For today’s edition of “Deal of the Day,” here are some of the best deals we stumbled on while browsing the web this morning! Please note that Geeks are Sexy might get a small commission from qualifying purchases done through our posts. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
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What happens when Frank Reynolds gets dropped into Cyberpunk 2077? Pure, unfiltered chaos, with zero regard for anything. From questionable decisions like “Can I offer you a nice egg in this trying time?” to blasting bad guys with all the subtlety of a bulldozer, Frank brings his unique brand of insanity to Night City. Guns? Check. Magnum condoms? Check. A totally inappropriate response to every situation? You bet. It’s Frank, it’s a mess, and it’s exactly what you never knew you were begging for. Buckle up and watch!
Well, this is how horror movies start. A man in Fargo spotted three wild turkeys circling a gravestone over and over—so long, in fact, that they’d worn a ring in the snow. Are they summoning something? Guarding a portal? Conducting an extremely exclusive turkey séance? No one knows. But if they suddenly stop and all stare at you… run.
You crack open a yogurt, and suddenly—POOF!—your cat appears. Coincidence? Not a chance. Every cat knows that the POK! of a yogurt lid is basically a mystical incantation that demands their immediate presence. But can cats actually eat yogurt? Well, technically, a little plain yogurt won’t hurt most cats—but let’s be real, they don’t need it. Some types of yogurt are safe for cats in small amounts, but it shouldn’t become a regular treat—especially for kittens with sensitive stomachs. While plain yogurt has probiotics and calcium, lactose-intolerant cats should steer clear. So next time your feline friend insists they heard the call, maybe just enjoy the yogurt yourself!
Check out these robotic pals, powered by the new Helix generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model, as they tackle the not-so-rushed task of putting away groceries—very, very slowly. Watching them carefully pick up each item and deliberate on where it belongs in the fridge is like watching two stoned roommates trying to remember where the milk goes. One commenter under the Youtube video nailed it: “When you ask your two stoned roommates to put away the groceries.”
With the brains of advanced AI running in the background and the speed of a sloth enjoying a coffee break, these robots offer a rather amusing look at the future of automation. Watch the video to see how they eventually, albeit slowly, get the job done!
We often forget how wonderful it is that life exists, and what a special and unique phenomenon it is. As far as we know, ours is the only planet capable of supporting life, and it seems to have arisen in the form of something like today’s single-celled prokaryotic organisms.
However, scientists have not given up hope of finding what they call LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor, the ancestral cell from which all living things we know are descended) beyond the confines of our planet.
Where are we looking?
Since humans started dreaming about Martians, scientific understanding has changed significantly. The most recent vehicles to have traversed the Red Planet’s surface – the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers – have identified compounds and minerals that suggest its conditions may once have been habitable, but that is the extent of it.
Other nearby planets offer even less hope. Mercury is a scorched rock too close to the Sun, Venus’ atmosphere is dry and toxic, and the others in our solar system are either made of gas or very far from the Sun. So, apart from Mars, the search for other forms of life is focused on satellites, especially those orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.
Europa and Enceladus – moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively – appear to have large oceans of water under a thick crust of ice that could potentially harbour organic molecules, the building blocks for the origin of life as we know it. These would be nothing like E.T. – they would look more like the simplest terrestrial single-celled organisms.
Looking further afield, more than 5,500 planets have been detected orbiting stars other than the Sun. Only a few are considered potentially habitable and are currently being researched, but as Carl Sagan said in Contact, “the universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
The prevailing belief until then was that life could only occur under the conditions where we saw multi-cellular organisms survive. Water, mild temperatures between 0⁰ C and 40⁰ C, pH in neutral ranges, low salinity, and sunlight or an equivalent energy source were considered essential for life.
However, in the mid-20th century, microbiologist Thomas D. Brock discovered bacteria living in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, where temperatures exceed 70⁰C. Though unrelated to the search for extraterrestrial life at the time, his discovery broadened its scientific possibilities.
Since then, organisms known as extremophiles have been found inhabiting a range of extreme conditions on Earth, from the cold of cracks in polar ice to the high pressures of the deep ocean. Bacteria have been found attached to small suspended particles in clouds, in extremely saline environments such as the Dead Sea, or extremely acidic ones, such as Rio Tinto. Some extremophiles are even resistant to high levels of radiation.
What was most surprising, however, was finding them inside ourselves.
Martians in your stomach
In the 1980s, two Australian doctors, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, began studying gastroduodenal ulcers. Until then, the condition had been attributed to stress or excess gastric acid secretion, which did little to help cure the condition.
Warren was a pathologist, and having identified bacteria in gastric biopsy samples from patients, he realised that they had to be considered a cause of the disease. However, he had to fight against the dogma that microorganisms could not grow in the highly acidic enivronment of the human stomach.
In 2005, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastric diseases, a discovery that revolutionised the field of gastroenterology.
H. pylori has an amazing array of factors that help it survive in hostile environments, such as flagella that allow it to surf stomach fluids to get close to the stomach wall, breaking through the protective mucus layer and attaching itself to it.
Using the enzyme urease, H. pylori degrades urea in the stomach into ammonia and CO₂, creating a higher pH microclimate that allows it to reproduce. As its numbers increase, it releases exotoxins that inflame and damage gastric tissue in the stomach. This is how ulcers eventually develop, as the underlying connective tissue is exposed to the acidity of the stomach.
Their discovery showed that even tucked away in our innards – in the walls of our stomachs, subjected to vinegar-like pH levels, total darkness, the violent movements of our digestive systems, harmful enzymes and churning tides of food – life is able to resist and proliferate.
The study of extremophile micro-organisms offers the hope that on other bodies in the solar system, or on one of the 5,500 known exoplanets, even in extreme conditions, the extraordinary phenomenon of life may be present. The Martians we dream of today might look more like H. pylori than anything else.
