Musk first acknowledged the deaths of the macaques on September 10 in a reply to a user on his social networking app X (formerly Twitter). He denied that any of the deaths were “a result of a Neuralink implant” and said the researchers had taken care to select subjects who were already “close to death.” Relatedly, in a presentation last fall Musk claimed that Neuralink’s animal testing was never “exploratory,” but was instead conducted to confirm fully formed scientific hypotheses. “We are extremely careful,” he said.

Public records reviewed by WIRED, and interviews conducted with a former Neuralink employee and a current researcher at the University of California, Davis primate center, paint a wholly different picture of Neuralink’s animal research. The documents include veterinary records, first made public last year, that contain gruesome portrayals of suffering reportedly endured by as many as a dozen of Neuralink’s primate subjects, all of whom needed to be euthanized. These records could serve as the basis for any potential SEC probe into Musk’s comments about Neuralink, which has faced multiple federal investigations as the company moves toward its goal of releasing the first commercially available brain-computer interface for humans.

The letters to the SEC come from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit striving to abolish live animal testing. The group claims that Musk’s comments about the primate deaths were misleading, that he knew them “to be false,” and that investors deserve to hear the truth about the safety, “and thus the marketability,” of Neuralink’s speculative product.

“They are claiming they are going to put a safe device on the market, and that’s why you should invest,” Ryan Merkley, who leads the Physicians Committee’s research into animal-testing alternatives, tells WIRED. “And we see his lie as a way to whitewash what happened in these exploratory studies.”

For example, in an experimental surgery that took place in December 2019, performed to determine the “survivability” of an implant, an internal part of the device “broke off” while being implanted. Overnight, researchers observed the monkey, identified only as “Animal 20” by UC Davis, scratching at the surgical site, which emitted a bloody discharge, and yanking on a connector that eventually dislodged part of the device. A surgery to repair the issue was carried out the following day, yet fungal and bacterial infections took root. Vet records note that neither infection was likely to be cleared, in part because the implant was covering the infected area. The monkey was euthanized on January 6, 2020.

Additional veterinary reports show the condition of a female monkey called “Animal 15” during the months leading up to her death in March 2019. Days after her implant surgery, she began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason; a symptom of pain or infection, the records say. Staff observed that though she was uncomfortable, picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate.

Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”

Yet another monkey, Animal 22, was euthanized in March 2020 after his cranial implant became loose. A necropsy report revealed that two of the screws securing the implant to the skull loosened to the extent that they “could easily be lifted out.” The necropsy for Animal 22 clearly states that “the failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection.” If true, this would appear to directly contradict Musk’s statement that no monkeys died as a result of Neuralink’s chips.

At some point in the last two years I completely stopped using Google search in browser and just use Google maps to find businesses or ddg for searches. Actual Google search just has too many sponsored or promotional links

How much has total web traffic increased in the same time? I feel like the number is meaningless without something to compare it to.

I'm sure this was labor retaliation or something but watching YouTube music eat google music and then steadily get worse. I don't know. Fuck google and their lack of support. I don't like Spotify particularly but now I use it because i really hated youtube music's suggestion algorithm.

It's probably no one's fault that the kids are poor but it definitely isn't the kids' fault. It's easy to have these conservative principles when it's not your kids being hungry.

Washington has Tillicum and Georgia has Cumming. This map was not well thought out

Typical "I wish a dude would" fantasy that appeals to a lot of these conservatives.

Thanks for the update. I am looking forward to instance blocking!

He'll just hold all the spots open in case Trump is reelected. That means this time the insurrection will have military backing. Kind of like the Supreme Court seat.

I like how the article says it was a graze then says a bullet was removed from the guys thigh.

Good for him. I can't think of anything nice to say about him but he has now reached the very low bar of keeping his word.

You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

It's not just the blue bubble though. It's being able to send and receive full quality pictures and videos to iPhone users without having to get them to install a 3rd party app. All the old people in my family have iPhone. They won't learn Signal. Beeper bridged that gap.

100% correct. I am a nurse who hasn't worked for 3 years because of childcare costs

I guess it would be cool if these worked. There are already similar products in the market and they suffer from being difficult to install, deadening and heavy.

A person elected on the strength of their pro Trump election denial is now threatening to not honor the outcome of a vote to remove her. Who would have thought she held democratic norms in such low regard?

I like the phrase "Lou Dobbs on Lindell TV" I wish people this far out of the mainstream on the left had as much influence as these gas pump tv level right-wing guys do.

You have to think most of these guns were brought by accident and were pistols. Most people keep their pistols loaded because they have them to kill other people if necessary. An unloaded gun is less lethal. People who carry all the time seem to get careless after a while. Inb4 stories of people with pistols just for snakes or bears or whatever, that is definitely not the most common use case. I know someone who had a gun in his bag and they charged him like $500ish dollars to mail it back to himself and threatened him with fines up to $2000 but there were no additional fines levied.

Maybe it's less about Trump and more about Netanyahu and his very conservative buddies dismantling the only checks to his power while stepping up settlements. There are lots of reasons to criticise Isreal that have nothing to do with American political divisions. The Israeli's themselves were protesting in large numbers just last week.

I remember the pod save America guys talking about him before he was a Texas rep. They were saying how much they liked him and how he helped them sleep and stay up. Being a Dr Feelgood is probably very expected for the role.

Attempting to not appear partisan doesn't really matter because the right will call foul no matter what. That's the moral hazard of dealing with such disingenuous people.

Verification cans :(

Once I figured out how to get it back into my penis I became unstoppable.

For the 2020 election in my state, republican groups funded the campaign to collect signatures for the green party to be on the ballot. So your expectations are met.

That leopard looks real full of faces

The national guard are actual military members not the gravy seals.

A good Christian God fearing furry would never

Using noscript I approved the sites js, the cdn and jsdeliver. I am also running ublock and am getting no nags. This is on ff mobile for Android.

I agree that he isn't exciting but I don't think the president should be exciting. He or she needs to be a capable leader who is good at picking teams otherwise I want to know very little about the day to day of the president's life. More weekly blog post and less constant tweeting.

I like that a lot. I think I'll use it next holiday get together.

On mastodon search for the account @news@beehaw.org it will be this lemmy sub but in mastodon. Commenting on posts in mastodon will also comment on the lemmy thread.

Pagers also work even in parts of the hospital that cell phones don't for whatever reason. At least last time I had a hospital pager a few years ago. Now a lot of places use commercial solutions like vocera that also work everywhere and allow two way voice comms.

Fubo is expensive but has almost every sport I want to watch. My in laws have it and it beats the premium cable packages for cost and convenience. Sorry to sound like an ad but if people have only seen fubo's ads they might not realize that this is a streaming service that can be worth the money if you like all sports all the time. Fuck the peacock exclusive. Fuck the prime exclusive. Fuck the apple TV exclusive. Sports should be easy to watch!

Don't let Nintendo know. Those guys love sending letters

I had a text message screening after applying to a job the other day. I used the keywords and got through the ai I guess and then answered text message questions for a while. I'd worked for this company before and last time that first round screening was done by a person over the phone. No real point just my experience being back in the job market after 8 years.

None of the Indians I've met are bots

They always make services worse before they end them. Maybe instead of incorporating ai they will release a new, not compatible with existing hardware, assistant and they are moving teams around.

I thought this was the same guy and was thinking he aged well

They all have "R"s in Texas. He represents a more blatant form of corruption than most.

Did he go back to Brazil? I know right after the coup attempt he was in Miami for a bit.