Cuttin' a rug

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Trump admin preparing for largest-ever visa revocation; how to keep an even keel when the only constant is change; and what the hell is a shark graveyard doing in an Egyptian desert?

Let’s get into it!

Uncertainty is a word that’s become pretty commonplace, but did you know there are actually five distinct sources of it?

Various neuroscience studies have concluded that uncertainty arises due to ambiguous inputs, external noise, internal noise, incomplete information, or imperfect information processing.

Knowing which source is transmitting at any given time is key to managing the anxiety that often accompanies one into the abyss of uncertainty.

An example of an ambiguous input is when you call someone and they don’t pick up the phone. In some cases, you may be tempted to conclude they screened the call or they’re in trouble. Ambiguous inputs can be dealt with through reinterpretation: ask why you reacted the way you did, make efforts to delay reacting at all, and try to draw a positive conclusion instead.

External noise is often the loudest source of uncertainty, and is usually the leading source in a team effort of ambiguous and incomplete information. Simply put: lower the noise and strengthen the signal. Expose yourself to what truly matters and filter out the rest.

Internal noise is silent but ironically often just as loud and often more difficult to manage.

A first-of-its-kind study published in Global Challenges assessed how the world would actually fare in the event of a global calamity, based on a specific set of criteria defining the various types of global threats.

The researchers identified three types of global catastrophic risks (GCRs): Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios, in which sunlight is blocked due to an asteroid, nuclear winter, or super-volcano; Global Catastrophic Infrastructure Loss, in which electricity, transport, and food production fail; and Global Catastrophic Biological Risks, in which some sort of biohazard—natural or man-made—results in mass casualties on a global scale.

"Australia is likely the most resilient place on Earth when it comes to global catastrophic risks," the researchers wrote.

Resilience was defined as a country’s ability to maintain societal function in the face of a GCR. According to the paper, the most resilient countries are “democratic; wealthier; have lower inequality; have a large industrial base, with high governmental influence; are located in remote locations, like large islands; have higher decentralization and diversity; and are not highly reliant on trade, or have geographically close trading partners.”

While no country is fully insulated from GCRs, the researchers said countries like Australia—and to a lesser extent, New Zealand, Japan, and Switzerland—are most equipped to handle the unleashing of hell on earth.

There was a time when the only electronic device that mattered when we were out of the house was the street lights telling us when it was time to go home.

Personal nostalgia “motivates us to remember the past in our own life [and] helps to unite us to that authentic self,” according to Dr. Krystine Batcho, a professor of psychology at LeMoyne College.

Historical nostalgia, on the other hand, tends to bubble up when we’re dissatisfied with the present.

“If people are unhappy for any reason with how things are today, they’re more likely to then experience this sense that things must have been better in the past,” Batcho said.

Modern phone addiction has caused these two nostalgias to merge for those who were lucky enough to live before the Matrix became reality.

For those too young to personally remember, the historical nostalgia is still palpable; Gen Z YouTube is currently flooded with viral videos of people innocuously going about their days in the ‘90s, with viewers lamenting the loss of a world free of smartphones.

A recent study found just blocking internet access on participants’ smartphones for two weeks (thereby reducing them simply to “phones”) resulted in 91% reporting “improved mental health, subjective well-being, and objectively measured ability to sustain attention.”

Leave the phone at home; there’s still plenty of time before the streetlights come on.

The last thing anyone would expect to find in the deserts of Egypt is water, but if you travelled back through the sands of time to the Abu-Tartur Plateau, you’d not only find yourself at the bottom of an ancient sea, you’d probably also be surrounded by sharks.

A team of researchers led by Cairo University paleontologist Tarek Yassin discovered fossilized teeth of seven different species of shark, five of which for the first time in this particular region.

"Collectively, this assemblage highlights a nutrient-enriched, high-productivity marine ecosystem along a phosphogenic shelf margin," the team wrote in its paper published in Cretaceous Research.

Most of the northern edge of Africa was completely submerged in this lively marine ecosystem during the Cretaceous period, which took place between 60 million and 144 million years ago.

In Egypt’s Western Desert specifically, a shallow inland sea covered certain areas while also connecting it to the Tethys Ocean, which stretched from what’s now the Caribbean to Southern Europe, the Middle East, and the Himalayas during the cracking of Pangea—history’s biggest breakup.

Wearin’ many hats

Some actors become synonymous with certain characters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t ever take on different roles. We’ll be given you an actor, and asking you to tell us who else they played with today’s same actor, different character trivia 😎