Deadly, Immortal and Thriving!Hello, you fabulous Techbandits friendly!

I started last week off with AI of the Dead…fascinating catch-up with some news stories that had caught my eye…check it out…and there’s even shownotes if you want to dive into this stuff yourselves!

I finally got a chance to whip up some petris of culture medium (agar)! I rehydrated the agrobacterium, already loaded up with RUBY plasmid from The Odin Plant Genetic Modification Kit…I added it to the agar plates and the bacteria now seems to be enjoying themselves chowing down on their edible bed (though these are stinkier than my previous Odin experiment with glowing jellyfish bacterium)…I shall update everyone with my attempts at injecting them into unsuspecting house plants this week on our Tuesday TechBandits!

Speaking of Cnidarians (a group of 13,000 types of sea beasties that include corals, anemones and jellyfish)…Sea Jellies as “Jelliologists” would call them… I swum deep down the rabbit hole (minnow hole?) to learn more about these extraordinary 95% watery beasts (we’re only 60% water to give you an idea).

Here’s some mind blowing facts about them: They’ve been around for 500 to 700 million years, which makes them the oldest known multi-organ animal. Not only that, jellyfish seem to be thriving, despite warming and polluted oceans!
They’re like some kind of alien, triffid, floaty monster, with belly mouths that they use to eat and poop out of…wow! There’s an image!?

Jellyfish have repurposed neurons called nematocysts, which unlike brain neurons, which can rapidly eject proteins to communicate information, instead, fire potentially lethal, poisonous barbs, in a billionth of a second. This also makes them one of, if not the fastest, creature on earth!
These things are incredible…and there’s a ton more we’ll get to learn about them too. I was excited to learn that scientists believe there could be as many as 300,000 additional types of jellyfish still unknown to us! Perhaps there are others like the Turritopsis dohrnii with the ability to revert back it’s baby polyp stage, in a process called “transdifferentiation”. “Immortal jellyfish”!?
These potentially deadly sea puddings are certainly worthy of some serious TechBandits investigation in the near future, don’t you think?!

More fun stuff I’ve been contemplating for TechBandits this week:

Are the Dodos about to make a comeback? They will be, if every goes to the “de-extinction” plans at Colossal Biosciences…and they won’t be alone, they’ve also got Wooly Mammoths in their sites!
Computer scientist Hilary Mason does a fantastic job of explaining machine learning to a child, teen, a college student, a grad student and an expert.

Got a Nintendo 3ds or WiiU kicking around? Nintendo is closing their digital store March 27th 2023, so you might want to pick up a few classics while you still can? I love the immediacy of digital downloads but without a physical copy of the game you lose the opportunity to re-sell it when you’re done. Company’s like Gameflip and RobotCache, look to be trying to change that, but it’s still a dodgy and badly supported process that seems rife for misuse and rip-offs. I’d love to hear if anyone has had any experience with reselling digital games and in-game assets, as it seems to be such a widespread frustration!

Huge thanks again to all our Patreons, subscribers, followers and friends! See you all this afternoon for more live Techbanditry…

Tuesday February 7th 2:30-ish ET

Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Brilliant!
Cheerio & Huzzah!
D!

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