May 1, 2023

empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines

Technology

Apple knows your Emotions: Apple is jumping on the AI bandwagon, but with an AI-powered health coaching service. The AI will be able to track your emotions, help you “stay motivated to exercise, improve their eating habits and sleep better.” Apple wants us to track our moods and link it to our speech and everything else it knows we are doing. We’ll see what Apple unveils at its WWDC in June, but we are hoping it is better than a modern mood ring.

Europe takes aim: EU regulators are considering legislation that will require artificial intelligence platforms to disclose what copyrighted material was used in building their systems. If this bill is passed, creators and copyright holders would then have a tool for gaining compensation from AI models which used their material for training.

UK takes aim: Not content to sit on the sidelines of the AI revolution, UK “Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan have pledged an initial £100 million to establish a Foundation Model Taskforce.” The aim of the taskforce is to make the UK “globally competitive” and create “sovereign” AI technology. This follows on the governments failed attempts at a sovereign NFT, but we hope this lasts longer than the lettuce.

Power to the People: We heard about Regroop on a podcast, so we may be late to the party. Regroop is daily climate action app where you get to choose your own mission. Essentially, if you have ever felt that you were too small to get things done or didn’t know how to start, Regroop provides you with simple daily tools to help support a climate activist, and then you can watch the community growing and hopefully, improving. Get involved in small and essential ways.

Time is Precious: Get out your Google Map and get ready to trade it in for currency, that is if you live in Dubai and you are shopping at IKEA. For the first time, IKEA is literally allowing customers to “Buy With Your Time”, as the chain realized that most of its outlets are on the outskirts of town, and that customers were spending a significant amount of time just traveling to their stores. IKEA is effectively allowing its Dubai customers to pay with their data through location tracking — we wonder if it comes with meatballs.

Rules of War: We’ve all see the labels on music, video games and movies telling us that the content may be violent or suggestive, but now the Red Cross is getting into the act and asking gamers to abide by the rules of war when playing online. “Every day, people play games set in conflict zones right from their couch. But right now, armed conflicts are more prevalent than ever. To the people suffering from their effects, this conflict is not a game. It destroys lives and leaves communities devastated...we’re challenging you to play…by the real Rules of War, to show everyone that even wars have rules,” states the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC even has a Twitch channel demonstrating its efforts to institute the rules and avoid virtual war crimes.

God of War and its Two Moons: The UAE’s Hope Orbiter snapped the most detailed images of one of Mars’s moons that we have ever seen. The picture shows “small and lumpy” Deimos orbiting Mars — which is just nine miles long and take 30 hours to orbit the planet.

Hoping to get to Mars: SpaceX launched the largest rocket ever built, the Starship, from Texas which unfortunately exploded after 4 minutes. The test flight, which may have been rushed to launch on 4/20, spread particulate matter for miles and may have had extreme and unexpected environmental repercussions. The launchpad itself was severely damaged, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service is still assessing the damage to the nearby national wildlife refuge. At the moment, the FAA has grounded the rocket until the root cause of the explosion can be determined.

Sequencing the Ark: Scientists have sequenced and compared the genomes of almost all mammals on Earth. The Zoonomia project sequenced DNA from 240 mammals “covering 80 percent of all mammal families including more than 50 endangered species.” Zoonomia researchers identified more than 100 million sections of genomes that are barely different across the 200-plus species. While the human genome was sequenced over 20 years ago, scientists are still trying to figure out what each protein controls. One unique study from the project is of the sled-dog Balto. Balto’s DNA was compared to 700 other dogs and mammals, and they were able to predict his appearance from his DNA and match it to historical photographs. They found that Balto was less capable of digesting starch than modern breeds, but no word on whether he preferred cilantro.

Politics

Native families: You may have noticed that the US Supreme Court doesn’t place a high value on anything that isn’t white, male or Christian (or holds a gun). In case you were about to forget, the Supreme Court will be deciding on the fate of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) some time later this year. The law was created in 1978 to give preference to tribal members for adoption and foster care for native children, and is being challenged by the state of Texas, among others. (To hear about this case and others listen to the podcast series This Land). Ahead of what many expect to be a devastating ruling, many state legislatures are codifying ICWA protections into law (sound familiar). The North Dakota legislature just became the 11th state to begin the process, and the bill passed the chambers nearly unanimously (House 91-1, Senate 46-0).

Culture

Boldly go: Feeling the need to escape the planet? If you need some control in your life, you can visit virtual recreations of every iteration of the bridge of the USS Enterprise. The Roddenberry Archive has recreated the iconic bridge in honor of the end of the series Star Trek: Picard. The site includes an interactive experience, documentary footage, and behind the scenes interviews with the artists, producers and actors.

Boldly wear: We’ve heard of multi-use products, but we aren’t sure about fashion that doubles as furniture. Rick Owens latest collection includes a helmet that doubles as a floor lamp, which Owens said were informed by Egyptian temples and tombs. When you really want to make an entrance.

We can relate: The White House hosted the President of South Korea this past week for a formal state dinner, and while we didn’t score an invitation, we were particularly impressed with the First Lady of Seoul’s knowledge of US pop culture — see her twitter post with a nod to Succession’s massive handbags.

Ugliest Buildings: If you are like us and listen to HGTV as background noise, you know there is a reality show where designers hunt down some of the ugliest homes in the US and attempt to renovate them. In China, however, the country has taken the building of extravagant, over-the-top buildings to an olympic sport. There is even an annual Ugliest Buildings Survey which is in its 13th year. As the country has gone through an economic boom which led to “hyperspeed urbanization,” buildings began to propagate the skyline flaunting wealth, culture and novelty. The 2022 winner of the survey was a mall in downtown Shanghai which resembles a Chinese tomb, Tian An 1,000 Trees, and there are even buildings resembling “resembling a liquor bottle, folk deity statues, a babushka doll, a gold ingot, a violin and even a crab.”

Corona Selfie: Corona was such a dirty word during the pandemic, but the Corona beer company has found a unique way to fight through the pain and for the good of the planet. The company is asking its buyers to take pictures of its bottles on Mexican beaches, acting as citizen scientists. The pictures will be used by Mexican researchers to monitor the health of the coasts and hopefully work to preserve them.

Props to the Chef: The character posters for the live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid came out this week, and the internet was not too pleased with the reimagining of the animals. Instead of being the cute, animated characters of our childhood, they apparently went on a diet or actually live in the ocean. So the writers of Vulture decided to provide helpful recipes to prepare and eat the Cast. Yes, it is exactly as it sounds.

Mark your Calendars: It is a busy week ahead. Tonight is the Met Gala (this year’s theme is Karl Lagerfeld). Thursday is May the Force. Friday is Cinco de Mayo. Saturday is the Kentucky Derby. And Sunday King Charles (or shall we say Queen Camilla) will finally have a coronation.

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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