It's rabbit season

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Honda puts the brakes on EV, let’s see how well you can recognize an AI generated face, and you won’t believe who’s making a comeback 🤔

Let’s get into it!

A study published in the British Journal of Psychology found even those who are deemed “super recognizers” aren’t that good at determining if a face is AI-generated.

Super recognizers comprise 1% to 2% of the population. They’re able to recall the faces of people they met or saw briefly years prior and can often spot background actors that most people miss in TV shows and movies.

The study’s researchers recruited 36 super recognizers and 89 average people and had each participant take an online test to evaluate faces—some AI-generated, and some real.

It found super recognizers were only slightly better at distinguishing AI from real, accurately identifying 57.3% of the faces on average, while the control group correctly guessed 50.7%. Some members of the control group, however, were more successful than some of the super recognizers.

“Ironically, the most advanced AI faces aren’t given away by what’s wrong with them, but by what’s too right,” said study author and ANU psychologist Dr Amy Dawel. “Rather than obvious glitches, they tend to be unusually average—highly symmetrical, well-proportioned and statistically typical.

Go on, give it a try and see how well you do 👀

Honda announced the other day that it’s shutting down the 0 Series (Zero Series) EV months before production was scheduled to begin, in a shocking reversal that’s expected to cost the Japanese automaker over $2 billion.

0 Series models showcased at international auto shows recently included a wedge-shaped sedan called the Saloon, along with an SUV, both of which were positioned as the crown jewels of the company’s next-gen production and design strategy.

Production was slated to begin at the Honda manufacturing facility in Ohio, where the company had already invested hundreds of millions of dollars retrofitting the assembly line. Similar renovations were underway at Honda’s plant in Alliston, Ontario, where part of a CA$15 billion investment in its Ontario facilities was paused last year for the same reason.

Rapidly declining demand for electric vehicles in North America, where prices remain prohibitive and infrastructure is nowhere near holistic enough to support a mass transition from gas-powered to electric vehicles, is changing the outlook for almost every auto manufacturer.

“Honda determined that starting production and sales of these three models in the current business environment where the demand for EVs is declining significantly would likely result in further losses over the long term,” the automaker said.

Otters may be one of the cutest aquatic creatures on earth but they’re also apex predators. These vicious little guys need the ecosystems they occupy to be functionally intact, which was not the case for many years in the rivers of the Midwest and Ontario.

Many of the tributaries and inlets flowing in and out of the Great Lakes were so polluted in places like Toronto, Chicago, and several in Ohio, that they’d even occasionally catch fire. This killed off a lot of the biosphere required for otters to survive, which resulted in their local extinction across 11 American states, and near-extinction in an additional nine.

Now decades of restoration efforts in those regions have resulted in the return of biodiversity. In 1986, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources borrowed otters still roaming in the east and south, and reintroduced them to rivers in the Midwest and Great Lakes region rivers.

With fish stocks continuing to grow, and the riverbed vegetation sprawling, otters are once again thriving in their rightful homes.

“All of these efforts were bolstered by the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a landmark US–Canada treaty that pushed both countries toward reducing toxic discharges and restoring damaged habitats,” said Timothy Mihocik at Rewilding Magazine.

Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time and the MJ effect continues to passively set records, most recently in the form of the first issue of Sports Illustrated that he graced the cover of.

Standing next to North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins, MJ posed for the cover that declared the Tar Heels college basketball team the one to beat ahead of the 1983-84 season. Though the team lost to Indiana in the Sweet Sixteen that year, it didn’t stop the magazine cover from achieving immortality.

At a Goldin Auction online this past weekend, a 9.6-graded copy of the magazine sold for $229,360, setting a record for the most expensive magazine in history.

According to PSA, a 9.6 graded copy “will have sharp corners but can have very minimal wear, minor spine stress with a few color breaks, scuffs, or perhaps very minor edge or tiny corner wear.”

MJ can now add a magazine to his list of most expensive sports memorabilia. The jersey he wore during the 1998 NBA finals (the “Last Dance”) sold in 2022 for $10.1 million.

He’s also on two of the four most expensive NBA trading cards ever sold, including a 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Dual Logoman Autograph of Jordan and Kobe Bryant that sold for $12.9 million last year, and a 2006-07 Upper Deck Exquisite Dual Logoman Autograph of Jordan and LeBron James that sold for $10 million.

Reruns galore

We’ve got a fun one for you, Staker. If you remember all those shows you watched at lunchtime and after school, you’ll do just fine because we’re quizzin’ you on epic syndicated reruns, in today’s trivia.

Give today’s game a try and you might just win a $25 e-gift card

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