{"id":5643,"date":"2026-06-07T13:16:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5643"},"modified":"2026-06-07T13:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:20:21","slug":"odd-lots-370","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5643","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/article\/news-southwest-bans-humanoid-robots-flights\/\" target=\"_blank\">Southwest Airlines has just banned \u201chuman-like\u201d or \u201canimal-like\u201d robots from its flights<\/a>. Oh\u2014and in checked baggage too. The concern is about biggish lithium-ion batteries, which does make sense. There\u2019s also the issue of whether robots are considered passengers, checked baggage, or carry-on baggage that carries itself on.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/why-one-branch-on-the-human-family-tree-replaced-all-the-others?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us\" target=\"_blank\">Interesting long-form piece about archaic homo sapiens<\/a>, a genetic group close enough to modern humans to share a species name, but different enough to trace their rise and fall and eventual extinction. Modern humans carry some juvenile traits into adulthood, like friendliness, playfulness, curiosity and flexibility, in a similar way that our modern dogs carry puppy traits like playfulness and cuddliness into adulthood. Dogs are lifelong wolf puppies, and we\u2019re lifelong cave-kids. <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/health.yahoo.com\/wellness\/nutrition\/healthy-eating\/articles\/eating-beef-every-day-may-213322427.html\" target=\"_blank\">Beef is not the big health risk<\/a> that Certain Influencers have long been yelping about. Well, we\u2019ve known that for a long time. Eggs are good for you too. As are protein and fat. The arguments will continue as arguments generally do.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/mobile\/the-overnight-charging-habit-thats-aging-your-phone-battery-faster-than-it-should\/\" target=\"_blank\">Keeping lithium-ion batteries on charge even after they hit 100% shortens the life of the batteries.<\/a> I knew this, and don\u2019t keep my phone or tablets on charge after they hit 100%, which I check for from time to time.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/technology\/robotics\/scientists-found-the-optimal-robot-body-and-it-has-20-legs-watch-it-scale-walls-and-move-through-trees\" target=\"_blank\">Duke University scientists have created a 20-legged robot<\/a> that merrily rolls along the Duke campus. Watch the videos; I\u2019m a long-time robot fan and I think they\u2019re cool.<\/li>\n<li>And if creating 20-legged robots isn\u2019t your thing, consider <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2026-05-randomness.html\" target=\"_blank\">scientists at ETH Zurich who have created (theoretically) perfect randomness<\/a> using two superconducting chips cooled almost to absolute zero and connected to each other by a 30-meter long tube similarly cooled. I don\u2019t quite understand it either (how do you prove a number is perfectly random?) but I have a hunch you could sell perfect random numbers generated with such a device and make a good buck. We\u2019ll see.<\/li>\n<li>USB-C cables and ports can do a lot more than just charge your phone or tablet. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/usb-c-port-can-do-things-youve-probably-never-tried\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here are a few such things worth keeping in the back of your head<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Well, this certainly wasn\u2019t on my bingo card: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/entertainment\/articles\/robots-clothes-humanoids-hit-catwalk-034420380.html\" target=\"_blank\">A humanoid robot fashion show<\/a>, where the robots and their, um, fashion models wear the same clothes on the runway.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/bigthink.com\/strange-maps\/grayening-why-everything-is-gray\/\">Here\u2019s a map of America\u2019s favorite house paint color<\/a>\u2014along with some discussion on when and why vivid colors fled from everyday American life. I remember when cars were all kinds of colors. The kitchen I grew up in was hot pink for a fair number of years\u2014and then bright blue. Sure, all that was (many) years ago. Multiple colors increase costs for just about any product line. Shame, that\u2014but a pretty solid explanation. (h\/t to Rich Rostrom for the link.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Southwest Airlines has just banned \u201chuman-like\u201d or \u201canimal-like\u201d robots from its flights. Oh\u2014and in checked baggage too. The concern is about biggish lithium-ion batteries, which does make sense. There\u2019s also the issue of whether robots are considered passengers, checked baggage, or carry-on baggage that carries itself on. Interesting long-form piece about archaic homo sapiens, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[118,37,15,102,145],"class_list":["post-5643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ai","tag-food","tag-hardware","tag-math","tag-robots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5643"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5647,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions\/5647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}