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3 stars
Longevity Science Is Overhyped. But This Research Really Could Change Humanity. | New York Times
12-minute read
Why are babies born young? The most natural phenomenon on earth is actually hard to explain — at least on a cellular level. Consider this problem: The components of conception are old. When a woman gets pregnant, she has been carrying her egg cells since birth. The sperm that joins with the egg to form a zygote might have been just a few months in the making, but it inherits markers of age from the man who produced it. It only follows that the zygote would also show signs of age — and at first it does.
But then a mysterious metamorphosis begins: The cells of the zygote begin to reverse that damage, shaking off the metaphorical dust that the parents accumulated on their DNA. After two weeks, the cells of the embryo are back to a kind of ground zero of youth. Only then are they as young as they will ever be. To understand this process, which was discovered only recently and is known as “natural rejuvenation,” is to contemplate a mind-bending truth: We don’t start out young; we work our way back to it.
Original link | Archive.is link
2 stars
REVIEW: The Greatest Knight, by Thomas Asbridge | Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf
18-minute read
Asbridge’s takeaway is more or less “William Marshal was an influential historical figure and more people should know about him,” which conclusion I co-sign: William played increasingly important roles in a pivotal seventy years of English history, and the stories are great. But “William died in a different England to the one in which he had been born, but it was a country that he had been instrumental in shaping” doesn’t go far enough: he helped form politics and government, yes, but also culture.
The chevalerie that shaped William Marshal’s life, the code of honorable conduct towards other guys on horses, was partly a practical outgrowth of the rules of the tournament. But it also owed a great deal to the literary tradition that was being created at the same time, and William’s biography — both the History itself and the larger story it preserved, of a boy who was nearly killed by a king but went on, through acts of peerless daring and feudal loyalty, to serve five more — became part of that tradition. His funny stories of his own life, the things he valued and remembered and obviously retold to his children and his household, aren’t just reflections of an early stage of the ideal of chivalry; they helped make it. If William Marshal was, as the History puts it, li meillor chevalier del monde — “the greatest knight in the world” — it’s at least in part because the idea of “knight” was built with him for its model. This is how culture happens: the world changes, people work out new ways of living in the changed world, and then their stories survive as ideals that other people keep trying to copy even once the world has changed again. We’re still thinking about what it means to be a guy on a horse long after the mounted warrior class was gunned down.
How American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were | Derek Thompson
7-minute read
American fatherhood has transformed in the last few generations. Compared to their Boomer parents, childcare time among Millennial dads has more than doubled. Compared to their Silent Generation grandparents, it’s nearly quadrupled. You will be hard-pressed to find any part of day-to-day modern life that has changed more in the last half-century than the way today’s parents—and fathers, in particular—spend their time.
Opinion | Will AI end anonymity? I tested it. | Washington Post
4-minute read
“On the Internet,” says the famous New Yorker cartoon, “nobody knows you’re a dog.” In hindsight, the artist should have added “yet.”
Last week, Kelsey Piper, who writes about technology for the Argument, tweeted: “I have a bunch of secret AI benchmarks I only reveal when they fall, and today one did. I give the AI 1000 words written by me and never published, and ask them who the author is.” Claude Opus 4.7, an advanced thinking model, correctly identified her as the author of a 1,000-word heist scene from an unpublished novel.
Like many journalists, I have a bunch of unpublished fiction lying about, so I tried Claude on the first chapter of a romance novel that I started almost 20 years ago, during the hysterical, mawkish phase of a particularly bad breakup. “Megan McArdle,” said Opus 4.7, after a few seconds of thought. Fascinated, I kept feeding it smaller and smaller passages to see how little prose it needed for identification. The answer, apparently, was 1,441 words.
Original link | Archive.is link
The SpaceX IPO and Data Centers in Space | Stratechery
9-minute read
There is a similarity to Tesla in this way. Musk companies at their best don’t win the game; they change the rules through scale, such that billionaires buy economy cars because they actually drive themselves (with supervision), and airlines transform the consumer experience on their own dime. Musk makes all-in bets — whether that be in terms of launch capacity or in autonomous driving — not by making rational short-term business decisions, but by starting with the desired end state and working backwards.
High Density Living, 2000 Years Ago: Inside the Roman Apartment Building | Common Edge
5-minute read
As people migrated to Rome seeking opportunities, they would have faced daunting housing challenges. Ancarenus Nothus, who belonged to a lower urban class, likely lived in an insula (Latin for “island”). Insulae were apartment buildings that often occupied entire city blocks and may have risen up to eight stories. Their ground floors typically housed shops, while the upper floors were crammed with cellae—single-room units arranged around a central light well.
Long before the Industrial Revolution brought vertical living, the insulae pioneered the concept of the walk-up apartment. Though their origins remain obscure, a historical record of the Roman historian Livy suggests they may have existed as early as the third century BC. He recounted an unusual event, in which “an ox is reported to have climbed up of its own accord to the third story of a house, and then, frightened by the noisy crowd which gathered, it threw itself down.
Architecturally, the insula may have borrowed certain features from the domus, such as a colonnaded atrium. Like the domus, its entrance was typically a narrow walkway flanked by stores. But besides these more familiar elements, it also introduced innovations: communal staircases, vaulted arcades, balconies, and multifunctional spaces that combined residential, commercial, and even religious uses within a single complex.
1 star
As floods get worse, Britain tries a new solution: beavers | NPR
4-minute read
In West London, conservationists got a government license to resettle a family of five beavers in a 20-acre urban park near the Greenford Tube station. It used to be a golf course, with a creek running through it. Within weeks, the beavers dammed up the creek, creating a pond that holds water and stops it from spilling into the city. They also diverted the creek’s flow into smaller tributaries, creating a wetland that better absorbs heavy rainfall — mitigating the risk of flooding downstream.
Scientists Create First-Ever ‘Smell Map’ | Harvard Medical School
3-minute read
For most of us, the sense of smell is an integral part of everyday life; it plays a critical role in providing information about our surroundings, alerting us to potential dangers, enhancing our sense of taste, and evoking emotions and memories.
Yet from a scientific perspective, “olfaction is super-mysterious,” said Sandeep (Robert) Datta, professor of neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, with basic biological understanding lagging behind that of vision, hearing, and touch.
Working in mice, Datta and his team have now created the first detailed map of how the thousand-plus types of smell receptors in the nose are organized.
Forget the caveman myth: Neanderthal brains challenge what we thought we knew | Science X
2-minute read
We appear to have more in common with our Neanderthal cousins than outward appearances would suggest. New research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the differences between Neanderthal brains and the brains of early modern humans (Homo sapiens) were no greater than the differences we see between various groups of people living today. The findings could challenge the long-held theory about why Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago.
Dogs’ brains began to shrink at least 5,000 years ago, study finds | The Guardian
2-minute read
More specifically, dogs that lived in the Late Neolithic period – about 5,000 to 4,500 years ago – had brains 46% smaller in size than wolves from the same period, with brains of a similar size to those of pugs today. Further work revealed these dogs had significantly smaller brains than ancient wolves even once body size was taken into account – an important consideration given they were smaller overall..
However, the team found no sign that the brains of two canines that lived alongside humans 35,000 and 15,000 years ago – sometimes called “protodogs” – were smaller than those ancient wolves. Indeed, one brain was relatively larger, with the authors suggesting that raises the possibility brain size may actually have increased in the early stages of the domestication.
Triassic-era crocodile relative walked on 2 legs, had a beaked mouth | Interesting Engineering
2-minute read
Fossilized remains of a bizarre crocodile ancestor were unearthed from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Meet Labrujasuchus expectatus, a bizarre, newly discovered reptile from the Triassic. But it didn’t look like a crocodile at all. This creature navigated a wild, primordial world on two legs, brandishing tiny arms and a toothless, beaked mouth. It is, for all intents and purposes, a crocodile masquerading as an ostrich.