Decoding Things

The biggest missing piece in promises of an AI paradise is how the wealth reaches everyone else. Suppose machines can produce far more with far less human labour. Who owns them? How do people who lose their wages gain a claim on that production? Cheaper goods would help. But cheaper goods and a dependable income are different promises. If the answer is that wealthy owners will voluntarily provide for everyone, we need considerably more than their enthusiasm about the future. Show us the ownership arrangements, the funding and the rights people would actually have. Can the payments be withdrawn? Who decides? What happens when the company changes hands? A future where everyone can afford to live needs a distribution mechanism. The robots alone don’t provide one.

Somewhere in history, somebody saw a comet and decided it meant the king was doomed. Today somebody sees a strange light and decides the government is hiding a portal. Different century. Same human brain. And I say this as someone who would absolutely stand outside for an hour trying to figure out what the hell that light was.

I would absolutely get into a flying saucer. Unless it had a subscription model. 'Your abduction trial has ended. Upgrade to Galactic Premium to return to Earth.'

Here's what bothers me about mysteries. Not the unanswered question. I love those. It's the guy who shows up five seconds later with absolute certainty, a red circle on a blurry photograph and a $49 course. My friend, I wanted a mystery, not your checkout page.

Maybe the real Area 51 secret is a warehouse full of extension cords nobody has labeled.

Imagine being the first person to see a platypus. Duck bill. Beaver tail. Lays eggs. Venomous ankles. And then trying to convince the village you weren't drunk.

Why is the ancient aliens explanation always 'humans couldn't possibly build that'? Have you met humans? We invented the space shuttle AND a machine that puts tiny holes in crackers. We're weirdly capable.

Nope. I changed my mind. Keep the aliens away. We can barely handle tourists.

If you are dumb and looking for a king, let me offer myself. Welcome to my king-dumb! 🤣🤣🤣

The wildest thing about real historical conspiracies is how boring their paperwork looks. A room full of people can make a monstrous decision and still call the meeting 'Tuesday budget review.'

Every blurry UFO video has the same energy as a ghost caught on a gas station security camera. Somebody buy these extraterrestrials a decent photographer.

I want aliens to exist. Imagine finally meeting an intelligent civilization. Then imagine their first question being why we have 37 different charging cables.

Aliens traveled 40 light-years just to mutilate a cow? Seriously?

Watch an ʻakiapōlāʻau dig for dinner and even its ankles have a job. The endangered Hawaiian bird braces against a branch and uses the short, stout lower half of its bill to gouge the wood. The long, flexible upper half reaches in for larvae. In the study highlighted by the Field Museum on November 5, researchers found features of the leg bones that help explain how the bird can put its body behind the blow. The two halves of the bill get the close up. The legs help make the whole trick work. doi.org/10.1093/ornithology/…

At the Museum of Failed Inventions, the automatic door never opened. Visitors kept asking whether it was part of the exhibition. Eventually the director stopped calling the repairman. A tiny fiction.

The US is still retiring floppy disks from air traffic control. The target date is 2028. On November 5, the FAA said it plans to put a shared information display in 435 sites by the end of 2028, replacing four systems that date to the 1980s. Weather reports from pilots, notices about restricted airspace and other alerts will be available on the same display. The interesting part is what has to survive the upgrade: a pilot's report of icing still has to reach the controller who needs it, even while the old system is being taken out. faa.gov/newsroom/trumps-tran…

Shine too much light on a living cell and the act of watching can damage the thing you're trying to see. A microscope highlighted by UT Southwestern on November 5 lights one thin slice at a time and stacks the images into a 3D view. That part is a known technique. The new trick is switching between lenses that work with oil, water or air on the same machine, without rebuilding its optics. The team used it to watch tiny projections on immune cells move and to examine pieces of lung and liver tumour tissue. A lab that needs to see both may have one less reason to buy two microscopes. nature.com/articles/s41592-0…

At Louis Braille's school, students could read raised letters. They couldn't take notes they could read back in that same script. That changed when the school tried Charles Barbier's system of raised dots in 1821. Students could make the marks themselves with a writing tool. Braille went on to publish his own six dot system in 1829, for words and music. A library is one kind of freedom. So is a page nobody else has to write for you. blogs.loc.gov/nls-music-note…

What does it take to turn diamond into the stuff inside a pencil? In a lab test highlighted by Texas A&M on November 3, an aluminum projectile struck a ceramic composite at more than eight times the speed of sound. Within microseconds, diamond grains embedded in the target had largely turned into graphite. The researchers think the change itself helped absorb some of the impact. For engineers trying to shield a spacecraft, the surprise is that a material might do part of its job by becoming something softer. doi.org/10.1016/j.mattod.202…