0:12
3D 'laser stirring' generates complex unobtainium-level alloys
High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are metallurgy’s version of having your cake and eating it too, combining multiple elements to create unusual mixes of desirable properties. The problem is that they can be difficult to create, requiring proper mixing of the constituent elements at the atomic level.
Category: Materials, Engineering
Tags: 3D Printing, NIST, Metals, Alloy
0:43
Daddy longlegs seen catching and eating frogs in astonishing first
Researchers watching a South American rainforest caught harvestmen—those “daddy‑longlegs” you see on sidewalks—snatching live frogs that were actually bigger than the arachnids themselves. The footage shows the arachnids lunging, grabbing the frog with their front legs, and pulling it into their mouth, all without any venom or silk. It’s a single observational report, so we can’t yet say how common this behavior is, but it does expand what we know about harvestmen’s diet beyond the usual tiny insects. For now, it’s a fascinating glimpse rather than a sweeping revision of their ecology.
1:31
Where Is Daeron? The Missing Targaryen May Have Already Appeared In 'House Of The Dragon'
House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 3 is all about how getting the Iron Throne doesn’t give you victory. Rhaenyra may control King’s Landing now, but she still doesn’t have any money to keep her court running, any respect from the lords who sided with the Greens, or any rapport with the common folk.
But her biggest problem is with her fellow Targaryens. Aegon is on the run with Larys Strong, and Aemond is plotting from Harrenhal. The only Targaryen with a claim to the throne under her control is Daeron, Alicent’s son, who lived at Oldtown with the Hightowers for most of his life. And even this is too good to be true for Rhaenyra. So where’s the real Daeron? The answer may be hiding in plain sight. Spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 3 ahead.
When Rhaenyra takes Alicent to see Daeron, she’s shocked to realize that Alicent doesn’t recognize her own son. Ormund Hightower pulled one over on Daemon and Rhaenyra by giving them a decoy prisoner, dyeing the hair of an Oldtown lady’s son to match the traditional Targaryen silver.
So where is the actual Daeron? We may have already seen him. In Season 3, Episode 1, we see Ormund Hightower on the march when a message from Aemond orders him to make camp. He’s accompanied by Ser Jon Roxton and a teenage boy, presumably Ormund’s squire, and fans have theorized that this squire may actually be Daeron.
While he may not have the Targaryen hair, his reddish-auburn hair is the same color as Alicent’s. While the silver hair gene is certainly strong, it’s not completely dominant, as Rhaenyra’s children with Ser Harwin Strong show. It’s very possible that Alicent and Viserys had a child with her hair instead of his.
But the biggest piece of evidence has nothing to do with the story at all, and instead pertains to the role’s casting. The squire character is played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, an accomplished young actor who played Miles in The Haunting of Bly Manor, provided the voice for Pinocchio in Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio, and is set to play Link in the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie. Given his prolificacy, it seems likely that he’d be playing a meatier role than Ormund’s unnamed squire. He also doesn’t have a House of the Dragon credit on his IMDb page yet, suggesting there’s more to his role than what meets the eye.
Showrunner Ryan Condal told Entertainment Weekly that Daeron — the real Daeron — will play a major role in Season 3, so whoever and wherever this character is, we’ll learn very soon. But don’t be too surprised if he shows up with a mop of red hair and a familiar face.
4:36
You Become What You Tolerate
One of the biggest misconceptions about personal growth is that your life changes when you decide you want more.
It doesn’t. Most people already know what they want.
A healthier body. More meaningful relationships. Financial freedom. A career they’re proud of. A calmer mind. Blah blah blah
The question we need to be asking is NOT What do you want?
It’s: What are you willing to keep tolerating?
Because the things you repeatedly accept stop feeling temporary & they start feeling normal.
And once something feels normal, it quietly becomes part of your identity.
Your brain is incredibly good at adapting. It’s one of the reasons human beings are so resilient. We adjust to new environments, new routines, and new circumstances faster than we realize. But there’s a downside to that gift.
We also adapt to things we were never meant to accept.
The cluttered apartment.
The job that drains you.
The friendship that leaves you feeling smaller.
The skipped workouts.
The constant stress.
The negative self-talk.
The credit card balance.
The relationship you’ve spent years calling “complicated.”
Almost none of those things begin as permanent. They begin as: “Just for now.”
I think one of the most revealing questions you can ask yourself is this:
What am I optimizing for?
Am I optimizing…
For comfort?
For convenience?
For avoiding difficult conversations?
OR am I optimizing for
health?
Freedom?
Peace?
Financial security?
Deep relationships?
A remarkable life?
And whether you realize it or not, your habits are optimized for something, honey!
Your calendar is optimized for something and so is your bank account and even your self-talk.
Nothing is really all that random. Your life is actually perfectly designed to produce your current results.
That isn’t meant to be discouraging. I actually find it incredibly hopeful.
Because if your life is the result of repeated choices, it can also be redesigned through repeated choices.
Here’s another way I’ve been thinking about it.
Every habit is a rehearsal. Every excuse is a rehearsal. Every boundary is a rehearsal. Every difficult conversation you avoid is a rehearsal.
Every time you say, “It’s not that bad,” you’re rehearsing a version of yourself that accepts it.
And then eventually, rehearsals become reality. That’s why identity feels so difficult to change.
You’re not fighting your goals. Or your desires. You’re fighting the version of yourself that has been thoroughly rehearsed.
I also think we all have something I’d call a tolerance budget.
Every day, we’re spending it somewhere.
Maybe you’re spending yours tolerating poor sleep, or on some shitty relationship that’s run its course. It could even be a messy environment that’s stealing your focus or constantly running late. Maybe it’s never taking the first step because you’re waiting until you feel ready.
But everything you tolerate has a cost.
The question is whether it’s costing you the life you’re trying to build.
Your future won’t be determined by one extraordinary decision, it’ll be determined by what you quietly decide is acceptable every ordinary day.
You don’t become what you dream about. You become what you tolerate.
8:16
They changed one word so you’d stop asking
God blessed them and said, be fruitful, and multiply, and REPLENISH the earth.
Replenish.
Not plenish. Replenish.
To fill again. To restock a thing that was full once, then emptied.
You do not tell someone to refill a glass that was never poured. The word only makes sense if something was here before. Full. Then gone.
Your King James left the word standing. Genesis 1:28, right where it always was. But open a modern translation and watch what happens. “Replenish” quietly becomes “fill.” The re is gone. The question it forces is gone with it.
Somebody did not want you asking what the earth was full of the first time.
Because once you ask that, Genesis 1:2 stops reading like a beginning and starts reading like an aftermath. “The earth was without form, and void.” The Hebrew under void is not empty-new. It is closer to ruined. Laid waste.
And that is the part they buried.
What was here before Adam. Why the ground was already ruined when God started over. What the KJV keeps and the modern versions scrub, verse by verse. And why every church you’ve sat in taught you to skip straight past it.
This is where Dead Hidden goes that the pulpit won’t.
Not ready for the guide? At least don’t walk away empty.
Subscribe and I’ll keep pulling up what they buried, one verse at a time.
9:50
AI Hallucination: Have You Had One?
AI (artificial intelligence) is a fancy term for a lot of different programming efforts that make people more productive. Specifically, AI is a branch of computer science focused on creating systems that perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. These tasks include pattern recognition, understanding language, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving.
AI hallucinations are incorrect or misleading results that AI models create. These errors can be caused by many things, including insufficient training, incorrect assumptions, biases in the data that was used to train the model, or just bad or culled data. AI hallucinations can be big problems for AI systems that are used to make important decisions like medical diagnoses. They can also be the result of intentional efforts to change history or shift blame.
The challenge right now, and will likely be forever, is you need an experience filter and common sense. In other words if you don’t know that a generative AI chatbot (Chat GPT, for example) has just generated garbage, you could be making decisions based on garbage.
In general AI is very good at taking simple natural language commands in English (or other languages) and translating them into computer code. This is known in the trade as an AI code generator. For example, net present value calculations are correct close to 100% of the time. This task has been handled on computers for a long time. The addition of the natural language component makes it easier for someone who does not have a technical background to perform the calculation.
AI is generally good at recognizing patterns (and the learning associated with pattern recognition) and being able to call out deviations. This work have been going on for about 70 years, so it is not surprising that AI systems can be helpful in this area. Where there are still challenges and human input is required is in edge cases or cases where there is little data.
Where AI stills struggles is with more advanced learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. This is where it can be dangerous. If your kids don’t learn the basics (without computers) in school, there is a risk that they won’t know when something is an AI hallucination. So the harsh reality is people need to be smarter than ever before.
Is our society up for the challenge?
12:34
Local Weather History: The Top 5 Weather Events of June 2026
June 11 Severe Weather Outbreak with 8 Tornadoes & Corridors of Damaging Winds
One supercell clipper our far northwest at Lake Village & north of Enos, then bow of severe storms followed on the evening of June. 6 tornadoes occurred, the longest track was +15 miles (EF0 at 85 mph) from Ade to Mt. Ayr & the strongest was an EF1 (100 mph) at Georgetown. Damaging winds occurred in many corridors in the area at 60-85 mph. Two microbursts hit the Kokomo area with up to 90 mph winds determined on the west side & 93 mph on the east side.
2. Severe Weather & Flooding Rainfall of June 6
After round of t’storms in the morning in the northern half of the forecast area, with sunshine, heat (highs 84-91 & heat indices 90-102) & muggy to oppressive humidity (dew points 72-76) numerous scattered t’storms & t’storm clusters formed in the afternoon, lasting into the evening. Training of t’storms led to up to 6” of rainfall. This led to flooding parts of the area with water rescues in Fountain County.
Microbursts occurred with multiple spots of trees & power lines down & damage to storage building on the north edge of Fowler.
Microbursts occurred with multiple spots of trees & power lines down & damage to storage building on the north edge of Fowler. Several reports of pea to marble & penny hail were received with quarter-sized hail reported northwest of Fowler & on the southeast side of Lafayette.
Widespread 2-6” rainfall occurred over a lot of Warren, Fountain, Tippecanoe, Clinton, northwestern Boone, Montgomery & far northern Parke counties yesterday afternoon-evening to overnight. Another pocket of heavy rainfall was west of Earl Park.
There was a lack of any rainfall in southern Montgomery, southeastern Boone, much of Vermillion & central & southern Parke counties.
14:43
Fifth of July Reflections about Independence Day
Dear friends,
This is not my usual kind of Substack letter. I’m doing no research for it. I’m documenting nothing. I’m on vacation with my wife at our A-frame cottage on Blodgett Hill in Cabot, Vermont. I’m typing semi-reclined on a futon looking out at a beautiful blue sky above the towering green of the trees. I’m writing as I might in an actual letter to friends. I am not giving it a number, as it is not part of the collection of letters I recycle on Facebook.
I like to think of Cabot as “where I’m from,” but truth be told I only resided here year-around for two years—my last two years of high school. I’m a 1962 graduate of Cabot High School. But my parents and younger bothers stayed here for years after that, and one brother still lives with his family in Plainfield, near Cabot, so this is where I have for 64 years been going “home” to family. I also have ancestors (no longer living) who lived in this area before the ancestral branch that produced me moved to Minnesota, which is where I mostly grew up before we moved to Cabot.
If you have heard of Cabot, it’s probably because of Cabot cheese and other Cabot dairy products. Those now are sold nationally, even internationally, and are made not just in Cabot but also at branch creameries elsewhere. Cabot Creamery products were just local when I lived in Cabot. I worked for a few months in high school at the creamery, as an afterschool job.
Regular readers of my writings know well my distaste for conventional schooling, but I must confess that I liked Cabot School. When I was a student there, there were just 52 students in the high school, just 12 in my graduating class. The school is still going strong, with about the same number of students as it had then. Cabot has stubbornly resisted pressures to consolidate with schools in other towns, which attempts had been present even before I became a student there. I’m glad of that.
When a school is small and everyone knows everyone, it has a kind of family feel. At least that’s how I felt about Cabot School. Courses were adapted to some degree to the needs of the students, and I recall teachers and the school principal being rather humble and open to students’ ideas and opinions. We had most of the usual extra-curricular activities, and the great thing about them was that anybody who wanted to be part of them could be—in fact was encouraged to be. To have boys’ and girls’ basketball teams (which competed with other small schools throughout the state) we needed all the boys and girls who wanted to play, regardless of ability. Similarly with the boys’ baseball team. We also had a school chorus, student newspaper, student yearbook, one or two school plays a year, and a debate team that did well even against big schools, including those in Burlington and Montpelier. I was part of all of them. Our teams did well, but we didn’t feel much pressure about winning. We were in it for fun. We did well despite our small size because, in a setting where they know they can be on the team, kids rise to the occasion and become pretty good.
The A-frame cottage, from which I am writing this letter, was built by my uncle Wyman Smith shortly after I left Cabot to go to New York City for college and graduate school. I helped a little on a visit home one summer. Wyman is the uncle who encouraged my family of origin to move to Cabot from Duluth, Minnesota, where we had previously lived. Wyman was a lawyer by profession, but his love was maple sugaring. He had purchased what people call a “sugarbush,” here on Blodgett Hill, and spent as much time as he could working it. Helping him with the sugaring—at a time when we hung buckets rather than plastic tubing—was another of my learning experiences the two years I lived in Cabot. Wyman also was the volunteer who coached our school debate team and drove us around to meets throughout the state.
When Wyman died his children inherited the cottage and land (about 70 acres of woods), but after a few years I learned they had put it up for sale. I bought it to keep it in the family, I think in 1998, and have spent time here ever since when possible. My mother—who lived up here her last days—is buried on the property. She’s buried the way she wanted to be buried—in a pine coffin made by my brother Barney, who is a carpenter by profession, in a hole my brothers and I (her four sons) dug together in the woods. She wanted no marker, but her brother Wyman put a small one there later, anyway. I’m glad of that, as it has allowed me to find the spot and think about her from time to time as I walk the woods.
But now I want to turn my attention to yesterday, the Fourth of July, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country. Cabot regularly has perhaps the greatest small-town Fourth of July parade in Vermont. People come from surrounding towns to participate in it and see it.
20:22
DATING TRAPS: THE MEN WITH NO SOCIAL MEDIA
you are drawn to him because he is not there. and that absence feels like a choice about values, like he has rejected the performance, the superficiality, the constant documentation of a life that does not need to be witnessed to be real. you think: here is a man who is too deep for that. here is a man who is present. here is a man who does not need validation. and you are flattered that he chose to be visible to you, that out of all the noise and the platforms and the endless performance, he showed up for you without fanfare. it feels intimate. it feels chosen.
but what if the invisibility is not a virtue. what if it is a method.
some men understand that there is an audience of women searching for this exact fantasy. women exhausted by men who perform, women who mistake absence for depth, women who are grateful for a man who seems to exist outside the machinery of modern life. these men know this. and they exploit it. they craft an image of a man who is above it all, who does not need social media, who is not distracted by the noise. it is a seduction. it is a calculated performance of not performing. and the predatory part is that they know exactly which women will fall for it.
a man with no social media, no digital footprint, no mutual friends, no way to be cross-referenced or verified, this man has engineered invisibility. he has created a blank canvas onto which you project your hopes. and because there is nothing else to go on, you have to believe everything he tells you. you have no choice but to trust his words completely. there is no one to ask. there is no record. there is no receipt.
i knew a woman who met a man like this. he had no instagram, no facebook, no presence anywhere. he was always busy. he was rarely available. his busyness was his invisibility, and his invisibility was his freedom. for a year, she did not know that he had another family. she did not know that while he was with her, he was also living an entirely separate life. she did not know because there was no way to know. no one knew him outside of what he told her he was. no one knew him because he did not exist anywhere except in the spaces he controlled. and when she finally discovered the truth, it was not because she caught him, it was because the lie became too big to contain. it was because he had too many lives to manage, too many women, too many relationships built on the same infrastructure of invisibility.
this is what narcissism does. it does not always show up as grandiosity or the constant need for attention. sometimes it shows up as the opposite. sometimes it shows up as a man who performs indifference to the world’s gaze while meticulously controlling the gaze of every woman he meets. a narcissist does not need social media to be narcissistic. in fact, social media can be a liability, it creates records, witnesses, contradictions that can be found and exposed. but invisibility? invisibility is perfect for a narcissist. it allows him to be whoever he needs to be in each compartment of his life. it allows him to move between worlds without leaving a trace. it allows him to tell each woman a different story because there is no one to cross-reference, no digital shadow, no past that can be verified.
the red flag is not that he is absent from social media. the red flag is what the absence allows him to do.
and the fear you are not naming, the fear you have been taught not to have, is this… a man who has engineered his own invisibility is a man who has something to hide. not from instagram. from life. from accountability. from you. the mystery you find attractive might be a structure. it might be infrastructure for a double life. it might be the only way he knows how to exist, by existing in multiple realities at once, by keeping you compartmentalized, by ensuring that you never meet the other versions of him, that you never compare notes, that you never discover that you are one of many women building a life with a ghost.
you deserve to feel suspicious of that. you deserve to let that make you uncomfortable. you deserve to ask the questions that feel paranoid because they are not paranoid, they are protection. the invisibility is not romantic. it is convenient. for him. and you are allowed to see it that way.
25:20
Why Disappointment Hurts: What the Bible and Neuroscience Reveal
Episode 21, Season 1
Why does disappointment hurt so deeply?
Whether it’s an unanswered prayer, a broken relationship, a diagnosis you never expected, or a dream that feels out of reach, disappointment has a way of shaking not only our hearts but also our understanding of God.
In this episode of The Christian Mind Reset, we explore what happens in the brain when our expectations collide with reality, and how God’s Word offers hope amid unmet expectations. Together we’ll look at the neuroscience of disappointment, including prediction error, dopamine, the lateral habenula, hopelessness, neuroplasticity, and the brain’s remarkable capacity for resilience.
We’ll spend time in Psalm 22, where David cries out with complete honesty, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” We’ll see why Jesus quoted those very words from the cross and what they teach us about bringing our disappointment to God without losing our faith.
We’ll also discover how Psalm 34 reminds us that God’s goodness is not determined by our circumstances, but by His unchanging character. Finally, we’ll explore how Scripture and neuroscience beautifully agree that our repeated thoughts shape how we experience life, and how the Holy Spirit renews our minds as we continue to bring our disappointments back to the Lord.
If you’ve ever wondered where God is in your waiting, this episode is for you.
• Why disappointment affects both the brain and the heart
• The neuroscience of prediction error, dopamine, and unmet expectations
• The role of the lateral habenula in disappointment and hopelessness
• David’s honest prayer in Psalm 22
• Why Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross
• How hopelessness changes our thinking—and how Scripture corrects it
• Psalm 34 and trusting God’s character over our circumstances
• Neuroplasticity, perseverance, and renewing your mind
• Biblical declarations and a guided prayer for seasons of disappointment
Psalm 22
Psalm 34
Psalm 30:5
Psalm 62:5
Romans 5:3–5
Romans 8:28
Romans 12:2
Lamentations 3:22–23
Philippians 1:6
Matthew 27:46
Liu, R. T., Kleiman, E. M., Nestor, B. A., & Cheek, S. M. (2015). The hopelessness theory of depression: A quarter-century in review.
Matsumoto, M., & Hikosaka, O. (2007). Lateral habenula as a source of negative reward signals.
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward.
Touroutoglou, A., Andreano, J. M., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2020). How the anterior mid-cingulate contributes to achieving goals. Cortex, 123, 12–29.
Connect with Dr. April Joy:
Substack: The Christian Mind Reset
If you liked today’s episode, please subscribe, leave a review, follow, like, or share. You can find me on Instagram at @thechristianpsychnp and also on Instagram and Substack at The Christian Mind Reset for more Scripture, neuroscience, and practical tips for renewing your mind.
Listen to The Christian Min Reset on Apple, Spotify, and Substack.
My eBook, The Christian Mind Reset: A 28-Day Psalms Guide to Biblical Meditation, Neuroscience, and Renewing Your Mind, is available in my Stan Store at https://stan.store/thechristianpsychnp and on my Substack.
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275(5306), 1593–1599. Link
Matsumoto, M., & Hikosaka, O. (2007). Lateral habenula as a source of negative reward signals in dopamine neurons. Nature, 447(7148), 1111–1115. Link
Liu, R. T., Kleiman, E. M., Nestor, B. A., & Cheek, S. M. (2015). The hopelessness theory of depression: A quarter century in review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 22(4), 345–365. Link
Thomas Nelson. (2017). The NKJV Study Bible (2nd ed.). Thomas Nelson.
Touroutoglou, A., Andreano, J., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2020). The tenacious brain: How the anterior mid-cingulate contributes to achieving goals. Cortex, 123, 12–29. Link
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