sea-monkey kingdom

One internet giant and mobile phone distributor had a strange, complex notion to put little aquariums inside the phone-casing that held living, hardy tardigrades—also known as water bears, as Super Punch informs. As tough as these little beasties are (capable of being boiled, frozen, irradiated and the vacuum of space), they couldn’t take the spotlight of the camera that magnified their tableau so their owners could watch them, and realising that these weren’t virtual pets but actual living creatures and not just existing for our temporary amusement, plus mounting technical set-backs, the project was eventually called off.

fm (no static at all)

Due to the finite nature of the speed of light, denizens of TRAPPIST-1d would be just learning about the final football game of Pelé, the Red Army Faction hijacking of a Lufthansa flight to Somalia, Miss Oklahoma and ill-will ambassador Anita Bryant is pied for her homophobic platform and the eradication of smallpox—plus witnessing the beginnings of the Space Shuttle programme, disco and the launch of Voyager 1 and perhaps hear Earthlings’ surprised reception of the Wow! signal that they dispatched such a long time ago. Excuse the lateness of our reply. Also on the air waves in the fall of 1977 were the musical stylings of newcomers The Sex Pistols and veterans Queen, Billy Joel and Steely Dan and M*A*S*H* plus One Day at a Time, the Norman Lear sitcom that’s been rebooted recently.

standardised position description or all your jobs are belong to us

Via Marginal Revolution, Oxford economist Daniel Susskind that the disruptive—and hopefully welcome—effects of machine-learning on the labour market is far, far underestimated. Humans assume that the routine tasks that robots will take first are the dull and boring ones—and not just the more complex but rather straightforward and easily articulated ones.
Robot desk-mates are already learning new tasks by observing and copying behaviours, even if their mentors think what they do defies explaination and that it the time it takes to spell it out… Moreover, the bigger element that humans aren’t considering is the assumption that machines ought to work in ways that replicate the processes that we’ve invented to reach a goal. They’d assuredly be gobsmacked at some of the dismal inefficiencies and pretenses based not in gainful, meaningful employment but rather busyness and making sure there’s no loitering about. What do you think? In the service of man, robotic lorries would displace many truck-drivers, for example, but the centralised warehouse and just-in-time inventory mightn’t have been the way to go and an alternative exists that we can’t see because we’ve just always done things in one way. Machines would probably re-write the rules of economics as a first order of business as well, making (if we allow it) the notion of a robot taking one’s job not a frightening prospect but a happy one that we are grateful for—leaving us to other, more noble pursuits and free from toil and attachment.

5x5

bewitched: a mass hexing occurred outside of Trump Tower last night

easier said than done: Kurzgesagt invites us to ponder the human rights we’d be conferring on sentient robots

swen or inga: a few very clever, impressive English language anagrams plus further resources—(a: Norwegians)

cat o’ nine tails: feline armourer Jeff de Boer, via the always marvellous Nag on the Lake

thrills await: NASA celebrates the discovery of the solar system TRAPPIST-1 with a series of retro travel posters