Put your thinking cap on

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: Home sellers cut prices in July, bring national median down again; A surprising new way to get a little more fibre into your diet; Enemies leave a stronger impression than friends; and The Eagles take The Sphere out for another spin…

Let’s get into it!

A study presented at last week’s annual general meeting of the American Society for Nutrition looked into the differences in nutritional content between prebiotic sodas and more common beverages like regular soda, diet soda, fruit drinks, and flavoured sparkling water.

The researchers found that sodas containing prebiotic fiber, probiotics, or a combination of both typically contained more fiber than the commonly purchased beverages.

On average, a prebiotic soda has 35 calories, five grams of sugar, and five grams of fiber per 12 ounces. That averages out to less sugar, fewer calories, and more fiber compared to regular sodas and fruit juice.

For years, soda consumption was in steady decline as consumers radically shifted away from excess added sugar, and consciously began looking for healthier options. The rise of prebiotics and probiotics has helped reverse the trend, creating a $777 million market that’s currently one of the fastest growing beverage categories.

“Prebiotics are types of fiber that are used by bacteria in the gut as a source of energy,” explains Carlos R. Soto Díaz, a study co-author and researcher in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. “For this reason, prebiotic sodas typically contain added fiber, which also serves as the basis for their prebiotic and gut health marketing claims.”

Several incidents have been reported recently involving AI agents proactively breaking out of their testing environments or hacking into other AI codebases, all while trying to cover their tracks.

While problematic, those in the industry insisted those actions incidents weren’t as apocalyptic as they may have seemed to the average onlooker.

However, the most recent incident may be something to raise the alarm over, because it took place on the public internet—intentionally—rather than in the testing environment where AI agents are meant to remain.

Testers gave Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model access to the public internet and some say it was the definition of opening Pandora’s Box. Despite it’s advanced capabilities, it’s usually pretty limited, because there’s not much it can do in a staging environment.

On the public internet, it’s whole other ballgame, and according to Britain’s AI Security Institute, both Anthropic agents and OpenAI agents were found intentionally using deceptive tactics in order to accomplish the things they were prompted to do.

In one instance, an agent tried to hack into a simulated corporate network by asking a human engineer to input a malicious line of code in the network’s codebase. It made this request using a fabricated bug report, and when it eventually detected people were onto it, it began trying to cover its tracks.

According to a study published recently in Communications Psychology, our minds don’t just remember people, but relationships and stories as well, which serve to contextualize who other people are and what they mean to us.

The researchers recruited 21 college students and had them watch the first six episodes of the television show Suits. They scanned their brains beforehand, while looking at photos of the eight characters featured regularly on the show.

After watching, they were asked to evaluate the personalities and relationships of several pairs of characters making up the eight, and had their brains scanned again while doing so.

The researchers found the mind used narrative and storytelling as a way of understanding the characters, including who was a friend, a villain, or an antagonist.

They also found when it comes to friendships versus antagonistic relationships, the latter leaves a much stronger impression on the region of the brain where such data is stored.

The Vegas Sphere may not be a hotel, and it’s certainly not in California, but the Eagles appear to be learning something very clear about the venue: you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

The band has once again added additional shows at the Sphere, with four set for Jan. 15, 16, 22, and 23, 2027. Presale tickets go on sale on Aug. 12, and the general public sale begins on Aug. 14.

The Eagles already have the longest-running residency at the iconic venue, and if the new shows actually end up being the final four, the residency will wrap up at 72 concerts. The first ones took place in Sept. 2024.

Don Henley said in an interview earlier this year that 2026 would likely be the end of the road for the Eagles.

However, according to a press release announcing the new dates, they were added to address “overwhelming demand,” seemingly suggesting that not only will the Eagles not be done at the end of 2026, but could continue playing well into 2027.

Sing it loud and proud

You might need to get those pipes ready, because it’s time for another round of guess the lyric, with today’s trivia 🎤 🎶