A Victorian clergyman's precise measurement of bee spacing still shapes modern hives, Apple's new iPhone camera mode can cryptographically prove a photo hasn't been faked, and witnesses say wild elephants in Kenya self-medicate with specific plants. [DVYio Newsletter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gA4jnWpQ) Welcome all to this week’s issue. If you’ve recently subscribed, thanks for giving this space in your inbox. (I know there’s no shortage of things competing for it.) I’m rather pleased with this week’s selection. My hope is that you’ll find something you wouldn’t normally have gone looking for, and come away understanding the world a little better. I’d also love to hear what you’ve found interesting during your week that you think could be worth including in a future issue. If something makes you stop and think, or immediately want to show someone else, reply and send it over. That's the typical instinct I use for choosing what goes in here. This Week I Learnt [A beekeeper in protective gear lifts a honeycomb frame from an open hive filled with bees.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn) [Modern beekeeping rests on a single measurement applied by a Philadelphia clergyman in 1851](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn) [Bees hate two things: too much empty space and too little empty space. Give them a gap wider than about 9.5mm and they'll fill it with wax comb. Give them less than 6.4mm and they'll seal it shut with propolis (a sticky glue made from tree resin). But in the narrow band between those two (roughly 7mm) they do neither.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn) [Lorenzo Langstroth, a Philadelphia clergyman, worked this out in 1851 after noticing bees left a similar gap alone in his own hive, and](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn)[patented a design](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nTNBHMGZ)[built entirely around it the following year. It's called “bee space”, and it's the reason you can actually pull a frame of honeycomb out of a hive without hacking it free first.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn) [Before that, beekeepers mostly kept bees in skeps (woven straw baskets) or hollow logs, where the comb was built straight onto the walls, and removing the comb meant cutting it free. Langstroth's design hangs the comb on removable wooden frames, spaced with bee-space gaps between the frames, the walls, and the floor, so bees never bridge the gaps with wax or glue them shut. Pull a frame out and it slides free, comb intact, no cutting required.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn) [That single dimension is why beekeepers today can check for disease, harvest honey, or split a hive without wrecking it, and why the basic Langstroth layout, tweaked since 1852, is still the standard hive used in many parts of the world.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cRBopxrn) Tech [An iPhone screen shows a man speaking into microphones, with a prompt to compare an authenticated photo for edits.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/d5iRNpCA) [Your iPhone can now prove a photo is real](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/d5iRNpCA) The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will have an opt-in camera mode called Apple Reference Image. It adds a digital signature (a way to detect tampering) to the image data the moment the sensor captures it (before any software processing) and timestamps it using Apple's servers, so anyone can later verify the image is a genuine, unaltered shot from a real iPhone camera. The signing happens on secure chip hardware. Image processing runs on Apple's private cloud servers, so Apple says even it can't see the photo, and any faked images can be blocked later without revealing who took the real ones. [Portraits of children and Persian-script banners hang from a damaged structure above rubble.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TiJUiQGB) [Preventable failures piled up (including over-reliance on AI) before the US missiles hit an Iranian school](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TiJUiQGB) Two Tomahawk missiles hit a school in Minab, Iran, on 28 February, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. A Pentagon investigation, still unreleased months after it was effectively finished, has reportedly found the strike came from a build-up of smaller failures: outdated intelligence that missed the site's shift to civilian use, and US Central Command staff leaning too heavily on Palantir's Maven AI system to flag outdated or inconsistent intelligence. [Close-up of a circuit board with a central chip and gold traces connecting it to surrounding components.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/pNmCPudx) [Some data centres are swapping copper wiring for light to curb their heat and energy problem](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/pNmCPudx) Chris Sharp, technology chief at Digital Realty, reckons "we're at the end of copper" for the internal networking that links servers together (up to 20 tonnes of it in a typical 100MW facility). The pitch from companies like Nvidia and Cornerstone Labs is that light doesn't heat up wires the way electricity does, so using light to carry data could cut the huge amounts of energy data centres spend on cooling. But the industry still needs to bring manufacturing costs down and make optical parts reliable enough to survive the heat everything else in the building generates. Poll When you read silently, do you hear the words in a voice? Always, in my own voice Always, but no specific voice Sometimes Only if I deliberately slow down Not at all Last Week's Poll In a group conversation, what role do you naturally take? Ask questions 19% Tell stories 19% Connect other people's points 21% Mostly listen 31% Correct details 10% [An empty live music venue with tiered red seating, brick walls, and illuminated curved ceiling fixtures.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vsBFY7av) [A modern music venue interior with a glass-fronted stage, brick walls, a staircase, and red lounge seating.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vsBFY7av) [A dark music venue interior with orange seating, tall windows, and framed photos of performers, including a singer at a microphone.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vsBFY7av) [An empty, warmly lit dressing room with a vanity mirror, hanging lights, countertop, and padded chair.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vsBFY7av) [A large red-brick industrial building with four tall chimneys stands beside a river, flanked by modern buildings.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vsBFY7av) [Apple Music Hall, London](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vsBFY7av) Science [Diagram shows voltage squeezing a soft polymer between metal plates; its response builds to a firing threshold and produces a neuron-like output signal.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/VbJAaQY6) [A soft polymer "nano-spring" lets MIT engineers build a device that mimics firing neurons](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/VbJAaQY6) MIT researchers built a nanoscale device that computes like a neuron, using squishy plastic. It's a sandwich of soft polymer between two metal plates: applying voltage makes the plates squeeze the polymer. Because that material is slow to spring back, the device “remembers” the pattern of squeezing until it crosses a threshold and fires, mimicking how a real neuron builds up charge before triggering a signal. Since memory and computing happen in the same tiny structure, with no separate capacitors or complex circuitry needed, it points toward low-power sensors and wearables that process data on the spot. [Map of typical El Niño rainfall shifts: wetter winters possible in the southern U.S., a weaker Indian monsoon, and drier Amazon and Australian conditions.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/c7QZHrC4) [Developing El Niño becomes strongest on record weeks before expected peak](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/c7QZHrC4) Sea surface temperatures in the key Pacific region hit 3.05°C above average on 19 September, beating the previous record of 3.02°C from the very strong 2015 El Niño, and it hasn't even peaked yet (that's expected later this year). In practice this means the usual El Niño script is already playing out worldwide: India's monsoon is running 15% drier than normal, the Atlantic has gone a record stretch with no hurricanes, and drought and wildfire risk is climbing in Brazil, Australia, and Indonesia, where the health ministry says smoke is already affecting around 12.5 million people. [Dark chocolate pieces lead to a gut with colorful bacteria, then to a smiling brain, suggesting links among chocolate, gut microbes, and mood.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/DvoorF3G) [People eating 85% dark chocolate reported fewer negative feelings, and their gut bacteria had shifted too](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/DvoorF3G) In a 3-week trial of 48 adults, those who ate 30g of 85% cocoa dark chocolate daily reported fewer negative feelings than a no-chocolate group. Their gut bacteria changed too: more diversity overall, more of a species called Blautia obeum, and less Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. Chocolate with 70% cocoa didn't produce the same mood effect, and the Blautia obeum increase tracked with the mood improvement, so the researchers suspect the extra cocoa is acting a bit like a prebiotic, feeding gut bacteria in a way that feeds back to the brain. [An adult elephant stands beside a calf in a green forest, with a third elephant partly visible at left.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/KEc33Whi) [Elephants treat themselves with medicinal plants, witnesses say](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/KEc33Whi) Wild elephants in Kenya's Mount Elgon region use at least 35 plant species when they're sick, and 25 of those are already known locally as medicines, according to interviews with wildlife scouts and community elders. One scout described mother elephants chewing a plant called Angurweet (normally used for stomach ache) into a paste, mixing it with their own milk, and feeding it to their calves. Data [Calendar heatmap of daily U.S. box office, 2004–2026, in 2025 dollars: red indicates lower revenue and green higher. Takings plunge in 2020; later years retain green weekend bands but show more low-revenue weekdays than 2004–2019.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/j9rM3skg) [The US movie box office as a heatmap](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/j9rM3skg) [US box office takings haven't fully recovered from 2020. /u/post_appt_bliss's calendar heatmap of daily US box office takings (adjusted to 2025 dollars) shows the pandemic depression in sharp deep red from March 2020. After that, 2022 through 2026 (so far) still show the familiar green weekend stripe, just fewer dark-green weekends and more red weekdays than 2004-2019 ever had. One theory is that streaming simply ate the mid-week, casual moviegoer, leaving weekends as the only reliably strong slot left.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/j9rM3skg) History [Spectators in a packed football stadium look up at several strange objects and falling silver fragments in the sky.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ciomDvDY) [The 1954 football match that stopped because everyone looked up at the sky](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ciomDvDY) [A First Division football match in Florence stopped on 27 October 1954 when 10,000 fans watched something odd cross the sky above the Stadio Artemi Franchi. Fiorentina player Ardico Magnini, who'd played for Italy at that year's World Cup, described "something that looked like an egg that was moving slowly" while silver glitter fell from above. Fan Gigi Boni remembers multiple objects shaped "like Cuban cigars" that stopped dead in mid-flight.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ciomDvDY) [The referee's match report confirms play was suspended because of what spectators saw, and it wasn't just Florence: sightings were reported across Tuscany that day and in the days after, along with a strange white fluff nicknamed "angel hair" that settled on rooftops and dissolved within an hour.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ciomDvDY) [Journalist Giorgio Batini collected samples of the fluff on a matchstick and had them tested at the University of Florence, where Professor Giovanni Canneri's lab found boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium, and no radioactivity, before the samples themselves disintegrated during testing. Roberto Pinotti, president of Italy's National UFO Centre, still calls it "a technological phenomenon that cannot be linked with anything we know on Earth."](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ciomDvDY) [Retired US Air Force pilot and astronomer James McGaha disagrees entirely: he reckons it was migrating spiders, which spin fine webs to sail on the wind (some have been tracked as high as 14,000 feet) and can glisten and clump into exactly the kind of drifting mass witnesses described. Pinotti rejects that explanation because spider silk is a nitrogen-based protein, not a match for the minerals found in the "angel hair" samples. More than 70 years on, with the original samples long gone, there's no way to run the test again.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ciomDvDY) [Collage of eight ornate uppercase W letters in medieval and decorative styles, including floral, animal, and geometric designs.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BCGo5oQD) [How doubling the letter U gave English its consonant W](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BCGo5oQD) Danny Bate explains that Latin once had the “w” sound in “water”, but by the time Rome fell, V represented a “v” sound instead. When Germanic kings like Clovis started ruling Latin-speaking lands after Rome fell, scribes needed a way to spell their names. So from the 6th century, likely in Francia, they started doubling U (literally "UU") until it fused into W by the 11th century. Old English actually preferred a runic letter called wynn for centuries instead, and only lost it to W after the Norman Conquest tipped the balance toward French and Latin spelling habits. [Misty evening view over Gdansk’s historic rooftops, with warm-lit buildings and a glowing street fading into the haze.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/p82aA3HG) [Gdansk, Poland](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/p82aA3HG) [Michael Sidofsky](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/p82aA3HG) Random [Dense pixel-art space station scene with crowded rooms, a glowing dance floor, control areas, robots, and many costumed characters.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ixDe7ZHa) [One artist has spent every weekend since 2022 drawing a single, ever-expanding pixel-art scene](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ixDe7ZHa) [The site floor796.com is one huge, hand-drawn pixel-art scene of a space station, packed with tiny animated jokes and references to memes, games, films, and anime. You can pan and zoom around it like a giant interactive poster. One artist, going by floor796, has been adding to it every weekend since 2022, drawing and animating it all himself using](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ixDe7ZHa)[a special tool he created](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/6bCrsA5q)[.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ixDe7ZHa) [Infographic: A 3% wealth tax on ultra-rich people could avert 29.5 million deaths by 2030; a 3% crypto tax on the top 10,000 holders could avert 6.6 million. Aid cuts were linked to 24% higher mortality.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/kcyvuhRP) [A wealth tax on the ultra-rich could prevent millions of deaths caused by aid cuts, study finds](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/kcyvuhRP) The world's 3,028 billionaires hold $16.1 trillion between them. A new Lancet study estimates that a 3% wealth tax on the ultra-rich could avert 29.5 million deaths in low-income and lower-middle-income countries by 2030, offsetting the current cuts to development aid. Even the smallest option modelled (a 3% crypto tax on the top 10,000 holders) was projected to prevent 6.6 million deaths, based on computer simulations built on 59 countries' data showing high aid funding cut the death rate from all causes by 24% between 2002 and 2021. [Smiling white-bearded hiker Dale Sanders stands on a rocky mountain summit with trekking poles and a backpack.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aMvh6TrM) [91-year-old "Grey Beard" Sanders reclaims his own record as oldest person to finish the Appalachian Trail](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aMvh6TrM) Dale Sanders, 91, just finished all 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail, falling 71 times over 359 days (including one just 600 feet from the summit) and being hospitalised for a pinched nerve along the way. It's his second time holding the "oldest person" record, having first set it in 2017 at 82, lost it to friend M.J. "Nimblewill Nomad" Eberhart in 2021, then taken it back with Eberhart's help. Now 87, Eberhart helped drive Sanders' support van for the first 800 miles. Design [Olive-green, bamboo-shaped ceramic cups with thin reddish rims; three are stacked, with one matching cup beside them.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Q6N2Qwwm) [Handmade Ceramic Mug by SaraGaia](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Q6N2Qwwm) [When these mugs are stacked, the joints line up, making the set look like one piece of bamboo. SaraGaia says each mug takes 72 steps and 15 days to make, with the green tea-dust glaze coming from a red-brown iron mineral fired in a low-oxygen kiln until it turns green.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Q6N2Qwwm) [Collage of colorful AI-generated posters advertising summer and spring fayres, with ornate illustrations and crowded text.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/rBit8DoH) [AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/rBit8DoH) Every village fayre poster made with AI seems to land on the same look: pastel bunting, hand-drawn florals, and airbrushed flowers. The fix is simple: instead of asking ChatGPT for "a poster", ask it to name and use an actual design style (Bauhaus, risograph, Memphis, and Japanese minimal). Click through for the back-and-forth and example posters. [“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/hdp2hp3U) [William Morris](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/hdp2hp3U) [Web](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nUb4UMKK) · [Twitter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/KoniYXJZ) · [LinkedIn](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/dbnvHDS8)