I have been following the Feral Historian channel for a while now. In a recent video about the movie Buckaroo Banzai, the creator pointed out a detail I never noticed before, even after watching it many times, including once during the Covid pandemic. The movie is actually a hidden story about the Cold War. The Red and Black Lectroids are fighting a war using stand-ins, and those stand-ins are the United States, represented by Buckaroo, and the rest of the planet Earth. The United States gets dragged into this conflict because the “good” side threatens to destroy the world with nuclear weapons if they do not get what they want.

There is a saying that I try to live by every single day: “Never ask a highway engineer to dispose of a whale corpse.” This comes from the writer Dave Barry, who shared this piece of wisdom. It refers to a famous incident where trying to get rid of a dead whale resulted in a very messy situation.

Sometimes, you just have to accept that it is time to move on. That is what Shelly would have wanted, or so they say. Well, that is the feeling you get from this video here:

. It is a mix of a British commercial and a romantic comedy, capturing that specific mood of letting go.

Google used to have a slogan that said “Don’t be evil,” but it seems they are no longer avoiding it. However, they still sometimes do good things, or at least they try to. Recently, Google has started using the law aggressively to stop scammers who send fake text messages. It is interesting to learn that private citizens can actually bring RICO suits against these criminals, which is a powerful legal tool.

If you have ever wanted a pet raccoon, you might be in luck. Scientific American reported that raccoons are showing early signs of becoming domesticated. This means they might be getting used to living with humans, just like dogs and cats did thousands of years ago.

We have some good news and some bad news regarding facial recognition. Scientists have finally figured out why some people, called “super recognizers,” never forget a face. They can identify people with incredible accuracy. The bad news is that this ability seems to happen at the retinal encoding stage, meaning it is something you are born with and cannot learn. However, the even worse news is that while you cannot learn it, computers certainly can. But since that technology is already out in the world, maybe it will help reduce the number of false accusations that have been in the news lately.

There is a new article and scientific paper that argues a very interesting point. It suggests that between the years 700 and 1850, there was a massive increase in genes related to educational attainment. The author believes this genetic evolution essentially “primed” humanity for the Industrial Revolution. The paper also mentions that the Black Death might have played a role in this process.

The war between humans and killer whales seems to be escalating. We are now calling it the “Orca War,” and it feels like we are watching a movie series. We have Episode IV, which covers fishing skippers in Alaska fighting hungry orcas for halibut, and Episode V, which shows why orcas are attacking and sinking boats around the world.

A new research paper looked at how Artificial Intelligences play a classic game theory game called “Guess 2/3rds of the average guess.” The study found that AIs change their strategy depending on who they think their opponents are. Interestingly, the AIs view themselves as the most rational players, other AIs as mostly rational, but they view humans as irrational. The researchers argue that this perception of self versus others is an argument for AI self-awareness.

The website Marginal Revolution linked to a study that shows a common human trait: people who are wrong are often the most confident. The site also included a reminder about a saying called “Caplan’s law,” which states that “A Bet is a tax on bullshit.” This means betting money is a good way to filter out nonsense claims.

Marginal Revolution also shared a worrying report from UC San Diego. Many students there, who have been getting As and Bs in their classes including difficult subjects like pre-calculus and calculus, are suddenly unable to do elementary school level math. The report highlights that some of these students are trying to become engineers. This story is spreading across the internet. There is a report on Slashdot about it, and the university itself released an official document detailing the decline in student skills.

There are two videos about the search for life in the universe that came out right after each other. The first is from Anton, discussing some papers on the topic:

. The very next day, Sabine Hossenfelder posted a video asking a logical question:

. She asks, if we assume every planet has the exact same independent chance of life developing, what are the odds that life only happens once? This is a statistical way to look at the universe.

AI tools are changing the way we work. Some people are reporting that these tools are making them “hyperproductive,” allowing them to get much more done than before. This is similar to the feeling many programmers have right now. One programmer wrote an article titled “My Programming Career is a Historical Artifact,” suggesting that the job of writing code is becoming obsolete or changing completely.

The Voyager I spacecraft, which we launched a long time ago, is reaching a new milestone. Next year, it will finally be a full light-day away from Earth. This means the light that leaves Earth takes a full 24 hours to reach the spacecraft, showing just how far it has traveled into the void of space.