In stitches

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Forgiveness may heal your body as well as your soul; Apple and Amazon AI listening devices may be skirting the law; and the impossible triangle of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.

But first, our weekly poll!

Most people learn from a young age that it’s better to forgive than to hold onto a grudge. Bitterness and resentment only hurt the bitter and resentful.

This lesson isn’t just something parents teach their kids to introduce them to conflict resolution; science is on the side of the angels here, too.

For example, one global study involving 4,600 people from five different countries asked volunteers to participate in forgiveness interventions, and found those who did so over time demonstrated fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.

On top of the mental weight resentment imposes and how forgiveness literally lifts that weight off the shoulders, those of a forgiving nature likely improve their likelihood of longevity.

Holding a grudge amplifies the stress response, and not just in relation to the person or thing with whom the grudge is held. Cortisol levels may spike at first due to an isolated incident, but after a while, they just end up hovering above where they should, adding unnecessary stress and subtracting days of a life well lived.

Elevated cortisol reduces sleep quality, heightens blood pressure, slows metabolism, and over time, accelerates biological aging.

Forgiveness eases the mind, calms the nerves, and sooths the soul.

The Apple Watch Series 12 features Siri Recap, which can listen to conversations throughout the day and either jot down what it heard, or parse out the meaning and jot that down instead. Amazon’s Frontier bracelet and Eclipse brick are designed to handle similar tasks.

Both families of products are potentially running the risk of violating wiretap laws, because while they’re intended to `be used for organizing a person’s day, they can also be used to listen in on private conversations.

"A non-wearer did not buy the watch, agree to Apple's terms, or choose to have their conversation summarized in the app," Colin Zick, a privacy and data security attorney at Foley Hoag, told CNBC.

Legal experts say wiretap and privacy laws are typically worded to determine if a private conversation or its contents were intercepted by a non-participant. While Amazon has reassured users about the Frontier and Eclipse, saying "no one, including Amazon, can access your data,” questions remain regarding who can access your conversations.

Michael Stokes, a former CIA officer and current senior vice president of emerging technologies at Veilant, says these types of devices create a “bystander problem,” because they allow for people to be surveilled without actually owning any of the technology.

It’s probably appropriate that despite exhaustive analyses of every brush stroke of The Starry Night, there are parts of it that simply left this world with the artist himself.

One of those parts is the answer to the question: did van Gogh base this painting on an observed sky, or did he make it up?

A study published in Nature by South Korean researchers hypothesized that the sky portion of the painting was inspired by what the artist actually saw out his asylum window in Saint-Rémy, southern France, but that it was inspired by several different nights before, during, and after July 22, 1889.

Most believe the painting was finished in mid-June of that year, because of a letter van Gogh sent around that time discussing a starry night sky. However, the waxing-gibbous Moon in the painting doesn’t reflect the size and position of the Moon just before dawn in mid-late June of that year.

The V-shaped cluster of stars off the center—known as the Hyades—can be seen in the pre-dawn sky of Saint-Rémy in mid-late June and in late July, along with the brightest star just off the horizon (which is actually Venus).

The study very likely settles two things: van Gogh painted The Starry Night during June and July (at least) of 1889, and that the answer to almost any question can be found in art or the stars.

Spotify announced the other day that in an effort to keep human-created music center-stage, it’s deleted over 50 million AI-generated slop or spam tracks from its curated lists of recommended music this year alone.

“AI-generated slop and spam don’t belong in your recommendations, and we’ve made changes to keep them out and protect the listening experience,” Spotify said in a statement Tuesday.

The tracks were frequently skipped over anyway, likely due to them being nonsense. While there are AI songs that were generated based on music written by actual humans, the majority of what gets uploaded can only loosely be described as music at all.

It’s not easy to weed out 50 million tracks individually, so Spotify developed an algorithm of its own to detect user behavior that signals a song is being skipped or ignored because it’s AI slop and not really a song. When such patterns are detected, the track is automatically removed by Spotify.

On top of the user experience being compromised when AI-generated tracks flood the app, the company also has to act diligently when tracks are generated to sound exactly like specific human artists who rely on play count for some of their own income.

Quizmaster’s choice

You know the drill, Staker! It’s Friday, so it’s time for a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and another round of à la carte for today’s trivia!