Poetry In Parks, Veggie Palm Scanner, UFO Videos and the Solution To Global Warming

The Magical Mashup of National Parks and a Nobel Laureate's Poetry

Ada Limón, the current US poet laureate, is teaming up with the U.S. National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America to put two things that inarguably belong together into the same space. If you are a reader of poetry, you already know the transformative experience that can come from reading words woven with emotion. National Parks also inspire a sense of wonder and allow for deeper self-reflection.

The newly announced “You Are Here: Poetry in Parks” initiative will start with seven parks across America (see the list here), with installations to be unveiled in 2024 that will "transform park features like picnic tables into public art and poetry." The timing is perfectly on trend too, as "viral workout trends" like silent walking gain attention and people seek out more quiet spaces where they can do better work, think bigger thoughts and disconnect from distractions.

"Brotox" and the Men's Cosmetic Procedure Boom

The cheek implant was the fastest growing men's aesthetic procedure this past year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. This so-called boom in "brotox" procedures, which includes everything from lip augmentations to butt lifts, is evidence of a growing willingness and social acceptance among men to consider undergoing beauty procedures.

It may also be an example of how the beauty industry “reached a point of total saturation when it comes to making women feel insecure about their appearance," as The Guardian suggested, so now they are turning to men. That's seeing this trend through a cynical lens.

A more empathetic perspective could be to accept that men too can now turn to cosmetic procedures as a way to bolster their self confidence. It's easy to criticize someone for going under the knife. And maybe easier to ridicule the men who do it. But if a medical procedure can dramatically improve someone's sense of self, none of them deserve to be criticized for their choice to do it.

Inside the Pentagon's New Website To Watch Declassified UFO Videos

If you believe aliens have already landed on Earth and the government is keeping it secret, a new website from the Pentagon is unlikely to change your mind. Still, the launch of the Department of Defense's AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) website is an interesting development in the ongoing quest to track and catalog UFO appearances. The site features declassified videos that are "approved for public release," and suggests there are several locations in Japan which may be "hotspots" for unexplained aerial sightings.

The existence of this site (and its release now) may also be evidence of what social scientists call priming. In other words, if there had been alien contact on Earth or if such an announcement were imminent, releasing a government website about UFOs might be a good first step to acclimate humanity to the real possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Ok, not convinced aliens exist yet?

This week in the NY Times, prominent astrophysics professor Adam Frank and author of the forthcoming book The Little Book of Aliens suggested that the story of our universe may be "unraveling" and that alien presence on Earth isn't really that far fetched when you consider that about 95% of the known universe consists of "dark matter" and "dark energy" - two things we can't see or measure. Perhaps aliens exist within that same 95%.

7-Eleven Japan Tests Palm Scanner To Check If You Are Eating Veggies

Radar speed scanners slow down drivers by showing them how fast they are going. The awareness creates the behavior change. Could the same idea shift how we eat?

In Japan, 7-Eleven is testing a Vege-Check palm scanner that "uses reflection spectroscopy to measure carotenoid levels in a person's skin." These are the biomarkers that can estimate the amount of fruits and vegetables someone has eaten. In 30 seconds, a palm scanner reads customer's palms and tells them their "vegetable intake level" on a scale of 1 to 12.

Imagine this being used in schools to encourage kids to make healthier eating choices. Perhaps it could be gamified or connected into existing games like NBA 2k and Fitbit did several years ago. If these veggie scores were part of a game or reward system, it might have a chance to achieve the impossible: get kids to make healthier eating choices on their own.

The World's Cheapest Way To Fight Global Warming

Emissions from airplanes are currently responsible for an estimated 3.5% of human-caused global warming. Researchers at Breakthrough Energy may be able to help lower this. When flying, aircraft leave behind condensation trails (contrails) that form artificial clouds which end up trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Reducing these contrails is, in the words of one researcher, "the highest-leverage climate opportunity that we know of."

New research shows this can be done by using machine learning to help aircraft avoid flying through "humid ice supersaturated regions of the atmosphere" using only simple adjustments to flying altitude throughout a flight, something that pilots are already accustomed to doing. After making the discovery, a research team worked with American Airlines to use their predictions on about 70 flights between January and March of 2023 and found that contrail creation was reduced by 54% on those flights.

It's not yet a no-brainer, though, due to the face that these flights also consumed about 2% more fuel (not an insignificant amount) to make those flights. These adjustments may also present some challenges for air traffic controllers. Given the urgency of the global warming problem, it seems clear that within a matter of years (if not sooner) these challenges will be minor obstacles and this solution will gain widespread adoption.

A Canadian Solution To The Homelessness Epidemic

Imagine this scenario ... a wildly successful tech company goes on a hiring spree, paying new hire salaries well above the city-wide average. These workers drive housing prices higher, making homes unaffordable for others outside the tech industry. The inequity creates a housing crisis and homelessness epidemic. To avoid blame and perhaps try and help, the successful company gives millions to nonprofits. The money has sadly little impact. Frustrated, the company threatens to withhold their economic clout from the city by moving their huge annual conference (and it's $50M+ budget) elsewhere if it gets disrupted by the homeless.

This is the real life drama happening now with Salesforce as founder Marc Benioff threatens to move their huge Dreamforce conference away from San Francisco just as the city struggles with a homeless epidemic and substance abuse problems on the street. It's easy to think it's a problem with no solution. Yet this same week, a newly released study in Canada demonstrated the effects of giving people experiencing homelessness a cash transfer of $7500 without conditions. A year later, they measured what people spent it on:

"The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent."

The implications are clear. If we're going to make a real difference in the lives of homeless people and create more livable cities for all, more non-obvious thinking and unexpected solutions will be needed. Like giving money directly to people instead of donating millions of dollars in feel-good PR efforts or relying on failed experiments.