1) The new marathon record, which was not a marathon!!
Like the moon
landing, Kipchoge’s run was a technical achievement that required unprecedented
planning and support. In fact, it was so heavily engineered that his new time
will not count as a world record. Kipchoge ran the fastest time ever over the
marathon distance, but for heated reasons that get at the heart of the sport,
he did not run a marathon.
To sustain this
blistering pace, Kipchoge ran under conditions that had been painstakingly and
exclusively arranged to push him beyond the two-hour barrier.
Challenge was not a
race by any strict definition: It was simply Kipchoge, joined by a rotating
phalanx of pacesetters, rocketing along the pavement against the clock.
2) We are nearing the endgame for PE funded
non-businesses burning cash
Consumer tech
companies, along with their venture-capital backers, help fund the daily habits
of their disproportionately young and urban user base.
But this was never
going to last forever. WeWork’s disastrous IPO attempt has triggered
reverberations across the industry. The theme of consumer tech has shifted
from magic to margins. Venture capitalists and start-up founders
alike have re-embraced an old mantra: Profits matter.
And higher profits
can only mean one thing: Urban lifestyles are about to get more expensive.
3) Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to
air-condition the outdoors
Qatar is one of the
fastest warming areas of the world, at least outside of the Arctic. Changes
there can help give us a sense of what the rest of the world can expect if we
do not take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
To survive the
summer heat, Qatar not only air-conditions its soccer stadiums, but also the
outdoors — in markets, along sidewalks, even at outdoor malls so people can
window shop with a cool breeze. “If you turn off air conditioners, it will
be unbearable. You cannot function effectively,” says Yousef al-Horr, founder
of the Gulf Organization for Research and Development.
Yet outdoor air
conditioning is part of a vicious cycle. Carbon emissions create global
warming, which creates the desire for air conditioning, which creates the need
for burning fuels that emit more carbon dioxide. In Qatar, total cooling
capacity is expected to nearly double from 2016 to 2030, according to the
International District Cooling & Heating Conference.
And it’s going to
get hotter.
4) Afternoon siesta is good for you (now I am
guilt-free!!)
There is evidence to
suggest that normal sleep does not consist of one block of 7 1⁄2 hours during
the night. It is more likely that our biology is designed to allow us to sleep
for about 6 hours during the night and 1 1⁄2 hours during the day. Sleeping
just once in 24 hours is called monophasic sleep, whereas broken sleep is
polyphasic. In evolutionary terms, polyphasic animals are the most common,
whereas monophasic animals have evolved more recently. Polyphasic patterns of
sleep are the most common.
In an ideal
biological world, napping (polyphasic) sleep might be best, as the body is
never unduly stressed.
5) The US military is trying to read minds
The goal is to
eventually develop accurate and sensitive brain-computer interfaces that can be
put on and taken off like a helmet or headband—no surgery required.
Human skulls are
less than a centimeter thick: the exact thickness varies from person to person
and place to place. They act as a blurring filter that diffuses waveforms, be
they electrical currents, light, or sound. Neurons in the brain can be as small
as a few thousandths of a millimeter in diameter and generate electrical
impulses as weak as a twentieth of a volt.
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