Researchers and botanists analyzed the morphological diversity of fossilized flowers and compared it with the diversity of living species. https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/media/recent-press-releases/detailansicht-en/artikel/floral-time-travel-flowers-were-more-diverse-100-million-years-ago-than-they-are-today/

TFW you bring out the ingredients to make dinner and... one of them is no longer classifiable as "food." #GuessWeWillHaveSomethingElse

Millions of Americans live without reliable internet services. For farmers and food providers, this leaves them lagging behind competition and stuck with outdated equipment. Now, they’re looking to the Farm Bill for answers.
https://modernfarmer.com/2023/11/were-cut-off-rural-farmers-are-desperate-for-broadband-internet/

I laughed

Gosh, this is a fun story: The pneumatic tube mail system in New York City
https://untappedcities.com/2023/10/17/pneumatic-tube-mail-new-york-city

Not to be "that person" but I have never even heard of the sandwich they choose for Arizona. https://foodies1st.com/post/503/best-sandwich-in-every-state

A 1990 experiment to test whether we could discern life on Earth remotely
> When Sagan and his colleagues pointed Galileo at Earth, they invented a scientific framework for looking for signs of life on these other worlds — one that has permeated every search for such biosignatures since. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03230-z

The Greening of Milan: Porta Nuova and Vertical Forest https://worldsensorium.com/the-greening-of-milan-porta-nuova-and-vertical-forest/

I laughed

Your 2023 WebMD, Wrapped (humor, in case that isn't obvious) https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/your-2023-webmd-wrapped

12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed https://arkeonews.net/new-discoveries-in-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-a-human-sculpture-with-a-realistic-facial-expression-found-in-karahantepe/

Overheard: "Dude, I think the squirrels in your head have chewed through the wires."

You've got to be able to hold a lot of contradictory ideas in your mind without going nuts. I feel like to do my job right, when I walk out onstage I've got to feel like it's the most important thing in the world. Also I've got to feel like, well, it's only rock and roll. Somehow you've got to believe both of those things. --Bruce Springsteen

Recruited to the war effort thanks to their deft research skills and technological know-how, in WWII librarians used microforms to gather and share intelligence with Allied forces.

https://daily.jstor.org/how-american-librarians-helped-defeat-the-nazis

An audacious collaboration between geneticists and conservationists plans to bring back the extinct dodo and reintroduce it to its once-native habitat in Mauritius.
https://www.cnn.com/dodo-de-extinction-mauritius-spc-intl-scn/index.html

Don’t you just hate rhetorical questions?

Ha!

This is a fascinating interview about AI but this is the quote that stands out to me:
“To be an optimist you have to have the courage to be a fearsome critic. … The critic is the one who says this can be better and that means optimism.” — Jaron Lanier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vU9QtcMZw

In the spring of 2021, Sarper Ozharar—a physicist at NEC Laboratories, which operates the Princeton test bed—noticed a strange signal in the DAS data. “We realized there were some weird things happening,” says Ozharar. “Something that shouldn’t be there. There was a distinct frequency buzzing everywhere.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/12/roar-of-cicadas-was-so-loud-it-was-picked-up-by-fiber-optic-cables/