To the letter

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Markets bump likelihood of rate hike next week to 70%; are humans starting to sound like the AI chatbots they talk to?; and the mind blowing evolution of the spider-tailed horned viper.

But first, our weekly poll!

Pew Research published a report a few weeks ago revealing about 10% of the entire internet is likely AI-generated. When accounting for content created only since ChatGPT was launched, the number rises to about 35%.

The researchers used a program called Open Pangram to analyze 10,000 randomly selected internet pages. Open Pangram is an AI detection tool that spots various “tells” a piece of content will likely have if it was AI-generated.

The most widely-known tell is probably the overuse of Em dashes throughout any LLM-generated text.

LLMs also tend to overly rely on formal and academic language, which is likely a byproduct of the fact that most text they’re trained on is of an academic nature.

There are also about 30 words that, for whatever reason, are used by LLMs disproportionately often. Words like crucial, enhance, garner, intricate, meticulous, significant, and tapestry have more than doubled in usage since 2023.

This begs the question: are AI chatbots influencing changes in human linguistics?
One study conducted by Hiromu Yakura and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development analyzed 730,000 hours of speech taken from 820,000 podcast episodes.

They found 20 words specifically have “increased abruptly in spontaneous human speech” since 2023, including eight or nine that were also identified by the Pew team.

Dementia is a term for multiple neurodegenerative conditions that tend to drive cognitive decline later in life. Alzheimer’s is the most well-known and most serious, but several others are believed to be preventable, or at least delayable.

A landmark study published in The Lancet in 2024 found 14 risk factors that together account for about 45% of dementia cases overall. In that sense, the study’s authors found modifying or eliminating these risk factors when applicable could prevent or delay the disease.

The World Health Organization has officially recognized the study’s conclusiveness, and issued new guidelines this week for preventing or delaying the onset of dementia.

The risk factors include being minimally educated as a child, and in midlife, risks include hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, depression, traumatic brain injury, smoking, excessive alcohol, diabetes, physical inactivity, hypertension, and obesity. Later in life, social isolation, air pollution, and vision loss were found to be contributing risks.

"We know more today than ever before about what drives dementia risk, and these guidelines translate that knowledge into action," said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"Countries now have clear, evidence-based recommendations they can put into practice immediately to protect people's cognitive health."

The spider-tailed horned viper is native to Iran, and is one of the most bizarre, scary, and incredible species on the planet.

The spider you can see in the photo above is not actually a spider, but—as the species’ name suggests—is the end of the snake’s tail. Rattle snakes play their prey a little music to attract them; the spider-tailed horned viper puts on a magic show, and it’s usually the last thing a bird sees.

Officially named the Pseudocerastes urarachnoides, this snake was first discovered in 1968 and was believed to just be a one-off miracle of nature. It took 40 years, but a subsequent specimen was discovered in 2006. The spider tail wasn’t an accident, but an extreme case of evolutionary brilliance enabling the creature to use caudal luring to attract its dinner.

Perhaps even more mesmerizing is the “spider” is purely a puppet; the anatomical structure has no bones; just tissue.

"We expected there might be some obvious bony element in the tail or something at the end that alluded to the external features, but nope!" said herpetologist Sara Ruane of the Field Museum in Chicago.

"You only get the spider tail from the soft tissue with no underlying bony structure, it is all keratin, just like our fingernails."

Billy Joel announced last year that he’d been diagnosed with a rare brain disorder called normal pressure hydrocephalus. He cancelled his tour to focus on his health, and the other day, he revealed that included having brain surgery.

“I noticed that my balance was not good,” he said on his SiriusXM channel.

“I had this sense of being on a boat, like this rocking motion. I wasn't steady on my feet. I didn't know why that was. And I went to meet with the neurologist and I was diagnosed with having something called normal pressure hydrocephalus, which they used to call water on the brain. Nobody's really sure what causes it, but they're able to diagnose it.”

He was advised that the condition could worsen, and his doctors recommended implanting a shunt in his brain. The Piano Man was initially opposed, but ultimately took the advice.

“I read up on it and I realized it can help improve your balance and can help your memory,” he explained.

“I don't want to lose my marbles. It's hard to tell what's age and what's a condition. So, I agreed to do the shunt and I had a surgery and they implanted a shunt in my brain and it actually improved things. My memory got better, my balance got a little better, my ability to function was better.”

Quizmaster’s choice

It’s Friday, and you know what that means! We’ll be quizzin’ you on a little bit of this and a little bit of that with another round of trivia à la carte 😎