Five Things: Internet, Ukraine, Tehran, Aging, Dogs
It's Sunday. Read this now.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
Yesterday I went to Berlin for a quick trip with my two younger daughters to help my oldest daughter move out of her apartment. She finished her internship in Berlin and will now continue on a Master’s program at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. As I am Northern by nature, I do think about what went wrong in her upbringing that she voluntarily decides to move to Bavaria. At the same time I think it is good to experience weird customs and traditions every once in a while. On a more serious note, I do think Munich is a nice place to live. Also, if anyone has a spare room or apartment, please let me know…
I love going to Berlin and even though we just wanted to pick up my oldest daughter, we did walk around the Reichstag a bit, looked at the Brandenburg Gate and went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Walking through the rows of concrete slabs is a really interesting experience and it makes you feel small and lonely, while everything else around feels somewhat arbitrary. Hard to describe, but the memorial leaves an impact on my whenever I go there.
I also did some reading last week and here are the five articles I think you should read!
What Was the Internet?
With the rise of AI, however, some new mood seems discernible, at least around the edges: the elegiac. A lot of the web is being swept away. In May, Google overhauled its iconic search box for the first time since 2001, signaling its all-in on the “intelligence age.” As chatbots hallucinate and hide their sources, search results become harder to browse, and digital life becomes ever more atomized, online access to information looks more imperiled than ever. Wikipedia has managed to survive—a miraculous exception that proves the rule—but it’s staring down new threats. Boston Review has been online since 1995, but our search engine traffic is falling, like everyone else’s. If work is published on the net and no one can navigate to it, does it leave a trace?
In other words, is this the end of the web itself? And if so, is some kind of eulogy in order?
This article is actually five articles rolled into one. I know what you think, Five Things could end here, but there are still four more articles for you below.
I am actually not that convinced that everything will go down the drain now that human traffic will be superseded by bot traffic. I, for one, am happy if I do not have to do research by myself all the time and click through plenty of click-baity headlines along the way. Publishing will change, that’s for sure, because the distribution model changes again, just like it did when mobile and social appeared. What I do see is that the decentralized internet I got to use when I first got online over 30 years ago has changed tremendously - and we have more gatekeepers than ever before.
U.S. and Ukrainian Forces Went Head-to-Head in an Exercise. Ukraine’s Drones Won.
The drubbing in Germany conveyed lessons from Ukraine focused on short-range battlefield drones. The exercise, held in April and May, tested visiting troops’ ability to operate and defend against the proliferation of smaller, front-line drones that have dominated the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Exercises like Combined Resolve are run precisely so that forces can experience realistic combat conditions. Army leaders in Europe over recent years have taken advantage of having Ukrainian forces on hand to participate and impart their hard-won skills to U.S. and allied troops in practice, on simulated battlefields. The expectation is that failures are educational. British and Swedish exercises have also resulted in easy Ukrainian triumphs.
The Ukraine is really teaching the complacent West a lesson in resilience and true innovation. At the same time, the German government talks about creating the biggest conventional army in Europe. I am not so sure, if conventional will made in the future. What are big numbers for if they lost all meaning on the battlefield?
Tehran Has to Make a Choice
Iran has positioned itself as the most overtly anti-Western state in the region, and the coming together of three prominent Muslim-majority countries aligned with the West, two of which have land borders with Iran, signals its isolation. Iran has endured months of war with Israel and the United States without losing, but it has done so in part by repeatedly attacking neighboring countries that house U.S. military bases. Now these countries are among those closing ranks against Iran in an agreement signed in and named for Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.
The symbolism can’t be lost on Tehran. The parties to the Mecca pact include some of the world’s most powerful Muslim-majority countries: the two with the biggest economies in the region (Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which also spend the most on their militaries), and the Muslim world’s sole nuclear power (Pakistan).
This is a classic case of “when you’re in a whole, stop digging.” - but the Mullahs refuse to acknowledge this as it would erode their base of power. They will dig themselves in even further fighting endless perceived and real enemies, instead of granting a region and thereby the rest of the world some well-deserved peace.
Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a Breakdown
The idea makes a lot of sense, but according to the cell biologist Junyue Cao, it’s inaccurate. Far from a random but linear process of wear and tear, he argues, aging is a stepwise, programmed, orderly affair. “The destruction of the system is programmed at a very early stage,” said Cao, who heads the Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics at Rockefeller University. Using technology that offers a systemwide view of the aging process in mice, Cao has outlined discrete stages of aging, akin to those of embryonic development, that are defined by changes in molecular signals and specific cell populations. In humans, the process likely begins before age 30.
Ooops, now it’s too late for me, the program is already running. I really don’t think aging is something I want to participate in any time soon as I don’t really appreciate most side-effects.
Dogs can tell if you’re scared or sad
This latest study sought to use fMRI to unravel the underlying neural correlates of processing human facial expressions in dogs. For the first experiment, the team recruited eight dogs (six border collies, one labrador, and one gold retriever) who lived with humans and were well-socialized. Seven of the dogs had previously participated in fMRI studies and were trained to sit still in a sphinx position during the scan; the new participant, Molly, underwent training using the same protocol. The researchers provided the dogs with a chin rest to support their heads during the scan and ear muffs for noise protection. No restraints were used.
Each dog was randomly shown a series of human faces as stimuli, with either neutral or happy expressions, for seven seconds while in the MRI machine. They used the faces of strangers to rule out any familiarity effects. The resulting analysis showed that the temporal cortex (associated with higher cognitive functions) and the caudate nucleus (associated with reward) had the most activity in response to happy faces.
Ain’t science great? M dog of course always knows how I feel and when it is most likely that I will give her a treat.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
Five Things: Sad in Tech, Burning Europe, Cyberwarfare, Small Talk, World Dog Surfing Championships
— Nico