Week of May 28, 2024
Footloose and Saturday Night Fever were part of a mini "nostalgic movies from your childhood" film festival encouraged by our older son. In the spirit of "you can never truly go home again," I was surprised by what I didn't recall about these movies. Beyond trite dialogue and dubious philosophic relativism (the book-burning scene in Footloose trying to express religious extremism is OK if it bans dancing and not ideas?!?), both movies depicted a lot of casual misogyny and bigotry. While it is never 100% fair to judge media out of the context of its time, the difference between how I remembered these movies and now cringing at the '70s and '80s cultural norms (that I did not appreciate back then) is striking. At least the soundtracks are still awesome.
Follow on:
The social science of nostalgia - it turns out that, in general, people perceive that cultural media peaks when they are between 10 and 20 years old. Or, put another way, we are all destined to become grumpy about "kids these days and their [music, movies, etc.]."
https://x.com/andrewcurran_/status/1794379728209805457
A fantastic blogpost about 80s movie soundtracks and Footloose:
https://80smetalman.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/greatish-soundtracks-of-1984-footloose/
Even Kevin Bacon is embarrassed by Footloose at times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQr-ou0S1s
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Wastewater levels of coronavirus RNA are rising, implying case rates will also increase in the next few weeks.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) website uses wastewater levels to forecast 4-week predictions of COVID rates.
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COVD and related articles
A recent review of the biophysics, science, and medical protection conferred by masks (in the setting of airborne illness) incited the "masks don't work" crowd on social media. Glen Pyle, a molecular biologist, offered a detailed discussion on the physics of masks.
https://x.com/glenpyle/status/1794126507830321611
Here is the paper that spawned the social media discussion:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23
Quick follow on: "The Risk of Aircraft-Acquired SARS-CoV-2 Transmission during Commercial Flights: A Systematic Review"
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/6/654
Coupled with a mix of rational and insane Twitter discussion:
https://x.com/danibeckman/status/1794056878638399773?s=42&t=cHtDhpWgAdi0UhIayqsoag
H5N1 avian flu is concerning - it is highly prevalent in animals, and human cases keep showing up (like the Australian child infected without animal exposure last week: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/bird-flu-avian-influenza-human-detection/103879886 ). I found a well-written 2020 review of how H5N1 (and viruses in general) evolve. A now-defunct crowdsource-funded European news magazine, The Correspondent, published the article. Nevertheless, it is a thoughtful review and readable to non-science people.
Medical Trends and Technology
Dr. Tal Patalon, a physician and data scientist, published an interesting editorial in Forbes (in early April) describing why quantum computing is such a big deal for personalized healthcare. Her piece is a good 10,000-foot few on the intersection of data, high-speed, high-volume computing power (i.e., quantum computing), and healthcare. She had me at "all data is medical data."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/talpatalon/2024/04/08/solar-eclipse-and-the-quantum-leap-of-medicine/
The Health Rising blog (focused on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/fibromyalgia) summarized the recent paper I highlighted about Yale researchers discovering "a master immune switch in the brain that can turn off and turn on inflammation in the body." The blog offers an easily readable written summation and an audio version of the story.
https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2024/05/25/master-immune-switch-brain-chronic-fatigue-long-covid/
One extra article this week, "Frozen human brain tissue can now be revived without damage." The techniques are more for benchtop neuroscience research, but (like me), I bet you instantly thought of Walt Disney's head.
and
https://www.iflscience.com/is-it-true-that-walt-disneys-frozen-70998
Infographics
This infographic on the physics of sunglasses is originally from the Jacksonville Times. I enjoyed the detailed discussion of how lens color impacts visual perception.
https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/1d27rud/a_cool_guide_to_how_sunglasses_work/#lightbox
Things I learned this week
As part of our throwback movie-watching, I explored the origins of Saturday Night Fever. In 1976, Nic Cohn wrote a "Hunter S. Thompson-style" gonzo journalist piece about the working-class disco scene in 1970s Brooklyn, which inspired the movie. Cohn published the article in New York magazine, stating that all the details were factual. In 1997, Cohn admitted that he had made up much of the story, including the people in the article. Thus, fraud is the basis for the movie that propelled the career of John Travolta, inspired the late 70s disco craze (and line dancing!), spawned a damn-fine BeeGees album, and facilitated a 1978 date-night movie and dinner for my parents (which is my first recollection of staying home with a baby sitter).
The 1976 article: https://nymag.com/nightlife/features/45933/
and the follow-up
and
Living with A.I.
The Washington Post's CTO announced the increased use of A.I. to mitigate the paper's financial shortfalls. Details are unclear, but generative A.I. is a tempting path to battle a $77 million deficit.
https://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-ai
News Corp is also relying more on A.I. - as are other newspapers.
https://x.com/maxwelltani/status/1793375460879110564
Here is an excellent anecdote on the limits of using A.I. and a good reminder that broad thinking is sometimes needed to explain observations. Polish computer scientist Bartłomiej Cupiał describes how training a neural network to play and optimize strategies for NetHack, a long-standing text-based strategy game from the 1980s, yielded some unexpected discoveries about the game itself.
https://x.com/cupiabart/status/1793930355617259811
A.I. art of the week
"A photo of an older male wearing a facemask and a disco white lounge suit frozen in a giant block of ice."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12BQSOc26RnqkF-y1otjZaCGmtkXcwCKY/view?usp=sharing
Clean hands and sharp minds, team
Adam
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