Vol. 2.35 | 09.13.19

Vol. 2 | #35 | 09.13.19

What Are Words, Really?
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You might think that the substance of words is the ideas they convey, and that to copyright those words is to protect ownership/authorship of those ideas. I know I thought that. But, according to a recent lawsuit filed by a guild of book publishers against Audible, Amazon’s audiobook division, things aren’t that straightforward. The publishers claim that while Audible has the license to distribute the sounds of the words of their books, displaying the shapes of the words through closed captioning in an impermissible act of copyright infringement. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


The Lake That Killed 1,700 People
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Not drowned by overflooding its banks, mind you. Asphyxiated. In 1986, thousands of cattle and 1,746 people were found all dead in the central African country of Cameroon. Apart from being dead, they all appeared peaceful, with no outward signs of trauma or distress. What the local villagers described as the work of evil spirits turned out to be the result of a huge limnic eruption from nearby Lake Nyos, in which a massive amount of carbon dioxide was suddenly released. Because concentrated CO2 is more dense than air, the toxic gas settled into the surrounding low-lying areas, stealing the breath of those in the area. In a biblical twist, the lake’s waters turned from blue to red as the high iron content of the lake’s bed was stirred up in the process and rose to the surface.


The Indestructible Tardigrades

I’m sure there is *some* way to kill the microscopic creatures known as “water bears,” but if they can survive in the frozen vacuum of space on the moon without artificial means, that counts as indestructible in my book.


Computing, Teleportation, and Qutrits

I’m pretty proficient when it comes to computing, even though I really don’t understand how the machinery itself works, turning 0’s and 1’s represented by miniscule circuits opening and closing into these words and cat gifs on the internet. Which means I’m no more capable of understanding what’s coming down the tech road soon in the form of quantum computing than you are. But it is coming, and it sounds like quantum mechanics may be the key that unlocks instant transmission of ultra-secure data without wires or radio waves through teleportation.

Oh yes.


Total Recall As Idea Pitch
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There are lots of concepts within sci-fi movies and such that would be cool if brought to fruition, like teleportation. But not all of them. Take, for example, the idea from the 1990 classic, Total Recall: implanting artificially created, false memories inside the mind of a person, such that they can’t tell the difference between what they really experienced and what they didn’t. A group of researchers are investigating how to do just that, using mice and the memory of being shocked with electricity at the smell of cherry blossoms. In short, the scientists mapped what that memory looks like, neuron-connection wise, from the brain of Mouse A — who actually had the experience — and then implanted that memory connection map into the brain of Mouse B, which never had the experience. After, Mouse B reacted to the smell of cherry blossoms as if he had been shocked in the past.

Scientific progress and hilarity ensues, or something. (And no, we don’t speak of the 2012 remake of Total Recall, as it did not happen.)

Vol. 2.34 | 08.23.19

Vol. 2 | #34 | 08.23.19

Get This: Marketing Claims May Not Be on the Level
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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a Silicon Valley startup claims its product does more than provide a convenient service. No, that’s not enough. It’s also more virtuous for the entire world to use it! Then, as use of the service/product starts spreading fueled by insane VC funding aimed at “accelerating growth,” reality starts making clear that maybe — just maybe — those “saving the world” claims were empty marketing promises. Today’s chapter in this recurring story: those electric scooters that have spawned in cities across the country. Turns out, they may actually be worse for the environment.


WeWork’s Investor Trap
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Speaking of Silicon Valley startup lunacy … just read Professor Scott Galloway’s take on the red flags flying all over WeWork’s howler of an IPO prospectus filing. (It’s now officially called The We Company, because of course it is.) A sample from his post titled WeWTF:

WeWork’s prospectus has a dedication (no joke): “We dedicate this to the power of We — greater than any one of us, but inside each of us.” Pretty sure Jim Jones had t-shirts printed up with this inspiring missive. Speaking of idolatry, “Adam” (as in Neumann) is mentioned 169 times, vs. an average of 25 mentions for founder/CEOs in other unicorn prospectuses.

Amazingly, the actual financials are even worse …


Dasani’s BYOB Vending Machine

What’s not to love about a vending machine that dispenses the great tasting filtered water of Dasani into your own refillable bottle, without the waste of a disposable plastic bottle? Presumably the price per oz would be cheaper than normal Dasani, because of the missing bottle. Of course, without the pretty Dasani bottle to catch your eye, would you buy Dasani’s water in the first place? I’m totally down for this experiment to work.


Saturn’s Rings Are Melting Away

Not because of heat, mind you. Rather, Saturn’s gravity is slowly pulling the ice that makes up the rings into itself, causing a phenomenon called “ring rain.” If you’ve never seen the rings of Saturn through a telescope, better do so soon. They could be gone in … <checks notes> … 300 million years. Given that homo sapiens has only been a thing for some 50,000 years, maybe this isn’t news we should concern ourselves with after all.


Who Gets to Decide?
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The story of Tom’s Diner in Denver is like the doppelganger opposite of classic eminent domain cases. Usually, a city wants a property owner to sell so that the city can turn the land over to a developer, who plans to convert it into a more valuable land-use alternative. In that scenario, the question comes down to when should the community interest be able to trump the individual property owner’s right to hold onto his property. Here, the owner — Tom — wants to sell his diner after 20 years in order to retire and have his family financially secure thanks to the developer’s $4.8 million offer, but members of the community want to prohibit his right to sell because the diner’s architectural design (“Googie” — new one for me) is cool.

Vol. 2.33 | 08.16.19

Vol. 2 | #33 | 08.16.19

A Perverse Game of “Name That Tune”
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With it’s multi-million dollar verdict last week, a jury confirmed that a plaintiff could successfully sue a mega-successful pop star like Katy Perry over four notes. This week, a new would-be plaintiff has entered the game, making noise about suing Lady Gaga over three notes.


Uber Still Losing Billions
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That’s billions, with a gold-plated capital B. Five billions, actually. The most eye-watering part? — Uber is still bleeding that much cash in a single, 3-month quarter. Read what Uber says its “path to profitability” is that it’s banking on and see if you can spot the hidden LOL’s:

Its path to profitability relies on several things going its way: the successful development of autonomous vehicle technology, which could allow Uber to retain more of each booking; boxing out Uber’s competitors in its growing (but also unprofitable) Uber Eats food-delivery business, where customers are fickle; and ensuring that it can keep classifying its drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, which could raise Uber’s costs even higher.


The Downside of Perpetual Learning

Or, more to the author’s point: “In entrepreneurial and business circles, consuming information has become a competitive sport.” Consuming information is very different from actually learning something. This article takes direct aim at stuff like the self-improvement myth that the average CEO reads 60 books a year and that consuming more podcast content by training yourself to listen to them at 2x speed is a way to “hack” your learning. It’s not. It’s just a way to amp up your consumption of information, much like the techniques used to eat 71 hot dogs in ten minutes.


All About NASA’s Launch Cameras

All the videophilic details about capturing launches of Saturn V rockets and twin-booster Space Shuttles throughout the years, using things like ultra-high-speed cameras and massive, twin-mounted telescopic cameras that look more like anti-aircraft guns than cameras.


“The Watcher” House Finally Sold
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It only took the owners five years to sell this 3,900 sq ft, 6-bedroom home in Westfield, NJ, for $959,000 … at a loss of about $400,000. Why, and why is this news? To understand that, you really need to read the full story about the house and its tragic owners.

Vol 2.32 | 08.09.19

Vol. 2 | #32 | 08.09.19

This Is How Bad Movies Start
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A team of scientists in China and California are working on a project to mix human stem cells in with the embryos of monkeys with the goal of breeding animals that contain fully human organs for use in human organ transplants. I mean, what could possibly go wrong here?


Who Owns the Building Blocks?
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Not of biology, but of art. Where exactly should the lines for copyright protection be drawn in this age of digital information, which — as Kevin Kelly has been arguing for some time now — wants to be copied, edited, remixed, sampled? A jury in Los Angeles just ordered Katy Perry and Capitol Records to pay nearly $3 million in damages to the Christian rap artist “Flame” over the purported copying of a four note segment. How small does a piece of music get to be before it is less a song protected by copyright and simply a few notes, like a chord, usable by any and all?


The Scandal of Stock Buybacks

That may sound salacious, but it’s tame compared to what the headline writers at The Atlantic used: swindle. You read and be the judge … but I must confess this one example alone is pretty convincing: “Merck insists it must keep drug prices high to fund new research. In 2018, the company spent $10 billion on R&D—and $14 billion on share repurchases and dividends.”


The Soviet Union’s Apollo 13

No, it didn’t feature a dramatic explosion turning a then-routine trip to the moon into a live tv drama with the lives of thee astronauts in the balance. That said, the Soviet mission to rescue its silent and marooned space station Salyut 7 did feature some gutsy space flying and docking, and spacewalking bravery of two cosmonauts in a dark and frozen station, working with winter coats over their space suits to keep warm. Yes, really.


Take a 3D Tour of Apollo 11’s Columbia
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The Command Modules of the Apollo Program were far more than just a slightly bigger space capsule than that of the Gemini Program to accommodate a third crew member. In my mind, I’ve always struggled to envision how, though. It’s always looked like a tiny compartment with just barely enough room for the 3 astronaut “couches” and the instrumentation and control panel. I never quite understood how they had room to change out of their pressure suits, where food and bathroom supplies were stored, and where containers full of moon rocks could possibly be kept for the ride home. Then I discovered this wicked cool, fully navigable, 3D-rendered model of the inside of Columbia, the Command Module for Apollo 11, built and hosted by the Smithsonian.

Vol. 2.31 | 08.02.19

Vol. 2 | #31 | 08.02.19

Einstein Is Still Right
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This time, it’s the super-massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy that is confirming the genius of Einstein. Through high-tech scientific wizardry, astronomers are able to measure how much the black hole’s gravity well exerts a distortion affect on the wavelength of the light of nearby stars, just as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicts.


When Origami Met Biology
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Astonishing art by German paper artist Katrin Rodegast, using paper maps to map human organs in 3D sculpture.


How The DoD Buys Fighter Jets

After years of hearing about the virtues of “fifth-generation” fighter aircraft like the F-35, the Dept of Defense has to decided to buy a bunch more fourth-generation F-15X’s. It all comes down to the metric of “cost per hour of operation” and the “bathtub model” of how those costs fall, stabilize, and rise over the life of an aircraft. Call me a dork, but I found this fascinating.


A $20K DIY Lamborghini

Like this guy, I, too, play Forza on the X-Box with my 11-year-old son. Unlike him, I’m not an engineer a physicist with a 3-D printer and carbon fiber on hand. Advantage: HIM.


Oh By The Way…
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An over 400-foot-wide asteroid zoomed through the neighborhood last week, and the world’s astronomers didn’t know it existed until just a couple days before. And by “zoomed through the neighborhood,” I mean passed within 45,000 miles of Earth. While that sounds like a long way away, keep in mind the moon is only 240,000 miles away. That, in the world of astronomical distances, was a close call indeed.