Maybe one day AI tools will be advanced enough to process a random dataset and produce valuable insights that incorporate the context of the real world. That day is not today.

Stephen Wolfram gets into modeling biological evolution:

Why does biological evolution work? And, for that matter, why does machine learning work? Both are examples of adaptive processes that surprise us with what they manage to achieve. So what’s the essence of what’s going on? I’m going to concentrate here on biological evolution, though much of what I’ll discuss is also relevant to machine learning—but I’ll plan to explore that in more detail elsewhere.

I mostly put this here as a bookmark for myself, but I have a feeling you’ll read through this before me.

You might’ve heard a little something about AI these past few months. If the ideas seem kind of fuzzy, Nicky Case and Hack Club are collaborating on a guide for how these things work and the issues that we should address as AI-based things grow more common. It has comics.

While the current tools are fun to play with, there are and will be real safety challenges as the systems slurp up more data and process faster. It grows more likely that the systems will directly affect your day-to-day life. So it seems worthwhile to know a bit how they work instead of blindly trusting companies than run with different motivations than you.

It’s been over 200 years since the cicadas of Brood XIII and Brood XIX came up at the same time. For the New York Times, Jonathan Corum revisits old cicada maps by Charles L. Marlatt from 1922. The spatial distributions look similar to current patterns and show how predictable these things are, even though they’re in the ground for so long.

The cicadas are coming. This year is unique, because there are two broods that are arriving at the same time in the midwestern and southeastern United States. Usually it’s just one at a time. CNN has a visual guide for where the cicadas will be and why they’re here now. Basically, one brood emerges every 13 years and the other every 17, and there’s overlap.

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, set out to plant and conserve 1 trillion trees by 2030. Bloomberg uses small dots to show how much more is left to achieve the target amount. The gray dots are what still needs to be planted. It’s kind of a lot, but fingers crossed.

The TikTok account Globetrots combines Google Earth and text-to-speech to show top-ten lists with various statistics. For example, what cities in the United Kingdom have the most people on benefits? A Google Earth shot pans to the different cities as text-to-speech narrates.

A good number of their videos have gained popularity (or the TikTok algorithms are pushing novelty). And the account recently subbed text-to-speech for a song format, which I think uses TikTok’s AI song feature? Just watch:

@globetrots

Do you agree?🎶 #top5 #uk #england #dangerous #music #googleearth #rock #fyp #foryoupage #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp

♬ original sound – Globetrots

It’s really corny, but we might also be seeing the beginning of something.

Knowing what’s next can help you work through a tedious step, because you know it’ll be worth it.

A deeply insightful map from xkcd.

See also: 19 maps that will blow your mind and change the way you see the world.

Based on estimates from the Crowd Counting Consortium, the Washington Post shows the increasing number of protests on college campuses over the past few weeks.

A set of maps show the locations, and a set of packed-circle charts show the increase of three weeks. Larger circles indicate larger crowd size. Darker yellow and black border indicate police presence.

Reddit user ChangsManagement mapped where NHL hockey players were born, based on data from Hockey Reference. As someone who knows next to nothing about hockey, except the bits I picked up while living in Buffalo, I’m surprised that the distribution is so far north, but it makes sense.

Daniel Shiffman, who you might know from his enthusiastic YouTube channel The Coding Train, updated his book The Nature of Code. The original version from 2012 focused on Processing. The new version uses p5.js, while still focusing on “understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world.” You can find the free-to-read online version here.

The Pudding ran an experiment that asked people to trace a shape. They would string together the sketches to make a flipbook to see where a single line or a circle would end up. They published the results:

Every shape devolved into a scribble, which I feel is a metaphor for information on the internet.

They also ran a sidequest that tested anonymity and the tendency to draw inappropriate things online. While the results were underwhelming, I appreciate the effort to see how many times a phallic sketch appears. Four times out of several thousand.

See also the Aaron Koblin works — a collaborative Johnny Cash music video, a song by 2,008 voices, and a hundred dollar bill drawn by thousands — that inspired the flipbook project. Although nothing beats Reddit’s pixel wars in 2017.

Hong Kong banned single-use plastics often used for food takeaway containers. For South China Morning Post, Kaliz Lee and Davies Christian Surya describe the ban and the scale of the waste. It’s a lot of plastic.

Here are the useful tools and resources that came out of April.

The Marshall Project highlights research on excess mortality in U.S. prisons:

The slowdown in admissions meant that prison systems reduced the number of younger people exposed to COVID, while the older people already inside were left there. That’s because incarcerated people are generally older than those likely to be sent to prison.

By the end of 2020, Bureau of Justice Statistics data shows the number of people in state prisons under 55 fell by 17%, while the 55 and older population was down by 6%.

Prison deaths spiked almost everywhere across the country, varying in magnitude from state to state.

Check out the full paper.

One of the challenges of understanding the weight of climate change is that it’s a slow process. You likely won’t see the full effect in your lifetime. So, for The Tardigrade, Julia Janicki and Daisy Chung placed your timeline against others to show how your future and others’ futures differ.

Projections are from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and show the timeline up until you turn 100 years old. You might recognize the visual form, which is based on Ed Hawkins’ climate stripes.

Using a series of graphics, Reuters explains Israel’s defense against rockets, also known as Iron Dome.

A key part of Iron Dome is its control system’s ability to discern what incoming targets pose a threat. If an adversary’s rocket will land harmlessly – in an unpopulated area or in the sea, for instance – it will not be intercepted. That makes it ideal for “saturation” scenarios in which an enemy tries to fire so many missiles that not all of them will be shot down, said Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.