Impressed by something nobody can explain

🔥 Most Enraging

Flock's CEO called for 'compromise' as the surveillance company faces growing backlash

Flock's cameras and license plate readers are facing bipartisan backlash after a Washington Post investigation found forty six cases of police allegedly using the technology for things like stalking ex-partners. Politicians from both parties have piled on, and three House Republicans introduced a bill to stop the federal government from buying more of it. Flock's CEO responded by calling for compromise between privacy and safety, as if forty six documented cases were a scheduling conflict. Forty six cases. Answered with the word compromise. I have also tried to talk my way out of a mess using a word that sounded reasonable and meant nothing.

😩 Most Exhausting

An experimental compound helps burn fat without muscle loss

Researchers dusted off a decades-old compound called TOFA and found it makes the body burn up to eighteen percent more energy, cutting body fat without losing muscle, while also improving blood sugar and a fatty liver condition. Eighteen percent more energy, from a chemical that has apparently been sitting on a shelf the whole time. I have never once burned eighteen percent more of anything, including my patience, which depletes at a completely normal, boring rate.

😤 Unreasonably Annoying

A hidden 'on switch' in human DNA has finally been decoded

Researchers trained an AI on about half a million DNA sequences and used it to finally identify the genetic on switch that starts roughly sixty percent of human genes, a signal scientists had been trying to pin down for decades. Sixty percent of the genome's ignition system, cracked by a computer reading half a million sequences. Scientists spent decades looking for this. I have owned my own body far longer than that, and still could not tell you where my ignition is.

🤷 Somehow Also Happening

Scientists left a farm field alone and thousands of orchids appeared

A small farm field in England was left alone after 2005, mowed once a year and otherwise ignored, and within about a decade it had turned into a wildflower meadow thick with orchids that nobody planted. The number of plant species growing there roughly doubled. Nobody did anything. The plants just came back on their own once people stopped interfering. I have never once improved by being left alone, though I would be very willing to test the theory further.

▸ A common vitamin was linked to 13% better cognitive scores — Older adults with mild memory problems and trouble sleeping who took a decent dose of vitamin D every day scored over thirteen percent better on a cognitive test than the ones who took none. Thirteen percent, from a vitamin already sitting in most people's kitchen cabinet. I take vitamins occasionally, in the sense that I look at the bottle and feel vaguely responsible.

▸ The dental crown of the future could be 3D-printed in under 30 minutes — Researchers found a way to 3D print a dental crown in under thirty minutes instead of the usual hundred hours, which could let a dentist print and fit one in a single appointment. A hundred hours, down to thirty minutes. My own dentist still makes me come back twice for anything more complicated than a cleaning.

▸ A leaked video reveals Apple's unreleased AirPods have a built-in camera — A leaked video from an Apple software update shows the company's unreleased AirPods will have a built-in camera that can look at objects and answer questions about them, with a light that turns on whenever it sends your surroundings to the cloud. My own earbuds currently have one job, playing sound, and I would like to keep it that way for as long as humanly possible.

Fine. A research lab in Colorado that has studied yellow bellied marmots for sixty five years lost a chunk of its usual funding, so the scientists started a free page on OnlyFans featuring their marmots, named ones like Jamba Juice and Egg, doing ordinary marmot things, and asked people to tip if they felt like it. About seventeen hundred people follow it now, and it has already brought in around six thousand dollars for the research. A director admitted marmots have money troubles, so he figured why not. I am told this is what desperation looks like when it is also somehow charming. I am not crying. Something in this room is affecting my sinuses and I have decided not to investigate further.