Hot robots | Space blobs | Holy war

Hey pretty lady

Brainless Aitana Lopez earns $10,000 per month purely because of how she looks. And I can say this because she isn’t really real. She is AI-generated, a product of a Barcelona design agency, The Clueless.

Who knew that the influencer industry’s biggest threat would come in the form of something even more vacuous?* But whatevs. The more interesting part for me is how this is another step along the path towards non-human humans.

It isn’t a great leap to suggest that advances in AI and robotics will lead to real-life Aitanas. It seems inevitable. And what then? Cyborg rights? Human-robot relationships? And what then separates us homo sapiens apart from our inferiority and morality? Will it just be that we can be labelled ‘organic’ like cucumbers and eggs?

Holy war, if not wholly

As much as it feels right to criticise Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians, the decisions of Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet are ultimately mere products of asshole genes and their environment.

A key part of that influencing environment is obviously religion, something Netanyahu has been oddly explicit about recently. There is a very good discussion on the topic at NPR.

Such odd things, holy wars. Aside from the ridiculousness and the barbarism, it is such a strange basis for fighting in the modern era, where motivation and legitimacy are drawn from the same intangible, faith-based source. But as Netanyahu sends his tanks further and further away from the very real trigger of 7th October, his dependency on the intangible as a justification becomes ever more necessary.

Religion needs to go. It’s stupid and dangerous.

A space blob is shooting at us every 76 minutes

Smack bang in the middle of our galaxy is a super massive black hole, and not too far away from it is a lump of gas whizzing along at a third of the speed of light, shooting high-energy gamma-ray radiation towards us every hour or so.

Or so says some new research that is trying to figure out where these bursts of radiation are coming from.

To remind you, the centre of the galaxy, or the Galactic Center as it’s also known, is 26,000 light years away. Which is about 156,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

I just find this so incredible. That we are on some level affected so regularly by an event occurring that far away… I enjoy the perspective. We are nothing.

Ben Shapiro doesn’t subscribe to this newsletter

I enjoy Ben Shapiro. I don’t agree with him but then I don’t agree with Alan Rickman’s character in Die Hard and he was good fun.

The fast-talking enemy of university debate teams is often called stupid and nonsensical in comment sections but my view is that he has some wit about him, and it’s better to respect an adversary’s talent than pretend it’s not there at all.

Anyway, here is a new debate between Mr Shapiro and Alex O’Connor. It covers a lot of interesting ground, including the existence of free will and the basis of morality. Alex O’Connor makes some very agreeable points on both, while Shapiro comes across as stupid and nonsensical.

More like Neuro$cience

Cinema ads are better than telly ads, even when they are the same. So says your brain.

New research shows that cinema was found to increase brain activity in four measured neuroscience areas: +2% for approach/withdrawal; +14% for detail memory; +16% for personal relevance; and +21% for global memory.

The research was commissioned by Pearl & Dean, the cinema ad company, and handled by NeuroInsight.

I suspect this trend of neuroscience-led marketing will continue – and long may it. Understanding how the brain typically reacts to aspects of our everyday environment will be key to improving life around us. Or making it even more homogenous and commercialised.

Either way, more empirical data around our thoughts and feelings will help shift testing away from subjective feedback to something closer to an objective truth, which in theory can be used to make the lives of us biological Aitanas better.

I do like to be beside the sea

Perhaps the good of cosmic existentialism is best described by the feeling of being by the sea.

Looking out, I feel dwarfed by the vastness but at the same time excited by its promise. There is an urge to take advantage of my insignificance and sneak into the water unnoticed, or travel across it without detection.

The sea doesn’t care about me. It will swallow you up without worry, neither will it feel your hardest strike. Its waves broadcast a soothing static but entirely without interest.

And yet I am thrilled by its movement and threat and opportunity and mystery. I want to touch it, or dive in, or sail above it.

Within that tension between its indifference and my enthusiasm, there is this startling peace that fades in the closer I get to it.

If you can, always go to the sea.

Tell people about this newsletter

If you like what you’re reading, please share it. There is probably a button for this on the email platform but I haven’t found it yet.

_{*I don’t mean this. I like influencers on the whole. But the joke was right there.}