Gen Z might be leading the societal change on tipping.
“Just 35% of Gen Zers told Bankrate they always tip their server at a sit-down restaurant. At the other end of the spectrum, 83% of baby boomers said they always tip.” ~ learn more
“Just 35% of Gen Zers told Bankrate they always tip their server at a sit-down restaurant. At the other end of the spectrum, 83% of baby boomers said they always tip.” ~ learn more
At some point we’ll certainly want to tell robots what we want done in the real world. Google’s AI researchers are now one big step closer. “Unlike chatbots, robots need “grounding” in the real world and their abilities. Their training isn’t just about, say, learning everything there is to know about an apple: how it grows, its physical properties, or even that one purportedly landed on Sir Isaac Newton’s head.…
Researchers in Korea recently published a preprint paper claiming they made superconducting material at room temperature and pressure. This would be a huge deal if it replicates (let’s remain skeptical), because existing superconductors require extreme cold to work. The dramatic bit is that two versions of the paper were published within 2.5 hours by overlapping but different sets of authors. Why? ~ learn more
“Participants were randomly assigned to different virtual rooms. In some rooms, people saw only a list of songs, while in others they could see how many times a song had been downloaded. Altogether the researchers created eight rooms — parallel worlds, really — which allowed them to study not just the role of popularity, but also the role of chance, in the creation of hits.” ~ learn more
A motivational post by Chicago native Peter Piekarczyk. I was inspired! ~ learn more
“How CDC propaganda leads to bad medicine and kills people”. Don’t believe anyone who says nicotine has no benefits. Don’t believe anyone who says it has no harms, either. ~ learn more
I read this book by Matthew Walker a couple years ago and it influenced me to care more about my sleep quality. I now learn (belatedly) that there are many deep flaws contained within. Unlike when Daniel Kahneman retracted an entire chapter of Thinking Fast and Slow, Walker seems to have taken a different path. Did he actually post this inadequate reply on a disposable wordpress blog? ~ learn more
Imagine a world where we could make machines at nanometer scale, the width of a single DNA strand. “With the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies capable of designing and anticipating protein structures, the near-term prospect for synthesized molecules in industry is immense indeed.” This article led me down an exciting rabbit hole watching recordings of the 2022 Foresight Designing Molecular Machines Workshop. ~ learn more
Freezing organs is relatively easy, but thawing them is a challenge. “We show that vitrified kidneys can be cryogenically stored (up to 100 days) and successfully recovered by nanowarming to allow transplantation and restore life-sustaining full renal function in nephrectomized recipients in a male rat model.” ~ learn more
“The company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has developed a technique that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to make around 70 edits to a pig’s genome. These edits should allow the organs to be successfully transplanted into people, the team says. As soon as next year, eGenesis hopes to transplant pig hearts into babies with serious heart defects. The goal is to buy them more time to wait for a human…