A new leaf

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: NATO’s growing pains aren’t a crisis, says NATO ambassador; The renovated National Geographic Museum opens; Engineers have created a building material that swallows carbon; and it turns out ‘sleeping on it’ might be the smartest way to make decisions…🤔

Let’s get into it!

The National Geographic Museum closed in 2023, but just three years later it’s back with a $300 million makeover across 100,000 square feet of wonder.

Called the National Geographic Museum of Exploration, it features a hands-on immersive experience that allows guests to step inside hundreds of methods of exploration.

Visitors can follow a hiker up Mount Everest, or sit by the ocean sipping a cocktail as whales swim by. While these experiences are featured as projections on a wall, feedback so far has suggested they’re so immersive, it’s almost hard to remember they’re just projections.

The National Geographic Society began printing its iconic magazine in 1888, and you better believe there’s a database at the museum that allows guests to view every single cover ever published. It’s a nod to the legions of “Explorers” NatGeo has supported over the years, many of whom captured moments in the wild that continue to transcend time.

“This museum tells the story of amazing humans who’ve explored, from our founding in 1888 all the way up to people doing work in the field today,” chief campus and experiences officer Emily Dunham told CNN.

Paebbl, a Dutch materials company, says it’s created the world’s first carbon-negative building material, allowing for the construction of buildings that also act as carbon sinks.

Called Rebond 300, the compound is known as a supplementary cementitious material, and can replace 30% of Portland cement.

Builders can still rely on the superiority of cement as a construction material, while also injecting it with a substance that has a verified Environmental Product Declaration footprint of -149 kg of CO2 per tonne (-328 lbs of CO2 per ton).

According to the company, the product leverages a process accelerated mineralization, which refers to the geological process by which CO2 is turned to stone in nature by reacting with minerals.

The process normally takes thousands of years; Paebbl sped it up a bit.

“Where conventional construction materials are optimized to reduce their carbon footprint, we’ve manufactured Rebond 300 to remove carbon from the atmosphere and lock it permanently into the built environment,” the company stated. 

Whenever anyone has a tough decision to make, the first piece of advice that comes to mind is almost always “sleep on it.”

It’s a textbook example of conventional wisdom that’s never really carried any scientific weight, but most find it helpful.

It turns it out it might be helpful because it actually does have scientific backing, according to a pair of studies conducted earlier this year.

The first was published in Communications Psychology in April. Its researchers concluded the contents of dreams are often heavily influenced by the experiences of the previous day, and those who take interest in the complexity of their dreams will tend to have more vivid, complex, and insightful ones.

In other words, it’s entirely possible that actively deciding to sleep on a decision can help with making that decision, allowing the subconscious mind to work its magic and illuminate perspectives you may not consciously be aware of.

Furthermore, the second study—published in Neuroscience of Consciousness in February—leveraged the expertise of “dream engineers” to determine if dream contents are manipulable.

The researchers found participants were more likely to solve puzzles they dreamt of than ones they didn’t dream of. They also found it was possible to trigger puzzle recall while participants slept using a series of auditory cues.

What that means is it’s likely possible to consciously force a dream to contain information about the impending decision. So yeah, go ahead…sleep on it!

The Masters of Reality - Why Black Sabbath Matter is officially scheduled for release in October.

The book was assembled by legendary rock photographer Ross Halfin, and features pictures, stories, memorabilia, and more covering the groundbreaking founders of the heavy metal genre.

At 500 pages in length, it also features essays penned by Geoff Barton and Dave Ling, who each interviewed every member of the band individually—specifically for this project.

The book has been in the works for years, and was initially slated for release around the time of the Back to the Beginning farewell show. Ozzy’s passing weeks later resulted in a delay.

"Ozzy was fully involved with the book and he signed the book plates months before the final show, as did all the band members. So now, we all thought the time was right, one year after Back to the Beginning, to announce the project. A book we all feel celebrates both Black Sabbath and Ozzy and illustrates just how important they are. I hope fans enjoy it."

Say what?

We need your input, so don’t stifle yourself Staker! You’ll be finishing iconic lines with today’s complete the TV quote trivia 📺️ 😏