Nuclear fusion technology could herald a golden age of energy that will make the fossil fuel age look like the stone age! That’s right, limitless carbon-free energy for everyone, all thanks to the hard work of genius nuclear physicists and engineers! MIT recently announced that their fusion reactor project is only about 15 years away. http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-novel-approach-fusion-power-0309

Are we headed for nuclear apocalypse? Everybody’s favorite crony capitalist and democratically elected dictator Vladimir Putin just announced an all-new nuclear-powered cruise missile that can hit any target on earth. The missile can, according to Putin, fly under any existing US missile defense systems undetected. It’s a bizarre announcement, because Russia already has more than 1,900 nuclear missiles on standby that most experts agree could bypass any missile defense systems anywhere. The announcement comes just weeks after the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to two minutes till midnight. If you don’t know, the Doomsday Clock represents expert global opinion of how close the world is to nuclear apocalypse. Midnight means the party’s over, and experts believe the planet is closer to total nuclear destruction than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was really really damn close. Well, and in 1953, just after the United states tested a hydrogen bomb.

Barbra Streisand cloned her favorite dog and things didn’t turn out as expected. Why? And How? And, most importantly, Whuuuuuuuut? First, Streisand revealed in a recent interview with Variety Magazine that she had her recently deceased dog Samantha cloned—twice. Well, she had two clones made. According to the world-renown singer, the dogs have different personalities than Samantha and aren’t exactly identical to her, either. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/barbra-streisand-clone-pet-dogs-explained-spd/

In science fiction they call it gray goo - nanobots that replicate without limits until eventually everything on the planet is a featureless gray goo. It’s the first thing that came to mind when I read a recent article in the NY Times about a new species of crayfish that clones itself and is taking over Europe. The species emerged just 25 years ago as a mutation. Normally, animals have two chromosomes, one from each parent. This female crayfish ended up with three, meaning that she could produce her own fertilized eggs without mating. And every egg is a perfect clone of the original crayfish. Oh, and crayfish lay hundreds of eggs at a time. More from the German Cancer Research Institute: https://www.dkfz.de/en/presse/pressemitteilungen/2018/dkfz-pm-18-07-A-clonal-crayfish-from-nature-as-a-model-for-tumors.php

That’s right, naked mole rats may be the true underlords of this planet, shriveled immortals lurking beneath our feet, sewing discontent throughout society until humanity is on the verge of collapse. Explains the current state of the world quite well, I’d say. But unfortunately we can’t pin humanity’s failings on the machinations of mole rats. We may, however, learn how to extend our misery indefinitely by studying their apparent agelessness. https://elifesciences.org/articles/31157