Thursday Things: Second Issue
22 August 2019. Vol 1 No 2. By Dan McGirt. #2
Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash
Welcome to Thursday Things!
This is the second issue. If you enjoy this issue of Thursday Things, please forward it to a friend. Thanks!
Helpful hint: Click on any underlined text in this email to get the link.
Don’t like the heart you’ve got? Print a new one! New methods in the field of tissue engineering bring us closer to being able to 3D print a full-sized, adult human heart. Thousands of patient in the US, and many more around the world, are waiting for heart transplants. Today, grimly, that means waiting for someone else to die. But we’re moving closer to an era in which doctors will be able to bioprint functioning hearts, along with other tissues and organs, perhaps derived from your own stem cells, so there is less risk of transplant rejection. This will save us the trouble of having to go full The Island. (Not that cloning Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor is an entirely bad idea.) 3D bioprinting for the win!
Speaking of matters of the heart, researchers continue to pump out interesting but not entirely useful studies of who is attracted to whom, and why. The brief article at the link rounds up some actionable nuggets. (Hint: wear red!) Per one study, women found men with facial scars more appealing for short-term relationships, but not for long-term. Meanwhile, women seeking long-term relationships demonstrated a preference for men with beards. Which means 1970s GI Joe is golden either way. Just ask Barbie. (Sorry, Ken.)
Pumpkin Spice Spam is coming. Can the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse be far behind?
Have you heard of “deep fakes"? Deep fake technology can create convincing fake photos, video, or audio of anyone saying or doing anything the creator wants. This is several light years beyond Photoshop and is based on artificial intelligence computing. Naturally the most well-known application to date is making celebrities appear naked when they are not. The latest worry is that the technology will be used to create fake evidence framing people for crimes they didn’t commit. Which I’m sure will be the plot of a Liam Nesson film soon.
Some want to ban deep fake technology before it is too late. But too late is already here. I take it as axiomatic that if a thing can be done, someone, somewhere will do it. Deep fake technology will be abused in all sorts of ways. But it will also have many positive uses in education, entertainment, medicine, therapy, and more. So keep an eye out for deep fakes. And don’t trust your eyes.
Brain freeze is the worst! If you’ve ever wondered how brain freeze works, scientists have the answer. It even has a scientific name: sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. I hate when I eat ice cream too fast and get sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.
My favorite current podcast is Revolutions, a weekly podcast exploring great political revolutions. Host Mike Duncan (also of the completed History of Rome podcast, which I also recommend) is currently recounting the Russian Revolution. Prior seasons covered the English, American, French, Haitian, South American, Mexican, and other revolutions.
If you only wade through one revolution, go with the French, which is the ur-example of how revolutions go horribly off the rails. It starts with nice declarations of new rights for everyone — hooray! Next thing you know, it’s all guillotine, all the time.
Please do send in your own podcast, audiobook, Netflix or other recommendations! I’m more of a reader, so I’m going to crowdsource the multimedia beat to Happy Subscribers like you.
Thank you for reading Thursday Things. If you have comments or complaints, hit reply and let me know your thoughts. You’re also encouraged to forward Thursday Things to anyone you think might enjoy it, so please do.
See you next Thursday!
Dan McGirt