In the Middle Ages, due to high illiteracy rates, paintings often served as the main medium of communication. Today, media communicates through monitor screens and their pixels. Pixels are rectangular dots created by hardware that combine to form text or images. Currently, the pixel is the smallest unit of media communication. Cryptopunks, NFTs created by Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson in 2017, are images composed of rough-resolution pixels. Although their value has increased due to their historical significance, ‘Cryptopunk #7523’ from the series was sold for $11,754,000 at Sotheby’s auction on June 10, 2021, because it conveyed rarity and history through its rough pixelation. This NFT, which utilizes square pixels as a tool, conveys a similar concept to Lego blocks, which are meant to be constructed with blocks. In media, messages are created, distributed, and valued based on the nature of the expression tool. The tool is the message. - Joseph’s “just my th...
The "normal human body temperature = 37°C" standard was established in 1851 by the German medical doctor "Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich", who took millions of temperature readings from about 25,000 people and reported "36.2°C to 37.5°C". However, surveys in the United States in 1992 and the United Kingdom in 2017 found 36.8°C and 36.6°C, respectively. So in the past people deemed that the discrepancy was due to errors in old measuring equipment or methods. But Julie Parsonnet and her colleagues at Stanford University's School of Infectious Disease Epidemiology found a common thread in the temperature databases: People are cooler now than they were then. It wasn't just a measurement error. They speculated that medical advances had reduced inflammation and lowered the average temperature. We don't question the obvious. - Joseph’s “just my thoughts”