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A UBC Okanagan study uses Gödel’s incompleteness theorem to argue simulations fail because the universe contains truths no algorithm can generate/ Image: The Truman Show screengrab For years, the idea that we might be living inside a giant cosmic computer has been one of the internet’s favourite existential spirals. A kind of upgraded Truman Show:…

North Korean officials accused the traveller’s companion of “polluting their country” after discovering a selfie video of him scattering ashes at the DMZ/ Henrik Jeppesen For most travellers, visiting twenty countries is an achievement. For Henrik Jeppesen, a Danish backpacker-turned-blogger, twenty was just the warm-up. By 28, he had stood in more than 2,000 destinations…

DNA taken from a shawl allegedly found beside Catherine Eddowes sparked claims it links Jack the Ripper to a Polish 19th-century suspect/ Image: Russel Edwards, The Independent There are very few unsolved mysteries that still grip people the way Jack the Ripper does. In the autumn of 1888, a still-unidentified serial killer stalked the streets…

Search teams recovered George’s backpack, containing a sleeping bag and unused stove equipment/ Image:X Bran Castle is one of those places where folklore clings to the walls. Perched above the village of Bran, its spires and narrow stairways helped turn it into the world’s “Dracula’s Castle,” even though the Transylvanian vampire of Bram Stoker’s 1897…

Some users joked their Spotify Wrapped showed a listening age of 2000 after “spending the year deep in Mongolian throat singing from 25 AD Wrapped remains the only annual event where people brag about sounding older than their parents.Spotify Wrapped arrived on 3 December, and, as always, the internet posted its results faster than most…

A 2022 study, cited by Jacobsen, predicts five billion deaths/ Representative Image If World War III begins as a burst of missiles and miscalculation, Annie Jacobsen argues, it will not be a protracted campaign but a compressed sequence of decisions and detonations, the kind that could kill, as she explains, referencing a 2022 study, “five…

Millions of Gen Z users are screaming “Faaaaahhh” online It’s getting hard to keep up. If you’ve heard your mates randomly shouting “faaah!” into the void, don’t judge them just yet, he might be onto something, and you might be the one who needs context. There’s an online competition of sorts happening right now, a…

The Brit who went inside says the towering pyramid is empty From most angles in Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel looks finished and ready for guests. The glass skin is smooth, the 330-metre pyramid sharp against the skyline, its tip tapering into a neat, futuristic point. This is North Korea’s tallest building, rumoured to have 105…

Jessie Cave is an actress best known for playing Lavender Brown in the later Harry Potter films/ Image: X Jessie Cave’s pregnancy story is not the sort of romance arc you’d pitch for a Harry Potter spin-off. The actor who played Lavender Brown, the lovestruck Gryffindor who clung to Ron Weasley – ended up with…

Ed Bambas, 88, still working full-time as a cashier, now has a GoFundMe that’s raised almost $1.9 million/ Instagram He was supposed to be on his second retirement, not his second full-time job. Instead, at 88, Army veteran and former General Motors worker Ed Bambas was still standing at a cashier’s station in a Michigan…