News Kaos Jeff Goldblum is a Very Crabby Zeus in the New Teaser for Kaos Family drama gets Olympian By Molly Templeton | Published on July 25, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Pesky humans! So prone to ignoring the whims and the wills of the powerful gods and goddesses of Olympus. In Kaos, the upcoming Netflix series from The End of the F***ing World creator Charlie Covell, Zeus (Jeff Goldblum) has had it with us. “I’m gonna wipe these fuckers right off the face of the fucking Earth,” he snarls, after hearing a woman say she defies the gods. Nice guy, that Zeus! Famously not a nice guy, really, but here he’s even less nice. Which tracks. Here’s Netflix’s detailed synopsis of the series: Zeus has long enjoyed his status as King of The Gods. That is until he wakes up one morning and discovers a wrinkle on his forehead. Neurosis sets in, setting him off on a dangerous, paranoid path. Zeus becomes convinced his fall is coming – and starts to see signs of it everywhere.Zeus’ once reliable brother, Hades, God of the Underworld, is secretly losing his grip on his dark dominion. There is a backlog of dead waiting to be processed and they are growing restless. Hera (Janet McTeer), Queen of the Gods, exercises dominion on Earth—and over Zeus—in her own unique way. But her power and freedom become threatened by Zeus’ growing paranoia, and she is forced to act, while Zeus’ rebellious son, Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), is out of control and on course for a cosmic collision with his father.On Earth people are aching for change, however Poseidon (Cliff Curtis), God of Sea, Storms and Earthquakes (and Horses) is more concerned with the size of his super-yacht and where the next party is at. The wellbeing of mere mortals is of little interest to him. Unfortunately for the Gods some of those mortals are beginning to realise this…These mortals—Riddy (Aurora Perrineau), Orpheus (Killian Scott), Caneus (Misia Butler) and Ari (Leila Farzad)—come from different walks of life and are all cosmically connected in the battle against Zeus. Each one has a very different role to play, any one of them may be destined to bring down the Gods. No previous Greek mythology knowledge is required to enjoy Kaos, according to Covell, who told Tudum, “I never want people to feel they can’t watch the show unless they’ve done their homework, because that’s just terrible and very kind of exclusionary. But I would love for people who have read [the Greek myths] to be like, ‘Easter egg, Easter egg, Easter egg.’ ” You can find said Easter eggs on Netflix when Kaos premieres August 29th.[end-mark] The post Jeff Goldblum is a Very Crabby Zeus in the New Teaser for <i>Kaos</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Teen Horror Time Machine Algebra, Murder, and Supernatural Powers: R.L. Stine’s One Evil Summer  Math can be maddening, but this seems a bit extreme… By Alissa Burger | Published on July 25, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share There is no shortage of bizarre stories and credulity-straining plots twists in ‘90s teen horror books: adults masquerade as high school students (R.L. Stine’s Halloween Party), teens take unsupervised spring break trips to Hawaii (Christopher Pike’s Bury Me Deep), and there are all manner of convoluted murder plots, revenge schemes, and supernatural dangers. But R.L. Stine’s Fear Street book One Evil Summer (1994) really stands out, with a smorgasbord of wild and wacky plot developments that keep the reader unsure of just where the next unbelievable turn will take them and what kind of story this actually is. Is the danger grounded in the real world or supernatural? Can we trust the main character Amanda’s perceptions? Is babysitter Chrissy Minor an innocent victim or an evil monster? Stine provides readers with competing clues, withholds information, and throws red herrings everywhere, making One Evil Summer one of the oddest novels of the ‘90s teen horror cycle (a remarkably high bar). From the opening pages of the book, Stine plants the suspicion that we may not be able to trust Amanda’s recollections of her terrifying summer. In the first chapter, Amanda is in Maplewood Juvenile Detention Center, accused of murdering her family’s summer babysitter, Chrissy, with most of the book framed as an extended flashback. When One Evil Summer starts, Amanda has been in the detention center for three days, with her lawyer and the center’s psychiatrist asking her the same questions over and over, though no one actually seems to listen to or believe her answers: “What had happened? What had she been thinking? How had she been feeling?” (4). It doesn’t seem like anyone believes what Amanda has to say and she has even started doubting herself and her own senses, thinking “Maybe I do belong in here” (4, emphasis original). With this opening chapter, Stine sets Amanda up as an unreliable narrator, encouraging the reader to engage with the story through this lens of doubt and the possibility of Amanda’s guilt, a perspective that is reiterated multiple times throughout the book itself. When Amanda tries to tell her parents she saw Chrissy floating in mid-air, they dismiss it as a dream and when she tries to warn them that Chrissy is dangerous, they drag Amanda to a therapist named Dr. Elmont to deal with what they identify as unresolved jealousy toward Chrissy.  According to Dr. Elmont, the jealousy Chrissy feels can all be traced back to algebra: Amanda failed algebra during the regular school year and now has to retake it in summer school. Amanda’s family is on a summer vacation, leaving Shadyside behind for the beach community of Seahaven, which means she’s retaking the class in a new school, with students she doesn’t know, and her vacation is divided between algebra in the morning, hanging out with her younger brother and sister Kyle and Merry in the afternoon, and trying to survive living with Chrissy in every spare moment in between. Dr. Elmont’s professional hypothesis is “Maybe somewhere deep inside, you think you don’t deserve your parents’ love anymore since you failed algebra. Maybe you think Chrissy is taking your place, and you hate her for that” (83). These seem like really high stakes for a high school math class (and definitely not helpful in addressing perceived ability, self-efficacy, and gender gaps in STEM), but everyone seems to seriously think this is the main cause of Amanda’s stress and struggles.  Apparently, algebra-related stress can cause some pretty wild hallucinations and persecution complexes, because the interactions between Amanda and Chrissy start weird and only get weirder. When the girls first meet, Amanda’s cat Mr. Jinx hisses at Chrissy and Chrissy’s eyes glow as she hisses back at him, terrifying the cat. When Chrissy is playing in the front yard with Kyle and Merry, a car inexplicably careens out of control and kills Mr. Jinx. Chrissy is cagey about her family, saying she lives with her aunt nearby, though no one in Seahaven knows her and when Amanda calls her out on the lie, Chrissy says it’s basically true, it’s just that her aunt hasn’t moved into the house she wrote down as her address yet. Her parents are dead, though her story of how they died changes, depending on who she’s telling it to, and her sister Lilith is either dead or in a coma, but these details change from one account to the next as well. Chrissy has a collection of newspaper clippings about her family, but when Amanda goes to Chrissy’s  room to try to find them, she encounters numerous obstacles, including seeing Chrissy floating in mid-air and laughing. When Amanda calls her friend Suzi Banton back home and asks her to go to the Shadyside library to look for information on Chrissy, like newspaper stories about her parents’ accident, the phone melts in her hand and Chrissy’s maniacal laugh echoes down the receiver. Suzi heads to the library to help Amanda out, but is later found “slumped over on the microfilm viewer, blood pouring from her mouth and nose” (91), taken in an unresponsive comatose state to the hospital. Amanda’s mom can’t get ahold of Chrissy’s references but takes a chance on her and after a while, forgets all about following up. When Amanda decides to try to contact them herself, someone finally answers, telling Amanda “I’m just a neighbor … We were wondering why we hadn’t seen the Harrimans in so long. You won’t believe what we found. I—I’m sorry. I think I’m going to be sick” (95). The call is cut short and Amanda never finds out the specific horrors of the Harriman house, though the girl on the other end panics when Amanda tells her that Chrissy is her family’s new babysitter, saying “Chrissy is in your house?! … Oh, no! Get out—now!” (96), before hanging up on Amanda. This all seems like an awful lot of terror and trauma to stem from a failing algebra grade, but as far as the adults in the book are concerned, it can all be traced back to those pesky equations.  Everyone who believes or tries to help Amanda ends up either incapacitated or dead. Suzi is in a coma back in Shadyside and the only person on Amanda’s side in Seahaven is a cute boy named Dave from her algebra class. He believes Amanda and is willing to help however he can, even luring Chrissy away from the house to check out his car or take her to the movies in order to give Amanda the time she needs to look around and try to collect evidence. (Chrissy seems excited about these opportunities, figuring that she’s stealing Amanda’s boyfriend, though in the larger scheme of things, this doesn’t really seem like all that big of a deal). Just like readers are encouraged to doubt Amanda’s perceptions and reliability, Dave remains a bit of an enigma. He takes Amanda on a jet ski ride out to an island to an abandoned hunting cabin where he and his brother like to hang out, showing her bloodstains on the floor, a doomsday prepper-style cache of dried food, and a big hunting knife that he suggests they use against Chrissy, planting it in her room to get her fired (though Amanda at first thinks he means murder). Dave seems stalwart and supportive, but also comes with plenty of red flags. That all becomes inconsequential when Chrissy figures out that Dave and Amanda are on her trail and magically pushes Dave’s parked car over a cliff. Amanda escapes but Dave plunges to his death. The cops come to Amanda’s house looking for him after his parents report him missing, but his car is never recovered, his body is never found, and he’s pretty much never mentioned again, either with regard to the tragedy of his death, justice for his murder, or Amanda’s grief.  The nature of Chrissy’s abilities are a fluid bait-and-switch throughout the book, as readers work to figure out whether she actually has magic powers or if Amanda is hallucinating, whether the threat Chrissy poses is human or supernatural. The answer is (kind of) revealed when Amanda finally gets her hands on the clippings Chrissy has been hiding, which include a direct link between Amanda and Chrissy’s families, stemming from an incident in which Amanda’s father, who is a public defender, was instrumental in Chrissy’s father being charged with arson after he set his own office on fire. (Harriman was the judge in the case, making him Chrissy’s previous target and employer). When the pieces all fall into place, Amanda discovers that Chrissy is actually Lilith and was in a coma following her parents’ murder-suicide deaths, and doctors note that she  “somehow assumed strange new powers while in the coma” (161). That’s the extent of the explanation: somehow this unbelievable thing happened, with the professionals later using the sheer unbelievability as justification for why they didn’t believe Amanda, even though everything she told them was true.  Amanda and Chrissy are drawn into a final, violent confrontation when Chrissy kidnaps Kyle and Merry, intending to kill them. Amanda rescues her younger brother and sister from drowning when Chrissy takes them out in a boat, knocking Chrissy unconscious. When Chrissy comes to and continues to try murdering the three siblings, Amanda keeps them all safe, despite the fact that Chrissy has set the house on fire and is using her inexplicable powers to bombard Amanda with miscellaneous items from around the house. In the end, Chrissy gets her comeuppance when she trips over a stray kitten and falls face-first into the fire. Amanda has saved the day, as well as Kyle and Merry’s lives, though when the police show up, she is arrested on suspicion of Chrissy’s murder and sent to the detention facility where readers first meet her in the book’s opening chapter.  No one has believed Amanda throughout One Evil Summer and as she tells her story again in the detention center, they still don’t believe her. No one corroborates her story or comes to her rescue. Her parents doubt her, Merry is too young to be able to tell anyone what happened, and Kyle has been struck mute with shock from the trauma he has endured. Amanda is hopeless and defeated, telling her psychiatrist “what’s the point? I’ve told this story about a hundred times, but no one believes me” (160). He reviews all of the reasons why everyone thought she was guilty and all the ways in which her story is unbelievable, overtly framing her as unreliable and untrustworthy … before telling her that Kyle has regained his ability to speak and has come to Amanda’s defense. The psychiatrist justifies and defends the fact that no one believed her as a preface to his revelation that “Kyle is much better. He began speaking this morning, and his story does match yours” (160). As a teenage girl, Amanda herself is unbelievable, but when her eight year old brother vouches for her, it’s all good. In the end, while Amanda is thankfully vindicated, lots of lingering questions remain, drawing readers back to a plethora of loose ends and wild twists that ultimately lead nowhere: Was Dave a good guy? Did they ever find his body? Did Suzi ever wake up? Are Chrissy’s coma-induced supernatural powers indicative of a larger trend or threat? What is the hero kitten’s name? Did Amanda pass algebra? We’ll never know.[end-mark] The post Algebra, Murder, and Supernatural Powers: R.L. Stine’s <em>One Evil Summer</em>  appeared first on Reactor.

Trump Shooter Researched Lee Harvey Oswald

MSNBC Voter Panel in WI: Kamala Knew About Biden's Infirmity -- and Covered It Up

When they were created, the Olympics were only open to amateurs, a restriction dropped decades ago. Nevertheless, at least one form of discrimination still stands – you need to be a member of the species Homo sapiens to compete (equestrian events aside). With the Paris games about to open, it’s time to consider what would happen if we made the ultimate sporting contest a true event for the entire planet.One can think of all sorts of sports that could be added to an all-species festival, but for practicality, we’ll restrict discussion to those sports that will feature in Paris. A quick examination leads to the conclusion that humans have little to fear when it comes to the overall medal tally. Where Would Humans Still Win?Most sports require skills at which humans are unmatched, such as hand control. One might teach a chimpanzee or elephant to hold a badminton racquet in hand or trunk, but there is little danger they would be able to hit a shuttlecock well enough to match it with a champion – that’s even if they didn’t get bored quite quickly.Tempting as it might be to imagine the effect a gorilla would have on an opposing football team’s defense, there is also little chance any non-human species would be capable of the coordination required by Olympic team sports. It’s one thing for a group of lions or wolves to work together when hunting a specific target that also happens to be tasty, but good luck getting them to spend 90 minutes passing a ball around so one can put it in a net.Where tools are used in sports, these are specified in ways that suit only humans. For the Summer Olympics, this particularly applies to cycling, canoeing, and golf, but it includes almost everything in winter. Fortunately for us, shooting and archery are also sports where humans face little competition – we might not be the ones holding the Olympics if some of the animals we hunt with weapons could fire back.Consequently, of the 329 gold medals on offer, there are more than 200 where humans have nothing to worry about. Where Humans Would LoseIn fact, there is a very small list of sports where humans would almost certainly not emerge victorious in an all-animal competition. These include running, swimming, jumping, and weightlifting events, but even on that list, there are some exceptions.RunningThe fact that cheetahs are the fastest land animal is well-known even to children. Humans certainly don’t enter into it. It’s also been verified by science, with one specific cheetah averaging 29 meters per second (95 feet per second) over three trials of a 201-meter (660-foot) course.Many are also aware that cheetahs are limited to short distances – if they cannot catch their prey swiftly, they give up and find a different quarry. The course for the above experiment wasn't an even 200, but a cheetah in the 100- or 200-meter races would have only members of its own species to fear if it wanted the gold.Perhaps there would be difficulties in training them not to jump the starting gun without the enclosures used in greyhound racing, but if the incentives were strong enough there is probably a way.On the other hand, cheetahs would be out of the running over greater distances. At the longest Olympic running race of all, humans might even get a look in. Some anthropologists argue that prehistoric humans were persistence hunters.  We couldn’t run as fast as our prey initially, but that didn’t mean all we had in our favor were tools, the claim goes. Instead, we wore our meals down as more slow-twitch muscles allowed us to keep going. The truth of this remains debated, but there is certainly some evidence. If so, might humans win the Marathon, even if entries were open?Man Versus Horse Marathons occur annually in several places around the world, most notably in Llanwrtyd  Wells, Wales, where hundreds of humans take on dozens of horses. Horses have won the original contest most years, but it’s usually close, and a human won on foot in 2004, the race’s 25th year, as well as in 2023. (Cyclists have won on several occasions, which is less surprising). Conducted over 35 kilometers (22 miles) the Llanwrtyd race is somewhat shorter than a true marathon, but that only adds to the case that humans would win over the Olympic distance, given a horse would certainly win at shorter lengths. Then again, the horse competitors have human riders, which presumably slows them down, but also provides for more tactical thinking than a horse alone could muster.There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of whether any other species could beat both horses and humans in an Olympic marathon. After all, others do not have the benefits of thousands of years of selective breeding like horses do.There are certainly plenty of animals that could beat humans over 400 to 10,000 meters (1,312 to 32,808 feet) – although cheetahs would only be among them at the shorter end – as long as they could be trained to stick to the course. For example, zebras are reported to sustain speeds over a distance of 20 kilometers (12 miles). faster than the best human sprinter can manage over 100 meters (328 feet). No comprehensive analysis appears to be available over all distances, but judging by one study impalas might be strong contenders in middle-distance races. Gentoo penguins may not be the fastest swimmers around, but they're pretty speedy, and don't mind spending time out of water, making them the favorites in swimming contests, as long as the water isn't too warm.Image Credit: Nejron Photo/nwdph/Winsartwork/Shutterstock, modified by IFLScienceSwimmingWater is not humans’ natural element, so you’d expect us to have no chance here, but we’d still probably scoop the pool. It’s very unlikely anyone else could even qualify for a stroke as weird as the butterfly, handing those events and the medleys to humans. Frogs’ swimming motions might qualify them for the breaststroke, but we’d probably beat them over 100 meters (328 feet), even if they could stand the chlorine.Seals sometimes like to do something that looks like backstroke, however, and if their movements were deemed suitable would certainly have us beaten on that account. There are a great many fish and cetaceans that would easily outswim us at freestyle, but few would survive waiting on the blocks for the gun. On the other hand, a gentoo penguin would have no such problems and has been timed at 35 kilometers per hour (22 mph) underwater, so would probably win those events.Rock-wallabies don't have the international profile of impalas or red kangaroos, but they could be the surprise winners of the long and high jump according to a scientist who knows them.Image Credit: Maximiliane Wagner/Real Sports Photos/Shutterstock.com, modified by IFLScienceJumpingHumans would stand no chance at either the long jump or the high jump; the interest would be in watching kangaroos battle impalas. Both have been reported as capable of reaching heights of 3 meters (10 feet) and lengths of 10 meters (33 feet), and that is without any training. Both are skittish beasts, so the hard part would be to get them to do it in the right direction. When most people imagine such a contest they’d probably think of red kangaroos, the largest surviving species, as the champions of the Australian continent. However, when interviewing marsupial expert Dr David Taggart for the piece on whether a wombat could beat an Olympic sprinter, he told us otherwise. Rock-wallabies are the true jumping champions, Taggart told IFLScience, “I’ve seen a yellow-footed rock-wallaby jump 10 meters and one go 9 feet upwards.” The figures are similar to those quoted for their larger cousins, but there’s one big difference: Taggart’s observations were of jumps from a standing start – with an opportunity to get a run jump-up, the wallabies should be far ahead.ClimbingHumans gave up some of our climbing skills when we came down from the trees, so it’s not surprising more arboreal species could easily beat us to the top of a climbing course. In bouldering contests, humans would certainly be beaten – although whether the winner would be an orangutan, a mountain goat, or those leaping rock wallabies might depend on the details of the course. The Olympic sports of lead climbing and speed climbing require the use of ropes, however, which might put humans back on the podium, or at least restrict the competition to our fellow apes.WeightliftingHumans really are not that strong, which is probably one reason we developed our large brains. It’s unlikely we could win in any Olympic weight division in an all-species contest, so who would?When it comes to the open category, African bush elephants have been known to lift 9,000 kilograms (20,000 pounds), and that’s for much longer than the competition requires. That means they could carry the weights that would win a human the gold medal, and all three podium finishers in both men’s and women’s divisions all at once. Their trunk alone can carry more than any Olympian will lift, hopefully resolving questions about hold legality.Things get trickier when you’re looking at the lower-weight categories. Relative to body weight, beetles are thought to be the champion lifter, although sources vary as to whether dung beetles or rhinoceros beetles are best of all. Still, there’s no Olympic division for those weighing a few grams, and even being able to lift 1,000 times your weight won’t win any medals in a human-centered contest.Stories of chimpanzees being able to pull far greater weights than humans have been refuted, but they are considerably stronger relative to body weight than us, so it’s possible our closest relatives would win the lowest weight division for each sex. Male orangutans can reportedly lift 225 kilograms (500 pounds), which if true should see them able to win most of the middle divisions, depending on the individual’s weight class. We haven’t been able to find an original source for that, but comparisons of their muscle distribution with gorillas suggest their arms are stronger, relative to their weight, so the claim seems plausibleSubjective JudgementNot everything in the Olympics depends on objective standards like speed and strength. Diving and gymnastics are greatly influenced by the biases of the judges. Until animal representatives can award marks out of ten, humans will still be making the assessments.Therefore, it would seem likely that however well animals can perform in Artistic swimming, Diving, Breakdancing, or certain aspects of gymnastics, there’s a high chance we’d still be awarding the medal to ourselves.You Might Think So, But Probably NotKangaroos are known for their boxing prowess, to the point where a kangaroo wearing boxing gloves served as Australia’s unofficial sporting emblem in the 1980s, and is still sometimes used today. However, kangaroos do very little actual boxing with their forelegs, merely holding their prey steady while they attempt to disembowel them with their sharp hind claws. That’s a quick route to disqualification under Queensbury rules.Some human versus kangaroo fights have been staged for entertainment (of human onlookers, not the kangaroo), but besides the cruelty, these are only really contests if the kangaroo can use all its limbs. So under Olympic rules, letting kangaroos in would be wrong and pointless.Uncertain CasesHaving put together this list, there are a few sports we will admit to remaining unsure about. There are plenty of animals that are physically much stronger than us – see the weightlifting section - but how would they go in the wrestling? If a human, even a champion wrestler, were to try to take on some of these in the wild, it’s unlikely they would win. On the other hand, freestyle wrestling, and Greco-Roman even more so, ban certain holds and moves. A chimpanzee, as just one example, wouldn’t need to use these to beat a human – their muscles are at least 35 percent stronger than humans. The question is whether an ape could be sufficiently trained as to not do anything illegal – including biting or scratching – when tackled by a formidable opponent. As far as we know, no one has tested this, for fairly obvious reasons.

A mass stranding event involving a total of 146 dolphins on the Cape Cod peninsula in the northeastern United States has officially been declared the largest such event in the country’s history. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), whose rescuers responded rapidly to the distressed cetaceans, 37 animals died in the event and seven more were humanely euthanized.On Friday, June 28, IFAW responded to a report of 10 Atlantic white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus acutus) apparently stuck in a shallow mudflat on the shores of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. However, when the team arrived on the scene, it was immediately clear that they were dealing with many more animals than they had thought.“We arrived to what appeared to be 80 to 100 dolphins on the shallow mud flats of Wellfleet’s Herring River ‘Gut’ – a global epicenter for mass strandings,” said stranding coordinator Misty Niemeyer in a statement. In actuality, the number on that first day quickly rose to 125, the largest stranding that IFAW had seen in its 26-year history in the area.  “This rescue had many challenges due to the number of dolphins, the large size of many of the animals, how spread out they were over a large area, the difficult mud conditions, and the complicated locations from which we could reach them,” Niemeyer said. In a grueling 12-hour operation, a team of over 150 people from multiple agencies, including 100 trained volunteers, managed to herd most of the animals into safer, deeper waters.Unfortunately, 10 dolphins had already died by the time the rescuers got to the scene.The surviving dolphins were carefully herded toward deeper waters.Image credit: © IFAWThis particular region of coastline is a known risk area for dolphin strandings due to its shape and the strength of the fluctuating tides it sees. IFAW responds to around 315 strandings around Cape Cod every year.The following morning, June 29, an IFAW team located 10 of the rescued dolphins once again straying into dangerous waters, and 25 more were seen swimming in the shallows just down the coast at Eastham.Concerns continued into the next day, with a small group of animals being monitored in Wellfleet Harbor and a further stranding of around 20 dolphins in Brewster, MA. Two of them died before rescuers could reach them, but the remainder were saved and moved out to deeper waters.Overall, thanks to the efforts of the team, 70 percent of the 146 dolphins involved in the incident survived.As well as those that died of natural causes, the team had to make the decision to humanely euthanize a small number of animals. IFAW’s Deputy Vice President of Rescue Katie Moore explained why this sometimes becomes necessary: “The very social nature of these dolphins means they will stick together even in a bad situation. By removing individuals that are not well, the group may be more easily moved offshore.”Several weeks later, on July 15, the event was officially declared the largest mass dolphin stranding ever seen in the US.It’s natural to wonder how and why so many animals could get into difficulties all at the same time. One study has even suggested that, in some cases, an Alzheimer’s-like disease could be to blame, while research into whale strandings suggests that factors within the natural environment are likely to be the main cause. Toxic pollutants and solar storms are other suggestions that have been put forward.  IFAW reported on July 8 that it is “gathering data to understand what may have caused this mass stranding,” but there are no clear answers yet. Thanks to the coordinated response, tagging data showed that over 100 dolphins had returned to swimming in deeper waters at a safe distance from the shore.  The multi-day rescue operation saw hundreds of responders coming to the aid of a total of 146 dolphins.Image credit: © IFAWIf you ever come across a stranded dolphin, it’s important that you don’t try to return it to the sea yourself. Instead, call for help from the experts, like the team at IFAW, and try to keep other people and pets away from the area.

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), July 22, 2024 was the hottest day since the ERA5 recording started in 1940. That day, the planet had an average temperature of 17.15°C (62.87°F), breaking the record set on July 21 of 17.09°C (62.76°F), that one only fractionally hotter than the previous record on July 6, 2023.The measurements are still preliminary, but the difference between the July 22 record and the other measurement is larger than the day-to-day variation in the dataset, so the team is confident that the record will unfortunately hold. The 10 highest annual maximum global average daily temperatures of the last 50 years have all occurred since 2015. This is the climate crisis unfolding as politicians sit on their hands instead of acting in meaningful ways to tackle it.Curves showing the daily global average temperature from 1940 to today really show how badly things are going...Data source: ERA5. Image credit: C3S/ECMWF"On July 21st, C3S recorded a new record for the daily global mean temperature. What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records. We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years," C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement on July 23, before the July 22 measurement was available.Following the new record on July 22, Buontempo added: “We now have a new record, and its value is sufficiently large to indicate with some confidence that this has exceeded the record set only last year. The event is still ongoing and it is possible the date of the peak may still change, but our data suggest we may see slightly lower temperatures in the next few days".Global average temperature reaches its annual peak between late June and early August, matching the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This is due to the difference in heat capacity between the landmasses and the ocean. There are more landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere so that drives the general shape of global average daily temperatures throughout the year. Since 1940, there has been an upward trend in temperatures, year-on-year. This is due to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.C3S states that is too early to tell if 2024 will beat last year as the hottest year on record, but it has an extremely good chance of doing so. Still, the warm final months of 2023 make this difficult to predict.