Despite a <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5789217/">mountain of scientific evidence</a> concluding there's no link between autism and vaccines, noted anti-vaccine figure and health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. is trying to double down on the long-debunked theory.
As the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/03/25/vaccine-skeptic-hhs-rfk-immunization-autism/">Washington Post reports</a>, fellow anti-vaccine crackpot David Geier — who has published articles claiming that mercury in vaccines is tied to autism, and was previously reprimanded by state authorities in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license — is joining Kennedy's department as a "senior data analyst" to work on a study once again examining the topic of autism and vaccines.
It's yet another sign that the Trump administration is chasing conspiracy theories to undermine the country's vaccination efforts, a dangerous game that could result in an escalation of health crises down the road.
The optic are particularly poor given the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/measles-outbreak-texas-spreading-mennonite-community-officials/story?id=120209992">ongoing outbreak of measles</a> in numerous states, an extremely preventable respiratory disease for which we've had highly effective vaccines for decades. Kennedy had <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/measles-patients-vitamin-overuse-rfk-jr">already misled parents</a> into overusing Vitamin A, leading to liver damage and <a class="underline hover:text-neoscope hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1104368-overview?form=fpf">yellowed skin</a> in children.
Geier's reported involvement with the health department has terrified public health experts.
"If we increase vaccine hesitancy and immunization rates go down further, we will see more vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks," Duke Global Health Institute director Christopher Beyrer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/health/rfk-jr-autism-vaccines.html">told the New York Times</a>. "That’s how it works."
Meanwhile, Kennedy described the fellow anti-vaxxer, who holds a bachelor's degree in biology and no medical degree, as a "brilliant, extremely knowledgeable researcher with deep expertise on mercury."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/health/vaccines-autism-cdc-rfk-jr.html">ordered to kick off a large-scale study</a> to reexamine long-debunked links between vaccines and autism. To experts, that's a massive waste of resources that flies in the face of scientific evidence.
Despite Kennedy endorsing Geier's research for many years, scientists have long discredited his findings, as the NYT reports. To date, there simply isn't any convincing scientific evidence linking vaccines and autism.
"The committee concludes that the evidence favor rejection of a causal relationship between [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine and autism," the Institute of Medicine wrote in a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25349/">2004 review</a> of a purported link between vaccines and autism.
In short, Geier isn't just a poor pick for the job; he could prove extremely dangerous with any meaningful amount of influence inside the federal government.
"To me, the big shame is that with budget cuts, we are not ramping up research into what is actually causing autism," former head of the Washington office of the CDC Edward Hunter told the NYT. "And if you are worried about vaccine-preventable disease, this is such a clear setback."
More on Kennedy: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/measles-patients-vitamin-overuse-rfk-jr">Parents Followed RFK Jr’s Crackpot Advice and Had to Send Their Kids to the Hospital With Yellowed Skin</a>

More Measles Committee

Developments

"If you are worried about vaccine-preventable disease, this is such a clear setback."

Government Hires Crackpot to "Study" Nonexistent Link Between Vaccines and Autism

Recent waves of Tesla <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/tesla-takedown-protest-find-global-day-action-incidents-rcna197875">protests</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/wave-vandalism-protest-tesla">vandalism</a> have made clear the growing discontent among US taxpayers of all stripes. While Elon Musk and Donald Trump slash through federal government jobs and social welfare programs, voters are <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5208310-republican-voter-frustration-doge-cuts/">demanding accountability</a> and an end to Musk's unchecked rampage.
That might be a long way off, if Musk has anything to say about it. And unfortunately for us, he's one of the few who does.
In an <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6370657426112">interview with Fox News</a>, Musk railed against anyone targeting his company, threatening that the government will be investigating the protests.
"The people pushing the propaganda... those are the real villains here," he seethed in response to a question about what the protests mean to him. "We're gonna go after them, and the president's made that clear, we're going to go after them, the ones providing the money, the ones pushing the lies and propaganda, we're going after them."
Musk and his <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6370657426112">faithful stenographers</a> have repeatedly conflated vandalism and protests against Tesla as "violence," in a rhetorical shift that coincides with federal law enforcement agencies under Trump expanding the definition of "terrorism" to include taking part in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/28/us/mahmoud-khalil-jurisdiction-hearing/index.html">peaceful demonstrations</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-university-ice-arrest-b2722397.html">writing op-eds</a>. That has been used to justify a number of extrajudicial kidnappings and deportations, like the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-15014bcbb921f21a9f704d5acdcae7a8">unlawful arrest</a> of Columbia PhD student Mahmoud Khalil by plainclothes federal agents earlier this month.
Whether Tesla protestors will face the same threat of being <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-trump-israel-gaza-2025">disappeared</a> is anyone's guess, but it's a jarring signal given the US state's <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/cruelty-point-details-horrors-experienced-024205040.html">increasingly cruel</a> stance toward <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-crying-woman-ice-studio-ghibli-2051924">immigrants</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/columbia-university-protests-trump-crackdown-rcna198016">students</a>, and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/04/israel-hamas-cease-fire-free-speech-00125333">critics</a>.
Musk's ominous warning also comes days after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the formation of an <a href="https://futurism.com/fbi-task-force-protect-tesla">FBI taskforce</a> to investigate damage and vandalism done to Tesla vehicles, sparking major concerns that the state is officially acting as the watchdog to an unelected oligarch's profit-driven ventures.
For her part, Bondi parroted Musk's more <a href="https://futurism.com/fbi-task-force-protect-tesla">devoted reply guys</a> in claiming that there's an operation "behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes" against Tesla, though she fell short of offering any evidence. So far, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=shared&amp;v=G5a4-3CzOiw">widespread hatred</a> for Tesla and its CEO has shown itself to be totally organic — hard earned by Musk's tampering with the federal government, on top of his <a href="https://futurism.com/jewish-leaders-boycott-elon-musk-nazi-salute">cryptofascist antics</a>.
The now-nationally coordinated Tesla Takedown protests are ramping up, meanwhile, with over <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193300/tesla-takedown-biggest-day-anti-musk-protests-march-29">200 demonstrations</a> planned around the world on Saturday. Whether Musk likes it or not, taxpayers are finding that Tesla may be the only avenue left to seek accountability for the billionaire's actions. It's worked so far — a <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-thirds-of-americans-now-say-they-wouldnt-drive-a-tesla--and-most-of-them-cite-elon-musk-as-the-reason-why-according-to-a-new-poll-152619516.html">recent survey</a> has found that two-thirds of Americans say they wouldn't drive a Tesla, as Tesla's stocks plummet for the <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-today-losing-streak-beb0f720">ninth straight week</a>.
"I think there's some real evil out there, and we have to overcome it," Musk said in his interview. "They're pushing these lies, and why do they push these lies? I think we need to hold people responsible for pushing these lies."
More on Tesla protests: <a href="https://futurism.com/hundreds-protest-tesla-dealership">Hundreds Protest Outside Tesla Dealership, Storm Building</a>

Sick Em

"The president's made that clear, we're going to go after them."

Musk Says Government Will "Go After" Tesla Critics

Scientists are suggesting there may be a brand new type of life — or, at least, that one existed back in the day.
In a new, <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.14.643340v1">yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper</a>, scientists from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland argue that the massive and mysterious tubelike fossils known as "prototaxites" deserve their own life form classification because, basically, they're too weird to belong to any other.
Since their discovery in the 1800s, prototaxites have long been a head-scratcher and a point of contention for scientists who to this day cannot figure out their nature. Fossils of this bizarre organism, which lived some 400 million years ago, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0034666701000586?via%3Dihub">were initially thought</a> to be the remains of rotted trees, complete with the fungi that assisted their decomposition inside them. In 1872, however, a ticked-off Canadian scientist named <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/14271">William Carruthers trashed that concept</a> and suggested, against scientific convention, that the name prototaxites, which translates to "first yew," be changed to "nematophycus," which means "stringy algae."
Fast forward to 2007, and Stanford botanist <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11701-mystery-prehistoric-fossil-verified-as-giant-fungus/">Kevin Boyce declared</a>, after analyzing the carbon isotypes found within a prototaxites fossil, that the strange monstrosities were some kind of fungus because they seemed to have gotten carbon from other organisms the way fungi do. Now, Edinburgh's Corentin Loron and his team are pouring water on that hypothesis as well — and suggesting, provocatively, that prototaxites don't belong to any other known lineage of organism and thus deserve their own.
To reach that conclusion, Loron and his colleagues analyzed the chemical makeup of Prototaxites taiti, a type of prototaxites found in Scotland that was, unlike its cousins, only a few centimeters tall. Fungi were abundant in the area where p. taiti was found, so the scientists were able to compare the composition of those fossilized fungi to that of the prototaxites fossils.
As they discovered, the cellular composition of p. taiti was vastly different from the fungi that grew alongside it — and indeed, was distinct from all known fungi, extinct or otherwise. Specifically, the prototaxites sample did not contain any chitin, a polymer that makes up fungal cell walls, which to their minds meant that it wasn't a fungus at all. Its anatomy was also "fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi," the researchers wrote in their paper, which added to their contention that prototaxites should be granted their own lineage.
Boyce, the botanist who insisted that prototaxites are a fungus nearly 20 years ago, admitted in an <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2473272-bizarre-fossil-may-have-been-an-entirely-new-type-of-life/">interview with New Scientist</a> about the new research that with the information that's been uncovered in the intervening years, "there is no good place" for the organism in the fungal lineage.
"Maybe it is a fungus," he told the magazine, "but whether a fungus or something else entirely, it represents a novel experiment with complex multicellularity that is now extinct and does not share a multicellular common ancestor with anything alive today."
Notably, scientists still don't know why prototaxites went extinct. This new research provides another clue about this bizarre and long-dead organism — and deepens the mystery, too.
More on weird life: <a href="https://futurism.com/woolly-mammoth-mice-adorable">Scientists Modified Genes In Mice to Give Them Traits of Woolly Mammoths, and the Results Are Frankly Adorable</a>

Taxonomic Mystery

What ARE these things?

Scientists Puzzled by Giant Ancient Life Forms

One of the men in charge of running America's money had a Venmo account so public that reporters were able to track his payments going back years — including the one marked only with an eggplant emoji.
In the aftermath of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/">The Atlantic's revelation</a> that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally <a href="https://futurism.com/trump-national-security-bombing-chat">added to a Signal groupchat</a> by national security adviser Mike Waltz, reporters around the world have gone digging to see just how bad the Trump administration's operations security practices really are.
As it turns out, incredibly sloppy. It's been easy to <a href="https://futurism.com/signal-group-chat-passwords-leaked">find all kinds of data</a> about the people running this country — including, as Wired reports, their Venmo accounts.
After breaking news that <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/michael-waltz-left-his-venmo-public/">Waltz's Venmo had been public</a>, the <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/even-more-venmo-accounts-tied-to-trump-officials-in-signal-group-chat-left-data-public/">magazine revealed</a> that other officials had seemingly also not locked down their accounts on the payment app. In fact, at least four of the men whose Venmo accounts were openly available had also been in Waltz's "Houthis PC small group" chain.
Among them was Dan Katz, the Treasury Department's chief of staff. The account Wired believes to be Katz's not only had its contact list visible, but was also linked to the official's wife.
The strangest part, however? A 2018 payment sporting an eggplant emoji in its "note" section.
As anyone who has used Venmo can attest, putting silly emojis and other goofy missives on payments to friends is par for the course. It's far more likely that Katz was just messing around than that he was paying someone for their "eggplant" — though of course, it wouldn't be the first time a prominent politician had been caught in such a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/congressmans-sex-scandal-explodes-venmo-transactions-public">predicament on Venmo</a> (in fact, just-retired president Joe Biden had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/15/biden-venmo-account-buzzfeed-news-national-security">his own Venmo embarrassment</a> a few years back.)
Regardless of the meaning behind the emoji, however, it's absolutely unreal that a ranking official in the department that's quite literally is in charge of America's money had his own financial transactions public and visible like that. It's bad enough that all these national security and military guys are getting caught with their pants down, so to speak — but for a Treasury official to do so as well suggests a staggering degree of recklessness in the highest echelons of the government.
That department and the others implicated in the story didn't respond to Wired's attempts to talk, so we can't know with 100 percent certainty that the account was really Katz's. If we had to place a bet on it, however, we'd wager it was legit.
If this scandal has taught us anything, it's that these people don't know how to use their privacy settings.
More on the Signal debacle: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/pentagon-issued-warning-signal-messaging">Pentagon Issued Warning About Signal Messaging One Week Before Its Head Was Caught Using It</a>

Come On, Man

As brainless as they are bloodthirsty.

Top Treasury Official Caught With Public Venmo Transaction for "Eggplant Emoji"

A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that accelerating the brain's waste removal system could have tremendous implications for our memory.
As detailed in a <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00210-7">study</a> published in the journal Cell last week, the team found that by boosting the natural process of the brain cleansing itself of waste, they were able to improve memory in older mice.
Around a decade ago, scientists <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14432">found</a> that as the brain ages, a network of vessels surrounding it, known as the meningeal lymphatics, starts to slow down.
The system drains fluid and waste into the body's lymph nodes, where immune system cells constantly monitor for signs of disease or infection. But when it's impaired enough due to old age, the brain's resident immune cells, called microglia, have to jump into action instead, which can tax and overwhelm the brain.
By targeting the meningeal lymphatics, the researchers are hoping to overcome a major hurdle for other therapies designed to battle age-related cognitive issues and neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Unlike therapies that struggle to get past the blood-brain barrier, this latest approach targets areas outside of the brain to gain access.
"The physical blood-brain barrier hinders the efficacy of therapies for neurological disorders," said Washington University pathology and immunology professor Jonathan Kipnis in a <a href="https://medicine.washu.edu/news/boosting-brains-waste-removal-system-improves-memory-in-old-mice/">statement</a> about the research. "By targeting a network of vessels outside of the brain that is critical for brain health, we see cognitive improvements in mice, opening a window to develop more powerful therapies to prevent or delay cognitive decline."
In an experiment, the team placed two identical black rods in a cage with old mice to let them play with them. On the next day, the same mice received one of these rods, as well as a silver rectangular prism. The idea is that older mice will spend roughly the same amount of time playing with either type of object, while younger mice will be more drawn to the novel trinket.
The team then used a treatment to boost the growth and function of the lymphatic vessels in some of the old mice. As a result, the researchers observed that they were spending more time playing with the shiny new object — suggesting their memory had improved, compared to other old mice that didn't receive the treatment.
"A functioning lymphatic system is critical for brain health and memory," said first author and Washington University postdoctoral fellow Kyungdeok Kim in the statement. "Therapies that support the health of the body’s waste management system may have health benefits for a naturally aging brain."
The team suggests that the meningeal lymphatics treatment led to a reduction in the production of an immune protein called interleukin 6 (IL-6), which has <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159124004562#:~:text=Elevated%20IL%2D6%20levels%20correlate,brain%20health%20and%20dementia%20risk.">previously been shown</a> to affect brain health.
While plenty of work remains before we can demonstrate that the same approach could work in humans as well, the researchers are hopeful of discovering new ways to slow down the naturally aging brain.
"Targeting the more easily accessible lymphatic vessels that are located outside the brain may prove to be an exciting new frontier in the treatment of brain disorders," Kipnis said. "We may not be able to revive neurons, but we may be able to ensure their most optimal functioning through modulation of meningeal lymphatic vessels."
More on neurodegenerative diseases: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/ozempic-like-drug-slows-alzheimers-study">Ozempic-Style Drug Slows the Progression of Alzheimer's Disease, Experiment Finds</a>

Memory Boost

Neuroscience/Brain Science

It's an "exciting new frontier in the treatment of brain disorders."

New "Brain Cleaning" Technique Improves Memory in Aging Mice

NASA and Boeing are <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-planning-another-test-flight-boeing-starliner">still working</a> to get the aerospace giant's plagued Starliner spacecraft back off the ground.
It's been just over half a year since Boeing's issues-riddled shuttle came back from its journey to the International Space Station. Due to technical problems, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-dumps-boeing-starliner-spacex">NASA decided</a> Starliner wasn't safe enough for NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to be on board, <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/boeing-official-not-surprised-starliner-astronauts-stuck">leaving them stranded in orbit</a>.
In a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2025/03/27/nasa-boeing-prepare-for-starliner-testing/">Thursday update</a>, NASA revealed that NASA and Boeing are "making progress toward crew certification of the company’s CST-100 Starliner," with teams "working to resolve Starliner’s in-flight anomalies and preparing for propulsion system testing in the months ahead."
But when — or if — Starliner will make its next launch attempt, with or without a crew on board, remains to be seen.
"Once we get through these planned test campaigns, we will have a better idea of when we can go fly the next Boeing flight," said NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich in the update. "We’ll continue to work through certification toward the end of this year and then go figure out where Starliner fits best in the schedule for the International Space Station and its crew and cargo missions."
"It is likely to be in the timeframe of late this calendar year or early next year for the next Starliner flight," Stich added.
As part of its Commercial Crew program, NASA tapped both Boeing and SpaceX to come up with entirely separate spacecraft that can launch astronauts to the space station and back.
Over the last five years, SpaceX has run circles around its competition with its Crew Dragon spacecraft, and has completed a dozen successful trips to the ISS.
Despite pouring billions of dollars into the development of Starliner, Boeing has far less to show, including a failed launch attempt in 2019 and a litany of issues during its first crewed attempt last year.
According to NASA, teams are working hard to test Starliner's offending thrusters and the surrounding "doghouse," the part of the module where the thrusters are located. Investigations <a href="https://www.space.com/space-exploration/international-space-station/nasa-still-mulling-options-for-boeings-troubled-starliner-astronaut-capsule">revealed</a> that the doghouse overheated during repeated thruster firings, causing Teflon seals to bulge, thereby affecting the flow of propellant.
The space agency is now looking at "thermal protection system upgrades," including "barriers within the doghouse to better regulate temperatures and changing the thruster pulse profiles in flight to prevent overheating."
But whether these changes will be enough to reassure all stakeholders is an open question. Boeing has already lost <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://futurism.com/boeing-lost-billions-money-starliner">over $2 billion</a> on the project since it began, and still doesn't have a single successful mission under its belt.
That, however, hasn't dissuaded the aerospace giant.
"Boeing, all the way up to their new CEO, Kelly [Ortberg], has been committed to Starliner," Stich said during a briefing last week, as <a href="https://spacenews.com/nasa-examining-options-for-another-starliner-test-flight/">quoted by SpaceNews</a>. "I see a commitment from Boeing to continue the program."
More on Starliner: <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-planning-another-test-flight-boeing-starliner">NASA Planning Another Test Flight by Boeing's Starliner</a>

In the Doghouse

It might take up to a year to get it ready for another launch attempt.

NASA Is Investigating Boeing Starliner's "In-Flight Anomalies"

OpenAI's extremely popular AI chatbot tool ChatGPT caught a huge wave this week when untold numbers of users started using it to generate images evoking the style of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's work at Studio Ghibli.
The trend quickly took on a life of its own. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to X-formerly-Twitter to <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/1904921537884676398">joke</a> about being turned into a "twink ghibli style."
OpenAI has since <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-chatgpt-studio-ghibli-style-images-generation-grok-claude-genai-2025-3">started cracking down</a> on the trend, implementing a confusing range of changes that now often refuse requests to generate images in Ghibli's style.
The viral trend, and OpenAI's chaotic response, reignited a <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-image-generators-copyrighted-characters">heated debate surrounding copyright</a> and the use of generative AI directly undermining the work of human artists and publishers — including the extremely talented animators at Ghibli.
And according to former general counsel at the TV channel Showtime and AI expert Rob Rosenberg, Ghibli may actually be able to take legal action against OpenAI over the situation.
While it's a "complex question" whether the Japanese animation studio would have enough grounds, the company "might have the ability to claim OpenAI has violated the Lanham Act which provides the basis for claims related to false advertising, trademark infringement and unfair competition," Rosenberg, now the founder of Telluride Legal Strategies, told Futurism.
The Lanham Act, which was enacted in 1946, is the primary federal statute governing trademark law in the US, and establishes a national system of trademark registration that allows owners to pursue infringement lawsuits.
"Ghibli could argue that by converting user photos to 'Ghibli-style,' OpenAI is trading off the goodwill of Ghibli’s trademarks, using Ghibli’s identifiable style and leading to a likelihood of confusion among consumers that this function is endorsed or licensed by Studio Ghibli," Rosenberg argued.
OpenAI could also be sued for "training its large language models on Studio Ghibli’s copyrighted works," he added.
OpenAI is already <a href="https://theconversation.com/canadian-news-media-are-suing-openai-for-copyright-infringement-but-will-they-win-245002">facing</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/30/us-newspaper-openai-lawsuit">several</a> lawsuits over its approach to scouring the internet for training data for its models, including plenty of copyrighted material.
Just this week, a federal judge <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/nx-s1-5288157/new-york-times-openai-copyright-case-goes-forward">rejected OpenAI's request</a> to throw out a <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-nyt-lawsuit-evidence-deleted">copyright lawsuit filed by the New York Times</a>. The newspaper alleged in late 2023 that the Altman-led company infringed its copyright by using its material without permission to train its AI models.
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has also been accused of <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-books-train-meta-ai-libgen">illegally downloading pirated books</a> to train its AI models.
But so far, there isn't any legal precedent to determine whether OpenAI broke US copyright law. The company has <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-over-copyrighted-work">maintained</a> that "training their models is a fair use under copyright law," Rosenberg explained, "and therefore an exception to infringement."
The "fair use doctrine" has been core to the ongoing debate surrounding whether AI companies like OpenAI are breaking copyright law. It's a legal framework allowing <a class="underline hover:text-futurism hover:no-underline transition-all duration-200 ease-in-out" href="https://copyright.psu.edu/copyright-basics/fair-use/">limited access to copyrighted materials</a> without prior permission for quotations and other non-infringing usages.
Whether Ghibli will actually make any legal moves is anyone's guess. On Friday, the company <a href="https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20250328/k10014763911000.html">told Japanese news outlet NHK</a> that a viral legal document, which claimed to be a cease and desist letter sent by the studio, <a href="https://screenrant.com/studio-ghibli-anime-chatgpt-openai-artwork-fake-legal-warning/">was fake</a>.
"As most courts have not yet ruled on the strength of similar copyright claims, it is unclear whether they would prove successful or not," Rosenberg told Futurism. "If OpenAI were marketing its platform as a place where consumers could go to turn their photos into 'Ghibli-style' anime, that fact would weigh more strongly in favor of a court finding that OpenAI’s conduct violated the Lanham Act."
Unless courts were to “unanimously rule” in favor of OpenAI, determining that training AI models on copyrighted material does indeed fall under fair use, we could be heading "toward a system where the AI developers will need to compensate copyright holders, and credit them where their content is used in producing output," Rosenberg said.
Aside from questions regarding the possible infringement of copyright, OpenAI could be robbing Ghibli of other ways to monetize.
"If Studio Ghibli ever wanted to launch its own tool allowing fans to transform photos into its signature style, OpenAI’s update has essentially taken that business opportunity away," Rosenberg said. "Worse, this technology could lead to people generating entire animated projects in the Ghibli style and falsely presenting them as authentic."
"It’s similar to asking AI to rewrite a short story in the style of JK Rowling and then posting it online as a ‘lost’ Rowling work," he added, "blurring the line between homage and outright misrepresentation."
More on AI copyright: <a href="https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-books-train-meta-ai-libgen">Cool Site Shows Exactly Which Books Zuckerberg's Minions Illegally Downloaded to Train Meta's AI</a>

Don't Mess With Hayao

OpenAI could be "blurring the line between homage and outright misrepresentation."

Lawyer Says Studio Ghibli Could Take Legal Action Against OpenAI

In Egypt's Red Sea, a crew on a sightseeing submarine tour managed to escape when the vessel began sinking — even though some of the tourists on board were not so lucky.
As the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04z4py93wdo">BBC reports</a>, authorities are questioning the crew of the Sindbad submarine after it foundered during a coral reef tour near the beach town of Hurghada in southeastern Egypt.
Of the 45 passengers on board the vessel, six tourists — including two children — died during the sinking, and nine more were injured. When authorities came to rescue the sinking sub, 39 people and five crew members were saved, the report notes. Two of the tourists who died were a married couple of doctors, and their daughters, devastatingly, are in the hospital in critical condition.
According to statements from Red Sea governor Amr Hanafy, the Sindbad's crew were all Egyptian and its passengers hailed from India, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. Somehow, only Russians died during the incident, and it remains unclear what happened.
Unlike the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/titanic-sub-oceangate-congressman">Oceangate debacle</a> from nearly two years ago, the Sindbad Submarines company seemingly had a strong reputation, and had been in operation in the Red Sea resort town for years. According to Hanafy, the sub was licensed and its head crew member had gotten all the right certificates to operate it — which makes the tragic incident all the stranger.
Tragically, this is not the first maritime tragedy to strike the Red Sea in recent months.
In late November, the BBC notes, the "Sea Story" tourist yacht capsized with more than 40 people on board while sailing near the resort town of Marsa Alam located about 200 miles up the coast from Hurghada. As <a href="https://divemagazine.com/scuba-diving-news/sea-story-liveaboard-survivor-tells-her-story">Dive Magazine noted</a>, it took 36 hours to rescue the yacht's surviving passengers, and four bodies were pulled from the wrecked yacht. Seven are still missing, and presumed dead.
Between the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/orcas-strike-again-sailboat">orca attacks</a> and the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/billionaire-yacht-sinking-strange-context">headlines about ships</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-photo-wrecked-titanic-sub-ocean-floor">subs sinking</a>, it's a wonder that anyone who doesn't have to is taking to the sea — but then again, <a href="https://futurism.com/flights-messed-up-ufos">flying's not much better</a> lately, either.
More on seafaring: <a href="https://futurism.com/dolphins-appear-astronauts-splash-down-ocean">Dolphins Appear as Astronauts Splash Down in Ocean</a>

Not Again

Friendly reminder to never go on a submarine tour. 

Entire Crew Escaped Submarine During Sinking That Killed Multiple Children

Remember the potential "<a href="https://futurism.com/killer-asteroid-most-populous-cities">city killer</a>" asteroid we were all freaking out about, 2024 YR4? Initially predicted with a small but <a href="https://futurism.com/city-killer-asteroid-odds-up-again">unsettling chance of hitting our planet</a> seven years from now, astronomers eventually ruled out that apocalyptic outcome once they were able to get better observations.
But the saga's not over. 2024 YR4 will be back for another pass, Athabasca University astronomer Martin Connors writes in an <a href="https://theconversation.com/asteroid-2024-yr-may-not-hit-earth-in-2032-but-it-and-others-will-keep-coming-back-250958">essay for The Conversation</a> — and there'll be others like it.
As Connors explains, YR4 exhibits what's known as "orbital resonance" with <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-europa-clipper-mars-slingshot-jupiter-moon">Jupiter</a>, meaning that it moves at a multiple of the speed of the gas giant. While Jupiter takes roughly 12 years to orbit the Sun, asteroids like YR4 only take four, putting it in a 3:1 resonance.
The upshot, in an "Armageddon" context, is that resonant asteroids close enough to cross Earth's orbit will have multiple attempts to hit the bullseye.
"Among asteroids, we must pay special attention to resonant ones, such as 2024 YR4, because eventually, they'll be back," Connors wrote.
The 3:1 resonance with Jupiter is special, because for a century it appeared that there were no asteroids in the asteroid belt that exhibited this pattern, as well as at other seemingly arbitrary resonances like 5:2 and 7:3.
Astronomers began to pull back the curtain on this phenomenon, dubbed Kirkwood gaps, in the 1970s. Any asteroids that ventured into these specific resonances, they determined, would either crash into an inner planet like Earth or be booted out by flying too close to them, giving the appearance of a "gap."
As it turned out, the Kirkwood gaps weren't completely empty. A whole classification of asteroids called "Alindas" was recognized for objects in a 3:1 resonance with Jupiter, Connors wrote. They're named after the absolutely enormous asteroid 887 Alinda, first discovered in 1918. At roughly 2.5 miles across, 887 Alinda would cause an extinction-level catastrophe if it struck Earth. In January, it menaced us with its <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/rare-4-kilometer-long-asteroid-887-alinda-makes-a-spectacular-close-approach-to-earth-77543">closest approach in one hundred years</a>.
Not all Alindas are aligned to cross paths with our planet, however. "A limiting factor is how tilted their orbits are: if they are quite tilted, they are not often at a 'height' matching Earth's, so are less likely to hit," Connors explained. "The bad news about that is that both Alinda and 2024 YR4 are very nearly in the plane of Earth's orbit, and are not tilted much, so are more likely to hit."
Fortunately, it'll be a long, long while before Alinda will have a chance of nearing Earth — not for another 1,000 years, according to Connors.
As for 2024 YR4, it'll whiff its chance to take a city off the map in 2032. And after it does, it'll be nudged out of its Alinda orbit — that is, its 3:1 resonance with Jupiter and 1:4 resonance with Earth — by passing too closely. That means it won't be haunting us every four years anymore. But humiliation is often the stuff that forges a villain, and it'll still come back. Just not as often.
More on asteroids: <a href="https://futurism.com/astroforge-asteroid-mining-mission-loses-contact">First-Ever Asteroid Mining Mission Loses Contact With Earth</a>

Mulligan

"Eventually, they'll be back."

Killer Asteroid Will Miss Earth But Return for a Shot at Revenge

That rogue scientist who created HIV-resistant <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/did-crispr-help-or-harm-first-ever-gene-edited-babies">designer babies</a> is apparently gearing up for more human gene-editing research.
In an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-scientist-he-jiankui-gene-editing-alzheimers-1b1af283">interview with the Wall Street Journal</a>, He Jiankui said he wants to conduct human trials on his next big project: encoding genetics to prevent Alzheimer's disease, a heritable illness, in future generations.
He identified South Africa, where the government declared in 2024 that it's open to the "<a href="https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/scientists-call-revision-south-africas-guidelines-genome-engineering">significant potential</a>" of genetic editing, as a good place for those trials to take place. Before that, He wants to send two Chinese colleagues to the US to conduct trials on mice and monkeys. As the controversial researcher told the WSJ, he can't go himself because his home country, which imprisoned him in 2019 for <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-scientist-who-produced-genetically-altered-babies-sentenced-3-years-jail">scientific misconduct and fraud</a> over his gene-hacking experiments on human fetuses that were subsequently born, won't renew his passport.
Aside from the broad strokes of a comeback, which seem to be more logistical in nature than anything else, we don't know almost anything else about how He plans to start up again.
The self-styled "<a href="https://x.com/Jiankui_He/status/1902173275805118660">Chinese Darwin</a>" has declined to identify his financial backers and doesn't, as the WSJ notes, have any affiliations with any academic institution. When the newspaper tried to figure out who he may be working with in the US, it was unable to do so, and South Africa's health department didn't respond to requests for comment from WSJ reporters.
Lofty promises and opaque funding are, of course, nothing new to science. But He is no normal scientist, and as the newspaper notes, his reputation as "<a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3043894/chinas-gene-editing-frankenstein-jailed-3-years-modified-baby">China's Frankenstein</a>" has followed the 41-year-old gene-hacking pioneer even after his release from prison last year. It's no wonder he doesn't want to reveal who's funding him: they could, conceivably, be ostracized for doing so.
It also probably doesn't help that He regularly posts photos of himself in his mysterious lab — which the Chinese government would not, the scientist insisted to the WSJ, allow foreign visitors to enter without permission — alongside <a href="https://x.com/Jiankui_He/status/1899271973190209969">cryptic declarations</a>, including his claim that ethics are "<a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/gene-hacking-scientist-ethics">holding back</a>" science.
For all that creepiness, however, He clearly has heart. Peppered between <a href="https://x.com/Jiankui_He/status/1903631720655851867">self-aggrandizing posts</a> are a number of shockingly egalitarian claims, including an insistence that "<a href="https://x.com/Jiankui_He/status/1904159170355675488">health is the universal human right</a>" and that "'Survival of the fittest' is unfair for the people born with genetic disadvantages."
"No one," <a href="https://x.com/Jiankui_He/status/1904348005060522422">He wrote in the latter post</a>, "should be left behind."
That ethos in particular seems to be related to the seemingly personal inspiration behind the scientist's latest avenue of research: his mother, who is in her late 60s, has Alzheimer's that has progressed far enough that she no longer recognizes her infamous son.
If he can get human trials up and running, He wants to see if he can mimic a genetic mutation found in Icelanders who appear to have a protein that protects them against the debilitating cognitive disease. That's a far cry from the <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientist-gene-edited-human-babies-mistakes">admittedly reckless</a> experiments he conducted on embryos — and it seems far less ethically dubious, too.
And what of the children born of those experiments? Their real identities aren't know, but according to He, they're healthy now.
"I will apologize only if the children have any health issues," the scientist said. "So far, I don’t need to apologize to anyone."
More on genetics: <a href="https://futurism.com/neoscope/23andme-bankrupt-data-vulnerable">23andMe Is Crumbling, and That Means Your Genetic Data Is Blowing in the Breeze</a>