1.
Rain panels? Rain panels.
researchers have found a way to capture, store and utilize the electrical power generated by falling raindrops, which may lead to the development of rooftop, power-generating rain panels.
Reading the citations on the original paper, it works kinda but research is ongoing. Science rather than technology still.
RELATED:
Wild Video Shows Entire Mountain Range in China Covered With Solar Panels (2025).
HEY:
Here’s a prediction I made in 2007:
By 2037, China, by virtue of their ability to see and manage environment impact on a larger scale than other countries, will have invented cheap renewables to reduce their dependancy on fossil fuels, and will be working on fixing the atmosphere (perhaps they’ll also have genetically engineered rafts of algae on the Pacific, excreting plastics). The West will rely on Chinese innovation to dig us out of our ecological mess.
Mind you I also predicted that our peak pop media would be from India. Turns out it’s South Korea so I got the country wrong.
2.
Pavlok is a wrist band that gives you electric shocks by remote control:
“I have been biting my nails for 25 years…I shocked myself every time I bit my nails… my husband had a good time shocking me when he caught me biting my nails… this helped with … quitting nail.”
Those ellipses… doing a lot of work… on… the “how it works” page. Also, husband.
You know that friend who won’t eat Taco Bell anymore after she got a terrible case of food poisoning?
That’s how it works: That’s aversive conditioning. We’ll help you use it to your advantage.
Well why not.
The wrist band also has an alarm clock function.
RELATED:
What do you call execution by electricity? It was debated in 1889 (2021).
3.
Ok. We’re in the middle of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), part of an existential struggle between Rome and Carthage that lasted over a hundred years.
At the end of the the First Punic War, Carthage was destroyed.
But they returned, established a new empire in Iberia (now Spain) and founded New Carthage on the Iberian coast. Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants etc and lays waste to Italy.
Striking back: Scipio audaciously captures New Carthage, and Carthage in Iberia is on the brink of defeat.
Hannibal’s brother Mago, army destroyed, flees to the island of Menorca (which is beautiful).
There he founds the city of Mahon, which today is the capital and remains a port, and it still bears his name.
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, named for the city:
The typical local egg sauce that has conquered the world is known as mayonnaise.
As mentioned in The Rest is History ep. 641, Hannibal’s Nemesis (Part 2) (Apple Podcasts) along with this grand claim:
the only thing you’d have in a fridge that’s named after a Carthaginian general.
A fact too good to check on ChatGPT but I can’t see why it shouldn’t be true.
4.
The legendary and much-loved email app Eudora was released for free in 1988.
Version 6 introduced MoodWatch, which labeled incoming and outgoing messages with chili peppers and ice cubes, depending on the presence of possibly offensive language. People loved it!
Oh the chili peppers!
You’d write an email with a few curse words and some YELLING and get those chilis.
I vaguely remember there was a feature to enforce a cooling off period? Like you couldn’t send a 3 chili email immediately?
Let’s bring that back:
Apple should license Pavlok technology and hide it under the track-pad. About to send an unhelpfully-worded email to a colleague? A prim little AI instantaneously adjudicates and electroshocks you as you click the Send button, right up the finger.
1.
Rain panels? Rain panels.
Reading the citations on the original paper, it works kinda but research is ongoing. Science rather than technology still.
RELATED:
Wild Video Shows Entire Mountain Range in China Covered With Solar Panels (2025).
HEY:
Here’s a prediction I made in 2007:
Mind you I also predicted that our peak pop media would be from India. Turns out it’s South Korea so I got the country wrong.
2.
Pavlok is a wrist band that gives you electric shocks by remote control:
Those ellipses… doing a lot of work… on… the “how it works” page. Also, husband.
That’s how it works:
Well why not.
The wrist band also has an alarm clock function.
RELATED:
What do you call execution by electricity? It was debated in 1889 (2021).
3.
Ok. We’re in the middle of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), part of an existential struggle between Rome and Carthage that lasted over a hundred years.
At the end of the the First Punic War, Carthage was destroyed.
But they returned, established a new empire in Iberia (now Spain) and founded New Carthage on the Iberian coast. Hannibal famously crosses the Alps with elephants etc and lays waste to Italy.
Striking back: Scipio audaciously captures New Carthage, and Carthage in Iberia is on the brink of defeat.
Hannibal’s brother Mago, army destroyed, flees to the island of Menorca (which is beautiful).
There he founds the city of Mahon, which today is the capital and remains a port, and it still bears his name.
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, named for the city:
As mentioned in The Rest is History ep. 641, Hannibal’s Nemesis (Part 2) (Apple Podcasts) along with this grand claim:
A fact too good to check on ChatGPT but I can’t see why it shouldn’t be true.
4.
The legendary and much-loved email app Eudora was released for free in 1988.
Oh the chili peppers!
You’d write an email with a few curse words and some YELLING and get those chilis.
I vaguely remember there was a feature to enforce a cooling off period? Like you couldn’t send a 3 chili email immediately?
Let’s bring that back:
Apple should license Pavlok technology and hide it under the track-pad. About to send an unhelpfully-worded email to a colleague? A prim little AI instantaneously adjudicates and electroshocks you as you click the Send button, right up the finger.