The Hong Kong Monetary Authority visitor center sells souvenir glass containers full of shredded paper money. Each container (costing $100 HKD) is advertised as containing 138 complete $1000 HKD banknotes.
Researcher Chunt T. Kong set out to determine whether he could use "computer vision" to reconstruct the shredded banknotes. If he could, this would mean that for an investment of $100 HKD he would be able to reconstruct notes worth $138,000 HKD.
He determined that, yes, in theory the banknotes could be reconstructed. But he encountered a few problems:
First, the souvenir containers often contained far fewer than 138 notes. Some had as few as 20 notes in them. He found stones hidden in some of the containers. This, he complained, was false advertising. He noted, "it appears that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has broken the law."
The second problem: "even though the shredded banknote pieces could construct a complete banknote, the serial number may not have come from the same banknote, and there is a high chance that it could not be exchanged for real money."
He didn't address how all the little pieces would be stuck back together. With scotch tape?
But, of course, it was all just a theoretical exercise. Though he says that, having informed the Hong Kong Monetary Authority visitor center of what he did, they're now no longer selling the shredded money.
Entries are now being accepted for the world's first "Miss AI" contest.
One of the organizers of the pageant offered the following justification for it: "Considering real beauty pageants are criticised for dehumanising women, lets dodge that bullet by having contestants which aren’t human to begin with!"
The contestants will be judged by a panel that consists of two humans and two AI models. They don't explain how the AI models will make their decision or cast their votes. I assume the human creators of the AI models will be the actual judges.
"A model is given a 'Firmatron' facial by an operator wearing special gloves to transmit electrical impulses to facial nerves." New York Journal-American - Dec 2, 1960
A 1985 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine reported the unusual case of a 70-year-old woman who kept hearing music playing in her head, particularly the song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." After ruling out other possible causes, her doctor eventually suspected the music might be due to the high doses of aspirin she was taking. And sure enough, when she reduced her aspirin intake, the music stopped.
I would never have thought that aspirin could cause musical hallucinations!
Tampa Bay Times - Apr 2, 1986
The letter itself is behind a paywall, but I was able to find a brief article that the woman's doctor (James R. Allen) wrote about the case in the magazine of the Minnesota Medical Association.
May 1981: an infamous moment in baseball history — when Lenny Randle made a ball foul by blowing on it.
Randle later swore he simply yelled at the ball, but in the video it sure looks like he's blowing on it. However, I have a hard time believing he was able to blow on it hard enough to alter its course. I suspect it would have ended up foul without his assistance.
Our endless enthusiasm for sipping things through narrow tubes has birthed much innovation in the straw market. It has also created a new anxiety: lip wrinkles.
Traditional straws force sippers to purse their lips around the opening in an expression that many believe, over time, creates wrinkles around your lips, called perioral lines.
Enter the anti-wrinkle straw, shaped like the number 7, with a small hole at the top horizontal portion that allows users to drink without pursing their lips.
I never drink through straws, nor do I worry about lip wrinkles. So not a product for me. But enough people do use straws, and do worry about lip wrinkles, to have created a demand for this product.