🧬 The Distilled Download - Feb 22

Greetings, fellow science nerds! 🤓 Here’s your latest installment of The Distilled Download.

I’ve got many fun projects in the works which I’m looking forward to sharing more about- including a soon-to-launch online community. If you’ve got any ideas/requests for it, let me know!

And now.

The Download

🧟‍♂️ Creepiest AI Image
This was generated by @ApocalypseCage on The App Formerly Known as Twitter. It’s a great example of an output that you wouldn’t think ChatGPT would allow, but it will with some cajoling. Something about it just tickles my funny bone. Maybe I’ll have a caption contest… (credit: this was sent to me by my brother)

💊 Light Speed AI
Apparently, running computer chips on electricity is just too slow for researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. They’ve developed what they call a silicon-photonic (SiPh) chip, which manipulates light at the nanoscale to perform complex calculations–at the speed of light. This not only promises to significantly boost the processing power and energy efficiency of AI systems but also enhances data privacy by eliminating the need to store sensitive information in a computer’s working memory. And it’s compatible with existing GPUs. As if AI needed yet another leap in capabilities. 🤷‍♂️

🤖 Song Stuck in My Head
Speaking of AI, this song randomly showed up in my Spotify and it’s been bouncing around my head for the last few days. It’s called Machine Learning, by J. Maya. Here’s one line: “The story of the robot who knows they’ll never be more than a machine learning how to please.”

🧠 Evolutionary Advantage of ADHD
Most folks with ADHD tend to describe it as a double-sided coin. It makes some aspects of their life way harder, but seems to also be linked to positive personality traits like creativity. Researchers just ran a cool experiment that showed that, in certain types of ancestral environments with limited resources, people with ADHD might actually naturally default to more optimal foraging patterns that would give them a survival advantage. Next up: re-running this experiment at a lunch buffet 😉

Recent Video Roundup

Supplement Scam Breakdown – where I walk you through all the reasons not to trust a particular overpriced supplement that wanted me to work with them.

Lab-Grown Beef… Inside of Rice - What it sounds like. Simultaneously cool and creepy.

Supplement Dosing Problems - Two examples of supplements I found during my research for my upcoming hair growth series that get the dosing WAY wrong.

Why Coffee Makes You Poop - For anyone who’s wondered. Here’s the more lyrical version of the same.

Thanks for reading! I love to hear feedback, so feel free to respond to this email or tag me on Twitter or Threads (which I’ll start using seriously one of these days 🙊).