Weird

[Weeklies] Time Dilation and Pale Crawlers

Also watermelons.

Welcome to Weeklies, where I recap some of the weird links I’ve shared on the homepage over the past week!

Time Expansion Experiences

Psychology Today published an interesting article by Steve Taylor this week on the perception of time. In it, he explores what he calls Time Expansion Experiences, in which seconds might feel like minutes, or longer. TEEs, he says, tend to happen during accidents, but according to his research may also occur during meditation or sports (research back in 2012 also pointed toward a time dilation effect for those playing sports). These experiences may also involve a sense of calm or vivid detail.

One interesting factoid from the article is that 77% of people surveyed say that Christmas seems to come faster for them every year, or that time speeds up as they get older. This, I think, is true! However, I also think it has more to do with repetitive experiences and falling into routine than anything else. A kind of hypnosis of life. The key is to constantly challenge yourself and seek out new experiences, or at least try something different once in a while. Tell time to slow down!

Social Somethings

On January 29, 2025 on r/Paranormal, a Redditor shared their bizarre sighting of a pale crawler. The sighting would have happened in 2008, and the witness claims they were brushing their teeth when they turned around to see a “pale white humanoid creature” on all fours scurrying through their parents’ bedroom and disappearing behind the bed. “It never looked at me so I wasn’t able to see its face,” the poster wrote, adding that they thought it might have been their brother, but after checking, no one was near the bed at the time.

A few commenters responded with their own stories of what they call crawlers. There’s actually an entire community dedicated to documenting this phenomenon, with the entities described as having “pale skin, long limbs, and a tall thin body.”

#1 Watermelon-Related Video of the Week

We’ve all wondered what goes on inside watermelons, especially the rotting ones inside your fridge. Photo Owl Time Lapse decided to stick a camera inside one for 128 days, to unravel these strange mysteries. What they found probably won’t shock you, but it is kind of cool.

Weekly AI Nightmares

Every week, something new happens in the AI sphere. Live Science shared the story of a new “red line” crossed by Large Language Models, after research in December showed that LLMs from Meta (Llama31-70B-Instruct) and Alibaba (Qwen25-72B-Instruct) could “clone” themselves. “Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart [humans], and is an early signal for rogue AIs,” the study said. Are we truly prepared for self-replicating chatbots? Their research showed that the studied LLMs could “have the capacity to go rogue.” The study, however, is not yet peer-reviewed.

IEEE Spectrum meanwhile muses on how we can stay prepared for the upcoming robot and AI takeover, suggesting that we make sure AI sounds robotic so we can more easily tell the difference when compared to humans. “We have a simple proposal,” they write, “All talking AIs and robots should use a ring modulator.” It’s an idea for sure, but I’m not sure it’ll catch on.

While telling AI (and their created works) apart from humans is becoming trickier, scientists are still devising ways to check for potential sentience. One group created a text-based game involving the concept of pain to see how LLMs would respond, using a method known as “trade-off.” Essentially, the LLMs were given a choice between reaching a high score but experiencing “pain,” or scoring less and avoiding pain or feeling “pleasure.” Out of nine LLMs tested, some did indeed choose the less painful path.

However, given that the pain, pleasure, and reward were all nothing more than concepts fed to the AI, and LLMs respond according to what’s expected and the data they’re trained on, it’s hard to say if such a test could actually reveal real sentience there. Even so, the existence of emergent behaviors in AI means we just don’t know, yet.

Links Of Interest

Psychic allegedly locates missing man in Texas.

125ft aliens peeking into space shuttles?

Could we travel to parallel universes?

Cornell’s robot jellyfish and worm are powered by a hydraulic fluid battery.

Near-death experience that can’t be explained.

Aliens vs. Bigfoot: Oxford scientists chooses Aliens.

Deceased grandmother leaves a gift?

Astronomers seek global ban on space advertising.

Experts may have solved Roanoke colony mystery.

Inherited memories from organ transplants?

That’s it for this week’s edition of Weeklies. Check back soon for more, or catch last week’s! They’re still good, probably!

advertisement

Rob Schwarz

Writer, blogger, and part-time peddler of mysterious tales. Editor-in-chief of Stranger Dimensions.

Related Articles