Thursday Things: Winner by a Nose Edition
15 August 2024. Vol 6 No 33. By Dan McGirt. #262
Thursday Things is here! This week we congratulate a dog horse mayor, age in fits and starts, and shout at the robots.
Oats for all! Photo by Kelly Forrister on Unsplash
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A horse of course
Thursday Things is a non-politics publication — with one exception.
We love dog mayors. The world would be a better place if there were more dog mayors.
Dogs make the best mayors, though we have seen occasional reports of cat mayors and goat mayors.
But a horse?
An alert Happy Subscriber shared this in-depth report from The Free Press (also found here on Substack) about a heated election that pitted an incumbent dog mayor against a cat challenger and an unexpected dark horse candidate:
Eric Spitznagel does an excellent job of reporting the race and the outcome. It’s far deeper coverage of any dog mayor-related election than I’ve ever seen. So I won’t repeat much of it. If you love dog mayors (or horse mayors) go read the whole thing!
But here’s a snippet:
As the results sunk in, Rosie, the incumbent mayor, a Golden Labrador mix, wandered around the crowd, saying her goodbyes. The band broke into “Hail to the Chief” for her, and she paused, as if to listen.
Welcome to Omena’s triennial animal election. What began as a fundraising stunt for the local historical society in 2009 is now a source of heated political debate in this middle-of-nowhere Michigan village, population 355. As the crowd began to disperse, a small group of locals gathered under a tree to escape the sun, and to talk frankly.
“The horse isn’t even from here,” groused Cathy Stephenson, the campaign manager for Topsy & Turvy, domestic shorthair cats who ran on one ticket to be co-mayors.
Oh, the drama…
Aging is not a smooth line
For those who do age — I don’t, because I drink the delicious blood of children — it apparently is not a smooth and gradual process, according to science.
Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60
If you have noticed a sudden accumulation of wrinkles, aches and pains or a general sensation of having grown older almost overnight, there may be a scientific explanation. Research suggests that rather than being a slow and steady process, aging occurs in at least two accelerated bursts.
The study, which tracked thousands of different molecules in people aged 25 to 75, detected two major waves of age-related changes at around ages 44 and again at 60. The findings could explain why spikes in certain health issues including musculoskeletal problems and cardiovascular disease occur at certain ages.
“We’re not just changing gradually over time. There are some really dramatic changes,” said Prof Michael Snyder, a geneticist and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University and senior author of the study.
The researchers tracked biomarkers from more than 100 volunteers over time. The findings surprised them.
The abundance of most molecules and microbes did not shift in a gradual, chronological fashion. When the scientists looked for clusters of molecules with the largest shifts, they found these transformations tended to occur when people were in their mid-40s and early 60s.
The mid-40s ageing spike was unexpected and initially assumed to be a result of perimenopausal changes in women skewing results for the whole group. But the data revealed similar shifts were happening in men in their mid-40s, too.
So what’s going on?
The first wave of changes included molecules linked to cardiovascular disease and the ability to metabolise caffeine, alcohol and lipids. The second wave of changes included molecules involved in immune regulation, carbohydrate metabolism and kidney function. Molecules linked to skin and muscle ageing changed at both time points. Previous research suggested that a later spike in ageing may occur around the age of 78, but the latest study could not confirm this because the oldest participants were 75.
Anyway, mark your calendars, kids.
And read the science version of this study in Nature Aging ‘Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles during human aging’
Losing sleep over AI
As artificial intelligence (AI) tools — or at least things branded as AI — seep into more and more areas of work and life, many people are understandably anxious.
Will a robot take my job?
Will some sort of AI defense network achieve self-awareness and decide to eliminate the human race by instigating a nuclear apocalypse?
It’s a lot to worry about!
That second scenario — robots or computers running amok and trying to kill us all — has been a staple of popular culture for decades, as we noted here back in June:
This cultural anxiety has found expression in popular culture for as long as computers have been around. Just off the top of my head, I think of films like Terminator and War Games in the 1980s. The original Westworld (1973). And the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey all the way back in 1968.
In more recent decades the theme has only become more common in our entertainment as computers have grown more powerful and more pervasive in our lives.
Here’s a good list of evil AI movies: Top 10 Evil A.I.
Most, though not all, of these depictions assume that the hostile AI will do away with us by trying to kill us. Simple, direct, logical — the kind of plan you’d expect a machine to come up with.
But what if the AI is a little more subtle, and less fatal ?
What if, instead of exterminating us on Judgment Day, the computers decide to annoy us with Sleepless Night?
Then you’d get this story: Self-driving Waymo cars keep SF residents awake all night by honking at each other
Silicon Valley's latest disruption? Your sleep schedule. On Saturday, NBC Bay Area reported that San Francisco's South of Market residents are being awakened throughout the night by Waymo self-driving cars honking at each other in a parking lot. No one is inside the cars, and they appear to be automatically reacting to each other's presence.
Videos provided by residents to NBC show Waymo cars filing into the parking lot and attempting to back into spots, which seems to trigger honking from other Waymo vehicles. The automatic nature of these interactions—which seem to peak around 4 am every night—has left neighbors bewildered and sleep-deprived.
Said one vexed resident: “The cars are robotic and they’re honking at each other and there’s no one in the cars when it’s happening, and that’s absurd.”
Well played, Skynet. Well played.
Thank you for reading!
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