💡 Warp News #248
📉 Large decrease in domestic violence. 🌳 Chainsaw amnesty protects rainforest in Borneo. 👩🚀 New record: 19 people orbited Earth simultaneously. 🐦 Endangered grasshopper sparrow on the road to recovery.
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🤯 Mind-blown again and again and again
It's not often that one experiences something almost incomprehensible.
I remember when I tried Google for the first time. My brother showed it to me. Used to worthless search results from Altavista, now exactly what I was looking for popped up again and again. 🤯
Another occasion was the first time with Spotify. Through Napster and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, you had managed to download a few songs. Now with Spotify, whatever you searched for was there, in good quality, and you could start listening within seconds. 🤯
ChatGPT is of course another instance - and since then I find myself stammering more often than ever. 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯
Last week it happened again. In Google's NotebookLM, you can upload various documents and process information from them. Actually worth a 🤯 but now I'm so blasé that I'm barely impressed.
However, there is another function that makes me 🤯. You can turn your material into a podcast.
I took my article about Warp Levels and the result is 🤯.
It sounds like people on NPR discussing it. So far there are only these two voices, all episodes are 7-10 minutes long, sometimes the audio sounds a little weird, and if you listen to several it gets repetitive.
But what makes me 🤯 is how intelligent the discussion is. Even I, who wrote it, get some insights into how the idea can be described.
And so human-like. Listen a few seconds in.
"He calls himself an angry optimist. I like that."
"Yeah, good energy."
Hahaha!
Mathias Sundin
The Angry Optimist
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🙉 Don't get swept away by short-sighted pessimism
Many opinions are based on the tree one is staring at. Instead, take a step back and see the forest. In space, AI, and batteries, I zoom out from the chatter and try to see what's actually happening.
🧙♀️ Harari is trying to create a myth
In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari tells about harmful myths. At the same time, he's trying to create his own myth. The one about our downfall.
💡 Fact-based optimistic news of the week
📉 Large decrease in domestic violence
The number of domestic violence cases in the US has decreased by 67 percent between 1993 and 2022. Rapes and sexual assaults decreased by 56 percent during the same period.
🌳 Chainsaw amnesty protects rainforest in Borneo by exchanging chainsaws for healthcare
279 loggers have turned in their chainsaws since 2017. The program has reduced deforestation by 70 percent over 10 years. The initiative combines environmental protection with improved access to healthcare for local communities.
🚢 Plastic in the Pacific Ocean can be cleaned up in ten years, according to Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup foundation has shown that all plastic in the Pacific Ocean can be removed within 10 years for $7.5 billion. The organization has already removed over 450 metric tons of trash from the central parts of the Pacific Ocean over the past three years.
👩🚀 New record: 19 people orbited Earth simultaneously
Three people were launched towards the International Space Station on September 11. This raised the number of people in Earth's orbit to a record-high 19. The previous record was 17 people, set last year.
🐢 Sea turtles in Brazil become healthier as water quality improves
Sea turtles in Guanabara Bay show better health after cleaning efforts. A tumor disease in turtles has decreased since 2023. Investments of over 300 million dollars have been made to clean the water in the area.
🐦 Endangered grasshopper sparrow on the road to recovery
The number of grasshopper sparrows in Florida has increased from 80 to 200 individuals in five years. The 1000th captive-bred sparrow was recently released into the wild. Over 15 percent of the released birds survive and reproduce successfully.
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