Patti Smith's Favorite Books, The Autocado, the Supposed Best Shows of the Year Thus Far, etc.
In which I drop quite a bit of science this week, like Galileo dropped the orange.
🎾 Another Sunday, another major tennis distraction…
＠ Guess I’m on Threads.
🪐 Lookin’ good, Saturn.
🎼 A Delaware-based AI company literally doubled the world’s music this week. “It took thousands of years of human creativity to make the first 100 million songs. But an AI bot matched that effort in a flash.” The company claims this “adds up to 4.8 million hours” of “creativity,” whatever that means.
🤍 Scientists have developed a paint so white that when applied, “can reduce the surface temperature on a roof and cool the building beneath it.” “It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40 percent.”
🦦 An otter in Santa Cruz has been harassing surfers, and stealing their boards.
🍔 Burger King Thailand has a new burger that’s twenty slices of cheese - and no meat.
🤖 Chipotle has unleashed The Autocado, a robot that makes guac in half the time.
🌭 So exactly how did the competitive eater go from being able to eat ten hotdogs in ten minutes to over 70.
🚃 The look of the diner came from railway dining cars. “So the outside has a shape that's reminiscent of a train. In fact, that's how diners got their name. Many of the design elements in a diner are based on the necessities of dining on a train in a railroad car, like booth seating and counter seating, and an open kitchen.” Related: what the oldest McDonald’s looks like today.
💪 Good explanation: why you don’t just lose fat when you’re on a diet. “To lose weight (body fat), you need to be in a calorie deficit. This means consuming fewer calories than your body uses, or exercising to burn more calories than you consume.”
🍹 I’m willing to try Gatorade with cocktails. “Before you roll your eyes—here’s why it works from a flavor perspective.” Plus, you know, hydration.
👽 The concept of aliens is so radical we basically can only think of them as human. “A truly alien alien is so incomprehensible that stories about them just become stories about human beings.”
🎞 Still haven’t seen the new Indiana Jones, but I did find this interesting: “How unprecedented is 80-year-old Harrison Ford's blockbuster starring role?” “Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fourth most expensive production starring an actor over 70,” but I’d argue the three more expensive productions (two Hobbits, one X-Men) didn’t really star the older actors, at least not in the way this movie is centered on Ford.
🍿 The Criterion Channel will be celebrating fifty years of hip-hop, starting this August. “The streaming service will highlight films ‘showcasing raw early documents of the scene’s key players, intimate and informative portraits of musical expertise and technical wizardry, and definitive, star-studded evocations of the culture’s impact.’” Both lots of movies I’d recommend and have always wanted to see on the docket.
📺 Variety’s picks for the best shows of this year, so far.
📚 Patti Smith on “two kinds of masterpieces,” as well as her fifty favorite books. “Everything pours forth. Photographs their history. Books their words. Walls their sounds.”
✌️ And I’m out. Talk to you soon. Remember to keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
