What's Not the News: April 9
What’s the news? I don’t know! This is the latest edition of Not the News, where we scrape the Internet to find the best non-covid, non-politics content there is. (Actually a much harder job than you’d think.)
But first:
We love promoting Excelers doing amazing things. You might have read about Quibi, the short-form mobile video platform that just launched. Steven Greitzer, Excel 2011, has been working for years to lead Quibi toward launch. If you want to see what he’s been working on, Quibi’s running a 90-day free trial until the end of April.
What to Read
Meet Your Meme Lords at the Library of Congress
If you want to find a cultural or historical treasure of the United States, you can probably find it in the Library of Congress, the world’s biggest library. So naturally, while you’re looking at a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, you can also check out old versions of Urban Dictionary.
That’s because the Library has spent the last 20 years archiving 2+ petabytes of data from the Internet. They’re not just scraping indiscriminately, either.
From the New York Times:
The criteria for selection typically used by print archivists — value to future scholars, uniqueness of the material — still apply to the web archivists, though the high extinction rate of digital matter factors into decision making.
One thing that met those criteria: a version of the Bible translated into “LOLcat” lingo. (Remember 2010?)
Smart Toilets
…No, seriously. Without getting into all the, you know, details, scientists say smart toilets could be used to collect really important biometric data. That data could help people monitor their health, detect certain conditions, and play a very important role in testing new drugs. (The scientific article proposing the idea used the phrase “deep learning,” so you know this is big-time stuff.)
From Axios:
Though such a toilet is only theoretical at this point, it's part of a trend toward more wearable and at-home diagnostics.
See, it’s just like the heart rate monitor on your Apple Watch! Add another item to the Internet of Things. Privacy advocates are probably having a migraine right now.
Progress in the Fight to Wipe Out Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes: ruiners of warm summer nights, causers of the question, “Why are you slapping yourself?” and, in some parts of the world, carriers of deadly diseases like malaria. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just be rid of the annoying things? That’s what Google’s subsidiary Verily is trying to do.
From Bloomberg (via Yahoo):
Since 2017, the company has released millions of lab-bred Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes into several Fresno County neighborhoods during mosquito season. The insects are bred in Verily labs to be infected with a common bacterium called Wolbachia. When these male mosquitoes mate with females in the wild, the offspring never hatch.
In results of the trial published on Monday, Verily revealed that throughout the peak of the 2018 mosquito season, from July to October, Wolbachia-infected males successfully suppressed more than 93% of the female mosquito population at field test sites. Only female mosquitoes bite.
All great stuff, and I’m more than ready to never get a mosquito bite again. But I want to meet the local politicians who said, “Sure, you can release tens of thousands of mosquitoes into my community every day. Science is just that important!”
What to Stream
Bon Appetit’s Test Kitchen (YouTube)
Delicious food, high-quality production, and short-form content—what’s not to love? It’s easy to get lost in this endless series of videos of Bon Appetit’s chefs making all kinds of food you don’t have the time to make yourself.
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Netflix)
The title is self-explanatory. Jerry Seinfeld spends each episode getting coffee with a famous comedian. From someone who did a show about nothing, a show that features two people just having casual conversations. But it turns out that when you put two funny people in a room together you get funny content.
Podcasts to Listen To
Without Fail
Candid conversations with entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, visionaries of all kinds about their successes, and their failures.
Catch and Kill
In this nine-episode series, Ronan Farrow tells the story of his reporting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and the tactics powerful men use to evade accountability. It plays like a thriller, but it’s all true.
Start with: Episode 1: The Spy
Not digging these? Choose from the 50 best podcasts of 2019.
Recipes to Try
Frothy Coffee
If you’re also Very Online, you’ve probably seen people making whipped coffee and milk recently. If you haven’t been convinced to try it, this recipe and article might do it for you.
Vegan Coconut Lentil Soup
In case you have lentils and canned tomatoes in your cabinet from a rare grocery run. Lentil soup also keeps very well for meal prep.
That’s it!
We’ll see you next week.
—Charlie, Meital & the North American Board