a.

Orcas eat great white sharks. They hunt seals, dolphins, and baby whales. They have never killed a single human in the open ocean. Not once, in all of recorded history. An orca's brain weighs up to 15 pounds. Yours weighs about 3. They have roughly double the brain cells we do in the regions that handle complex thought. A neuroscientist at Emory named Lori Marino put an orca brain in an MRI and found these animals can tell different species apart underwater. They do it by sending out clicks that bounce off everything around them and come back as a kind of 3D sound map (this is called echolocation). From 500 feet away, an orca knows you're a human and not a seal. It skips you on purpose. The answer is culture. Orcas around the world are divided into at least 10 separate populations, each with its own food rules, its own language, and its own way of hunting. All of it learned from their mothers. One population eats only fish. Another eats only marine mammals like seals and sea lions. These two populations can live in the exact same water and never swap a single meal. A baby orca learns what food is from its mother, and that list stays the same for life. In the Pacific Northwest, one population called the Southern Residents eats almost nothing but Chinook salmon. Scientists have documented them killing harbor porpoises 78 times over six decades, carrying the dead porpoises in their mouths, and never once eating them. Even when the group was starving. A 2023 study in Marine Mammal Science looked at all 78 cases and concluded it was play. These orcas would rather go hungry than eat something their culture says isn't food. Researchers studying whale behavior in 2001 found that orca cultural traditions "appear to have no parallel outside humans." Each family group has its own dialect, its own version of the language. Calves spend about two years just learning how to make all the sounds their family uses. Mothers will slow down a hunt on purpose so their young can watch. In 2005, a 12-year-old kid was swimming in Helm Bay, Alaska when an orca came at him full speed. At the very last second, the orca seemed to realize it was charging a human. It bent its entire body in half and turned back to open water. In captivity, it goes differently. SeaWorld's Tilikum killed three people during his life in a concrete tank. Research from 2016, published in the journal Animals, traced it to psychological collapse from being locked away from the family bonds orcas need to stay stable. I think calling this a "mystery" undersells the science. Orcas decide what to eat based on culture, not instinct. No orca mother has ever taught her calf to hunt humans, so no orca hunts humans. Only about 75 of those salmon-eating Southern Residents are still alive. Their pregnancy failure rate is 69% because we've destroyed their salmon runs. They won't break their food culture to survive. Whether we care enough to protect theirs is the part that actually matters.

Pentagon spent more than $11.3 billion in the first 6 days of the war against Iran, much more than previously estimated, per AP

The Silent Disappearance of Fireflies We May Be the Last Generation to See Fireflies

Murdered by a ice terrorist outside his own home.

Cats get more attached to people than dogs

Outdated CPR training is putting women’s lives at risk. Women who suffer cardiac arrest outside hospital are significantly less likely to survive than men, and one overlooked reason is that CPR training almost never accounts for female anatomy. A Duke University analysis across 47 U.S. states found women are 14% less likely to receive bystander CPR. In the UK, the gap is similar: only 68% of women get CPR from bystanders compared to 73% of men, with many people citing fear of inappropriate touching or concern about injuring a woman’s chest. The problem is compounded by the tools we train on. A global survey revealed that roughly 95% of CPR manikins are designed with flat chests; only one widely available model includes visible breasts. As a result, most trainees never practice the slight technique adjustments needed for women and often hesitate in real emergencies. Research published in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services offers hope: when trainees used manikins equipped with realistic silicone breasts, they were almost twice as likely to feel confident performing chest compressions on a woman. Experts say updating training manikins to represent both male and female anatomy could eliminate hesitation, close the gender survival gap, and save thousands of lives.

The Donald Trump administration has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of free entry days at national parks. They will be replaced with Donald Trump’s birthday.

unpopular opinions: marriage edition 💍👀