Mauricio A. Lopes @Science4Future

Brazil used to be the world's second-largest cocoa producer, until a fungus erased its crop and turned it into an importer. In 1989 a disease called witches' broom hit the cocoa farms of Bahia, likely carried in by hand as an act of sabotage. It deformed the pods and killed the shoots, and in under ten years it wiped out about seventy percent of Brazil's cocoa. The country fell from second in the world to seventh, and it has bought its beans ever since. One part of the story the fungus never reached is how Brazil grows the crop. Much of Brazil's cocoa grows inside a standing rainforest, in the shade of the native trees, a system called cabruca that Bahia has used for over two hundred years. Growers raise the cocoa without clearing the forest, so the birds, the monkeys, and hundreds of other plants live right alongside it. For most of that time, keeping the forest earned them nothing extra. Now a new European law blocks any cocoa grown on land where a forest was cut down. West Africa cleared most of its forest to plant cocoa, so it is caught on the wrong side of the rule. Brazil grew its cocoa under the forest, so it lands on the right side, and buyers now pay more for exactly that. Add disease-resistant trees bred by Brazil's own scientists, and a crop the country lost is finally worth planting again. I wrote the full story of the comeback... x.com/drewcrawford_/…

Drew Crawford @drewcrawford_

4 hours ago

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Wish calculus was introduced this way in schools

Most PhD programs train specialists. The best ones train thinkers. A PhD isn’t just about mastering a niche topic it’s about learning how to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, solve complex problems and communicate ideas across disciplines. The researchers who make the biggest impact often think beyond their field.

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“People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” — Aldous Huxley

Where are we headed with thinking machines? Our new perspective on large medical reasoning models nature.com/articles/s4155… @natBME @HongYuZhou14 @AdamRodmanMD @pranavrajpurkar

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“When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival, we slowly invented brains. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand years ago, when we needed to know more than could conveniently be contained in brains. So we learned to stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library. A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person - perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.” — Carl Sagan

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Brazil is sitting on some of the largest fresh water reserves on Earth. And almost nobody prices it in. The Guarani Aquifer holds close to 40,000 cubic kilometers of water under southern Brazil. That is enough to give the whole world drinking water for around 200 years at today's use. It is one of the largest aquifer systems ever found on the planet. About two-thirds of it sits under Brazilian soil. Then scientists looked under the Amazon and found something even greater. They call it the Great Amazon Aquifer System. Early estimates put it near 162,000 cubic kilometers, roughly four times the Guarani. Even the conservative numbers are enormous. The Urucuia Aquifer feeds the farms of western Bahia and the MATOPIBA region. It also keeps the São Francisco River flowing through the dry season. That same aquifer lost about 31 cubic kilometers of water in just two decades. Groundwater is the reason farmers there can grow crops on the same land year round. Global markets still price Brazil on its politics. They forget what is sitting under the ground.

If computing power brings about technological advances without human input, and enough of the pay-off is reinvested in building still more powerful machines, wealth could accumulate at unprecedented speed economist.com/leaders/2025/0…

How animals sense Earth’s magnetic field is one of biology’s enduring mysteries. Researchers in Science have now identified superparamagnetic macrophages in the livers of rock pigeons to be crucial for magnetic sensing. The finding uncovers an unexpected role for immune cells in sensory perception and may fundamentally change our understanding of animal navigation. Learn more in this week's issue: scim.ag/4uAKQDl

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Cannes 2026 award winners #Cannes2026: Palme d’Or: FJORD, Cristian Mungiu Grand Prix: MINOTAUR, Andrey Zvyagintsev Jury Prize: THE DREAMED ADVENTURE, Valeska Grisebach Best Director: (tie) Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi, LA BOLA NEGRA, Paweł Pawlikowski, FATHERLAND Best Screenplay: Emmanuel Marre, A MAN OF HIS TIME Best Actress: VIRGINIE EFIRA, TAO OKAMOTO, All of a Sudden Best Actor: EMMANUEL MACCHIA, VALENTIN CAMPAGNE, Coward Camera d’Or: BEN’IMANA, Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo Palme d’Or for Best Short Film: PARA LOS CONTRINCANTES, Federico Luis FIPRESCI Prize: FJORD, Cristian Mungiu Un Certain Regard: Un Certain Regard Prize: EVERYTIME, Sandra Wollner Jury Prize: ELEPHANTS IN THE FOG, Abinash Bikram Shah Special Jury Prize: IRON BOY, Louis Clichy Actor: BRADLEY FIOMONA DEMBEASSET, Congo Boy Actresses: MARINA DE TAVIRA, DANIELA MARÍN NAVARRO, MARIANGEL VILLEGAS, Forever Your Maternal Animal Critics’ Week: Grand Prize: LA GRADIVA, Marine Atlan Rising Star Award: AINA CLOTET, Viva Gan Foundation Award for Distribution: A GIRL UNKNOWN, Zou Jing SACD Award for Best Screenplay: NICOLE BORGEAT, Dua Directors’ Fortnight: Audience Award: I SEE BUILDINGS FALL LIKE LIGHTNING, Clio Barnard Europa Cinemas Label: TOO MANY BEASTS, Sarah Arnold Coup de Coeur: SHANA, Lila Pinell You can find the full Cannes 2026 lineup here. I updated the list with the winners and distributors and will continue updating going forward. letterboxd.com/filmfestival/l…