Golden years

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. What science has learned about living in cities, floods are going to continue getting worse, and Aerosmith joins an exclusive club 😎

Let’s get into it!

Evolutionary biologists at Loughborough University, England and the University of Zurich, Switzerland, say the speed at which industrialization drove half the world’s population into modern cities may have had a critical impact on core biological functions known to drive human “evolutionary fitness.”

Rising chronic disease, declining fertility, and diminishing strength and endurance may all be a consequence of urbanization, according to the study, which could signal disaster given 68% of the entire human race is expected to live in cities by 2050.

“For most of human history, our biology was shaped by natural environments, but industrialization has rapidly transformed the world around us—faster than our bodies can adapt,” Danny Longman, senior lecturer in human evolutionary physiology at Loughborough, told Newsweek.

“Emerging evidence of impaired biological function in the environments we now inhabit led us to propose the Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis: that our nature-adapted biology is poorly aligned with our modern urban environments.”

The study was based on existing evidence compiled from several related disciplines, including anthropology, ecology, physiology, along with public health data, revealing the unnatural habitat of a modern city may be chronically inhibiting human health on a mass scale, both short- and long-term.

Google announced it would soon release its beta AI detector known as SynthID in order for users to be able to distinguish AI generated images from human generated ones.

The announcement was made shortly after the release of Nano Banana Pro, Google’s hyper real AI image editor that’s become the gold standard of generative AI image-making; it’s almost impossible to determine that a Nano Banana Pro image is AI-generated simply by glancing at it.

Images created using this tool contain invisible watermarks, which SynthID can read. The problem, however, is that SynthID has a perfect track record, provided it’s scanning images created with Google-made products.

While it’s seriously limiting to only be able to flag Google-made content, the existence of such a detector will likely force others in the AI race to develop similar programs for identifying content made on their own platforms.

Researchers at Princeton University have released an alarming study about rising sea levels caused by climate change. According to the data, severe floods that typically only happen every hundred years could become an annual occurrence by the end of the 21st century.

Rising sea levels and warming global temperatures have already made hurricanes more powerful and more frequent, but storm surges like the ones seen during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 are yet to become regular occurrences.

The study modelled out several carbon emission scenarios (from moderate to severe) over the next 75 years, and mapped out the corresponding sea level increases based on each scenario.

“By the end of this century, the flood hazard is going to go up tremendously," said study lead author Amirhosein Begmohammadi, a civil engineer who worked on the project during his postdoctoral research at Princeton University.

Begmohammadi and his team found that when it comes to regions like New York and Connecticut, storms won’t necessarily have to become more severe if sea levels rise by certain amounts. For example, a three-foot rise could mean a storm wouldn’t necessarily have to hit head-on like Sandy to cause similar damage.

"People who design for resilience do so using the 100-year events, but they're not designing for the future changes,” said Begmohammadi. "A 100-year event now is not the same as one in the future."

Aerosmith’s One More Time EP debuted at no. 9 on the Billboard 200, making the classic rock juggernaut just the fifth musical act to chart a top ten album during each of the last six decades (and only the second group).

Aerosmith’s fourth album, Rocks, came out in 1976 and peaked at no. 3, making it the Boston outfit’s only top ten album of the ‘70s, despite the band releasing five others in that decade.

It took 13 years to get back into the top ten as well, with the release of Pump (Love in an Elevator, Janie’s Got a Gun, The Other Side, What It Takes), which peaked at no. 5.

Aerosmith levelled up big time in the ‘90s, though, with Get a Grip (Cryin’, Crazy, Amazing, Livin’ on the Edge), and the hype carried over onto Nine Lives (Hole in my Soul, Pink). Both albums peaked at no. 1 on the Billboard 200.

The next decade included 2001’s Just Push Play and 2004’s Honkin’ on Bobo, which peaked at no. 2 and no. 5, respectively, followed by 2012’s Music From Another Dimension!, which also peaked at no. 5.

Adding 28-year-old phenom rocker Yungblud to One More Time certainly helped get Aerosmith into the top ten for the sixth consecutive decade, which means they’re now breathing the same air as Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and James Taylor.

Chillin’ out part 2

You guys loved how we played it cool with yesterday’s quiz so we’re doubling down 🥶

We’ve got a set of 10 chilly questions about movies with wintry themes and scenes in today’s trivia! Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

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