It’s becoming more common to see grizzly males also going out on the sea ice to hunt on the smaller islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. If they run into a polar bear female while they’re on the sea ice, they will (rarely) mate with her," Rivkin continued. "What we don’t see is grizzly females going out that far, which means that male polar bears don’t have the opportunity to mate with female grizzlies. Also, male grizzly bears are more aggressive than polar bears, and may win out in situations where males of both species are competing for a female grizzly or polar bear.”As more grizzlies encounter polar bears, it was anticipated that hybrids would become more common. As such, an international collaboration – supported by Environment and Climate Change Canada – decided to investigate the matter by developing a new monitoring tool to look for "hidden" hybrids between grizzly and polar bears.It was the first-ever large-scale analysis of these hybrids in the wild, made possibly by an innovative SNP genetic sequencing chip that could analyze grizzly and polar bear samples. It analyzed 371 historic polar bear and 440 historic grizzly bear samples from across Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, finding only eight grolar bear hybrids.“We did not discover new hybrids, which suggests that while hybridization does happen, it is so far restricted to a small portion of the western Arctic,” explained study co-author Rivkin. “Nonetheless, our work is a valuable addition to the conservation world because it allows for easy, and relatively inexpensive monitoring for hybrids on an ongoing basis.”The study is published in Conservation Genetics Resources.

Underwater robots have captured a rare glimpse of a female deep-sea squid. Not only was it holding on to a clutch of unexpectedly giant eggs, but it might also be a brand new species.Though thought to be abundant in the depths of the ocean, deep-sea squid are something of a mystery, not helped by the fact that they’re rarely seen alive. Spotting a female squid brooding is rarer still, but that’s exactly what happened back in 2015 when an underwater robot operated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) nabbed some footage of a gonatid squid with eggs.Remote-operated vehicles from MBARI had observed deep-sea squid egg brooding on 17 previous occasions, but this one was different – the eggs were 11.6 millimeters (0.5 inches) wide, nearly double the egg size of other known gonatid species.A close-up of the female squid holding on to the eggs.Image credit: © 2015 MBARI“Our unexpected encounter with a squid brooding giant eggs caught the attention of everyone in the ship’s control room,” said MBARI Senior Scientist Steven Haddock, who was chief scientist during the expedition that encountered this brooding squid in the Gulf of California, in a statement.Not only were the squid’s eggs unusually large, but there were also far fewer of them than might be expected. Many egg-producing species in the ocean make lots of small eggs in order to maximize the chances of survival in a pretty unforgiving environment (see: the beginning of Finding Nemo).But things are different down in the depths. “[T]he stable and predictable environmental conditions of the deep water column (1,000–4,000 m [3,280–13,123 feet]) allow high relative investment in fewer offspring and may select for fewer, larger eggs and advanced hatchlings,” the authors of a study documenting the findings explain.From examining specimens of other squid previously seen in the Gulf of California, the team of researchers involved also think that the egg-brooding female belongs to an unknown species within the family Gonatidae. Whether that’s confirmed or not, this mother squid was investing more than many would be willing to give for her babies. “Brooding takes a lot out of a mother squid. She won’t eat while carrying her eggs and ultimately dies after her eggs hatch,” explained Henk-Jan Hoving, the study’s lead author. Those eggs might even take up to four years to hatch, according to the researchers – that’s a long time to go without a meal.“But her sacrifice improves the chances that her offspring will survive,” said Hoving. “It’s just one of the many remarkable adaptations that may help cephalopods to survive in the deep sea.”The study is published in Ecology.