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Can the Democrats Create the ‘Perfect Storm’ in Florida? Abortion and marijuana legalisation are on the agenda in November as Biden courts the youth vote in the ‘Sunshine State’ of Florida. The two issues are hoped to mobilise the youth vote and tip Florida away from Republicans whose anti-choice and anti-cannabis stance has been labelled ‘straight out of the stone age.’
Should AI be Used to Connect with the Dead? The market for digital immortality via cloned grief chatbots has risen in popularity. For approximately $1,390 you can revive loved ones using generative AI technology with Super Brain, an AI startup in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. Co-founder, Zhang Zewei argues that digital immortality ‘enables everyone to have a virtual online twin.’
It’s a Scream! Can plants emit sound? Apparently so. According to the latest research, plants such as tomatoes and tobacco produce repeated clicking or popping noises under stress. Human ears cannot detect their ultrasonic frequencies, but other animals can pick them up.
Loneliness Makes Women Hungry: A new UCLA study finds a link between food cravings, self-control, and loneliness. Women who see themselves as lonely tend to exhibit increased levels of activity in the brain associated with food cravings for sugary foods and decreased levels of activity in the brain associated with self-control. Women who are more socially isolated tend to have higher fat mass, lower diet quality, more cravings, and increased levels of anxiety and depression.
How to Bounce Back from Criticism: In her book The Human Condition (1958), the political thinker Hannah Arendt asks us to distinguish between ‘who’ we are and ‘what’ we are. The who is largely outside of our control and determined by people’s perceptions of us, but the what (our qualities, talents and shortcomings) remains our business and cannot be determined or fully captured by another person’s opinion of us. Accordingly, criticism can at best offer an assessment of what we are, rather than a statement of fact.
April Fun Fact: No one quite knows the origins of April Fools’ Day, but some say it was inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s story ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ in the Canterbury Tales.
War in Gaza Divides Germany’s Art Scene: Since October 7, questions of antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia have dominated Germany’s public discourse. The fine line between freedom of speech and cancel culture has become even finer with numerous events being cancelled, prompting the Instagram account Archive of Silence. The problem of introducing public discussions of Israel, Palestine, and the war in Gaza through Art has exposed cracks in Germany’s entangled arts and political spheres.