Of course, Vigo didn't randomly stumble onto this technique while collecting clam spit as a hobby. Sea silk is an art form that goes back to Ancient Egypt. It was the finest fabric known in antiquity, coveted not only because it shines like gold when held in daylight, but also because it was said to improve your fortune and fertility. We'll never know what desperate (and suicidal) tailor discovered this disgusting process, but it's so difficult and time-consuming that over the ages, fewer and fewer could be bothered to learn it. Now, only Vigo still raids clam gums for residue to make this soft gold.

Due to sea silk's rarity, as well as how delicate and beautiful it is, she could probably make a trillion dollars selling curtains to Saudi princes. But she and her family actually live on welfare, refusing to sell the cloth at any cost, claiming it would offend God to monetize "the soul of the sea." Instead, she gives it away. But before you submit an order for three yards of the stuff, it's also in incredibly short supply. It takes Vigo 200-300 dives just to gather 200 grams of byssus. So anyone hoping to nestle cozily under a bedspread made of mollusk drool is out of luck.

And that mastery is exactly what the kilogram needs. You see, the metric system of measurement is maintained to an incredibly precise standard. Right now, the kilo is the only type of metric measurement that still has a physical prototype -- precisely weighted lumps of material against which all other produced weights are tested. The daddy of them all is the international prototype kilogram, or "Le Grand K," an expertly measured bundle of platinum and iridium located just outside of Paris under lock and key. But it appears that those precautions still aren't enough, because the special K is somehow managing to lose weight. That's bad news for scientists, because they've technically agreed that this doesn't mean the kilogram is getting lighter, but that the entire Universe is getting fatter.

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

However, if scientists could obtain a silicon sphere which weighs exactly one kilogram down to the molecule, they then could count the number of atoms in that sphere and come up with an unalterable universal standard once and for all. This is where Leistner comes in, because he could possibly create a perfect ball of silicon. He thinks of this craft as "massaging atoms." It's a painstaking, months-long project which involves polishing a ball so delicately that he's knocking a mere few atoms off the surface each time, and then feeling for irregularities with his fingertips, which are supposedly so sensitive that he can feel molecular structure by touch alone.

But we have to hurry. Leistner is already in his 70s and still hasn't found a single apprentice who can do what he does. And this is one job robots aren't stealing anytime soon. No technology we can create can do what Leistner achieves with his own two hands and some relatively mundane workshop equipment. So here's hoping he completes his ultimate masterpiece before his spirit is recalled to that great silicon orb in the sky.

In 2015, Koch revealed in an interview that he was about to give up and get a regular job when the Snowden thing happened, at which point he decided that his software was too important to abandon just for the sake of, you know, feeding his family. In order to help as many people as possible, paying to use GnuPG is optional, like with WinZip. And so, like with WinZip, almost nobody ever pays. On average, Koch makes around $25,000 a year (often less) on one of the most important pieces of software in history.

Luckily, he barely manages to keep afloat with the occasional funding drive. The 2015 interview earned him a particularly big windfall, as it drew the internet's attention to something that was, holy crap, kind of a big deal. But as of June of this year, he's had to start another donation drive so that he can keep protecting the world's most high-profile whistleblowers, rather than take a more lucrative job selling bratwurst from the back of a food truck.

Before European settlers came to North America and went Hulkamania on the natives, the Wukchumni tribe of central California numbered in the tens of thousands. Today, the tribe is dying out. Only 200 people remain, and of those, only one knows their traditional language. That's 84-year-old grandmother Marie Wilcox.

Understanding that her rapidly approaching expiration date will instantly erase millennia of human knowledge, Wilcox decided to write a dictionary, knowing that she's the only person who possibly can. As you'd imagine, even Wilcox's memory of how to speak Wukchumni isn't perfect. She hasn't had a conversation in it for decades, what with there being no one else on Earth to have one with. She must search deep into her old-person memory banks to resurrect all those words she hasn't used since before her bones started aching when it was overcast.

Despite these challenges, Wilcox has managed to almost complete her work, thanks to painstaking effort and the support of her family. It took seven years for her to produce a draft of her dictionary, but she isn't done, as she continues to expand and refine it. We can only hope she remembers all the swears.

So what happened to the Shakers? Tragically, they've been defeated by one really ill-advised part of their dogma: Thou Shalt Not Bone. The Shaker religion is one of absolute celibacy, so the only way someone can join is through conversion. They cannot make more of themselves, not even if they're the last two left. Shakers are the sectarian equivalent of pandas. Now we're sad.

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village Maine

Membership began to plummet after the Civil War, to the point where Hadd and Carpenter are the last ones left. So unless we can convince them to do a congregation-building pelvis collision (which would be dangerous at their age anyway), they're going to need a hell of a membership drive.

S. Peter Davis is the creator of the Three Minute Philosophy YouTube series, and is the author of the book Occam's Nightmare.

GNUPG does have manuals out there, in case you think it's a thing you need.

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