20250831
Peacock feathers are greatly admired for their bright iridescent colors, but it turns out they can also emit laser light when dyed multiple times, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. Per the authors, it's the first example of a biolaser cavity within the animal kingdom. - Nature
People: less pleasure reading. Resigning through a proxy. Mini IKEAs in other shops. Submarining. Mavericks. Learn to adapt. Attention / scarcity. Self publishing. Millennial cringe.
AI: KPMG 100-pages prompt. Home depot, AI cameras and cops. Bubble? Are humans the bottleneck? Missing the point. Cash out of AI slop. AI, surveillance and churches.
Tech: Floating satellites (src). Trump and satellites. Cute pandas hide payloads. LinkedIn leaks. 4G Rpi plants.
Random: Peacock biolasers, and lasers as herbicides. Secret ingredient to ice creams.
Futures: State of corporate foresight. LAVA. Futures jobs - WB. A few snow leopards. Future imaginaries.
Back from holidays!
A Storm of Distractions
Marcus found himself at the convergence of an oddly typical Tuesday and a rampant storm of events that would envelop him in chaos. He had awoken that morning with a singular goal: to finally read the novel that had been gathering dust on his shelf since the arrival of social media, which had been doing a splendid job at munching at his attention like a squirrel at a buffet. The irony wasn’t lost on him—one did not simply read for pleasure in this age. No, that was a thing of the past, and satisfaction had been replaced with the manic dopamine rush of scrolling through curated lives on TikTok.
But before his reading rendezvous could commence, his phone buzzed ominously. The notification indicated a breach, a hacking incident involving LightBasin, a group notorious for their audacious and sophisticated schemes. With a Raspberry Pi fitting snugly into an unsuspicious corner of an ATM, they had crafted an invisible doorway to capital. Marcus couldn't help but wonder how much money could slip through that digital guise without even a paper trail—equivalent to trying to read a novel while several drowning rats clanged their tiny bells to get your attention. He chuckled at the thought but quickly remembered that the marketing world was also grappling with attention being the next capricious currency.
Choosing distraction over reading, he poured himself a cup of coffee and opened the absurd global news. It appeared KPMG had just launched a witty little AI named 'TaxBot' that churned out tax advice faster than one could say “unexpected audit,” raising questions about the very nature of human expertise. Meanwhile, the Australian division of the firm was busy packaging this speedy support as not only necessary but delightfully efficient.
Marcus laughed aloud, a sound that mingled with the glint of irony—was this how humans adapted? He glanced around the living room, seeing the relics of his attempts at homemade ice cream, complete with a faded recipe demanding more time and experimentation than he had. The joys of creation, once a sinew binding his weekends, were slowly giving way to demands of efficiency, like the machines and algorithms that defined their current existence.
He half-heartedly plugged his earbuds in, curious if a meditation app was finally going to sing its praises using the fabricated story of a CEO’s imaginary daughter. “This is the absurdity of modern marketing,” he thought, “sending out a hologram to build connections while real-world relationships languished in the dungeons of submarining.” Like phantoms, relationships rose, ghosted, resurfaced—everything danced in a cycle that felt uncanny.
Determined to reclaim his morning, he settled down, his brow furrowed over the penultimate page of his book, only to be uprooted once more by an ad featuring peacock feather lasers. Delightful! They had uncovered the biolaser caverns of nature; physically marvelous, yet still managed to beg the question, what would this wondrous science lead to if peacock images became a medium for malicious AI?
The world had become a gameboard, each conspiracy turning into a fleeting thought while society chased its own tail on the treadmill of productivity. Marcus flicked through the news again, where NASA’s satellite missions faced the grim reaper of budget cuts, under the specter of a collapsing ecological fabric that echoed across time.
Eventually, he surrendered, eyes closed and heart heavy—the local news segments, crackled hollow; calls for increased security and warnings against personal oversharing felt daunting. With every social channel offering layers upon layers of manufactured wonder, he wondered if the only path forward lay in either sheer resignation or radical reinvention—all the while keeping a watchful eye on both his ice cream experiment and the laser-emitting peacocks.
Only the novel lay in ruins, pages untouched; tomorrow, perhaps, he mused, he might find a slice of time to read about a world that once was—or still could be. Amid this absurdity, perhaps the story of human connection, simple yet profound, was still waiting to be written, even if buried beneath an avalanche of digital distractions.