Welcome back to the Abstract, and Happy New Year! Here are the studies this week that stoked the flames, cooled off, then went feral and rogue. First, the ashy remains of a cremation pyre reveal a rare glimpse of an ancient ritual. Then: Uranus is chilling, ham on the lam, and a Saturn without a…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Mysterious bones that date back seven million years likely belong to the oldest known human ancestor, according to a study published on Friday in Science Advances. For years, scientists have debated…
A team of researchers at Epoch AI, a non-profit research institute, are using open-source intelligence to map the growth of America’s datacenters. The team pores over satellite imagery, building permits, and other local legal documents to build a map of the massive computer filled buildings springing up across the United States. They take that data…
This post originally ran on Tedium, our zine designer Ernie Smith’s wonderful website and newsletter about the Dull Side of the Internet. Check it out here. I write a lot these days, but my path into journalism, going way back to J-School, was through layout. For years, I was a graphic designer at a number…
Joseph speaks to Craig Silverman, one of the co-founders of Indicator. Indicator is a new, independent media company that Craig runs with Alexios Mantzarlis. For years Craig has covered the world of ad fraud and disinformation using all sorts of open source intelligence (OSINT) techniques. Definitely check out Indicator at Indicator.media. The site publishes its…
“This is so fucking stressful,” Jason said. On a group call, all four of us—Jason, Sam, Emanuel, and me—were bidding on something that had long eluded us. 404media.com. Not the .co domain we launched with two years ago because that’s all we could afford. But a fully-fledged .com. That September day I was on holiday…
Welcome to a special holiday edition of the Abstract! It’s been an incredible year for science, from breakthroughs in life-saving organ transplants to the discovery of 3I ATLAS, the third known interstellar object. But we can’t cover everything, so to cap off 2025 I’m pulling together a grab-bag of my favorite studies from the past…
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss our recommendations for the year. SAM: Whenever we shout out a podcast, book, TV show, or other media or consumable product on our own podcast or in…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have discovered a hotspot of weird marine life more than two miles underwater in the Arctic, making it the deepest known example of an environment called a gas hydrate cold…
I am starting to think I will never receive my personalized, likely AI-generated horny Shrek Christmas ornaments I purchased from Wear and Decor. I had hoped the indecent and probably unauthorized Shrek ornament depicting the green ogre getting a blowjob would arrive before Christmas and, ideally, before I traveled home for the holidays. I doubt…
