Arctic summer sea ice should have melted away years ago, according to the 'experts' who foretold its demise by 2007, 2012, 2016... But with the ice going nowhere, those experts are very quiet now, says Paul Homewood.
The post Arctic Scare Stories Melt Away appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Bob the Builder has been accused of spreading "Net Zero propaganda" after ditching his construction yard for installing solar panels and "low carbon heating" in a woke new advert.
The post Bob the Builder Spreads “Net Zero Propaganda” in Solar Advert appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The EU has claimed "insurance as usual is not sustainable" in the era of climate change, but it's really just an excuse for Brussels to build a climate protection racket, warns Dr Tilak Doshi.
The post Brussels is Building a Climate Protection Racket in the Name of ‘Climate Insurance’ appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A Nature editorial on the Jason Arday affair, blaming everyone except Arday himself, chooses progressive ideology over basic honesty and scientific integrity, says Jerry A. Coyne in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The post Jason Arday and the Corruption of Science appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
An anti-immigration-themed adaptation of Tetris was removed from the White House website over the weekend. The move comes days after The Tetris Company disavowed any involvement with the game and said that it "take[s] copyright infringement very seriously."
The White House's "Build the Wall" game asked players to stop a "Zombie Border siege" by stacking Tetris-styled bricks in an attempt to "hold the line." Unlike in Tetris, though, the blocks in "Build the Wall" don't disappear when you complete a line, meaning each brick contributes to an impassable barrier for the pixel-art "zombies" marching in from the "Southern Border." That change makes the gameplay pretty uninteresting for anything but cheap propaganda, and it also means that every game quickly and ironically ends with a "Border Breached" message when the blocks inevitably fill up the well.
Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of Texas migrant rights group Frontera Federation, told AFP last week that the makers of the game "have lost touch with what it means to be human and care for others."
© WhiteHouse.gov / Internet Archive
On January 23, 1961, a pair of thermonuclear bombs fell from the sky near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Neither of the weapons was dropped by a foreign adversary—they belonged to the United States, and in a remarkable series of events, they were dropped over American soil after the B-52 carrying them broke apart in midair.
The sobering circumstances that unfolded on that date were just one of several “Broken Arrow” incidents—accidents involving nuclear weapons that, in several cases, demonstrated how catastrophe could arise not from an enemy attack, but from mechanical failure, human error, and chance.
Goldsboro was neither the first nor the last nuclear weapons accident on American soil. More than six decades later, the incident remains a sobering artifact of the Cold War and a reminder of the extraordinary risks that accompanied keeping nuclear-armed aircraft continuously ready for war.
Early 1961 was a hard time for the B-52 bomber, with several crashes occurring across the United States. Most of these, and even the brief grounding of all B-52s, were minor news stories at the time. Outside the local area, sources like the New York Times gave only brief coverage of what happened in Goldsboro on January 23, 1961. However, the Goldsboro News-Argus placed a dark image of the twisted, flaming wreckage on its front page the next morning, and its ongoing coverage provided some of the only detailed records of how the public viewed the crash. What they didn’t know nearly killed them.
Part of the 4241st Strategic Wing under Strategic Air Command, the B-52G Stratofortress was armed with two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs and flying out of Goldsboro’s Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. Its nighttime flight was part of Strategic Air Command’s round-the-clock alert operations. Following an aerial refueling over the Atlantic, the plane began leaking fuel. This led to a dramatic midair breakup 11 hours into the flight, so spectacular that a night watchman eight miles away reported seeing sparks coming off the stricken plane.
During the crash, centrifugal forces became so great that they pulled a lanyard connected to the release mechanism of one of the bombs. This accidental twist of physics armed the bomb as it fell toward Earth.
The plane crashed only a few hundred feet from the home of the Tyndall family, who described the event as looking “like the whole world was on fire.” Homes for miles around shook from the force of the impact. In the mad dash to reach the crash site, one military police officer was involved in a car accident, adding one more bit of destruction.
The Stratofortress, with its 185-foot wingspan, was an enormous plane, and it left behind a massive debris field. The burning wreckage quickly drew not only about one hundred Air Force personnel but also the state highway patrol, local sheriffs, and the fire department. Onlookers attempted to gain access to the site but were held back by military police warning of a potential radioactivity threat. This would be the only time for decades that the military would concede that the crash posed a nuclear danger.
It took seven hours to find the last survivor, one of only three from the eight-man crew aboard the Stratofortress.
After most of the wreckage was hauled away, the Air Force continued excavating the area to recover every piece of the plane and even turned to the public for help locating a lost ejector seat. These continued searches fueled a wave of rumors that the Air Force was looking for missing nuclear weapons and that the town might be evacuated. What the military called “routine” water tests did little to assuage some residents’ fears that they were in danger from whatever had come down. By late February, the Air Force was issuing official denials that anything was amiss in Goldsboro.
At a time of rising Cold War tensions, the USSR did not let the American crisis go to waste. Soviet propagandists employed “Moscow Molly,” a mysterious figure of the Soviet propaganda machine. Speaking in unaccented English between broadcasts of popular American music, Moscow Molly delivered messages designed to demoralize American, British, and Canadian soldiers. She would sometimes disconcert soldiers on lonely and remote bases by directing messages specifically at them, using personal information reportedly obtained by the Soviet intelligence apparatus. Several women likely played the role of Moscow Molly, but their identities have never come to light.
By January 24, just a day after the event, Moscow Molly was broadcasting over Radio Moscow that the United States hadn’t just inadvertently dropped a bomb on Goldsboro, but that it had gone off, claiming that locals were “incensed.” Soviet propagandists did not stop there, reportedly using ham radio operators to beam the broadcasts into the United States as well.
Their efforts attracted little notice in the United States. The Goldsboro Kiwanis Club drafted an official rebuttal statement to be read over the U.S.-backed broadcaster Radio Free Europe, stating that “The people of Goldsboro are stronger than ever in their belief that the Air Force is a good friend and neighbor.” This statement may have been more than mere propaganda, as hundreds of people attended the funerals of the deceased airmen, demonstrating how the community rallied in the aftermath of the event.
The story of rumors, propaganda, and community spirit stood still for decades as the United States continually denied that there had ever been a nuclear close call on US soil. Journalist Eric Schlosser overturned that story while researching his 2013 book Command and Control. One of his Freedom of Information Act requests turned up a document with the rather lengthy title Goldsboro Revisited or How I Learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb or To Set the Record Straight. The title’s parody reference to the film Dr. Strangelove perhaps makes its content even more eerie and surreal.
Sandia Laboratories nuclear weapons safety supervisor Parker F. Jones wrote the report in 1969. In it, he revealed that one of the bombs—the weapon that separated from the aircraft and descended by parachute before becoming entangled in a tree—had come disturbingly close to detonating. The weapon incorporated multiple safety mechanisms intended to prevent an unintended nuclear detonation. When investigators examined it, they found that several steps in its arming sequence had occurred, leaving one crucial low-voltage switch preventing the sequence from proceeding further.
Each Mark 39 carried a yield of several megatons, making the weapons vastly more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. Had one successfully detonated, the immediate destruction would have been catastrophic, while radioactive fallout could potentially have affected areas far beyond Goldsboro.
History often balances on the head of a pin, and this remarkable close call is just one of many such occurrences in the history of nuclear weapons.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
A Maçã liberou recentemente uma trinca de novos comerciais no formato vertical para divulgar a sua plataforma de streaming de músicas, o Apple Music, e alguns de seus principais recursos.
Dois deles focam em uma ferramenta relativamente recente: o recurso de transferência de bibliotecas entre serviços de streaming, lançado no ano passado para facilitar a migração de usuários para a plataforma da Maçã.
O primeiro comercial mostra um iPhone 17 Pro gigante com o app do Apple Music aberto sendo transportado por um caminhão em uma rodovia. Ao observar a tela do aparelho, é possível constatar que há um processo de transferência em andamento, em uma clara alusão a uma mudança de lares.
The easiest move you’ll ever make. Switch to Apple Music and bring your playlists with you. pic.twitter.com/ZOuBqGsUf7
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) August 4, 2026
Com um conceito parecido, o segundo comercial mostra uma mulher relaxando em um sofá apoiado sobre três skates enquanto o móvel desce por uma rua. Assim como no comercial anterior, um iPhone 17 Pro ganha destaque — de novo, com a tela de transferência do Apple Music aberta.
Switching to Apple Music is easy. Bring your playlists withyou and get access to over 100 million songs, ad-free. pic.twitter.com/Bt0KfOrcJk
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) August 5, 2026
Além de ir por outra direção, o último vídeo dessa nova leva é um tanto… perturbador, lembrando um pouco os comerciais de consoles de videogames (com destaque para os da Sony PlayStation) do início dos anos 2000. Feito para divulgar o recurso Playlist Playground, ele mostra uma pessoa — que está usando EarPods, diga-se — inserindo uma fita cassete em um compartimento na sua testa, o que faz uma música começar a tocar.
From an idea in your head to a playlist you press play on. You write the prompt, Playlist Playground takes it from there. pic.twitter.com/wjya7Y3tDZ
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) August 4, 2026
Como é possível notar, todos os três vídeos são bem curtinhos, girando em torno de 15 segundos. Já disponíveis em redes sociais como X e Facebook, é bem provável que eles acabem dando as caras também em plataformas como TikTok e Instagram Reels — inclusive acompanhados de novos comerciais.
O Apple Music conta com um catálogo de mais de 100 milhões de músicas e 30 mil playlists — muitas delas com suporte a Áudio Espacial (Dolby Atmos) e em altíssima definição, com áudio Lossless. Para quem ama música clássica, há um app dedicado com mais de 5 milhões de faixas, tudo em uma interface simplificada! No Brasil, são três tipos de assinatura: Universitária (R$12,90/mês), Individual (R$23,90/mês) e Familiar (R$40,90/mês). Caso você não seja um assinante, pode testar o serviço de forma gratuita por um mês. Ele também faz parte do pacote de assinaturas da empresa, o Apple One.
NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada mais pelos produtos/serviços usando os nossos links de afiliado.
A brasileira Sofia Coelho, que atualmente ocupa o cargo de diretora de arte na Apple, ofereceu um raro vislumbre dos bastidores do processo criativo da empresa em uma publicação no LinkedIn, na qual revelou rascunhos e um protótipo do personagem Lil’ Finder Guy.
Embora a publicação tenha sido removida (por qualquer motivo que seja), as imagens mostram como o personagem saiu do papel para as peças publicitárias da Maçã. O Lil’ Finder Guy, não custa lembrar, estreou como o rosto da campanha do MacBook Neo e, posteriormente, também apareceu em comerciais que divulgavam recursos do Mac.
Coelho disse que a publicação era um “anúncio de aniversário bem-humorado” e descreveu a liderança do projeto como um “projeto de design dos sonhos”. Também mencionou os colegas que trabalharam ao seu lado na campanha.
"On March 4th at 11:00 a.m., measuring exactly one apple tall, a mascot, charmingly coined by the internet as Lil' Finder Guy, was born!"
— Basic Apple Guy (@BasicAppleGuy) July 24, 2026
In a post by Apple art director Sofia Coelho on LinkedIn (post taken down), Sofia shared early sketches and models of Lil' Finder Guy. pic.twitter.com/4Oo8xazSxx
Uma imagem mostrava uma folha de esboços explorando as expressões, as proporções e a forma geral do personagem. Essas imagens estavam ao lado do que parecia ser um protótipo físico do próprio Lil’ Finder Guy — o qual tinha “exatamente a altura de uma maçã”, segundo Coelho.
Ela também observou que a campanha figurou na lista de finalistas do Cannes Lions, uma das premiações mais prestigiadas da publicidade.
Apple Submitted the MacBook Neo & Lil' Finder Guy campaign to the Cannes Lions festival. pic.twitter.com/npRQ3G0hWw
— Basic Apple Guy (@BasicAppleGuy) July 4, 2026
Além de rara, os detalhes de bastidores mostram que até mesmo as menores ideias da Apple recebem um tratamento criativo completo.
Já compartilhamos muitos casos de vidas que foram salvas com a ajuda do Apple Watch, mas a maioria deles parte de relatos feitos pelos protagonistas (ou terceiros) nas redes sociais ou para publicações jornalísticas.
Desta vez, a própria Apple publicou em seu canal no YouTube o relato de um homem chamado Phil, que contou em um vídeo de pouco mais de meio minuto como o recurso SOS de Emergência do relógio salvou a sua vida.
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Ele relatou estar pedalando em uma trilha com seus filhos pequenos quando calculou mal um salto e sofreu um acidente que o deixou desacordado — o que fez o Apple Watch detectar a queda e ligar imediatamente para a emergência.
“Só agradeço muito por estar usando o meu Apple Watch”, disse Phil, que foi resgatado pelos bombeiros e ficou internado por uma semana após quebrar a clavícula e sete costelas por causa do acidente.
Baita história, não?
NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada mais pelos produtos/serviços usando os nossos links de afiliado.
Chegou o momento do nosso ritual de todo mês: pausar por um instante para agradecer a quem ajuda o MacMagazine a se manter de pé pelo Patreon ou pelo Catarse. Isso não é força de expressão — é algo que realmente importa para a gente.
Quem lê o MM há um tempo sabe qual foi sempre o nosso plano: viver de publicidade e jamais colocar uma paywall entre você e o conteúdo do site. Isso não mudou. Só que a publicidade sozinha não dá conta de tudo o que é preciso para manter o site no ar, o canal no YouTube, o podcast, o MM Fórum e tudo aquilo que acontece nos bastidores e que ninguém vê. É aí que entra quem nos apoia diretamente.
Hoje somos 115 patrões. Não importa o valor escolhido por cada um: toda contribuição é real e ajuda a gente a seguir publicando com a mesma frequência e a mesma independência de sempre — feriado ou fim de semana incluído. Já apoiou e precisou dar uma pausa? Tudo bem, a porta continua aberta pra quando quiser voltar. Nunca apoiou, mas está pensando nisso? Qualquer valor faz diferença, mesmo.
Dependendo da categoria escolhida, dá pra aproveitar benefícios como navegação sem anúncios, prioridade em ações como o MM Tour e a chance de participar das gravações do nosso podcast, entre outras vantagens.
Aos nossos 115 patrões atuais: obrigado por acreditarem no nosso trabalho e por fazerem tudo isso ser possível, todo santo mês. 💙
Patrões Platinum Patrões Ouro Patrões Prata Patrões BronzeMuito obrigado, galera! 😀
No, there weren't "2,700 heatwave deaths due to climate change", says Ben Pile – a figure conjured by Met Office and Imperial College modelling. But nobody must be allowed to remember the warm days of 2026 fondly.
The post No, There Weren’t “2,700 Heatwave Deaths Due to Climate Change” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies is one of the world's most respected institutions in energy economics. But its ideological commitment to the 'climate emergency' is now damaging its research, says Dr Tilak Doshi.
The post The Oxford Institute Letting Climate Ideology Bias its Research appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
EastEnders aired pro-migrant storylines after hiring a writer who campaigns for "migration and racial justice".
The post EastEnders Ran Pro-Migrant Stories After Hiring ‘Racial Justice’ Influencer appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Pro-migrant campaigners boasted that they had influenced a BBC children’s television show as part of an attempt to change attitudes to asylum seekers.
The post BBC Children’s Show “Influenced by Pro-Migrant Campaigners” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A covert Home Office unit founded by an ex-MI6 spy has been secretly advising police on 'controlling the narrative' during Britain’s race riots, i.e., manipulating and suppressing speech. Is this thought policing?
The post Revealed: The Shadowy Government ‘Thought Police’ Unit Suppressing Speech to ‘Keep a Lid’ on Racial Tensions appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Millions of homes are at risk from climate change, the British Geological Survey has claimed in a new report – but it relies on the IPCC's discredited RCP8.5 modelling, says Paul Homewood.
The post Millions of Homes at Risk from Climate Change, Claims British Geological Survey in New Report Relying on Discredited Modelling appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Just who does Financial Times journalist Pilita Clark think she is, encouraging parents to ensure their children are sufficiently alarmed about the climate, asks Tilak Doshi. How far the pink paper has fallen.
The post Why is the Financial Times Encouraging Parents to Make Their Children Anxious About Climate Change? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The breast cancer 'breakthrough' is a story of overtreatment, not a triumph of testing, says Dr Clare Craig. The truth is, the genetic test failed, but it's being rolled out anyway.
The post The Breast Cancer ‘Breakthrough’ is a Story of Overtreatment Not a Triumph of Testing appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Met Office has claimed a new Welsh temperature record for springtime. But it was recorded at Bute Park, a Class 5 junk site where hot air is frequently vented from greenhouses, says Paul Homewood.
The post New Welsh Temperature Record Set at Junk Site appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Massive curriculum changes are required for UK school Geography after the Met Office's climate projections were ruled "implausible" by the IPCC. But don't expect the revisions any time soon, says Chris Morrison.
The post Massive Curriculum Changes Required for UK School Geography After Met Office Climate Projections Ruled “Implausible” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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