Weird Things

WT: Bones Like a Space Bird


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The episode opens with Andrew quizzing the others about an extinct goat from Mallorca and revealing that the animal was a mammal that had evolved extremely unusual cold-blooded traits on an island with limited resources and no predators. The hosts then dig into the evolutionary tradeoffs between cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals, mention the naked mole rat as another unusual mammal, and riff on speculative science fiction ideas about humans adapting to space travel and microgravity. A long middle section turns to AI and mixed-reality tools. Andrew demos the Sol Reader and Quest 3 passthrough, while the hosts discuss how VR and spatial computing might change reading, work, and social presence. They also explore ChatGPT roleplay and image generation, talk about latency and model scaling, compare AI summarization tools and news feeds like RSS, NewsBlur, Twitter/X, and Substack, and debate prompt secrecy, guardrails, and whether AI assistance can feel therapeutic. Later, Brian shares a striking real-world story about seeing a bright object and smoke ring in the sky after an Austin eclipse event, which turned out to be a SpaceX Starlink launch. The episode closes with discussion of Starlink as backup internet and satellite-to-phone service, then a brief wrap-up directing listeners to Patreon and the show’s RSS feed. Key topics Island evolution and cold-blooded mammals: Andrew explains that the Mallorca goat evolved on an island with scarce resources and no predators, becoming
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Weird ThingsBy Andrew Mayne

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