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How many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It's an old joke, but also one that -- like the behavior to which it refers -- might soon be obsolete. Because today's L.E.D. lightbulbs last so long, replacing them is rarely necessary. So then the question becomes, how many entrepreneurs does it take to keep the lightbulb business from falling victim to its own technological advances? Or as The New Yorker's JB MacKinnon wonders: "Is there a workable business model for products that are built to last, rather than to fall apart?" There are a few ideas from startups that hope to turn lighting into a software-driven service. (If that doesn't work, I suppose they could always remove the headphone jack and pretend that's a must-have advance...) Here's more on a very interesting challenge to an industry that got too good at its job. Trying To Solve The L.E.D. Quandary
"In the past, buying clean water had been a necessity for the rich (the poor simply endured centuries of bad drinking water, and often died from the experience). Now it was freely available to all. Why would you continue to spend money on something that now came, miraculously, out of a tap in your kitchen?" Well, let's crack open a can of LaCroix and discuss. From The Guardian, a historical look at how the business of bottled water went mad. (In the farm to table era, even water that's delivered cloud to mouth doesn't seem quite artisanal enough.)
Sports are a microcosm of society. So it shouldn't surprise us that some of the presidential election year strife that has soiled social media and every dinner party would have slithered its way into NFL locker rooms as well. And like the rest of the country, the pro football split in the presidential race is largely about race itself -- a topic that's now pitting national anthem kneeling players against their steadfastly standing owners. They don't call it the National Football League for nothing. From Mike Freeman in Bleacher Report: Donald Trump Is Tearing The NFL Apart. (Interestingly, he pretty much ruined the USFL too.)
You want a headline that puts the opioid drug scourge into context? Consider this one from the NYT: As Drug Deaths Soar, a Silver Lining for Transplant Patients. "Transplants were initially associated with deaths from car accidents, which is why organ donors are noted on driver's licenses. But overdoses (47,000 in 2014) have surpassed car crashes (32,000 in 2014) as the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. The growing numbers of overdoses from synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil have only heightened the drug toll."
+ Stat: The DEA is reconsidering its ban on the herbal supplement kratom. And the agency is also set to cut opioid production by 25 percent for next year. (The DEA took longer to cut opioid production than it took to outlaw hemp shirts.)
Ever have one of those days when everything is going really well, and you're feeling really good, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, you realize that you're not Bruce Springsteen? Even President Obama once said, "The reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen." Well, it turns out Bruce Springsteen has those days too. "People see you on stage and, yeah, I'd want to be that guy. I want to be that guy myself very often, you know? I had plenty of days where I'd go, 'Man, I wish I could be that guy.'" He discussed that and more on a recent episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Last night, some old friends and I sat in the sixth row and listened to Bruce Springsteen discuss his new autobiography at the same time Madison Bumgarner was adding to his legendary status with another post-season pitching gem for the Giants. At that moment, I may have become the first person to self-actualize via other people's achievements.
There are plenty of people in tech and life sciences who think we are only at the beginning when it comes to extending life expectancy, and that even achieving immortality is a longshot possibility. But a new paper suggests we may be nearing a lifespan limit. So what's the number? About 115 years old. (I hope we can push it at least a few years longer than that. I'm a little behind on my novel.)
"Someday you will die, leaving behind a lifetime of text messages, posts, and other digital ephemera. For a while, your friends and family may put these digital traces out of their minds. But new services will arrive offering to transform them -- possibly into something resembling Roman Mazurenko's bot." In The Verge, Casey Newton shares the story of Eugenia Kuyda's bot: When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence.
"Cultural transmission does not require the high cognitive sophistication specific to humans, nor is it a distinctive feature of humans." Scientists were able to train bees to pull on strings in order to get a reward. Then other bees learned the behavior from the bees that had been trained by humans.
+ Trained pigeons can tell the difference between the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. From Mental Floss, here's a selection of incredible animal facts.
Feeling pretty good about your physique today? Well, enjoy it, because according to the NYT, this is probably the least you'll weigh all year.
+ "Of course you want to make a profit, but it's not about that. It's about continuing something. It's history. We're messing with history here, and I don't want to see it destroyed." A guy who once worked as a dishwasher at Carnegie Deli just offered $5 million to buy it before it closes in December. (He should launch a crowdfunding campaign in the middle of the Yom Kippur fast...)
+ "Social media plays a pivotal role in spreading these rumor-panics which travel around the globe in the blink of an eye. They are part of a greater moral panic about the fear of strangers and terrorists in an increasingly urban, impersonal, and unpredictable world." (It's either that or the big red noses.) The Guardian's Matthew Teague tracks the false clown sightings back to patient zero. This was the day it all began.
+ Why are left-handers so much more rare? And can you be left-eared?
+ NYT: New York Burial Plots Will Now Allow Four-Legged Companions. (This is seriously my cat's worst nightmare.)
+ WaPo: Do Commas Still Matter? (Hint: Nothing Matters.)
This is a weekly best-of version of the NextDraft newsletter. For daily updates and to get the NextDraft app, go here. (Original story reprinted with permission from NextDraft.)
