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Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. AI is taking over businesses faster than software but comes with unique risks, where to ski without breaking the bank, and more evidence suggests the shingles vaccine fights dementia 👨‍🔬

Let’s get into it!

AI is being rapidly adopted by businesses everywhere. When it comes to Silicon Valley, the goal is always to move as fast as possible, and use agile workplace structures to patch holes in the ship without slowing it down.

The problem with this methodology when it comes to AI is that this type of technology doesn’t fail in a way that software does.

As described by John Bruggeman, chief information security officer at technology solution provider CBTS, while software will breakdown because of a bug in the architecture, AI automation systems will often fail because they’re doing exactly what humans told them to do, but in a way humans didn’t anticipate.

In an interview with CNBC, he described an IBM-deployed AI service agent that was convinced by a customer to issue a refund that made logical sense, but didn’t line up with the refund policy. The customer left a positive review, prompting the automation to issue more unwarranted refunds to earn more positive reviews—a goal it was trained to pursue, but not in a way its human programmers anticipated.

Experts say the human failure to understand how this technology functions could have colossal implications, particularly given how fast companies are moving to adopt it and how insistent they are on deferring troubleshoots to AI makers like Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI.

Prices for goods and services aren’t rising as quickly as they were a few years ago, but consumers are still adjusting—often unsuccessfully—to the still-sky-high prices of things they once rarely thought twice about.

For recreational skiers today, committing to their usual resort feels like staring down a double-black-diamond mogul run. As individual mountains have been bought up by major conglomerates, resort and lift fees have risen so sharply that they’ve left skiers are left with two options: go elsewhere or buy a season pass.

New York resident Evan Glassman is feeling the pain. He used to take his family to Deer Valley in Utah, where single-day lift tickets now cost as much as $340. Multiply that by four or five days, and then again by three or four family members, and the costs become exorbitant.

That’s why he’s shifted gears and is now taking his family to neighboring Solitude Mountain and Brighton, where lift tickets rarely exceed $137.

On the East Coast, Vail Resorts is now the king of the hill and encourages skiers to buy the $1,050 Epic Pass, which brings per-day prices down but forces customers to decide early and likely commit to more skiing than they want to in order to get their money’s worth.

The Indy Pass, however, costs $599 and gives families access to Bolton Valley in Vermont, Saddleback Mountain in Maine, Pats Peak in New Hampshire, and multiple other non-conglomerate-owned hills across North America.

We covered several studies published last year that found a striking side effect in patients who received the shingles vaccine: they were less likely to develop dementia, suffer its symptoms, or die from it.

Multiple additional studies published early this year supported that finding, accounted for healthy‑user bias, and concluded that the vaccine may be even more effective than previously believed as a defence against dementia.

Earlier research examined the dementia‑related impact of the 2006 Zostavax shingles vaccine produced by Merck, which was found to reduce the risk of shingles in older adults by 51%. In 2017, the Shingrix vaccine—developed by GlaxoSmithKline—became widely adopted due to its efficacy of between 90% and 97%.

A 2024 study published in Nature Medicine compared dementia rates among Zostavax users and Shingrix users. Although not fully conclusive, it found that Shingrix users experienced 17% more time dementia‑free.

One of the 2026 studies, published in Nature Communications, compared dementia rates among 66,000 Shingrix users and 260,000 unvaccinated patients, finding that the vaccinated group had a 51% lower risk of developing dementia.

Another study—published in the Journal of Gerontology—found that the shingles vaccine may slow biological aging more broadly. By reducing inflammation and slowing aging at the molecular level, cognitive decline may also be delayed or prevented.

In the Congo Basin (also known as “the lungs of Africa”), blackwater lakes are emitting carbon dioxide at an unusual rate, despite the region being considered one of the largest carbon sinks on Earth.

The region accounts for just 0.3% of the world’s landmass but holds roughly one-third of the organic carbon stored in tropical peatlands across the entire planet.

A study published in Nature Geoscience found two of the blackwater lakes are releasing CO₂  into the atmosphere, 40% of which comes directly from ancient peat dissolved in the water.

“It is entirely possible that this is a natural, balanced cycle: The vast peatlands slowly release carbon from below while sequestering a comparable amount from above, resulting in no net loss,” said lead author Travis Drake, a carbon biogeochemist at ETH Zürich. “However, the more alarming possibility is that climate or land-use changes are actively destabilizing the system, causing it to lose its stored carbon.”

Drake noted some paleoenvironmental markers were found in the peat samples he and his team analyzed, suggesting climate change—both natural and anthropogenic—could cause peatlands to dry out, face more oxygen exposure, and release CO₂  faster and in greater volumes.

C3PO’s body parts have been flying all over the galaxy for nearly 50 years, so it’s not surprising that one of them is ending up on the auction block this month.

However, the Propstore sale starting on March 25 will feature what the famed movie memorabilia auction house says is “the only known example of Threepio’s head from the second film to appear on the collector market.”

That’s right; the droid known for providing information folks rarely ask for but almost always end up using is donating his expressionless face and wisdom-filled animatronic skull to the auction block.

The ultra-rare prop from 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back is expected to fetch between $350,000 and $700,000 as the highlight of the annual prop sale.

Another Star Wars item up for grabs is the lightsaber hilt Rey obtains in The Force Awakens before she scales the summit of Ahch-To to return it to its owner—a guy by the name of Luke Skywalker.

While the young Jedi Rey may not yet command the same star‑power as Darth Vader, if her lightsaber hilt sells for its estimated $50,000–$100,000, the buyer will likely be getting a bargain—especially considering that Vader’s hilt sold last year for $4 million.

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