All in a day's work

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: Understanding just how rainy it is in Britain; Is WKRP really coming to Cincinnati; and are we really outsourcing our brains to AI?

Let’s get into it!

It’s not to say that it doesn’t rain often in the United Kingdom, but when it comes down to it, the country actually ranks 83rd in annual precipitation.

Still, the relationship the UK has with rain appears to precede its reputation on the world stage, and locals think it probably has more to do with the culture of the umbrella than the precipitation itself.

South London’s Fox Umbrellas has been in business since 1868. Their handcrafted masterpieces are highly sought after, possibly because of their quality, or the fact that they’ve appeared in iconic series like Outlander, The Crown, and Peaky Blinders.

Tourists still make a point of attending Royal Ascot horseracing specifically just to see “well-dressed individuals, with many carrying an umbrella in case of inclement weather,” said Fox Umbrellas’ managing Director, Paul Garrett, in a CNN interview.

“We get many tourists who value the importance of functionality and elegance of an umbrella to go with their attire,” he said. “We do get visitors from other countries that specifically come to see us to order a bespoke umbrella and spend a lot of time choosing each detail.”

New research from the University of Pennsylvania looked into the implications of large language models (LLMs) increasingly being used by people to do their thinking, instead of relying on their own capabilities.

The study broke thinking down into two categories, while also revealing the rise of a third originating from the use of AI and LLMs.

They found decision-making is done through “‘fast, intuitive, and affective processing” (System 1)’…or by ‘slow, deliberative, and analytical reasoning’ (System 2).”

System 3, however, was described as one independent of the human mind, relying entirely on a data-driven machine’s algorithmic processing capabilities, which the researchers referred to as “cognitive surrender.”

While humans have relied on cognitive “offloading” for decades, with the use of technology like calculators and GPS systems, cognitive surrender involves completely ceding the process of mental reasoning to an external machine.

You can read here for full details of the study’s findings, but at a high level, the researchers found over 1,300 study participants taking part in nearly 2,000 individual cognitive reflection tests deferred to an LLM’s authority nearly 3 out of 4 times on average, despite knowing the LLM in question was going to be wrong 50% of the time.

A study conducted by chemistry researchers at the University of Michigan found there may have been a contaminant in countless papers researching levels of microplastics in various environments, leading to a dramatic overstatement of how much microplastic was actually present.

Using air samplers to retrieve particles in the atmosphere, chemistry grad student Madeline Clough found there were exponentially more microplastics in the samples than she anticipated.

“It led to a wild goose chase of trying to figure out where this contamination could possibly have come from,” Clough said.

“Was it a plastic squirt bottle, was it particles in the atmosphere of the lab where I was preparing the substrates? We finally traced it down to gloves.”

Most lab gloves are coated with “stearates,” which are a kind of salty soap-like material, and they’re almost chemically identical to most types of microplastic. They often seep into lab samples and obfuscate the data, according to Clough.

Clough and her team didn’t specify how many previous studies likely need to be redone, but they urged scientists to use cleanroom gloves moving forward, which are not typically coated in materials that distort levels of the very thing scientists are analyzing.

WKRP may have been in Cincinnati during the fictional TV series that ran from 1978 to 1982, but in reality, the radio station’s call sign has only ever existed at a station in Raleigh, North Carolina.

101.9 WKRP-LP launched in Raleigh in 2015, but the rights to the letters were listed for sale earlier this year, and “as God as my witness,” it appears they were bought by someone in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati," D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the call letters, told The Associated Press. "Book it! It's done!"

McIntire told the AP that he first watched the beloved series at age 13, and after seeing it just one time from the very beginning, he swore he’d bring it to life.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

It appears he’s actually owned the station in Raleigh since it launched in November of 2015. He says he’s contractually bound by silence for now, but as far as the move to Cincinnati is concerned, "It will be radio," he said. "But that's all I can tell you at this time."

It slices, it dices, it quizzes

If you’re a fan of all the wacky, wonderful stuff you could buy on TV, you’re gonna love today’s trivia!

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift card.

Winner will be notified on Wednesday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *