Welcome to Weeklies, where I recap some of the weird links I’ve shared on the homepage over the past week!
Art Bell Biopic On The Way?
A production company is currently shopping around an Art Bell biopic starring Paul Giamatti, according to Deadline. Radio Silence Productions, known for V/H/S, Ready or Not and the recent Scream movies, are behind the project, while Amazon and Warner Bros. are interested in picking it up.
Will it be good? Will it be bad? One thing is certain in this uncertain universe, and that is, if an Art Bell movie is made, it will most certainly be a movie.
Rumor has it The Why Files, a popular paranormal YouTube channel, may also be involved. I’ve only ever watched one episode (the John Titor one, which actually featured my very old and very bad graphic on timeline divergence), but who knows? Maybe a talking fish might spice things up.
Meanwhile, Paul Giamatti himself is no stranger to the paranormal, as he co-hosts his own podcast on the weird called Chinwag, alongside Stephen Asma.
Here Comes An Asteroid?
Worried about Apophis? That’s old news, and recent data shows that Apophis won’t be hitting earth for another 100 years, at least. Asteroid 2024 YR4, though? That one, you might want to watch!
Some have dubbed it the “city-killer asteroid,” and it now has about a 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in 2032. If it does, the 300-foot wide rock will cause some pretty severe devastation around the area of impact, equivalent to something like 7.7 megatonnes of TNT, or 500 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. That said, a 2.3% chance is very, very low, and future measurements will give us a clearer picture of the odds. There is also a chance that it may hit the moon.
# Social Somethings
Dinosaurs in Guatemala?
A 12-second viral video popped up this month alleging to showcase miniature dinosaurs wandering around outside Tikal Temple V, one of the many pyramids found at the ruins of Tikal, an ancient city in Guatemala. Think it’s fake? Wrong! It’s just…in reverse, and actually showing a bunch of little White-nosed coati, or pizote. Their upright tails do make them look like tiny dinosaurs!
A miniaturized hotel experience
They’d fit right in at this mini resort a man made for his pets. Here, Xing’s World provides a short tour on Shiba-san’s birthday. And things just keep getting smaller and smaller…
A knocking ghost
Finally, we have this short account posted to r/Paranormal from someone who believes they heard their recently deceased friend knocking on their door. The knock was a “specific knock” their friend used to do. However, the poster had once been warned about cavorting with spirits. “My grandmother always told me never let spirits in my house,” they wrote, “so I wasn’t curious at all or wanting to open the door. I just said ‘thanks for coming to see me…'”
AI Art Nightmare of the Week
Can AI ever achieve consciousness or truly be like a human, and if it can, what does that say about us? For now, we are separate, though I think it’s too soon to make any definitive statements on the battle between our own brains and AI computations.
Live Science recently shared an excerpt from the new book “Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia” by technologist Mike Pepi, in which he starkly contrasts the art created by an AI with the art created by a living, breathing, and experiencing human being.
Can we ever draw meaning from art generated by an AI? Pepi’s focus is on Unsupervised, an installation presented at the Museum of Modern Art. You can check it out in this video:
Pepi compares the generated shapes and “art” of the AI display to the painting Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, also located at the museum, just upstairs. One is created using training data and algorithms, the other by a man who used to watch his neighbor, Christina, crawl across the fields of her parents’ farmland, as she could not walk due to a muscular disability. The human piece has a story behind the art and leaves its viewer with meaningful questions that may never be answered, while the AI art has simply training data and algorithms, and an output that simply is what it is. Because of this, Pepi writes, while viewing Unsupervised he “encountered the terror of never finding anything.”
Other Links of Interest
Meta unveils AI models that convert brain activity into text with unmatched accuracy.
Muscle tissue meets mechanics in biohybrid hand breakthrough.
Pale Blue Dot photo turns 35.
Moroccan fly maggot espionage.
Astronomers spot the largest known object in the universe.
Scientist transfers data between two machines using quantum teleportation.
Andrew Ryan Begins Construction of Rapture (Not really, but kind of).
Man murders wife after paranormal meter sparked fear that she would eat him.
Euclid telescope captures Einstein ring revealing warping of space.
What was the mysterious space signal scientists discovered in 2024?
Michigan, Illinois given best odds of seeing Bigfoot by betting website.
Best Of Daily AI 2/1 – 2/15
That’s it for this week’s edition of Weeklies. Check the homepage daily for new news, or catch last week’s Weeklies for slightly older news!
