“While looking through my parents’ old photo albums, I noticed that they had lots of pictures of friends gathered together. It made me think about the camera roll on my phone, which is full of screenshots and selfies. Why don’t I take pictures with my friends?”
—Say Cheese
Dear Cheese,
All modern technologies bend toward self-referentiality. Long before the birth of the smartphone, the earliest screenshots required actually pointing a camera at a television or computer screen, an act that (for those who can remember it) recalled the repelling force of two like-charged magnets or the nauseating infinite regress of two mirrors facing each other. Part of you half-expected a black hole to swallow you up, punishment for having summoned some elusive paradox in the universe.
We now live full-time in that Escherian fun house, spending more of our lives on phones that serve as both the object and channel of our attention. Some years ago, back when AI lacked its current powers of discernment, my mom got a kick out of sending me the deranged “Memories” that her iPhone culled from her camera roll. As the tinkly, inspirational music crescendoed, the slideshows reliably displayed photos of her friends and grandchildren before concluding with screenshots of confirmation codes and bathroom faucets from Home Depot’s website.
Although it’s little commented on, the screenshot bears a curious symmetry to the selfie—in its eschewal of the rear-facing camera and its memorialization of solitude. A writer for Vice dubbed the screenshot “the faceless selfie … a way to share what happens when we’re alone on the internet.” Perhaps this gets at the note of self-incrimination I sense in your question. The camera roll contains the receipts of our attention, evidence of how we have opted to spend our mortal hours. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” Christ said, a proverb that insists all collections are a synecdoche for one’s soul.
When your private gallery becomes a mirror of your data trail and images of your own face, it’s easy to fear that your life has been whittled down to a pinpoint of frenetic, solipsistic attention—that what you are choosing to look at is yourself in the act of looking.
Every organism responds to the world with an intricate cascade of biochemistry. There’s a source of heat here, a faint scent of food there, or the crack of a twig as something moves nearby. Each stimulus can trigger the rise of one set of molecules in an animal’s body and perhaps the fall of others. The effect ramifies, tripping feedback loops and flipping switches, until a bird leaps into the air or a bee alights on a flower. It’s a vision of biology that entranced Andreas Wagner, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich when he was still a young student.
“I thought that was much more fascinating than this idea that biology is about counting the number of things that are out there,” he said. “I realized biology could be about fundamental principles of organization in living systems.”
His career, which has included stints at the Santa Fe Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, has taken him from modeling the regulation of gene transcription in an embryo, where precision timing makes the difference between life and death, to asking how an organism can manage to evolve when any change in its genes could spell disaster. He has used theoretical models to probe difficult questions about what drives evolution, and he has wondered about evolutionary innovations that seem to lead nowhere — until they suddenly become the next big thing. His most recent book, Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture (Oneworld Publications, 2023), is an exploration of this phenomenon.
Quanta spoke to Wagner over the phone recently about his new book, evolution as exploration, and the grand patterns that underlie biology. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner has made it his life’s work to study “robustness” in evolution — the quality that enables species to survive and adapt in the face of challenges. Thi My Lien Nguyen for Quanta Magazine
Manipulating the fabric of time usually causes everything to unravel, but that’s a possibility that Sophie (Judy Greer) is more than willing to risk. The past eight months of her life have been defined by suffocating loss: after her husband, Malcolm (Edi Gathegi), was killed by a drunk driver, she’s struggled to stay afloat. Long shifts in hospice care — and an even longer court battle with the man who destroyed her life — have driven her beyond her wits’ end.
Her young daughter Riley (Faithe Herman) isn’t faring much better. She’s skipping classes, starting fights with her mother, and alienating herself from the life she once loved. Malcolm was the glue that held their family together, but Sophie and Riley still have one lifeline in the form of Jabir (Payman Maadi), Malcom’s closest friend.
Jabir is mourning a past life as well: a tumultuous dictatorship in his native country saw the demise of his entire family. Like Malcolm, he’s a talented physicist; his thirst for retribution enables him to put those talents to brilliant use. He’s been quietly building a time machine for years, and though he’s not able to send a person back in time just yet, his machine does have another dubious purpose. Given the proper data, this machine can displace particles in the past — and take someone’s life in the process.
Debate continues to rage over the federal Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which seeks to hold platforms liable for feeding harmful content to minors. KOSA is lawmakers’ answer to whistleblower Frances Haugen’s shocking revelations to Congress. In 2021, Haugen leaked documents and provided testimony alleging that Facebook knew that its platform was addictive and was harming teens—but blinded by its pursuit of profits, it chose to ignore the harms.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who sponsored KOSA, was among the lawmakers stunned by Haugen’s testimony. He said in 2021 that Haugen had showed that “Facebook exploited teens using powerful algorithms that amplified their insecurities.” Haugen’s testimony, Blumenthal claimed, provided “powerful proof that Facebook knew its products were harming teenagers.”
But when Blumenthal introduced KOSA last year, the bill faced immediate and massive blowback from more than 90 organizations—including tech groups, digital rights advocates, legal experts, child safety organizations, and civil rights groups. These critics warned lawmakers of KOSA’s many flaws, but they were most concerned that the bill imposed a vague “duty of care” on platforms that was “effectively an instruction to employ broad content filtering to limit minors’ access to certain online content.” The fear was that the duty of care provision would likely lead platforms to over-moderate and imprecisely filter content deemed controversial—things like information on LGBTQ+ issues, drug addiction, eating disorders, mental health issues, or escape from abusive situations.
So, regulators took a red pen to KOSA, which was reintroduced in May 2023 and amended this July, striking out certain sections and adding new provisions. KOSA supporters claim that the changes adequately address critics’ feedback. These supporters, including tech groups that helped draft the bill, told Ars that they’re pushing for the amended bill to pass this year.
And they might just get their way. Some former critics seem satisfied with the most recent KOSA amendments. LGBTQ+ groups like GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign removed their opposition, Vice reported. And in the Senate, the bill gained more bipartisan support, attracting a whopping 43 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. Surveying the legal landscape, it appears increasingly likely that the bill could pass soon.
The 23-year-old patient arrived in the back of a police car and was in four-point restraints — hands and feet strapped to a gurney — when emergency physician Elizabeth Mitchell saw her at a Los Angeles hospital early on March 17.
Chloe R. Kral was being held on a 5150, shorthand in California for an emergency psychiatric order that allows people deemed dangerous to themselves or others to be involuntarily confined for 72 hours.
She had spent the previous six months at a private treatment center receiving care for bipolar disorder and depression. Chloe had improved and was set to move to transitional housing when she suddenly became combative and threatened to harm staff and kill herself. Police had taken her to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital before a planned transfer to a mental hospital.
Chloe, Mitchell recalled, was “mumbling about Rosa Parks” when they met. She managed to tell the doctor that she hadn’t used drugs or alcohol, but was otherwise incoherent. “We get a lot of psychiatric patients, and they’re just waiting for placement,” Mitchell said.
But something indefinable — Mitchell characterized it as “maybe gut instinct” honed by nearly two decades of practice — prompted her to order a CT scan of Chloe’s head to better assess her mental status.
When she pulled up the image, Mitchell gasped. “I had never seen anything like it,” she said. She rounded up her colleagues and “made everyone in the whole ER come look.”
“I was speechless,” she said. “All I could think was ‘How did no one figure this out?’ ”
Hiring a financial advisor is one of those pivotal life decisions – a fork in the road that can dictate the path of your financial future for decades to come.
A study from Northwestern Mutual of the attitudes and behaviors of American adults toward money found that 71% of them felt their financial planning needed improvement, while only 29% work with a financial advisor.1
Research suggests people who work with a financial advisor feel more at ease about their finances and could end up with about 15% more money to spend in retirement.2
The value of working with a financial advisor varies by person and advisors are legally prohibited from promising returns, but research suggests people who work with a financial advisor feel more at ease about their finances and could end up with about 15% more money to spend in retirement.2
While hiring a financial advisor can help you maximize your retirement nest-egg, there are some potential pitfalls you should be aware of before you choose who to hire.
Technology has come a long way. We’ve had medical advancements and information technology change the way we love. In the previous 100 years, we have gone from the first car made to the best electric vehicle on the market. Along with these advances, we have had many different ideas brought to fruition.
One of them is using A.I. – artificial intelligence – to reimagine what historical figures would look like if they were walking among us today. At last, forgotten faces of the past can finally be brought back to life in brand new ways.
Artificial intelligence does a great job of recreating a modern Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great is a name as well-known as any other. Fictional stories and movies have been made in his name, and he is bound to be a name that will never be forgotten. Starting a massive military campaign when he was only 20, this Greek King set out to change the course of history and did so very effectively.
Source: Instagram/Royalty Now
We can now see what Alexander the Great may have looked like by the tremendous technological advances made today. Although he was known for being a fierce military leader, Alexander never named someone as his successor when he passed away. The bust used for this rendering is of a young Alexander, clearly showing his youth in the A.I. interpretation.
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Source: Instagram/Royalty Now
Nefertiti ruled during and was most prominently known for a bust made to her liking. Being the only authentic replica giving us an idea of what she looked like, it is nice to see that this Queen kept her majestic aura. The A.I. envisions her to be relaxed and calm, although no one knows what she is like.
Fire crews battled blazes still burning Saturday from wildfires that ravaged parts of Maui as teams with cadaver dogs combed through the rubble in an intensifying search for the missing.
Firefighters were making progress, but three main wildfires that ignited Tuesday and left 80 people dead and thousands of buildings torched were still not extinguished: The Lahaina fire was 85% contained, the Pulehu/Kihei fire 80%, and the Upcountry Maui fire 50% as of late Friday.
Another fire that prompted evacuations in the Kaanapali area of West Maui on Friday evening was 100% contained within a few hours and evacuation orders were canceled, officials said.
As the sun rose in Kihei on Saturday, the sky was filled with the smell of smoke. On the highway into Lahaina, a historic town decimated by the fires, cars, trucks, and buses laden with supplies ignored signs to keep off the median as they tried to bypass the traffic jam ahead of a road blockade.
Residents who were allowed to return to Lahaina on Friday were met with charred remains, demolished homes and businesses, and a changed landscape, including the loss of dozens of their neighbors. But police on Saturday were once again restricting access into West Maui, warning people to stay out of the area because of hazards, including toxic particles from smoldering areas.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green has warned the death toll could climb even higher as the search for the missing continued. Cadaver-sniffing dogs were brought in Friday to assist the search for the dead, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen Jr. said.
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In an aerial view, two men ride a scooter by businesses that were destroyed by a wildfire on Aug. 11, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii.
San Francisco, one of the country’s most politically far-left cities, is showing the slowest post-COVID pandemic recovery of any major U.S. or Canadian city, according to newly published data.
The University of Toronto’s School of Cities this week released its “Downtown Recovery Rankings,” which were based on the change in level of foot traffic in dozens of North American cities from before the pandemic to afterward.
Specifically, researchers used mobile phone trajectory data to examine the number of visits to 62 downtown areas, comparing recent activity in the largest cities across the U.S. and Canada to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
According to the study, San Francisco ranked dead last in recovering from the COVID pandemic, when downtowns around the world became unrecognizably quiet and lifeless due to lockdown measures. Indeed, the far-left California enclave this spring experienced only 32% of the foot traffic seen during the spring of 2019. The number was identical when compared to the winter (December 2022 through February 2023) of the same period in 2019.
SAN FRANCISCO PROFESSOR COMPLAINS ABOUT ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL COST’ OF STORES LOCKING ITEMS TO PREVENT THEFT
The results came a little over two months after San Francisco launched a costly $6 million ad campaign in a bid to attract tourists and business travelers — one of many efforts by the city, led by Democratic Mayor London Breed, to revitalize downtown.
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San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed speaks during a rally for the Housing for All process reform legislation in advance of the San Francisco Planning Commission vote outside City Hall on June 29, 2023.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner has made it his life’s work to study “robustness” in evolution — the quality that enables species to survive and adapt in the face of challenges. Thi My Lien Nguyen for Quanta Magazine
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Source: Instagram/Royalty Now
In an aerial view, two men ride a scooter by businesses that were destroyed by a wildfire on Aug. 11, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii.
San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed speaks during a rally for the Housing for All process reform legislation in advance of the San Francisco Planning Commission vote outside City Hall on June 29, 2023.
James' World 2 