The Day After the Election, Pet Cloning, Irish Pub Museums and TIME's Best Inventions

Pet Cloning Isn’t the Future … It’s Already Happening, With A Long Waiting List

The promise is simple: your pet can live as long as you. Or, at least, a version of your pet thanks to the largest commercial pet cloning company who is remaking thousands of dogs, cats and even horses. Apparently there are specific rules to consider if you’re in the market for this pet cloning service. They need a piece of the pet’s ear, it must be harvested within five days and you’ll need to refrigerate (not freeze) the sample before providing it. Oh, and the service costs upwards of $50,000.

The biggest problem, other than ethical considerations which aren’t really mentioned in the article, is that people expect the cloned pet to be the same and actually recognize them when it’s born (grown?). As an unnamed customer service rep for the company told WIRED magazine:

“I try to prepare them not to expect the same dog all over again. They are genetically linked—and that includes temperament and intelligence and parts of the personality—but the new pet is going to have different experiences. The dog’s not going to know who you are right off the bat.”

I’m lucky that our family dog is still quite young, but I’m not sure I would do this even if the price came down to a more reasonable number. If you have a pet, and particularly if you had one that passed away, would you consider this service? Hit reply to this email and let me know.

A Short Tour of the Best Inventions of 2024 According To TIME Magazine

The newly released TIME Best Inventions of 2024 was a lovely diversion today and I probably (definitely!) spent way too long digging into the many different products and ideas on the list. From there, I selected eight that really stood out to me in particular and they are below. The full list is worth a read.

Diaa - A Ukrainian marriage app that allows couples who are physically separated by Russia’s invasion of the country to propose and get married via video call. It's simple, necessary and an absolute tragedy that it even needs to exist in the first place.

Toi Labs TrueLoo - This AI powered toilet seat optically scans stool and urine samples for signs of health problems. Probably overkill for your home, but this is already rolled out in 50 senior living facilities and it's easy to imagine the potential life-saving benefits there.

Yondr Pouch - It's hard to think of a company mission more urgently needed than Yondr, which promotes moments of disconnection by locking your device inside a pouch. You may have experienced Yondr at a concert or show in the past, but the fastest growing market for Yondr are schools--a perfect use case for this clever and necessary product.

FinaMill Spice Grinder - If you love fresh ground spices but find them hard to have available and buying lots of grinders is wasteful, this is the ideal solution. The FinaMill has interchangeable pods so you can keep several with different spices and just grind them when needed. The ultimate adulting product or gift for the aspiring gourmand.

Literally Cotton - Aside from the exceedingly clever brand name, the premise of this company is perfectly futuristic: lab-grown cotton. If they can make it work at scale, the idea that we can now fabricate instead of grow cotton could transform entire industries.

Technicolor Dream Pen - This pen is actual magic. You can scan any color on any item and the pen will remix to give you an exact match. I desperately want this pen and I am pretty sure I have exactly zero logical reasons to use it and that I'll tire of it immediately. The ultimate impulse buy.

Niche Direct Admissions - The colleges come to you. That's the promise of this beautiful example of flip thinking - a platform where students can put in their details, scores and background and then let colleges proactively admit them. It's not only a great way to boost the confidence of the aspiring college-bound teen, it also helps get students to consider schools that could be a great fit but not yet on their radar.

Rebind Book Club - While this idea is probably quite clunky in practice (I haven't had a chance to try it yet), I love the vision behind it. The platform uses AI to let you have deep intellectual conversations about a classic book with someone notable. It's the sort of conversation that's hard to come by in real life and perhaps ideal for a simulation ... if it's not uncanny of course.

Is All-Blind Narration the Future of Audio Description for Films & TV?

“He looks ahead, his dark eyebrows overshadowing his dark eyes. One of his several gold teeth gleams in the dim light.”

This is the audio description for a scene from a limited series called The Penguin from Max, a part of the Warner Brothers group. This isn’t just another AI-generated audio description of a visual scene, it was created by an all-blind and visually impaired team of actual humans who could describe the scene based on a combination of notes and scene descriptions from the original script of the show. It’s an unusual choice in an industry that is increasingly turning to automation for production tasks.

The story does highlight the long-understood idea that people who lack one sense may develop near extreme abilities to compensate as their brain rewires itself. It is also a great reminder that despite the pace of technological advances, there may still be some jobs better completed by real, feeling people. It’s a conclusion you might also take away from the recent study which found self-driving taxis are slower and more expensive than human-powered ride sharing services. We’ll take the win. It’s still nice to see any evidence that humans still have the edge.

Win Bigly - Persuasion In A World Where Facts Don’t Matter | 2nd Edition

Back in 2017, I selected this book as a winner in our Non-Obvious Book Awards program that year because of how perfectly it described a new sort of persuasive art that then President-elect Donald Trump had perfectly mastered. Just in time for this latest election, Dilbert-creator Scott Adams has a 2nd Edition of the book out (released in September 2024) and it’s worth picking up. I have to admit, I’m conflicted about him as a person. The level of delight he takes in childish name calling and his overall smug speaking style is hard to like. But his writing is clever, his insights are spot on and his perspective is highly useful for understanding why Trump is continually able to connect with so many people. So this is one of those “separate the book from the writer” cases where I recommend reading this new edition of his book anyway despite the author’s personality. Just try to avoid accidentally suffering through listening to Adams give an interview or watching one of his rambling online videos and stick to his writing.