Regrowing Teeth, Hayao Miyazaki, and Wave Power
+ in praise of iOS's new multiple timer system and in hate of the diuresis
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This week, we talk about the Zucks eradicating human disease, a drug to regrow human teeth, my endless obsession with Hayao Miyazaki, iOS’s new timer system, and… a rabbithole into the question of why isn’t human civilization powered by the energy from waves?
And more, because I just kept adding things as I kept track them over the week in an Apple Notes file that is starting to get so big it’s taking 400ms for each keystroke.
What I’m Reading…
The Zucks to eradicate human disease. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced they're building a computer system to help eliminate human disease by 2100. That’s… a long time away and I’ll be dead so that sucks. Could you try to do it by, like, 2035? Who knows if they’ll be successful but it’s nice to have some big daring projects like this, and doing it as a couple is pretty cool.
“The costs may be hefty” … you don’t say?
Let's all regrow our teeth. A Japanese Company is testing a new drug that could allow adults to regrow teeth. It’s crazy to think the human body literally grows every part of itself, but we have no control over that yet. “The drug works by inhibiting a gene called USAG-1, which is responsible for stopping tooth buds.”
Studio Ghibli sold to Nippon TV after finding no successors for Hayao Miyazaki. I remember a sad moment — I think it’s in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (highly recommended) — or maybe the NHK documentaries, where Miyazaki basically says the company will die after him (and he’s ok with that), and it’s such a stark contrast to Disney’s approach. It was also a slight towards his son Goro who was working as a director in the company. I love the Miyazaki/Suzuki combo (Suzuki is an incredible producer), and I think The Boy and the Heron will be their last major collaboration, which I can’t wait to watch and also have that feeling where I don’t want to watch the last episode of a show, because then it’s over. (I still haven’t watched the last episode of The Night Manager, even though I’ve watched the other episodes twice.)
Ah, I found the clip. It still hits me — “It’s taken on so much and gotten so big. But well… that’s it. The future is clear: it’s going to fall apart. I can already see it. What’s the use of worrying? It’s inevitable.”
Also, Miyazaki is practically unrecognizable without his beard.
While reading an article on the world’s best pickpocket, I noticed an umlaut on the word coordination. I did not remember an umlaut on that word before…. god, The New Yorker is so pretentious. I think it’s so that people don’t think they made a mistake by vowel doubling. And then I found they have an entire article on why they do this, called the curse of the diuresis. I just can’t. Such weird flexes.
“It’s actually a lot of trouble these days to get the diaeresis to stick over the vowels.” BECAUSE IT’S STUPID. There was an editor in 1978 who was going to change it and then they died — I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy but…
Cool things…
iOS now has multiple timers. The best new feature by far in iOS 17 for me is the ability to have multiple timers. Hard to believe it took 16 years to get multiple timers on an iPhone, but finally it’s replaced my… well, it hasn’t replaced anything I guess except an annoyance every time I make banana bread and need a timer for it to be done and a timer for me to put the foil on top.
ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak. OpenAI is rolling out conversational voice, which means response times must be getting faster (probably using 3.5-turbo?). The voice samples are crazy good.
And, of course, the downside: “The new voice technology—capable of crafting realistic synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech—opens doors to many creative and accessibility-focused applications. However, these capabilities also present new risks, such as the potential for malicious actors to impersonate public figures or commit fraud.”
Probably won’t be too long until we have automated voice dialers faking celebrity voices, or our loved ones asking for help and to send a little money…
What I’m Watching…
The genius design of train wheels. This was going around on reddit, which was a TikTok video, made from a youtube video. Tiktoks disappear a lot so I’ll link to the youtube. I had no idea train wheels are like this — but then I was thinking… wait, are train wheels ACTUALLy like this? Why don’t they look like that, then? Maybe they’re just sort of this shape but on a much less pronounced basis. Model railroad nerds, enlighten me.
Tesla Optimus Robot Hits Preschooler Stage. Well, that’s what I’m calling it anyway — it now self-calibrates its own limbs and can sort color blocks. Soon they’ll be sent to Montessori. This is fast progress and in a few years robots like this will be running our fast food joints and warehouses.
We’re already in Ready Player One. I found this a really great brain nugget (which I also found on X/Twitter, but was just a TikTok embed — all social media is becoming TikTok all the way down). Eden McKenzie-Goddard argues that our world is becoming more like Real Player One, not because of VR, but because the virtual world is becoming more important and more valuable than our physical world. He uses an example of a girl recording a video in a train in front of a bunch of strangers, not caring about her physical surroundings, because her value is mostly derived from the world on her phone, not the people on the train.
The King of Stolen Valor. A long youtube doc on Jack Idema, a con man who inserted himself into the “hunt for Bin Laden” narratives. It’s impressive how far he got just by telling people words. We do tend to believe what people say, especially when there’s a little truth somewhere in it. He was found guilty of running an unlawful private prison in Afghanistan and torturing Afghan citizens. He was charged by his girlfriend with infecting her with HIV after he knew he had the disease. Not a great human.
Pickpocket Guy Does TED. Worth it for the ending.
What I’m Listening To…
Chicken Noodle by Small Crush. So cute. Reminds me of being a teenager, spaghetti sauce on my shirt, grandma telling me to “never take a date to Italian.”
Randomness:
Worthless Bird. Bird (the scooter company) was once valued at $2.5 billion … was de-listed from NYSE because they are now valued at $11 million. Yeah, $11m. I mean their scooters alone must be worth that much, so that’s wild. They were once the fastest growing company to the $1b mark.
“At fifteen, he stole a pistol from a security guard’s holster on a dare and was shot five times by a plainclothes policeman who happened to witness the theft (hence the limp).”
Harsh Dad Club. In response to how they got into finance, a candidate I interviewed said: “My dad said I wasn’t smart enough to be a lawyer or a doctor so he said I should go into finance to pay the bills.”
Farewell, duck. With the new iOS release, your phone will stop autocorrecting fuck to duck, which feels sort of like a loss in some weird way, as I’ve really grown to ducking like it.
Musical albums are the ultimate example that quantity is quality. Make 10 to 20 songs, maybe one or two will hit.
Your iPad is now an HDMI monitor. Orion is a new app that lets you use your iPad as a monitor for your computer, game system, a raspberry pi, betamax vhs whatever. It uses an AI upscaler, you know, like an advanced version of those SNES9X upscale filters. I played a lot Chrono Trigger on that emulator in college.
Orion is made by the same folks who make the iPhone photography app Halide, which I bought but never use. The default camera app is just so convenient and good enough most of the time.
B-side projects. A random note from the Orion blog announcement that I really enjoyed (and feel is true): once you have a popular app/site/business, it’s important to keep playing so you learn new things and don’t burn out. Calling that a b-side project is really cute. Quotes:
“B-sides are small fun, small, and focused projects. Apps like Halide needs major work every year to keep up with new hardware, but we expect Orion will be ‘done’ after a release or two. We'll keep maintaining it so it doesn't break, but we won't revolve our lives around it. It's a fun utility, and that's why we're only asking for a few bucks.”
“Beyond being fun to build and design, apps like Orion let us experiment with new developer tools earlier than in our flagship apps.
A Rabbithole on Wave Power…
I’ve been thinking about wave power for a couple decades now — basically every time I look at the ocean I think, wow that’s a lot of wasted power out there, hitting the shore. I looked it up and 0.2% of the ocean’s energy could power the entire world. It’s more predictable, available, and energy-dense than wind. Why isn’t some of this being harnessed? Well, people have been trying… ends up it’s hard, I guess.
UK has — well, had — the Islay LIMPET which is the world’s first commercial wave power device. Why is that name so dumb? Because it’s an acronym: Land Installed Marine Power Energy Transmitter. It was an on-shore installation that basically moves air in and out of a pressure chamber as the waves crash.
Portugal has — ope, again HAD — the Pelamis. Lots of hads here. It was the “the first offshore wave machine to generate electricity into the grid” in 2004. The project was abandoned due to the company having technical and financial issues.
So… not a great record so far.
Azura is currently being tested in Hawaii and is funded by the US Department of Energy and is the only wave power device in North America to actually feed power back into the grid. It produces 20 KW, which if my calculations are right — I’m awful at math but ChatGPT checked this and said it’s right — it could power 133 refrigerators or so. I’m pretty sure this is a PowerBuoy.
Ends up the PowerBuoy is not just for power generation but — surprise surprise since the military is testing it — also for surveillance. One buoy can survey up to 1,600 square miles (!) of ocean and is used to track boats and monitor for possible drug/human trafficking. They are also used to expand communication networks since they can power themselves.
Yoshio Masuda did a bunch of experiments in the 1940s testing various concepts, constructing hundreds of units used to power navigation lights (aka buoys).
Even though people have been trying to harness wave power since the late 1890’s — probably earlier — no one has really cracked it for widespread usage. There’s a really big opportunity here for clean energy.
It still seems like an interesting problem to me. Would be fun to focus on it for few months. Too bad I missed out on the Saltire Prize which would have awarded £10 million euros to someone who cracked the 100GWh barrier.
Thanks for reading. If you got this far, you’re amazing. Do me a favor and hit the heart thing. Or smash that reply button and remind me there are people on the other end of this (shoutout to Javier, Emily, Kristoffer, Carol, and others for your encouraging replies!).
//// Josh
PS: I used Midjourney a LOT this week, probably half a thousand generations, and this monster mug is my favorite fail. I’m working on a new AI art project using midjourney and html/css/js and hope to show some progress here next week.
