#2,725 – The Greatest Ideas of 2022

It was another difficult year highlighted by war, inflation, political uncertainty, and an ongoing pandemic.  But that didn’t stop innovation from continuing its relentless march especially when it came to AI, energy, healthcare and physics. Without further adieu, a look at the absolute greatest ideas of 2022:

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough: For the first time ever we’ve managed to harness the power of the sun and generate more energy than expelled when trying to create nuclear fusion power.  It’ll still be decades before we can commercialize this technology but this proof of concept was an important first step and could lead to limitless clean energy that solves our Climate Change woes.

ChatGPT: This interface for interacting with GPT-3 is a conversational AI that can answer questions, summarize text, and write things for you in different styles.  Free and easy to use it’s a powerful tool that could bring AI to the masses and disrupt multiple industries.  If nothing else its arrival signals that an AI tipping point is upon us with a whole wave of new technologies set to be unleashed in the weeks and months to come. 

The James Webb Telescope: In July we got our first look at images being produced by this next generation telescope and the results have been breathtaking to say the least.  Throw in detecting carbon dioxide on an exoplanet for the first time and discovering galaxies that no other instrument had ever detected before and the JWST is off to a great start.  Even if it hasn’t found any aliens yet. 

Web3: When the year first began Web3 was all the rage.  Instead of Web2, the social web that we’re all familiar with, dominated by companies like Facebook and Twitter, Web3 is designed to remove Big Tech from the equation, building open source apps that run on blockchains.  If NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and the Metaverse are to take off it’ll be because of the success of Web3.

New Wonder Material: Known as 2DPA-1 and created by MIT, it’s as strong as steel but as light as plastic.

Diabetes Pill: Developed by Yale this oral medication could control insulin levels to treat diabetes while simultaneously reversing the inflammatory effects of the disease.

The Wave of the Future: Soon there may be a way to counteract high blood pressure without the need for any medication.  Simply by blasting your kidneys with radio waves to destroy the nerves around them.

CRISPR Gene-Editing Drug: Instead of just using CRISPR to cut out problematic sections of a patient’s DNA we may soon have a new drug therapy as well based on this gene-editing technology that would treat blood related illnesses.

Weight Loss Drug: But there could be an even more impactful drug on the way, one that helps patients lose over twenty percent of their body weight. A percentage change that shatters the previous record for a weight loss drug. In fact, there’s hope that the drug that could even be used to prevent people from becoming obese in the first place.

Earth Drilling Startup: If Quaise Energy gets their way, we’ll vaporize rocks instead of crushing them, drilling 10-20 km into the Earth’s crust to reach temperature’s hotter than the surface of the Sun, providing us with all the energy we’ll ever need.

AlphaFold Update: Science has come a long way but there’s still much that we don’t know.  Such as the nature of protein folding and how those structures impact the functionality of cells.  Until now that is.  Because thanks to Google’s AlphaFold we now know the structure of every known protein.  All 200 million of them from over 1 million species.

Reversing the Aging Process: This year we got another step closer to extending human life spans as researchers in the U.K. managed to make skin cells 30 years younger.  A longevity pill that would eliminate cells that degrade tissue function is also in the works.  Lending hope to the idea that we could soon extend our life spans to 200 years.

Forever No More: A report came out this year suggesting that rainwater every where on Earth is no longer safe to drink thanks to the pervasiveness of forever chemicals.  But a breakthrough this year shows that it may be possible to break down at least one class of forever chemicals using an inexpensive compound found in ordinary soap giving us a chance to fight back.

2022 was another great year for innovation.

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#2,724 – The Weirdest Ideas of 2022

They may be weird but that doesn’t stop them from being great. A quick look back at the weirdest ideas of the year:

Fish-Operated Vehicles: I thought that the future of driving would involve electric vehicles and driverless cars. Maybe even flying cars one day. At no point did I imagine getting driven around by a goldfish. And yet that’s exactly what might happen thanks to a plan to teach goldfish to drive fish-operated vehicles.

Lickable TV:  Have you ever watched a TV commercial for fast food and gotten a craving? Well, in the near future you may actually be able to lick the screen and taste the food! Thanks to a newly created Lickable TV.

Tongue Texting: In the future it may be possible to text using only our tongues, via a system called SilentSpeller, that tracks the movements of a user’s tongue.  This would enable us to communicate silently.  The next best thing to telepathy!

Bear Serum Muscles: Move over Wolverine.  There’s a new superhero in town.  And it could be you.  Thanks to new research that could endow humans with the muscle mass of bears.

Slime Robot: A stretchy, slimy robot designed for medical purposes to slither through your body and remove objects from your body that shouldn’t be there.

Necrobotics: Turning dead spiders into robots. Um, hard pass.

Stranger Things: Just watched Season 4, Part 2 of Stranger Things and can’t get enough of the gang from Hawkins?! Well, you’re in luck. For it may soon be possible to move things with your mind like Elle. Thanks to technology that reads our brain waves and uses that information to move programmable matter on metasurfaces, the two dimensional counterpart to metamaterials.

Plufl: The world’s first ever dog bed designed for humans.

Ggool: A cryptocurrency that you earn for going to the bathroom (making it a literal shit coin).

Virtual Children: Offspring that we’ll raise entirely inside of The Metaverse so that we can have the experience of raising someone without any of the real world responsibility.  The next evolution in Tamagotchi. 

PimEyes: A search engine for faces that could lead to major privacy concerns.

Ice Cream Perfume: Spray on your ice cream before eating to enhance the smell and taste.

Octa-Glove: We could soon have gloves that turn our fingers into tentacles thanks to researchers from Virginia Tech who were inspired by the adhesive properties of the Octopus. 

Adult Bedtime Stories: A popular trend emerged this year as people realized that listening to bedtime stories has real benefits for people of all ages.

Video Game Playing Brain Cells: A group of brain cells in a laboratory dish have learned how to play Pong hinting at a future in which biology helps computers become more intelligent by changing the way they learn.

The Walking Dead: The way in which we walk could be used to predict when we’re going to die.

Speech2Face: AI can now figure out what you look like based on how you sound.

Minority Report: A new algorithm can predict crime with 90% accuracy. 

Brain Reading Algrorithm: A new brain reading algorithm can accurately tell what a person is thinking about by decoding scans that were taken of their brain. Noticing a trend here?

Edible Cement: A new environmentally friendly version of cement could lower emissions and also give us something to eat in the event of an emergency. Yum!

Are any of these the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,723 – My Favorite Ideas of 2022

My favorite ideas to write about in 2022:

Electric Chopsticks: I may have a new #1 all-time favorite invention: electric chopsticks that make food taste saltier!

Lasix Hearing: It may soon be possible to under a quick outpatient procedure similar to Lasix eye surgery that will repair our lost hearing just as effectively.

Invisible Fiber: Soon we’ll be able to have our cake and eat it too. Thanks to a new invisible ingredient that can be added to food to make it 20% healthier without it even being noticed. It can even be added to cake and pizza!

Moonwalkers: I’m a New Yorker so I’m used to walking faster than everyone else but soon the playing field will be leveled thanks to new shoe attachments that help you walk faster by 250%! 

TickleFoot: Speaking of shoes there is now also a foot insert designed to tickle you in just the right spot to reduce stress.

The Unreadable Library: I’m known for collecting books and never reading them so it should come as no surprise that I’m a huge fan of the Unreadable Library, a collection of works in Oslo that won’t be published until 2114.

Graphene Tattoos: Here’s a use case for the wonder material graphene that I did not see coming: tattoos.  Specifically, e-tattoos capable of turning into a health monitor to keep an eye on our blood pressure.

Mouse Movers: A way to move your mouse, even when you’re not at your computer, to make it look like you’re working remotely when you’re really slacking off.  Not that I would ever use this. 

Nightmare Cure: We could cure nightmares by playing a specific piano chord while we sleep as our brains pick up on the positive feelings of that chord.

BioHarvest: One day we could have a more potent form of customizable cannabis that requires less water, space, time and energy to grow making it environmentally friendly and a far better option than what we currently have available today.

Jelly Ice Cubes: A new kind of ice cube that’s reusable and doesn’t melt that could revolutionize how goods are transported.

Paper Battery: Sometimes adding water to something is bad. Just ask the Gremlins. But other times it’s great. Like with the new paper battery that comes to life when you add water to it.

Hiking Trail Building: A 16 story residential tower set to open in 2023 in Denver, Colorado that will come along with a built in 4 story hiking trail! If I ever move to Denver this is where I want to live.

Oreo Wine: Wine that tastes like Oreos! This year also gave us an exciting new field of scientific study: Oreology, the study of “the flow and fracture of sandwich cookies.”

What Is My Movie?: A site that uses AI to help you remember obscure movies based on your descriptions. 

Sunless Solar Panels: Works even when it’s cloudy outside.

Driverless Bicycles: Forget about Driverless Cars.  We may soon have Driverless Bikes that will come to us when we need them and then return themselves to their charging stations when we’re done with them.

Mirror Line: In the future five million people may live in Saudi Arabia in the Mirror Line, a double skyscraper that runs parallel for 75 miles!

Sand Battery: We may have finally found a way to store excess solar power for use later on by storing it in a battery made of sand.

Pain Blocking Implant: A new dissolvable implant that can cool nerves to turn pain off.

Laundry Jet: A laundry hamper that sucks up anything thrown its way.  Basically turns doing laundry into a game of basketball!

Zen Balls: Hold them in your hand while you meditate and they provide real-time biofeedback to help you achieve better results.

Banana Barriers: Bananas have fire resistant properties.  If we plant them around forests they could provide natural protection against forest fires spreading into communities. 

PillCam: And having recently undergone an upper endoscopy this is probably my favorite idea of all…a pill with a built in camera that you can swallow to find out what’s going on inside the body without the need for colonoscopies or upper endoscopies. 

Are any of these the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,722 – The Coolest Ideas of 2022

The coolest ideas of the year!

Atomic Television: Televisions have come a long way from black and white screens that take up half your living room to flexible 4k screens that bend and fold up.  But now they’re about to undergo an even more dramatic evolution thanks to an Atomic Television that transmits video through excited rubidium atoms.

Invisibility Shield: Stressed out from the pandemic, inflation, Climate Change, and the imminent threat of World War 3? Feel like disappearing and hiding from the world?  Well, now you can. Thanks to a newly invented invisibility shield!

Exomuscles: Instead of exoskeletons that act as both muscle and bone, providing force as well as structural support, exomuscles make use of the body’s own structure and simply chip in with additional force when needed.

Infinity Train: We could soon have an electric Infinity Train that’s continuously powered by gravity and never needs to stop.

Laser Writing:  In the future we could have a laser pen that can write in mid-air, a potential pre-cursor to having Star Wars style hologram technology.

Real Life Lightsaber: Spekakng of Star Wars YouTuber Alex Burkan entered the Guinness Book of World Records after creating the world’s first real life retractable lightsaber.

Hangover Pill: A new pill could make it so that you never experience a hangover again.  But it also could make it so you never have fun again either by preventing you from getting drunk in the first place.

Air Vodka: But if you were to drink the old fashioned way you might want to try Air Vodka.  Made from captured carbon.  So that you can feel better about the environment.  Until you start to feel worse.

Electric Rain: Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong created a droplet-based electricity generator that can generate power from rain.

Color Changing Car: Bank thieves rejoice!  You can now rob a bank in one car and then get away in another all with just the push of a button thanks to new color changing technology that works just like an e-reader.  The poor cops will never know what hit them!

New Cameras: There’s one the size of a grain of salt that could turn any surface into a camera.  Better yet, there was also a camera created by engineers at Northwestern that was capable of seeing through or around any object such as fog, corners, and even human flesh. 

FluxJets: Hybrid train planes that rely on electricity alone for propulsion while leveraging a new branch of physics known as Veillance Flux.

Mechanical Neural Networks: A new class of materials capable of changing their physical properties to respond to changing conditions around it.

Chill Polish: Nail polish that turns colors when your beer is cold enough to drink.

Entropy Vest: A new futuristic piece of clothing that can heat you up by changing its state of matter instead of using batteries or electronics. 

The Synthetic Party: A new Danish political party with an AI representative and policies derived by AI.

Stretchable Displays: LG has unveiled a new flexible material that could be used to created display screens that can be elongated by 20%.

Magic Avatars: Lensa’s AI generated portraits that can recreate you in different styles.  Another AI tool brought back deceased celebrities to life to show what they would look like now if they were still alive.

Smart Glass Wi-Fi: In the future we may draw Wi-Fi signals from solar powered windows thanks to a newly developed smart glass.  An approach that would require less energy to use than traditional Wi-Fi.

Distributed Laser Charging: And speaking of Wi-Fi we could soon charge our phones while going about our day thanks to a new breakthrough that could use infrared light to wirelessly distribute power in public spaces such as grocery stores.

Are any of these the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,721 – My Greatest Ideas of 2022

Every year I wonder if this will finally be the year.  The year that I finally run out of ideas.  And every year the answer is no.  2022 was no different.  Here’s a quick look back at some of my greatest ideas of the past year:

Reading Clubs: Instead of book clubs we should have reading clubs. Where instead of getting together to discuss the same book (that maybe wouldn’t interest everyone) we get together to discuss the latest book that we’re reading and inform others why they should be reading it too.

Geriatric Park: A theme park designed with old people in mind giving them the opportunity to do everything they never got to do during their lives.

Modular Movies: Using AI to update movies after they come out to keep references topical, ensure that the jokes are never outdated, and that the dialogue is always current with the latest slang.

Casino Gym: What if we had a casino gym? Like a progressive slot machine jackpot that accumulates until someone randomly wins it all, a casino gym would operate in the same manner with money accumulating while people work out (their sweat literally getting converted into cash) until someone randomly wins it all.  And since you have to be present to win people would be more inclined to work out more often and for longer amounts of time.  There would be no membership fees with all the revenue and the money for the jackpot being generated by people paying to use the machines that feed into the master jackpot.

Jobtors: My recent experience with a realtor made me think that we should have even more people who help us with life’s big decisions.  And other than buying a home or getting married the biggest decision you’ll ever make is deciding what career to pursue and where to work.  Which is why I think that in addition to realtors we should have jobtors.  People who make it their full time job to find you a job.

Hateraid: A resource to help us keep track of our feigned hatred so we know who to hate on and cancel at any given time.  Featuring verified scouting reports and links to all the latest news about a person or topic Hateraid would update in real-time to keep people informed of someone’s current social status. 

Roast Debate: We should add one more debate to the docket during a presidential election: a roast debate.  Where the two candidates, or more during primaries, roast each other, showing off their wit and true personalities. 

Lottery TV Show:  Instead of paying to enter the lottery everyone is automatically entered and the winner selected on live TV.  The money is raised via advertising dollars during this TV special which would generate more money than the Super Bowl and remove the tax on the poor.  While making it a true lottery.  

Fixing the NBA: Let’s reverse things making two point shots worth three points (since they are more heavily guarded) and three points shot worth 2 points (since everyone can make them now).  Let’s also make the Slam Dunk Contest more interesting by turning it into an Olympics style floor program that lets you showcase all your skills during set routines so it doesn’t matter if you miss one dunk.

The Highbrary: A library/bookstore at the top of a mountain that you can only reach by hiking to.  Would give you a goal when hiking and something to do once you reach your destination. 

Are any of these the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,720 – The Greatest Books of 2022

I’m known for collecting books and never reading them but I did manage to read a few in 2022. Here are some of my favorites:

Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century – A look back at some of the most ridiculous predictions of the 20^th Century this books gets you to marvel at how far we’ve come and gasp about how much we’ve gotten wrong. But what really caught my eye was just how much I would have had to write about if I had my blog in the past. Even back then there was no shortage of innovation.

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch: This informative book aims to become the one resource we would need if we ever needed to rebuild a technological society from scratch.  After reading it I hope we never need it as I would be of no use to anyone in a post-apocalyptic society. Unless of course, I had this book with me. 

Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most – I couldn’t make it a whole year without reading something from my favorite author, Steven Johnson.  In this book he takes a look at how we make the decisions that matter the most.  It’s a quick read and not his best work but still enjoyable.

The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers – From my other favorite author Eric Weiner this was a life-changing book, teaching me innumerable things about every famous philosopher and making me realize that I actually have a few things in common with each of them.

On Trails: An Exploration – For a change of pace from my normal non-fiction science fare I read this book about the wisdom of trails.  And best of all I read it while hiking on the Appalachian Trail!

How To Create A Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed – A fan of neuroscience, I found this book about how the brain works by famed futurist Ray Kurzweil extremely interesting.  Even if I didn’t understand most of it.

Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction – What makes something go viral or become a hit? Derek Thompson explores that question in this highly entertaining book that was one of my favorites of the year.

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything – The third book from game designer Jane McGonigal is designed to get you to think like a futurist so that you’ll be better prepared when extreme events like an unforeseen global pandemic occur.  As an aspiring futurist myself it was eye-opening. 

Man Seeks God: As I mentioned earlier Eric Weiner is one of my favorite authors so I thought I would also give this book a shot even though I wasn’t a big fan of the subject matter.  And while it was a slog to get through there was still a lot of interesting tidbits about religion especially the part about the Raelians, the UFO worshipping sex cult.

Astroball: The New Way to Win It All – In honor of the Houston Astros winning the World Series I read this book by Ben Reiter about their analytics driven approach to rebuilding.  What was most interesting was when they talked about how the players learned so much from veteran outfielder Carlos Beltran such as how to identify when the opposing pitcher was tipping pitches so they would know what pitch was coming.  It was only later on that their infamous cheating scandal came to light undoing much of what Reiter was trying to convey.

What about you? What were your greatest books of the year?!

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#2,719 – Magic Avatars

ChatGPT isn’t the only new AI making waves over the last few weeks. Lensa has been as well thanks to their popular Magic Avatars, AI generated portraits that have been flooding social media networks.

As the New York Times puts it:

“Have you noticed that many of your friends are suddenly fairy princesses or space travelers? Is your Instagram feed overrun with Renaissance-style paintings of people who were definitely born in the ’90s? If so, you are entitled to an explanation of what exactly is going on here (and it’s not time travel).

In the past week, users have flocked to Lensa AI, an app that uses your selfies and artificial intelligence to create portraits in a variety of styles. Created by the company Prisma Labs, the app is generating images — and controversy.

Even if you haven’t heard of Lensa AI, you’ve possibly seen its work this week. As of Wednesday, it was the most popular iPhone app in the United States in Apple’s app store. Lensa takes your selfies, studies them and churns out original, computer-generated portraits of you — or anyone whose photos you feed it.”

The controversy comes from the fact that it could be generating nudes and NSFW images as well without users consent which could lead to a whole host of problems down the road. But if we’re just using the technology for stylish selfies and avatar profile pictures hopefully it winds up sticking around. Because the results really speak for themselves.

Is Lensa’s Magic Avatar the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,718 – ChatGPT

1960’s Futurists: Automation will free mankind from meaningless tedium to focus on creative pursuits only human beings can master.

2020’s Techbros: We’re building AI to write all your books, music, and TV so you can focus on the meaningless tedium of your cubicle job.

– Author Patrick S. Tomlinson

By now you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT.  Described by many as a revolutionary technology.  One that could even kill off Google in short order.  Or at least the college essay.  But what exactly is it?! In short it’s a chatbot, a conversational AI that can answer questions, summarize text, and write things for you in different styles.  Free and easy to use it’s a powerful tool that could bring AI to the masses and disrupt multiple industries.  If nothing else its arrival signals that an AI tipping point is upon us with a whole wave of new technologies set to be unleashed in the weeks and months to come. 

Adds CNET: “ChatGPT is a chat-based tool built by research lab OpenAI that answers questions with somewhat conversational dialogue. Its natural language abilities will delight anyone who’s had to rephrase questions to get answers out of Siri or Alexa. The AI, trained on the vast tracts of text available on the internet, knows about information only through 2021. But it’s got plenty of info on nitty-gritty details and big concepts. That’s got some educators agitated, but as long as you use it carefully, it can be something of a bonus brain.”

That’s a real interesting point.  This whole time I was thinking that it would be a Neuralink implant that would serve as a bonus brain of sorts.  Instead it may be ChatGPT that serves that function.  But what exactly can it do?! Here are a few examples of what it’s been shown to do so far:

• Write essays and do homework for students
• Write something in the style of something else e.g. write a poem about baseball in the style of the King James Bible 
• Negotiate lower bills
• Create weight loss plans
• Track fitness
• Act as a personal assistant
• Generate meal ideas and shopping lists
• Devise previously unknown travel routes
• Debug computer code
• Write software
• Develop plugins
• Be used as a Linux terminal
• Prep for job interviews
• Allow you to practice conversational skills
• Write music
• Game development
• Translate languages
• Extract data from text
• Summarize longer texts
• Answer questions or explain things to you
• Generate ideas for you such as birthday present ideas for someone of a certain age.
• Look up information instead of using Google
• Come up with things to say to dating app matches

I mean come on! That’s insane! No wonder it’s been referred to as a calculator for words.  And it’s still early days.  People are still playing around with it. At this rate I’m sure it’ll wind up impacting pretty much every walk of life but a few of the industries that could be impacted the most by it include:

• Google/Search
• Education
• Software
• Healthcare
• Marketing
• Legal
• Journalism
• Entertainment

This is no joke.  This really is the Next Big Thing.  Don’t believe me?! You can sign up and try it out here.

I just hope that we use our new toy for good.  That it doesn’t kill art and music and writing and all of other creative pursuits but instead really does become a calculator for words and a bonus brain.  As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman writes on Twitter:

“The most that OpenAI, or any other company, can do is to steer the AI revolution a little.  This will impact all aspects of society, and will be an emergent thing created and shaped by all of us.  Much much bigger than any company. 

Also, once a technological revolution starts, it cannot be stopped, but it can be directed, and we can continually figure out how to make the new world much better.”

I get the sense in reading that sentiment that we’re witnessing a historic cat is out of the bag moment.  Similar to when the Internet first started spreading 30 years ago.  And the impact is likely to be the same.  Buckle up. 

Is ChatGPT the Greatest Idea Ever?

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#2,717 – Elongate

It’s always been said that if Elon Musk was ever involved in a scandal it should be called Elongate.  Well, that day may have finally come.  Because after a week full of daily mishaps it seems as though his dream of running Twitter may be about to come to a screeching halt, just like one of his Teslas that hasn’t yet figured out how to navigate on auto pilot.

It all started a few days ago when a stalker jumped on the hood of a car that he thought Elon was inside of. Instead it was only Elon’s son X Æ A-12.  Information that he allegedly came into possession of thanks to an account (@ElonJet) that tweets out the movements of Elon’s private jet.  Now, this account is protected under the First Amendment and Musk himself has been on record as saying that he would never ban it.  After all, he is a free speech absolutionist who has reinstated the accounts of terrible human beings such as Donald Trump and actual Nazis all in the name of free speech. 

But once the incident occurred and his family was put at risk Musk pulled a 180.  Now saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to doxx someone’s location for security reasons.  And you can’t really blame him for thinking that way.  Personal security is nothing to sneeze at, especially for someone as high profile as Musk and you can’t blame him for wanting to protect his family.  But it’s how he handled that situation that set up his downfall as he decided to take matters into his own hands.  First banning the ElonJet account of Jack Sweeney and any other account that allegedly doxxes information including those of prominent journalists covering the story without warning. Then proceeding to dox the identity of the stalker by posting his picture and license plate online so that his mob could track him down instead of just giving that information to the police.  Such a hypocritical thing to do! But that’s not all! He also proceeded to dox himself later in the week when he personally announced that he was at the World Cup! So just how worried is he about his own safety if he’s the one sharing his location in a humble brag? Perhaps this was all just a rouse then to ban the accounts of journalists that he didn’t like and to get the tracker on his jet removed.  After all, he did ban journalist Taylor Lorenz later in the week just for asking him to comment on a story that she was working on.

Coming up with a thoughtful anti-doxing policy would be one thing but it was this uncalled for suspension of journalists covering him that escalated the situation into a whole new realm as the “Thursday Night Massacre” led to worldwide outrage and led to media companies like CNN issues statements where they would be reevaluating their relationship with Twitter moving forward.  Read: removing advertising revenue.  Something that was already happening across the board anyway as advertisers didn’t like the direction the site was heading in under Musk’s leadership even before all of the events of the last week played out.  Read: the reinstatement of suspended accounts.  To which Musk initially threatened to name the names of the advertisers who were leaving so that his followers could boycott their products in return. 

But, that’s not all.  The next day he created another public relations nightmare by banning links to Mastodon, Facebook and a host of other competing social media networks.  Claiming that other publishers don’t allow free advertising and so neither will Twitter.  But the problem with this sentiment is that for years Twitter and other social media companies have argued that they are platforms not publishers and therefore not responsible for the content posted on their sites and therefore not subject to the same regulations.  So by making this ban Musk opened himself up to a fine of a 20% of Twitter’s annual revenue from the European Union.  Whoops! The next day the policy was deleted. 

On a daily basis accounts are now being suspended and subsequently unsuspended, new policies are being put into place without notice and official decisions are being handled via impromptu polls that Musk just redoes if he doesn’t like the results. 

Everything is done spontaneously, off the cuff and on the fly, without a plan in place or oversight, as Musk enacts solutions to problems that affect him personally without any understanding of the site wide implications or global consequences.  Things are so bad for him that he recently got booed off stage at a Dave Chappelle show which he later attributed to a fight in the audience and not for the face that he illegally fired everyone at Twitter without proper notice because of course his fragile ego can’t admit when he’s the problem.  He even banned the account of prominent Silicon Valley investor Paul Graham who had previously defended Elon’s acquisition of Twitter which may have been the final straw for many tech industry insiders.  And I haven’t even mentioned yet the issue of him illegally converting office space into hotel space in violation of zoning ordnances so that overworked employees can sleep in the office.  The dude just does whatever he wants without thinking about or caring about the consequences.  He’s Trump 2.0.

And worse of all he thinks that all of this self-destruction is actually good for business. Repeatedly pointing out that Twitter is fire right now for posting record numbers of activity as people tune in to watch the demise of Twitter in real time. Dude, we’re not laughing with you. We’re laughing at you. Actually, we’re not laughing at all.

Because the problem with all this, besides the fact that it’s ruining Twitter, our supposed Town Square, and source for breaking news, as well as Musk’s previously sterling reputation, is that it’s also destroying Musk’s wealth as he is likely to take a massive loss on the $44 billion he invested into Twitter along with the downturn that Tesla stock is taking (now down under $150 a share) as he continues to sell his own shares there to finance this pet project.  In fact, he may have to declare bankruptcy in regards to Twitter soon and cut his losses.  In a vacuum that would be okay.  Who cares if a billionaire loses their personal fortune especially when that billionaire is the class clown getting taught the world’s most expensive and public lesson.

But Musk was supposed to be our savior.  Building an empire of electric cars, solar panels, and rocket ships that would save the Earth and help us colonize Mars so that we could become an interplanetary species.  The real reason he wanted to buy Twitter was because it fit into that savior complex.  Saving free speech and democracy before the scourge of social media led to the collapse of civilization.  So if he fails, not only at Twitter, but then as a result at building enough wealth to get us to Mars, then all of humanity fails too.  And therein lies the real scandal.  Especially since it’s Musk’s own actions that is causing Twitter to fall apart. 

Twitter is falling apart at the seams thanks to Elon Musk.

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#2,716 – Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

Wendell Pierce who stars alongside Jim from The Office in Amazon’s Jack Ryan and who previously starred on The Wire said it best on Twitter:

“REMEMBER THIS DAY.  NUCLEAR FUSION BREAKTHOUGH.

We have harnessed the power to create nuclear fusion with lasers eliminating the need for fossil fuels, and without any radioactive waste.  This breakthrough creates unlimited clean renewable energy.  It eliminates the need for oil…

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has harnessed the power of the Sun.  This is one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our age.”

Wendell, I couldn’t agree more.  However, some people may be skeptical of the news.  We’ve been close before.  In fact, this is the fourth time I’ll have written about being close to a nuclear fusion breakthrough since I started blogging.  But this time feels different.  Coming with all the bells and whistles that an official announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy brings it has a certain air of authenticity this time around. Speaking to the significance of the moment. Signifying the dawn of a new era.

The New York Times explains how it all came about:

“Within the sun and stars, fusion continually combines hydrogen atoms into helium, producing sunlight and warmth that bathes the planets. In experimental reactors and laser labs on Earth, fusion lives up to its reputation as a very clean energy source.

There was always a nagging caveat, however. In all of the efforts by scientists to control the unruly power of fusion, their experiments consumed more energy than the fusion reactions generated.

That changed at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 when 192 giant lasers at the laboratory’s National Ignition Facility blasted a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond.

The laser beams entered at the top and bottom of the cylinder, vaporizing it. That generated an inward onslaught of X-rays that compresses a BB-size fuel pellet of deuterium and tritium, the heavier forms of hydrogen.

In a brief moment lasting less than 100 trillionths of a second, 2.05 megajoules of energy — roughly the equivalent of a pound of TNT — bombarded the hydrogen pellet. Out flowed a flood of neutron particles — the product of fusion — which carried about 3 megajoules of energy, a factor of 1.5 in energy gain.

This crossed the threshold that laser fusion scientists call ignition, the dividing line where the energy generated by fusion equals the energy of the incoming lasers that start the reaction.

‘You see one diagnostic and you think maybe that’s not real and then you start to see more and more diagnostics rolling in, pointing to the same thing,’ said Annie Kritcher, a physicist at Livermore who described reviewing the data after the experiment. ‘It’s a great feeling.’

The successful experiment finally delivers the ignition goal that was promised when construction of the National Ignition Facility started in 1997. When operations began in 2009, however, the facility hardly generated any fusion at all, an embarrassing disappointment after a $3.5 billion investment from the federal government.

In 2014, Livermore scientists finally reported some success, but the energy produced was minuscule — the equivalent of what a 60-watt light bulb consumes in five minutes. Progress over the next few years was slight and small.

Then, in August last year, the facility produced a much larger burst of energy — 70 percent as much energy as the laser light energy.

In an interview, Mark Herrmann, program director for weapons physics and design at the Livermore, said the researchers then performed a series of experiments to better understand the surprising August success, and they worked to bump up the energy of lasers by almost 10 percent and improve the design of the hydrogen targets.

The first laser shot at 2.05 megajoules was performed in September, and that first try produced 1.2 megajoules of fusion energy. Moreover, analysis showed that the spherical pellet of hydrogen was not squeezed evenly, and some of the hydrogen essentially squirted out the side and did not reach fusion temperatures.

The scientists made some adjustments that they believed would work better.

‘The prediction ahead of the shot was that it could go up a factor of two,’ Dr. Herrmann said. ‘In fact, it went up a little more than that.’”

Unfortunately, we will have to temper our expectations for this breakthrough as we are still several decades away from building reactors and implementing it.  But the dream of being able to produce unlimited clean energy without greenhouse gas emissions is finally within reach. 

Perhaps, that is why people were celebrating in the streets of Argentina today?! Sadly, no. They were just celebrating a victory in the semifinals of the World Cup. But history will show that this was the news that they should have been celebrating.

  A nuclear fusion breakthrough could be one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time.

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