The stories worth knowing.
The memes worth stealing.
Your group chat will thank you.
THE BIG PICTURE In 2014, Jake A. Smith wrote a 174-line PHP compatibility fix as a stopgap for AOL’s CMS. Twelve years and nearly 20 million cumulative Packagist installs later, he has deprecated it. The package remains installable, but it will receive no new fixes. “Temporary” has officially entered its retirement era.
MEME + CONTEXT One head, two origin stories. Stanford-led research suggests the forebrain and midbrain develop separately from the hindbrain—a finding that helped researchers grow human hindbrain motor neurons in the lab.
MEME + CONTEXT Even galaxies struggle to get everyone moving in the same direction. NASA’s new Hubble image highlights NGC 4698, whose central stars and gas rotate perpendicular to the surrounding disk.
MEME + CONTEXT A careful course correction can be worth years. NASA says fuel savings and extra propellant could give the Roman Space Telescope at least 22 years of potential science operations, against its original ten-year fuel budget.
MEME + CONTEXT An essay on hawksley.dev challenges the push toward passkeys for personal accounts, arguing that recovery and portability problems can outweigh their phishing protections. The author praises the underlying technology but questions its everyday usability—a distinction that puts access to accounts, not just protection against intruders, at the center of the debate.