prakhar@affmantra.com

Why did magic mushrooms evolve? We may finally have the answer

Many mushroom species produce the psychoactive compound psilocybin YARphotographer/Shutters​tock Magic mushrooms have been giving humans mind-altering experiences for thousands of years, but the real reason fungi evolved these hallucinogenic chemicals may have been as a bioweapon against insects that feed on them. Psilocybin is the active ingredient in numerous species of magic mushrooms, which are…

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Institutions are drowning in AI-generated text and they can’t keep up

In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone. Other fiction magazines have also reported a high number…

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SpaceX’s Starlink dodged 300,000 satellite collisions in 2025

A long-exposure photograph in the northern hemisphere showing satellites in the night sky Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images A report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late December reveals some startling information – including that its Starlink satellites had to perform about 300,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres in 2025. Starlink…

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AI activation will define 2026

We’re still in the earliest days of artificial intelligence. It was just November 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT, and the world changed. However, enough time has passed for us to have a sufficient perspective to categorize AI and autonomous agents into three distinct eras. Introduction—2024: In the initial shockwave, there was more novelty and hype…

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