Wild Feed

“When you read content on X, you should be able to verify its authenticity. This is critical to getting a pulse on important issues happening in the world,” posted Nikita Bier, Head of Product at X, back on October 14, 2025.

“As part of that, we’re experimenting with displaying new information on profiles, including which country an account is based, among other details. Starting next week, we will surface this on a handful of profiles of X team members to get feedback.”

On November 3, Condé Nast announced that the Vogue brand would absorb Teen Vogue, resulting in the layoffs of at least six staffers, “most of whom are BIPOC women or trans” according to a statement released by the Condé Union.

Both in 2016 and now, the changes at Teen Vogue reflect a larger political and cultural moment taking place throughout the country. Eleven years ago, conversations about race, gender and systemic inequity began to take a more prominent place in media and politics, leading to an expansion of diversity in hiring and messaging across industries. But the journalists brought in to help build trust and strengthen credibility on anti-trans legislation, grassroots activism and more, are being pushed back toward the margins.

Protests are one of the most popular ways to express disapproval and effect change, and people continue to take to the streets today. In this list—adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube—we cover world-altering protests from across history, from the Battle of Cable Street to the more recent Jasmine Revolution to the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt.

The concept dates back to 1956, when American sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl came up with the term “para-social” to describe the relationships some viewers formed with TV personalities. Decades later, viewers are still forming parasocial relationships with TV personalities, but they’re also forming them with influencers, content creators, actors, musicians and other individuals in the public eye.

A parasocial relationship involves an “illusion of friendship,” Elizabeth Perse, a former communications scholar at the University of Delaware, told USA Today’s Elise Brisco in 2021. Sometimes, these relationships can become “unhealthy and intense,” says Simone Schnall, a social psychologist at the University of Cambridge, in the statement.

For decades, amateur astronomers have railed against light pollution — the single greatest negative impact of humans on the night sky. Initially, the argument was, “We can’t see the stars anymore!” More studies revealed how Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) is detrimental to sleep patterns and causes fatigue and stress in both humans and animals. Could things actually get worse? Indeed, the answer is “yes.”

Nine in 10 Americans gather around a table to share food on Thanksgiving. At this polarizing moment, anything that promises to bring Americans together warrants our attention.

But as a historian of religion, I feel obliged to recount how popular interpretations of Thanksgiving also have pulled us apart.

Communal rituals of giving thanks have a longer history in North America, and it was only around the turn of the 20th century that most people in the U.S. came to associate Thanksgiving with Plymouth “Pilgrims” and generic “Indians” sharing a historic meal.

The emphasis on the Pilgrims’ 1620 landing and 1621 feast erased a great deal of religious history and narrowed conceptions of who belongs in America – at times excluding groups such as Native Americans, Catholics and Jews.

You see, earlier generations never had machines that offered instant compliance and endless affirmations on tap, while today a single prompt delivers validation with the ease of a vending machine. A half-formed idea receives not a pause for thought or a stern correction, but instead gets a warm nod and a cascade of supportive reasoning from our AI assistants. And just like that, in the span of a few keystrokes, the quiet echo chambers we used to create in our own heads have been upgraded into something far more industrial—and far more dangerous.

At Queen Mary University of London, behavioral scientist Alex Davidson and his team designed a test using flashes of light—short and long pulses that signaled different outcomes. A long flash meant yummy sugar water. A short one meant a bitter shot of quinine, which they hate. After a series of trials, the bees began choosing the light associated with sweetness every time, even when the sugar was removed entirely.

In the jungles of Peru and the Philippines, some of the smallest spiders on Earth are building monsters. Each web they spin hides a puppet—crafted from dead insects, leaves, and silk—that looks uncannily like a much larger spider. When predators move in, it’s showtime.

What inspires a master of the macabre and the fantastical? In Guillermo del Toro’s case, it was a combination of a fascination with monstrosity and many all-too-real experiences with the monstrous nature of humanity, some of which happened within his own family.

DHAKA, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Bangladesh's ousted prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was sentenced to death in her absence on Monday at the end of a months-long trial that found her guilty of ordering a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year.

People in the packed courtroom - including families of victims - cheered and clapped, and some in the crowds outside sank to their knees and offered up prayers after the verdict, the harshest against a leader in the country's history.

An underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon could now blow its top by mid-to late-2026, scientists say.

In December last year, scientists said the Axial Seamount was nearing the threshold seen before an eruption a decade earlier and could erupt within a year. Now, they predict the eruption will likely come later than previously expected, by mid-to-late 2026.

Gathering snot is one of many ways that drones are being used to study whales. In the past 10 to 15 years, drone technology has made great strides, becoming affordable and easy to use. This has been a boon for researchers. Scientists “are finding applications for drones in virtually every aspect of marine mammal research,” says Joshua Stewart, an ecologist at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute.

FBI Director Kash Patel enjoys access to a litany of professional perks, among them use of a Gulfstream G550 jet, a 15-passenger luxury aircraft owned by the Department of Justice that he has reportedly taken to visit his aspiring country musician girlfriend. Responding to growing outrage about his personal use of the government jet, Patel has insisted those who track his flights are dangerous and cowardly.

Unfortunately for Patel, tracking flights is legal, easy, and an important tool of government transparency.

A leading artificial intelligence researcher is warning that Character.AI’s plan to ban chatbots for kids by late November may leave them susceptible to self-harm or suicide if they detach from an AI companion too quickly.

Jodi Halpern, a UC Berkeley bioethics professor, celebrated the ban overall, but wants parents to be on the lookout for emotional changes or needs in the weeks following children’s separation from their chatbots.

CHICAGO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Nearly two dozen people were arrested as faith leaders protested on Friday outside a federal immigration facility near Chicago, authorities said, the latest sign of tensions over the Trump administration's aggressive enforcement push.

Neuroscientists from Columbia University and McGill University have identified a brain chemical that appears to drive depression and suicidal thinking in individuals who faced trauma or hardship during childhood.

Reading has a reputation as the quintessential quiet activity. Picture reading and you might think of hushed libraries and shushing librarians or a cozy afternoon whiled away in silence on the couch with a good novel and perhaps a purring cat on your lap. There are even silent reading parties where guests BYOB (bring your own book) and sit in companionable quiet. A bookish introvert’s dream! Yet, despite reading’s association with quiet individual immersion, it has a loud, communal history. In fact, for millennia, reading was something only done out loud. Here’s a quick primer on how reading went silent.

Most Canadians have access to workplaces that are safe, promote health and autonomy and, most importantly, are protected by the law. But for people in criminalized professions, including sex work, it’s a different story.

In Canada, sex work itself is legal. But most aspects associated with doing sex work — purchasing sexual services and communicating for that purpose — are illegal.

R. v. Kloubakov, a recent Supreme Court of Canada case, demonstrates how basic elements of the workplace for sex workers are not only contested under the law, but they’re also being decided upon without the input of people in the profession.

Envy arises when we compare ourselves to someone else and conclude they’re better off. We’ve all been there. Envy is a universal emotion, but it’s also a corrosive one. In a large longitudinal study of more than 18,000 adults, researchers found that higher levels of envy predicted poorer well-being years later. Put simply: The more envious we are, the worse we tend to feel over time.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite convicted of assisting beau Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, is now serving her 20-year sentence at a federal women’s prison in Bryan, Texas. The facility — just 100 miles east of Austin — is known for its minimum-security environment and relatively comfortable conditions.

Astronomers have captured striking footage of the solar system comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) breaking apart on the nights following Nov. 11 after it was destabilized by a close brush with the sun in early October.

Nearly everyone has experienced it: After a night of poor sleep, you don’t feel as alert as you should. Your brain might seem foggy, and your mind drifts off when you should be paying attention.

A new study from MIT reveals what happens inside the brain as these momentary failures of attention occur. The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows out of the brain — a process that typically occurs during sleep and helps to wash away waste products that have built up during the day. This flushing is believed to be necessary for maintaining a healthy, normally functioning brain.

In a penny-pinching move, the U.S. Mint has produced its last one-cent coin.

The final penny was minted in Philadelphia Wednesday, 232 years after the first penny rolled off the production line. The government decided to stop making new pennies because each one costs nearly 4 cents to produce. The move is expected to save about $56 million a year.