Anyone who was watching TV in the late 1980s remembers the commercial: probing personal questions appear in white text on a black screen as a Tangerine Dream-esque synth riff pulsates in the background. ”How can you increase your mind’s potential?”; “Why is it so hard to just ‘be yourself’”; “Do you have to live with pain?” With each question, a page number appears in red on the bottom right. Then, the music climaxes abruptly in a shattering chord! An animated volcano erupts, spewing rocks and orange-yellow magma into the purple night sky! The blazing volcano seamlessly becomes the front cover of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. A voiceover tells us that we can buy the book “wherever paperbacks are sold,” and then concludes, with “Dianetics” spelled out in big white block letters: “A fresh look at today’s problems.” The commercials were part of an “unprecedented” multi-million dollar marketing blitz that started in the early ‘80s and included, in addition to ubiquitous TV time, print ads, neon signs, billboards, bus stop and subway station posters, radio spots, sponsorships, and banners at popular sports and entertainment venues. Dianetics, originally published in 1950, was and is the self-help cornerstone of the Church of Scientology, and was so sacrosanct to Hubbard that it marks, in some sense, the beginning of time: the years after publication of the first edition are referred to as AD, “After Dianetics” (1951 is 1 AD, and so on). Although exploding volcano imagery had appeared on the cover of paperback editions since 1968, the volcano-themed commercials didn’t air until 1987, coinciding with the release of a new edition; Dianetics soon after hit the New York Times Best Seller list (alongside Trump: The Art of the Deal) for the first time since 1950.

Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users’ prompts and uploaded images, according to internal documents obtained by 404 Media. The contractors are also bombarded with users’ requests for sexual AI images.

A lock of hair, advances in genetic science and a community of descendants all contributed to solving an American mystery

Ideapod, a cornerstone brand of Brown Brothers Media's AI empire, has deep ties to convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

The 38,000 testimonies are the largest body of evidence about children’s experiences in these institutions. The women say survivors should choose what happens to their histories — both painful and illuminating

After public backlash, the Trump administration changed its tactics from ‘siege’ to ‘soft feet’. Now, ICE is everywhere

Four people were aboard the single-engine plane when it went down in a cornfield near Carvers School Road in East Troy at about 1:30 p.m.

Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.

An appeals court made clear deportation flights to third countries must stop immediately, but flight data showed ICE may be violating the order.

Many day-shift employees arrived without knowing a co-worker had died after being told only that there would be a "late start."

One of the great mysteries in astronomy has been why Venus has no moon. Now a new theory provides a simple answer: It might have been eaten.

A new map shows Flock has more cameras in the U.S. than was previously known. The company wants the map taken down.

So absurd and embarrassing ..."

A new wave of AI-enhanced consumer creep-tech disregards the privacy of everyone but the wearer. The people have had enough.

Living off blood isn't easy, but the tropical mammals evolved clever adaptations to make it work, a new study says.

Between 2025 and August 2026, the Trump administration deported over 25,000 people to countries other than their country of origin. Very few of these removals were publicly announced by the US. The Deportation Project tracked them, and depicted them in this map.

Students faced prison terms and thousands of dollars in restitution over campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza

California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation passed to protect providers of gender-affirming care from charges in other states. This past weekend, the Democrat nixed Assembly Bill 2164, which would prevent the governor from honoring an extradition request for anyone who comes to California to receive an abortion or undergo gender-affirming care, citing concerns it would restrict his office’s executive authority. “This would prohibit future governors from recognizing a request for extradition of a person subject to criminal liability based on allegations that the person engaged in specified health care activities,” Newsom wrote in a veto message published on Sunday. Progressive groups voiced disappointment about the veto of AB 2164. The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus had made the bill a priority this year, saying it was important to prohibit “future Governors from recognizing a request for extradition of a person providing or aiding legally protected reproductive health care services or gender-affirming health care services in California.”

An updated phylogeny of bats is presented, based on new genome assemblies and many ancient fossils and including all known bat families.

St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming that Mayor Kaohly Her sexually harassed and battered him, and that the city retaliated against him when he reported it and initiated an investigation. Several allegations in the lawsuit, which names Her and the city as defendants, had been made public during the course of an earlier internal probe into Her’s conduct. But the complaint includes new claims, including that Her made “unwanted and nonconsensual physical contact” with Henry, “placing her hand on his upper thigh beneath a conference-room table — not once, but twice — during a [St. Paul Police Department] budget meeting.” It also accuses Her of making sexual innuendos about the size of Henry’s penis and describing herself as a “MILF,” a sexually vulgar acronym. The lawsuit comes less than a week after the city announced that the misconduct investigation into the mayor found that she “engaged in offensive and inappropriate behavior” in violation of the city’s workplace conduct policy but did not sexually harass or retaliate against anyone. On top of the allegations about Her’s behavior, the lawsuit claims that the mayor hired a private public relations firm to discredit Henry after the investigation began, and that St. Paul officials violated the Minnesota Whistleblower Act when they “engaged in a series of retaliatory acts” because of the sexual harassment complaint.