The scariest and most convincing deepfake yet might be this one of Tom Cruise. Imagine where the technology will be in ten years.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9318267/Deepfake-Tom-Cruise-takes-TikTok-11-million-views-raises-alarms-experts.html
Someone made a hyperrealistic “virtual Emma Watson.” Someday, you might have one of yourself.
https://texturing.xyz/blogs/services/emma-watson-case-study
It won’t be long until machines can watch surveillance camera video feeds and recognize any type of criminal behavior as it happens.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-56255823
Allan McDonald, the one NASA engineer who warned his bosses that the space shuttle Challenger was at risk of exploding, is dead.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/07/974534021/remembering-allan-mcdonald-he-refused-to-approve-challenger-launch-exposed-cover
The National Academy of Sciences now says geoengineering might be necessary to curtail global warming.
https://apnews.com/article/technology-us-news-climate-climate-change-768658d602f039e4291c07d900c3e7e6
China has successfully restored degraded rural wastelands with proper landscaping and land use practices.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-biggest-challenge-lack-of-imagination-the-scientists-turning-the-desert-green
The Syrian Civil War is now ten years old.
https://apnews.com/article/turkey-islamic-state-group-migration-bashar-assad-syria-c928ec068b59ea33d54018d796382969
And Fareed Zakaria’s expert prediction that Bashar al-Assad would lose that War is now nine years old.
https://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/01/zakaria-why-i-now-think-assad-will-fall/
Taiwan has managed to retain control of a few islands that are within sight of mainland China.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/10/taiwans-kinmen-islands-only-a-few-miles-from-mainland-china/409720/
North Korean artillery can’t destroy Seoul in 30 minutes, as alarmists like to say. For one, South Korea’s military could quickly figure out where the enemy artillery positions were and blow them up with their own artillery, missiles, or attack planes.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/could-these-big-north-korean-guns-destroy-seoul-180951
The American “C-Ram” defense system is a giant machine gun that can shoot down incoming projectiles in midair. One burst of gunfire costs tens of thousands of dollars in bullets, meaning the enemy missile or mortar that it destroys could be orders of magnitude cheaper.
https://youtu.be/MMFzlwzFgKw
Muskets got much more accurate over the 1800s due to improving technology.
http://67thtigers.blogspot.com/2010/05/ballistics.html
This simple video animation shows how “Needle Guns” worked. It’s clear how they bridged Civil War-era muzzleloaders with WWI-era rifles that use what we’d recognize as modern bullets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDxuKvoDZqE
Over two nights in 2019, several U.S. Navy warships off the coast of Los Angeles were followed and buzzed by small drones. They were not able to identify where they came from or who they belonged to. A cruise ship passing through the area also saw the drones.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39913/multiple-destroyers-were-swarmed-by-mysterious-drones-off-california-over-numerous-nights
What realms of technology and knowledge have “topped out”? Here’s an interesting list.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/lxra2m/what_things_have_we_reached_the_end_of/
If trends persist, the Japanese people will cease to exist in 3011 due to low reproduction rates. Of course, current trends won’t persist. If anything, medical immortality technology will halt the population decline of Japan (and every other country) during the next century, and lead to renewed growth of the human population.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/lack-of-babies-could-mean-the-extinction-of-the-japanese-people
There are more identical twins alive today than ever before. This is surely due to widespread use of IVF, which raises the odds of twin births.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56365422
“Adam Rainer” was the only person known to have been both a dwarf and a giant.
https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-man-who-was-a-dwarf-and-a-giant/
Turkish is probably the most phonetic language. The letters of its alphabet correspond to distinct phonemes, and all words are spelled phonetically. It’s impossible to have a “Turkish spelling bee.”
https://www.quora.com/What-language-has-the-most-phonetic-alphabet-and-which-language-has-the-most-unphonetic-alphabet-besides-English
Human languages vary considerably in number of phonemes, average number of syllables per word, and speed of speech, but they all tend to transmit data at about 39 bits/sec. Inbuilt human cognitive limits probably prevent us from transmitting faster.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594
Irregularities within the Earth’s mantle could be remnants of a small planet that collided with it billions of years ago.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/remains-impact-created-moon-may-lie-deep-within-earth
The sacoglossan sea slug can detach its head from its body if the latter gets infested with parasites. In spite of losing up to 85% of its body mass and all its organs except its brain, the slugs can fully recover after autodecapitation. Using photosynthesis (!), they can generate enough energy and nutrients to regrow their lost body parts and organs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sea-slug-self-decapitate-and-grow-new-body-research-photos-and-why/
The magnapinna squid lives in the deep sea, has tentacles over 30 feet long, and looks terrifying.
https://youtu.be/IPRPnQ-dUSo
The founders of a health tech startup called “uBiome,” which claimed to be able to offer clients useful health advice based on genetic analyses of their feces, were arrested for fraud.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/ubiome-richman-apte-sec-filing-charges-fraud-16042042.php
Here’s a good paper about the potential and limits of using narrow AI to discover new drugs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359644620305274
Here’s a helpful scorecard that shows where all the different life extension drugs and therapies are in their development.
https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/
The COVID-19 public health precautions have practically eliminated the spread of the flu and its associated deaths.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2021/03/08/weve-crushed-the-flu-this-year/
Thanks to vaccinations and people gaining immunity after surviving infections, the U.S. will probably achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 by late summer or early fall.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/05/health/herd-immunity-usa-vaccines-alone/index.html
In most of Africa, government statistics on deaths are woefully incomplete, meaning the COVID-19 death toll on that continent could be much larger than reported.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55674139
Here’s a roundup of the WHO’s mistakes and flip-flops done to appease China.
https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/who-china-appeasement/
The former CDC Director believes COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese virology lab.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/26/health/covid-war-doctors-sanjay-gupta/index.html
The former head of the U.S. State Department team that investigated COVID-19’s origins now says he thinks it leaked from a Chinese bioweapons lab.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/2503595/covid-outbreak-maybe-bioweapons-research-accident-state-dept-investigator/
Sixty-four percent of Russians think COVID-19 is a manmade biological weapon, and only 30% of them are willing to get a vaccine for the virus.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/coronavirus/what-64-russians-believe-coronavirus-bioweapon-179096