A list of curious facts
One: It took three years of hard work for scientists in Manchester to successfully breed the extremely rare harlequin toad in captivity.
Two: A team of researchers at the University of Arizona have a backup plan just in case humans manage to destroy themselves and all life on Earth: to “launch the sperm and ova of some 6.7 million different species to the moon where they would be stored in the hollowed out lava tubes that worm their way under the moon's surface.”
Three: Marijuana may or may not be bad for your health—but it certainly is very bad for the planet. Turns out indoor-grown weed—which is the most common commercial kind—is spewing carbon into the atmosphere. “Cannabis production results in over 2,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted for every kilogram of product." Ars Technica has that story.
Four: A Russian project called ‘The Immortality Road Map’ has a plan for humans who will live forever:
“A megastructure called a Dyson Sphere will provide a superintelligent artificial agent (AI) with the enormous amounts of power it needs to collect as much historical and personal data about you, so it can rebuild your exact digital copy. Once it’s finished, you’ll live your whole life (again) in a simulated reality, and when the time comes for you to die (again), you’ll be transported into a simulated afterlife, à la Black Mirror’s ‘San Junipero,’ where you’ll get to hang out with your friends, family, and favorite celebrities forever.”
Popular Mechanics has more on this grand plan.
Five: Qoves Studio is a ‘facial aesthetics’ consultancy that has an AI-driven “facial assessment tool” that looks at images of your face, assesses how beautiful (or not) you are—and tells you what you can do about it. Of course, since there is no such thing as a culturally sensitive beauty AI, it tends to be about as racist and sexist as the techies who train it. The scariest thing we learned from this MIT Technology Review deep dive: Social media platforms like Insta, TikTok etc may be secretly using these beauty algorithm tools to decide whether to show or bury our images. See below the company’s detailed assessment of Timothy Chalamet. Or if you prefer: ‘Does The Hairstyle Make For A Pretty Face?’
